Agamemnon’s murder has now been avenged, but the fact that Orestes has killed his mother creates a further problem. Only after Pylades reminds Orestes of Apollo’s command is Orestes finally able to kill Clytemnestra.

Orestes has no trouble killing Aegisthus, but it is extremely difficult for him to kill his own mother. Apollo had instructed Orestes to avenge his father’s murder by killing both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, now around eighteen, comes back to Mycenae with his cousin, Pylades. The next play in the cycle is called The Libation Bearers, and it takes place seven or eight years after the death of Agamemnon. In the Agamemnon, it is Clytemnestra, not Aegisthus, who kills her husband. Aeschylus makes several changes to the story of Agamemnon’s death from the way that it is told in the Odyssey. Clytemnestra has sent her ten-year-old son, Orestes, away so he will not get involved in the intra-familial feud. Clytemnestra has taken a lover, Agamemnon’s cousin Aegisthus, who also wants revenge on Agamemnon. In it, Agamemnon has been gone for ten years, and all that time his wife, Clytemnestra, has been angrily plotting her revenge on her husband for sacrificing their daughter, Iphigenia. The first play in the trilogy is called the Agamemnon, and it centers around Agamemnon’s homecoming from the Trojan War and his subsequent death at the hands of his wife. The Oresteia was produced at the Greater Dionysia Festival in 458 BC, where it won first prize. All Greek tragedies were written in trilogies, but this is the only example of a trilogy that still exists. The Oresteia is a cycle of three plays, written by the playwright Aeschylus, about Orestes, the son of Agamemnon.

The oresteia trilogy aeschylus