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"Her father called his henchmen on, on with a prayer, "Hoist her over that altar like a yearling, give it all your strength! She's fainting - lift her, sweep her robes around her, but slip this strap in her gentle curving lips Her glance [was] like arrows showering, wounding every murderer through with pity- (Ag. 230-239). .
The entire imagery of the sacrifice of Iphogenia is pictured as a hunt in progression, the "hoisting," which has a negative, barbaric connotation, to the altar, instead of lifting, the simile of the victim daughter to a yearling. Even her glance can be pictured as the glance of an entrapped deer or calf, young and innocent, and "showering every murderer with pity." These lines contribute to the image of hunting one's prey. Her robes being swept around her seem metaphorical to a net being closed in upon the body of a hunted animal. With overall images of a hunt and sacrifice in progression, the underlying tone of hunting is a bit clearer to the readers of the Oresteia. .
The very next referral to nets is when the chorus, again, is speaking of the war and downfall of Troy, and how Zeus has " slung [his] net on the towers of Troy, [that] neither young nor strong could leap, the giant dredge net of slavery, all-embracing ruin- (Ag. 361-364). When a god has hunted and trapped the city of Troy with a net which nobody can escape, hunting with the use of nets seems to be as if instead of humans hunting and trapping animals, the gods are now hunting and trapping humans.
What is a robe but another form of a net which humans wear? Even kings can be hunted and trapped in nets, the "nets" or red robes which Clytemnestra uses to hunt and kill her husband Agamemnon. Deviously, she lures her prey to the trap with the red robes upon which he is made to walk, and when he is in the water taking a bath, she traps him and takes her axe upon him. If this sounds like an animal being hunted with the use of a net, it is by no means an accident on the part of the author.