Ever since the first humans arrived on earth, hunting and gathering have been the main sources of our physical survival. Likewise, tools such as nets have been quite essential as one of our hunting essentials. Humans are consumers; we always have been from the start, so it would be strange if our ancestors did not discuss something that was such a major factor to existence, i.e. hunting, as soon as they had the capabilities to have a written language. Thus, it is not as surprising that ancient literature such as Aeschylus" the Oresteia would have many references to hunting, and one of the most prominent and promising methods to hunting, the use of traps and nets. In the Oresteia, what is normally the hunt of animals for the consumption and survival of human beings is combined with war also, resulting in negative connotations to the word. With the combination of the two independently good ideas, war and hunting, there is a result of the idea of war being a hunt of human beings.
It seems to the chorus in the beginning of the Agamemnon that the war over Helen of Troy has made not only the city of Priam a victim of the Greek armies, but according to a prophet named Calchus, many cities have been caught by " the long hunt nets [of war]," (Ag. 129). Something about the very first referral to nets being made specifically to accommodate hunting combined with war in the Oresteia gives way to a theory that perhaps the ancients thought it bad and treacherous to combine just hunting animals with killing humans in war. Because of this combination, the word "hunting" develops a new connotation, one that is perversely related to hunting humans with nets. Closely after this referral to hunting, we see the father, Agamemnon, sacrificing his daughter Iphogenia at the behest of the gods. What is truly significant about the passage of her sacrifice is how Aeschylus words the imagery to form a subliminal, yet traceable referral to hunting, not an animal but a human, with nets.
