For Aeschylus, however, the conflict between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra is far more than a personal dispute between a married couple: it is a political battle about how society is run: the matriarchy is challenging the patriarchy. Not only because of Cassandra, the “spoils of war” he presents to Clytemnestra as his lover, but above all because he sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia in order to secure a favourable wind from the gods for his fleet. Agamemnon returns home in triumph after ten years fighting the war against Troy to be greeted by his wife Clytemnestra with hatred and a desire for revenge. This is the spiral of violence that grips the ruling house of the Atrides in Aeschylus’s ‘Agamemnon’, the first part of his trilogy ‘The Oresteia’. Everyone thinks they have the law and the will of the gods on their side and this conviction drives them on to commit new injustices. Every drop of blood spilt has to be atoned for with more.
The cycle of revenge and retribution is endless.
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