So, he chooses to sacrifice Iphigenia, and the winds stop pinning down their hulls at bay. His hubris meant that he had more pride in his reputation with the army, than love for his own daughter. His ego cared more about satisfying masculine ideals of war glory.

To bless the war that avenged a woman’s loss, …” Yes, he had the heart to sacrifice his daughter, No, but stop the winds with a virgin’s blood,įeed their lust, their fury? – feed their fury! – ‘Obey, obey, or a heavy doom will crush me! –

“and I still can hear the older warlord saying, Hubris is a Greek-origin word for foolish arrogance and excessive self-confidence that eventually leads an ambitious person to their downfall.Īs the men of the Chorus narrate the tale, they make Agamemnon’s priorities clear: And that revenge is what the play Agamemnon is about.īut within the story’s complexities of curses, revenge, child murder, war, and grief, I’d like to hone in on… hubris. Hence Queen Clytemnestra’s blood thirst for her husband’s death upon his return from Troy, to avenge her murdered child. And so Agamemnon killed his own daughter, so that they could sail on to war. When Agamemnon was to set sail with his men for Troy to join in the war, the Goddess Artemis was angry (for some unrelated reason), and raised such winds as to not allow them to sail until a virgin sacrifice to her had been made. The curse rippled through generations to claim the innocent lives of the family’s children, including Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon. The curse began with Agamemnon’s great-grandfather, Tantalus, who killed his own son and had him cooked up and fed to the unsuspecting gods when they feasted in his palace. Never has this been more true within literature than in the tragic story of the immortal blood curse shadowing the House of Atreus. “…they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices.” (Proverbs 1:31-32) Agamemnon is book #10 from The Literary Project.

Agamemnon by Aeschylus