Oresteia, << oh rehs TEE uh, >> is a series of three tragedies written by the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus and first performed in Athens in 458 B.C. The three plays rank among the masterpieces of world drama.
The Oresteia is a trilogy, a dramatic form consisting of three tragedies that focus on different phases of the same story. The Oresteia is the only surviving trilogy in ancient Greek drama. Aeschylus’s trilogy is a complex work that explores many themes, especially guilt and atonement, the relationship between the gods and humanity, and the conflict between justice and revenge.
The Oresteia consists of Agamemnon, Choephori (The Libation Bearers), and The Eumenides (The Furies). In the first play, Agamemnon, king of Sparta, returns home victorious from the Trojan War after a 10-year absence. There he is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, who plotted the murder with her lover, Aegisthus. Clytemnestra sends her young son, Orestes, into exile.
The Choephori refers to the chorus of female servants who make offerings at Agamemnon’s tomb. In this play, Orestes returns as a young man to avenge his father’s murder with the support of his sister, Electra. He kills his mother and then, maddened by guilt, is pursued by avenging goddesses called the Furies, who demand revenge for Clytemnestra’s death. In The Eumenides, Orestes stands trial in Athens for murdering his mother. The goddess Athena casts the deciding vote that acquits Orestes, finally breaking the cycle of vengeance and establishing the rule of law and justice in the state.
The story has been adapted by many authors. They include the ancient Greek dramatists Euripides and Sophocles, the Roman dramatist Seneca, the French playwright Jean Racine, the German writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Gerhart Hauptmann, and the English poet T. S. Eliot. The American playwright Eugene O’Neill adapted the trilogy into Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), relocating the action to the United States just after the end of the American Civil War in 1865.
See also Aeschylus.
