ABSTRACT
At the City Dionysia of 458 BC, two years before his death, Aeschylus presented his dramatization of the myth of the house of Atreus. Later known as the Oresteia (‘the story of Orestes’), Aeschylus’ version takes the form of a connected trilogy that unfolds in chronological sequence, with continuity of subject-matter, imagery, characters, and story-line. Agamemnon tells of the title figure’s return after conquering Troy, and his murder (along with his Trojan concubine Cassandra) at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra, who seizes power with her lover Aegisthus. Her exiled son Orestes returns to avenge his father’s death, murdering Clytemnestra and Aegisthus with the help of Electra and the slave-women of the house, who give the second play its name, Choephori or Libation Bearers. After the matricide, Orestes is pursued by the Furies, spirits who take vengeance on those who shed kindred blood, tracking him first to Delphi and then to Athens. There Athena establishes a court to try cases of homicide, and the goddess herself breaks the jury’s deadlock by voting to free Orestes. She calms the Furies’ anger, persuading them to reside in Athens as spirits of marriage and fertility, transforming them into ‘the kindly ones’ or Eumenides, the title of the third play. Following the trilogy a satyr-play, Proteus (now lost), told the escapades of Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother and husband of Helen, when he was shipwrecked in Egypt on his way home from Troy.
