Girl on an Altar: Key Moments

What happens: Before the action proper, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia at Aulis to gain the winds his fleet needs to sail for Troy.

Shows: The founding act of the whole tragedy. Power and ambition are bought with a child’s life, and this is the wound everything else grows from.

Use it for: Power, sacrifice, the origins of revenge, Agamemnon’s character, the play’s tragic structure.

What happens: In the war’s long aftermath, Clytemnestra lives with the loss of Iphigenia while keeping the household and waiting for her husband’s return.

Shows: Grief with nowhere to go. Her mourning is denied an outlet and slowly hardens into resolve.

Use it for: Grief, the position of women, Clytemnestra’s character, the slow build to revenge.

What happens: Clytemnestra forms a bond with Aegisthus, who becomes her partner in both her life and the plan against Agamemnon.

Shows: That her apparent powerlessness is really preparation. The revenge is assembled, not spontaneous.

Use it for: Power, revenge as planning, relationships, Clytemnestra as an active agent rather than a victim.

What happens: Agamemnon returns in triumph from the Trojan War, expecting to be received as a conquering hero in his own house.

Shows: His blindness. He treats the return as a victory parade, not a reckoning, and walks into a trap he cannot see.

Use it for: Power, dramatic irony, Agamemnon’s character, the gap between surface and truth.

What happens: A red cloth, often staged as a carpet, is laid down for Agamemnon to walk on as he enters the house.

Shows: Power as performance. The colour reads as glory and as blood at once, and the honour is really a lure.

Use it for: Symbolism, dramatic technique, the marriage as a mask, Clytemnestra’s control of the scene.

What happens: Agamemnon brings Cassandra, the Trojan prophetess, into the household as his captive and prize of war.

Shows: The treatment of women as spoils, a final insult to the marriage, and the cruelty of foresight no one heeds.

Use it for: The position of women, the cost of war, the marriage theme, Cassandra’s tragic figure.

What happens: Clytemnestra, with Aegisthus, kills Agamemnon, answering the death of Iphigenia with his own.

Shows: Revenge as the rebalancing of power, but also as a repeat of the same deadly logic, a life for a life.

Use it for: Revenge, justice versus vengeance, the climax, the cyclical nature of violence.

What happens: Cassandra, who foresaw her own end, is caught up in the violence that consumes the household on Agamemnon’s return.

Shows: The powerlessness of the conquered and the futility of prophecy when no one listens or can act.

Use it for: The cost of war, fate and foresight, the spread of violence beyond its main target.

What happens: The surviving children of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are left to live with a father killed and a mother who killed him.

Shows: That the grief and violence are inherited. The cycle does not close with the revenge, it is passed on.

Use it for: The cycle of violence, consequences, family and grief, the play’s unresolved ending.