Aeschylus’ 'The Oresteia': Reading the Trilogy

Aeschylus’ Oresteia is the only surviving trilogy that exists from antiquity (14). Thereby making it utterly unique, it definitely deserves a blog post for it’s own. So let’s take a look at how to approach The Oresteia which consists of: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides.

Association with Homer:

Aeschylus referred to The Oresteia as “slices from the banquet of Homer” (14). Essentially, Aeschylus evidently desires to be associated with Homer and this is clear across this trilogy. The trilogy refers to both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and therefore covers the themes of war and peace. However, the darker events of the Odyssey, the ones that were truly disturbing, are the ones that Aeschylus focused on. Specifically, the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra, and the vengeance of his son (Orestes).

Robert Fagles and W.B.Stanford illustrate in their essay ‘On Reading of ‘The Oresteia’’ that the house of Atreus “is the embodiment of savagery”. This location, combined with the founder of the family line (Tantalus of Lydia) who is a barbarian whose spirit and soul haunts this trilogy, suggests even before the trilogy begins the exact theme and situation that permeates the trilogy.

Breakdown of each play:

1. Agamemnon

This play describes how Clytemnestra murders her husband, Agamemnon, because of the death of their daughter. Clytemnestra sets to establish herself and her lover, Aegisthus, as rulers over Argos.

This play evokes Nietzsche’s words on Aeschylean tragedy: “All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both”.

2. The Libation Bearers

In this play, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s son, Orestes, obeys Apollo’s command of killing the murderers as revenge. However, his mother’s furies drive him mad.

3. The Eumenides

In the final play of the trilogy, the furies pursue Orestes to Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. Apollo is able to purify Orestes of any blood-guilt. However, Apollo is unable to release him from the Furies and consequently refers Orestes to both Athens and Athena for their respective judgements. Athena then chooses a group of men to conduct a trial of manslaughter, Orestes is eventually acquitted and then is restores to Agamemnon’s lands in Argos. Athena then eventually persuades the Furies, to become “benevolent patrons” (15), and their name changes from ‘The Furies’ to the ‘Eumenides’ – hence the title of the play.

Aeschlyus and the Trilogy:

Richard Lattimore notes that Aeschylus’ uses the house of Atreus as “a grand parable of progress”. What Lattimore essentially means is that the trilogy celebrates and present light after consistent and unchanging darkness, and this symbolism permeates repetitively all three plays, and therefore becomes the most dominant symbolism of the plays. Simultaneously, Aeschylus also demonstrates man’s suffering in life, while illustrating man’s character as persistent and constantly battling.

Works Cited

Aeschylus. The Oresteia. Translated by Robert Fagles. Introduction, Notes and Glossary by Robert Fagles and W.B.Standford. Penguin Classics. 1977.