Aeschylus’s treatment of the theme of hereditary guilt in "Agamemnon"

Aeschylus’s Agamemnon is a tragedy that was first performed in Athens in 458 BC, basically deals with one of the dark stories of hereditary guilt. His tragedies certainly deal with death, but life always asserts itself amidst the lurid dance of death. Life in his time was lived at an intense level. His plays are a poignant expression of that sense of intensity.

In the ten years between the fall of Troy and the rise of Athens the social and political life of Greece

underwent many dangers. Aeschylus and his contemporaries had spent their youth amidst tyrannies, revolution and wars. The play Agamemnon is based on a background history that deals with hereditary curse. This curse was brought on by crime, and crime breeds crime. The sin of Atreus of killing two sons of Thyestes, and the curse of Thyestes upon Atreus’s family determine the curse of life of Agamemnon. Again, Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter out of superstitious belief breeds the seeds of revenge in his wife. Thus the tragedy develops through a nexus of curse, sin, retribution and revenge.

In Agamemnon, Aeschylus deals with the murder of Agamemnon, the king of Argos. Agamemnon married Clytemnestra and his brother Menelaus married Helen, Clytemnestra’s sister. The final tragedy of the family was the consequence of incidents of the Trojan War. It was the relentless ‘Fate’ that made Agamemnon the commander in chief of the Achean forces against Troy. A mighty fleet set sail for Troy to rescue Helen, one of the twin daughters of Zeus, gives birth by Leda, wife of Tyndareos. On the way they stopped at Aulis, where Agamemnon while hunting one day killed a stag Sacred to the goddess Artemis. The goddess become angry and calmed the winds to prevent the Greek’s sailing. Days lengthen into months and soldiers became impatient. At last, following the suggestion of Calchas, Agamemnon went back home and brought his daughter Iphigenia telling Clytemnestra that he had arranged for Iphigenia to be married to Achilles. Iphigenia came and was duly slaughter on the altar of Artemis. The wind began to blow and the ships proceeded uninterrupted. Hearing the news of her daughter’s murder, Clytemnestra became mad with rage and determined to have revenge upon her husband on his return.

In Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon, the story was dominated by the cruelty of ‘Fate’. He expresses through the character of Agamemnon that wrong doer must suffer. The sin of Atreus has to be inherited by his son Agamemnon, but his son too commits a sin by sacrificing his own daughter. The curse was no doubt hanging upon the house of Atreus, but Agamemnon also invited his own doom and justified the action of fate. Orestes him son was also founded by immemorial tradition to enact vengeance for his murdered father. At the end of the Trilogy, reconciliation is achieved and Orestes suffers torment at the hands of the Furies and last of all granted release. Thus through sin and struggle, suffering and atonement, there appear a new phase in men’s quest for justice.

Agamemnon is killed partly for his own guilt and partly for his father’s guilt. So a parent’s guilt visits the son and the son has to suffer for the sin committed by the father. In this way ‘hereditary guilt’ travels through generation involving a serious of murder. The consequence of one’s guilt gives rise to another and the fire of Nemesis never dies. The killer must be killed is the dictum of justice. “Horror is countered by horror and sin by sin” – the justifiability of this strange justice is not known by the mortals.