In general, a ritual sacrifice is used as a means of purification. In Agamemnon, however, sacrifice becomes corrupted and is equated with murder. After the murder, Clytaemnestra boldly states:
Words, endless words I’ve said to serve the moment –
Now it makes me proud to tell the truth.
How else to prepare a death for deadly men
Who seem to love you? How to rig the nets
Of pain so high no man can overleap them?
I brooded on this trial, this ancient blood feud
Year by year. At last my hour came.
Here I stand and here I struck
And here my work is done.
I did it all. I don’t deny it, no.
He had no way to flee or fight his destiny –
(1390-1401)
This shows that she is a very evil and bold woman. Right before the murder, Agamemnon returned with Cassandra in a chariot. She orders her handmaidens to lay tapestries before Agamemnon's feet as he walks into the house as said in this excerpt:
Women, why delay? You have your orders.
Pave his way with tapestries.
They begin to spread the crimson
Tapestries between the king and the
Palace doors.
Quickly.
Let the red stream flow and bear him home
To the home he never hoped to see—Justice,
Lead him in!
Leave all the rest to me.
The spirit within me never yields to sleep.
We will set things right, with the god’s help.
We will do whatever Fate requires.
(900-907)
These lines have lots of meaning in them. When she says “Justice,” she means the pursuit of justice. In her evil mind, justice means revenge and murder. The “red stream” refers to the stream of Agamemnon’s blood once he is murdered inside the house. “The spirit within me never yields to sleep” means her evil spirit is blood-thirsty. It won’t sleep until it seeks the justice, or revenge that it wants. “We will do whatever Fate requires” links back to the last line of the first quote I said earlier. His fate equates his destiny as Clytaemnestra says earlier. The red carpet symbolizes that he cannot flee his destiny, as Cassandra prophesized.
As a queen during the war, Clytaemnestra is the cornerstone of society itself. As queen, she rules Argos in her husband's absence by controlling aspects of the city including both legal and religious policies. She should be the most law-abiding of citizens since she is the queen, but she commits the highest of all crimes—murder. From a religious standpoint, she should be the leader of their religious ceremonies, yet she is a hypocrite and savagely debases the moral values of the norm. In her language, she describes her deed as a sacrifice to the Gods. By using these words, she mixes mortal secular actions with religious ones. The culmination of all her words and deeds is when she appears, bloody but triumphant, before the chorus, standing in front of Agamemnon's murdered body, and announces her actions and her motives.
