"So much has slipped away, but the smell of death lingers. Maybe the smell has entered my body and been welcomed there like an old friend come to visit" (House of Names, pg. 3). Death has plagued the house of Atreus, and it does not stop with those who are related by blood to the family but also those who married into the family. Clytemnestra allowed the curse to consume her every being even welcoming it into her life, which ended in her murder. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra were married and had three children Iphigenia, Electra, and Orestes. As Agamemnon prepared his army for war against Troy, he was told to sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to Artemis to lift the curse of terrible weather. Clytemnestra and the children were brought to the camp where Agamemnon was preparing his soldiers for war, excitedly waiting for what they believed was the wedding of Iphigenia and Achilles. Upon arrival however, it was made clear they were not there for a wedding but rather a sacrifice of Iphigenia's murder. This anger from that day on only fueled Clytemnestra everyday while Agamemnon was away at war. Her anger stemmed from the lie she was told about her daughter being brought to the camp to be married, and then was fueled as she watched her daughter be dragged to her death. Clytemnestra never wanted to see her daughter die, but the blood curse was still going strong in the family. The curse got to Clytemnestra from the moment she witnessed the sacrifice. As it is written, "Murder makes us ravenous, fills the soul with satisfaction that is fierce and then luscious enough to create a taste for further satisfaction" (House of Names, pgs. 3-4). Clytemnestra's witness of the murder of her daughter made her ravenous for revenge against her husband, which she methodically plotted while he was away in Troy. She used Aegisthus to find the woman who could weave poison into fabrics, and she had the woman make a robe that when put onto Agamemnon would paralysis him. The day Agamemnon returned from battle, when he went to bathe himself, Clytemnestra followed him into the room and placed the robe on him and took a knife to his neck and killed him on the spot. Her passion to avenge her daughter drove her to murder her husband. Without the sacrifice of Iphigenia, Agamemnon may have never died at the hands of his own wife, but because of the choices he made the blood curse came back at him with vengeance. Now her murder had to serve it's own consequence, just as Agamemnon served his. Not only was Clytemnestra driven to murder, but so was her daughter, Electra, who wanted to revenge on her mother for how she was raised and the lack of power she had. Electra used her brother, Orestes, to murder her mother rather than get her own hands dirty. Orestes waited in the garden while his mother picked flowers and as she attempted to get back inside after seeing a guard being stopped by two others she was murdered by her own son. He stabbed her in the back while attempting to cut her neck. It wasn't Orestes' own anger that led to the death of his mother, but rather his sister's anger that she implanted into him. The story of Clytemnestra started with the murder of her daughter and ended in her own murder. Murder, bloodshed, and death haunts the House of Atreus and all who enters it's doors.
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November 2021
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