Language is Aeschylus' juggernaut: he uses striking, innovative words to drive an image into the mind of his audience. Clytaemestra, notorious as a villain or perhaps an anti- heroine, effectively acts as a medium for Aeschylus' brilliant rhetoric in Agamemnon. Clytaemestra's rhetoric not only invokes vivid imagery, but also confuses and perverts spheres of logic and rhetoric: sacrifice with murder, liquids with cloth, and blood with wine. These images overturn the values and traditions of her society, symbolized by the chorus, by joining spheres that were customarily kept separate. Aeschylus' perversion of values through the confusion of rhetorical spheres gives Clytaemestra ultimate power in the play and throughout the trilogy.

One of the ways Aeschylus builds Clytaemestra's power at the play's climax is through the involution of murder depicted as a sacrifice. The ritual sacrifice, a sphage, served as a means of purification in antiquity (Lebek 80). In Agamemnon, the symbolic act of sacrifice becomes corrupted and equated with murder. Death, as a sacrifice, is a constant theme. It has been alluded to many times before Agamemnon's demise, always in the form of ritual sacrifice, but ne

3. Lebeck, Ann. The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1971.

5. Dodds, E.R. "Morals and Politics in the Oresteia." Chapter in The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays in Greek Literature and Belief. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.

1. Aeschylus I. "Agamemnon" Oresteia. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953

6. Goldhill, Simon. Language, Sexuality, Narrative: The Oresteia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

2. Gomme, A. W. "The Position of Women in Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC" Classical Philology 20 (1925): 1-25

The first corruption of the ritual is the offering of blood rather than wine. It is not the first time that human remains have been offered for ritual feast instead of animal ones; the audience quickly remembers the feast of Atreus, perhaps the ultimate symbol of the impiety of the Atreides. By offering Agamemnon's blood as wine, Clytaemestra makes a connection with the feast a generation earlier. The second corruption concerns what is being sacrificed. Rather than killing some goat or bull, Clytaemestra murders her husband and king. Again, a person takes the place of an animal, and again, the audience is reminded of an earlier sacrifice. Here we are ironically drawn back in time. Iphigenia, with her saffron robes flowing around her, most likely begged her father for her life. The image is strikingly similar to what we, the audience, would see: Agamemnon lying dead, his crimson robes flowing around him, with Clytaemestra standing coldly triumphant over him. Finally, she does not offer her sacrifice to Zeus the Savior, but rather Zeus, who guards dead souls. In doing so, she has corrupted the ritual sacrifice on all levels. She has perverted the libation, the sacrificial victim, and the object of the sacrifice. She has inverted the nature of the gods, as well as man, revealing her true nature.

Clytaemestra has effectively coaxed the chorus by transforming the vulgarity and brutality of her deed into the methodical and necessary steps of sacrifice. As a queen and a mother, Clytaemestra represents the pinnacle and cornerstone of society itself. As queen, she rules in her husband's absence, controlling all legal and religious aspects of her city. As a mother, she is the center of private life, giving birth to future kings and citizen

Some common words found in the essay are:
Savior Zeus, Agamemnon Clytaemestra's, Savior Lebek, Agamemnon Cassandra, Immediately Agamemnon's, Aeschylus' Oresteia, Furthermore Oresteia, Clytaemestra Agamemnon, Language Aeschylus', Drama Greeks, ritual sacrifice, blood wine, showers god glory, glory birthtime buds, zeus savior, sacrifice murder, glory birthtime, birthtime buds, god glory, showers god, god glory birthtime, stand showers god, robes flowing, gardens stand showers, throughout trilogy,
Approximate Word count = 1605
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)