Aeschylus's plays "Agamemnon", "The Libation Bearers", and "Eumenides" were all based on one parent child conflict that gradually manifested into one the best-known curses in Greek mythology. Tantalus, one of Zeus's many sons, started this havoc when he attempted to serve the Gods a dinner consisting of his son, Pelops. The reaction of the angered Gods resulted in the curse on the House of Atreus, which would prove effective as it plagued parents and their children for generations to come. The first of these conflicts is presented in "Agamemnon" as a wife slays her husband in punishment for being a negligent father. An ever deeper dilemma is presented in "The Libation Bearers" as a son avenges his father's death by murdering his mother. The last of the plays, "Eumenides", brings about a sense of closure as the question over parental love and loyalty is raised in a divine trial.
             After ten years at war Agamemnon returns to Troy only to be slaughtered at the hands of his loving wife, Clytaemnestra. This is not only because of his "friend", Cassandra, but because of a bitter resentment she has harbored waiting for his return. In order to leave port and sail to war, Agamemnon had sacrificed his eldest daughter, Iphegina. "Oh, but doom will crush me, once I rend my child, the glory of my house- a father's hand stained, blood of a young girl streaks the altar." ("Agamemnon", 207) To Clytaemnestra this was a great betrayal as she felt her husband had chosen the life of a soldier over that of a father. Although Iphegina is dead far before the tale ever begins, she still manages to play an overwhelming powerful role including being the source of her mother's madness. "...growing strong in the house with no fear of husband here she waits the terror raging back and back in the future the stealth, the law of the hearth, the mot...