fed them to him as revenge for stealing his wife This act of cruelty deepened the curse The gods punish such crimes so the family is doomed to suffer This curse is already in motion when the play Agamemnon begins In the play Cassandra comments about the House of Atreus A house that hates the gods house full of death kinsmen butchered heads chopped off Agamemnon s Sin Agamemnon the Greek king faces a terrible choice during the Trojan War To get favorable winds for his ships the goddess Artemis demands he sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia Agamemnon does this as a duty But killing his own child is a sin Even though he is pressured by the gods his action adds to the family s guilt This shows how past sins force new crimes Agamemnon is both a victim of the curse and an evil-doer Clytemnestra s Revenge Agamemnon s wife Clytemnestra kills him when he returns from war She claims it is revenge for Iphigenia s death But her act is not just about justice it is also driven by her own anger and her affair with Aegisthus who is Agamemnon s cousin and Thyestes s son However Clytemnestra s actions only continue the cycle of hereditary guilt because her son Orestes is now bound to take revenge on her for killing his father The Cycle Continues The play ends with Clytemnestra and Aegisthus ruling the kingdom However we know from the Chorus and Cassandra s prophecy that Agamemnon s son Orestes will return and kill his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father Cassandra predicts Another man will come and will avenge us a son who'll kill his mother then pay back his father's death This endless loop of violence parent killing child and child killing parent stresses how hard it is to escape hereditary guilt Each generation repeats the same mistakes Fate vs Free Will Aeschylus makes us wonder Are the characters truly free or are they controlled by the curse Agamemnon chooses to sacrifice Iphigenia but the curse pushes him toward that decision Clytemnestra chooses murder but her rage is fueled by years of pain The play suggests that while curses influence people they still have agency the power to act The characters act only thus they cannot break free from the curse Justice or Vengeance The chorus in the play often talks about Zeus the god of justice and the idea that sin begets sin But in Agamemnon justice looks a lot like revenge Clytemnestra thinks she is punishing Agamemnon fairly but her methods are brutal Aeschylus seems to question whether violence can ever bring true justice or if it just continues the cycle The Chorus says The man who sins is sinned against the killer pays the price This remark represents the cyclical nature of revenge To wrap up in Agamemnon Aeschylus uses the theme of hereditary guilt to show how families and societies can be trapped by their past The characters suffer not just because of their ancestors crimes but also because they keep making selfish violent choices The play is a warning without mercy wisdom and new ways of seeking justice the cycle of guilt and revenge will never end