Sacrifice of Iphigenia

The sacrifice of Iphigenia is presented as the decisive act of violence behind the family’s later revenge in the account of Aeschylus’s Oresteia. Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter; the consequences reach beyond her death, shaping the intentions and actions of his wife, Clytemnestra, and their son, Orestes.

Background and Circumstances

The account identifies Iphigenia as the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and states that Agamemnon sacrificed her. It places the act in the family history surrounding Agamemnon’s return from the Trojan War, without specifying the circumstances or purpose of the sacrifice.

Consequences for the Family

Clytemnestra awaits Agamemnon’s return intending to kill him. The account connects that intention with his sacrifice of their daughter and notes that Clytemnestra now has a lover. It presents these details as the background to the planned killing, without reducing her reasons to a single cause.

Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, later kills his mother to avenge his father. The act does not end the violence: the Furies pursue and torment Orestes. The sacrifice therefore belongs to a chain of familial acts and reprisals whose consequences extend to the next generation.

Narrative Significance

Although the sacrifice is recounted as part of the mythic background to the Oresteia, it gives the later killings their family context. The movement from a father’s sacrifice of his daughter, through the wife’s intended revenge, to the son’s matricide makes violence recur across generations; Orestes’s pursuit by the Furies carries that cycle beyond the act of revenge itself.