Aeschylus' Oresteia

A Trilogy: three parts

• Each part forms a whole unto itself
• Each part contributes to the larger whole plot of the trilogy
• The other playwrights did not, apparently, connect the three tragedies in their trilogies in this way

Earlier versions of the myth

• Homer's Odyssey
• The story serves as a contrasting backdrop to Odysseus' return home from the war
• Aegisthus kills Agamemnon
• Orestes kills the killer and his mother
• Matricide is not a "big deal" in the Odyssey
• Stesichorus
• Apollo offers Orestes a bow to fight the Furies (aka Erinyes)
• It is likely that Aeschylus' resolution to the cycle of revenge was new

Background to the myth:

• The part Aeschylus ignores
• Tantalus killed his son Pelops and served him to the gods
• It was discovered and Pelops was revived
• Thyestes and Atreus' parents were Pelops and Hippodamaia
• The rest figures in the Oresteia, chiefly by allusion
  
• Atreus, Agamemnon's father
• Thyestes, Aegisthus' father
• Thyestes took Atreus' wife
• Atreus killed Thyestes' children and served them as a meal to Thyestes
• Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother and Helen's husband
• Paris, seducer of Helen
  
• Agamemnon's role in the Trojan War
• Leader of force to avenge insult to Menelaus and reclaim Helen
• Sacrifice of Iphigenia for safe passage to Troy
• Artemis demanded it
• Destruction of temples at Troy
  
• Agamemnon's return with Cassandra
• the plot of the Oresteia
  

Aeschylus used the myth to meditate on the shift from the lawless retributive "justice" of revenge/vendetta/lex talionis/feud to the rule of law.

• Greek dike, usually translated as "Justice"
• Cosmically, a principle of balance
• Transgressions are balanced out by payments
  
• Legally, an institution, a case at trial, or a principle
• The problem: vendetta is incompatible with sustainable community
  

Aeschylus also explores the notion of responsibility:

•  Two claims
• The gods made X do Y
• X chose to do Y
• Both cannot be true, or can they?
• Overdetermination
• Moral problems of determinism
• Is there a "real cause"?
• Aside from minor figures such as Iphigenia, what sense can be made of guilt and innocence?

Contrast this play and the Persians with what we know of Euripides and the themes he treats.

What of Oedipus? Was he responsible for his actions or not?