Agamemnon at Aulis

Agamemnon at Aulis faces a choice between sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia — which will allow the Greek fleet to sail — and refusing to sacrifice her — which will preserve his daughter's life but break the oath binding the army and dishonor the dead already fallen. Both options destroy a genuine good: parental love on one side, political obligation on the other. There is no third option. There is no creative resolution preserving both goods intact. The Chorus does not say Agamemnon chose wrongly — it says the situation itself was structured to make any choice painful. The guilt that follows is not the guilt of error but the guilt of having chosen in a situation where every choice involved destruction of something that should not have been destroyed.