A Child for Victory

Agamemnon, sacker of Troy--he lives in history as a a Conqueror. Yet, also, he bears a more shameful legacy. He is the man that was told by the gods that he could not sail for Troy until he had offered the perfect sacrifice. For this honor, he chose his daughter, Iphigenia. Luring her to the beach with a promise of marriage, he married her to Death. The end of the story comes soon after the Trojan hiatus. Agamemnon returns from the wars only to be murdered by his wife, Clytaemnestra, in vengeance for the death of her daughter.

Her fury is eloquently stated in the line, "Memory womb of Fury child-avenging Fury!" For the memory her body bears Iphigenia the mother, Clytaemnestra would commit murder, overset tradition, and bear herself as a man. And history condemns her for it. Yet in all her evil, there is an edge of proper fury, of righteous anger, of a mother wounded and at bay. The rage of a mother whose child was unjustly betrayed and murdered for a lesser cause--victory.

As the world's womb has aged has it lost it's memory? Women have always murdered their own children, yet now, throughout the world, infants are being sacrificed for victory. Save the environement, decrease the surplus population! Save the state, decrease the cost of the unproductive! Save the woman, decrease her burden in the home. Let us lure our children to the beach with the promise of birth and instead give them a birth to death. Where is the mother's fury at this betrayal of her world that murders her children?