The Oresteia: Agamemnon / The Libation Bearers / The Eumenides

by Aeschylus

Athens entered upon a spectacular era of energy and prosperity, one of the great flowering periods of Western civilization.

Parthenon of Ictinos and Pheidias,

#1

Oresteian ...

#2

called

for compassion and lasting self-control.

dominant symbolism is that of light after darkness.

He deepened Homer with even older, darker legends and lifted him to a later, more enlightened stage of culture.

The house of Atreus is the embodiment of savagery. No other Greek family can rival it for accumulated atrocities.

Pelops,

won the hand of Hippodameia by a ruse which killed her father - a murderous chariot race

Thyestes seduced his brother’s wife

Atreus

feasted him on his childr...

Thy...

fled into...

accompanied by his one remaining so...

celebrates our emergence

from the tribe to the aristocracy to the democratic state.