Aeschylus’s ritual language

Exploring the sacrificial victim through Iphigenia and Agamemnon

By Mariana C.

Animal sacrifice, the ritual that surrounds this act, was a fundamental part of many ancient civilizations. The offerings to the gods, to heroes, and to ancestors formed a unique, necessary connection between the living and the dead, between daily life and the divine sphere. Beauty, the aesthetic of death, and the sacrificial victim as an object were also key parts of these rituals. The killing and destruction of the perfect victim in honor of the gods, a feast in honor of heroes or a thysia, a sacrifice accompanied by food and celebration, in honor of the best men and women of the family, all have in common the need to appease, praise, calm superior entities, to honor them by giving the best of the house.

Greek tragedy explores god and hero sacrifice constantly, the ritual, the deep meaning, and the special connection of mortals with gods and heroes, but in this tradition, the beauty and the aesthetic of sacrifice are sometimes perverted, corrupted, and the victim is nothing less than a woman, a human, a victim that represents an act of hubris.

The sacrificial ritual loses a sacred meaning when contaminated with this type of victim, gaining new and more intricate meanings, becoming an act where each participant, the victim and the murderer, assumes a new role and transforms themselves into antagonists of the gods. This impure sacrifice, the human sacrifice, represents everything that is wrong, the hubris, the excess, the insult to the gods and the divine laws, and inside epic and poetry, it can be seen as an image, a representation of all these notions together with the inner fears, desires, and ideas about death, eroticism, and the body as an object of desire. The view can also be literal, as a testimony of real human sacrifice and ancient customs that speak of different times and ways of communicating with the divine realm.

Aeschylus’s Agamemnon and the entire Oresteia trilogy have a constant motif of blood, animal sacrifice and ritual, a juxtaposition of the correct and acceptable, the animal as pure victim, and the corrupt offering, human embodying the animal, assuming the role of victim as ritual substitute, blood as a language for both the aesthetic of death and the desires of the community.

This image of blood and sacrifice is contemplated in explicit and implicit ways, as is often the case in Greek tragedy; language is a fundamental key to understanding the meaning that the author is deciphering. The word adaiton appears several times in the Agamemnon, and its significance is crucial given its meaning of uneaten, used here for the killing of the king, and also used for Iphigenia.

“And I implore Paean, the healer, that she may not raise adverse gales with long delay to stay the Danaan fleet from putting forth, by urging another sacrifice, one that knows no law, unsuited for feast, worker of family strife, dissolving wife’s reverence for husband.”

Agamemnon, Aeschylus, lines 145-150

Both deaths are sacrificial, although for different purposes, and both by the hand of close family members, which connects what could have been a correct manner with a corrupted piece for the gods. This term denotes that these deaths are understood under the sacrificial ritual victim light, not as common crimes, but as a terrible and immoral act that spreads a blood that condemns the entire family. This term clearly establishes that the victims will not be ingested, the text places these victims as substitutes for the animal ritual that is usually expected for these situations; they both are taking the standing of a calf or bull, and both in Aeschylus and Euripides, these rituals are shown as sacrifices covered in ritual language and loaded with a special semiotics.

“Next when Calchas bade you offer your daughter in sacrifice to Artemis, declaring that the Danaids should then sail, you were overjoyed, and gladly undertook to offer the girl, and of your own accord—never allege compulsion”

Iphigenia at Aulis, Euripides, lines 358-360

In Euripides, Iphigenia is treated as a ritual victim, a sacrificial animal that, conversely, also assumes the position of a beautiful element, an almost divine victim resembling a statue or a goddess. In the name of fame, the xalon kleos is specifically mentioned in connection with her death, and like Polyxena, these ritual female victims are understood as beautiful bodies, virgins that denote a sublime beauty and carry this until the moment of death.

Iphigenia is killed on her father’s orders because of an oath, because of fear—fear of being destroyed by the army and fear of losing power and the position of king. This ordinary sacrifice is nevertheless enveloped in ritual language; the virgin is treated as a virgin animal, taken to the altar as animals are described, and her throat receives the wound like that of ritual victims. This victim and sacrifice are described as sphagion, a sacrifice that is not eaten but destroyed, a word that is used too inside Aeschylus’ tragedy to describe the killing of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra.

In lines 1388-1392, the sacrifice-killing of the king is described with the word sphagen, thus placing Agamemnon at the level of a sacrificial animal, a scenario that has more keys to the tragedy. He is not only described as an offering that is not food, but he is also wrapped in a reenactment of the ritual by Clytemnestra, who took him to the bath to clean his body and embraced him in a tunic to later stab him. This represents the cleaning and carrying of the animal victims to the altar, so that the man is the substitute of the calf, is the victim for the gods, in this case, the offering for the goddesses in the name of the murdered daughter, Iphigenia, the first ritual substitute and the main cause for Clytemnestra’s revenge.

“ I stand where I dealt the blow; my purpose is achieved. Thus, have I done the deed; deny it I will not. Round him, as if to catch a haul of fish, I cast an impassable net—fatal wealth of robe—so that he should neither escape nor ward off doom. Twice I struck him, and with two groans his limbs relaxed. Once he had fallen, I dealt him yet a third stroke to grace my prayer to the infernal Zeus, the savior of the dead. Fallen thus, he gasped away his life, and as he breathed forth quick spurts of blood, he struck me with dark drops of gory dew; while I rejoiced no less than the sown earth is gladdened in heaven’s refreshing rain at the birthtime of the flower buds.”

Both victims transform themselves into perfect animal pieces, that, although not eaten, are treated like the usual victims, cleaned, carried to an altar, with an exposed throat, and even with the correct and expected language. These bodies resemble the body of the calf; the language makes both the text and the audience think about the sacrificial ritual and suggest the future contamination and condemnation of the murderers and the entire community.

Agamemnon is again the protagonist of a path of contamination; just as he was for the kleos of the best heroes, he is in this case the common thread of the most terrible offenses to the divine law. It has been suggested that the purple, costly fabric that he walks on at the request of Clytemnestra is another blood motif, as a bloody path that connects him with the future murder. The idea seems to fit, since the language in images in Aeschylus is constantly attached to the scattering of blood, but even more important, with the bloody past of the House of Atreus, the ancient crimes of blood, the impure sacrifices, and the future crimes that will definitely end with the house and fame of Agamemnon and his descendants.

Further reading:

Aeschylus. Translated by Smyth, Herbert Weir. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 145 & 146. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926.

Scodel, Ruth. “Δόμων Ἄγαλμα: Virgin Sacrifice and Aesthetic Object.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 126 (1996): 111–28.

FOWLER, BARBARA HUGHES. “The Creatures and the Blood.” Illinois Classical Studies 16, no. 1/2 (1991): 85–100.

Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O’Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 1. Hecuba, translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.

Loraux, Nicole. Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman. Harvard University Press, 1991.

About Mariana:

Mariana is a student of Humanities, and during the last few years she has been studying various subjects related to Classical Philology. Her interest in ancient languages and literatures, particularly Ancient Greek and Latin, has been the central axis of her academic interest. Her studies focus on the works of Homer, Greek tragedy, and classical literature and ancestral texts. You can follow Mariana @marianaownroom on Substack and Instagram.