Oresteia facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Oresteia
SNG Drama Ljubljana performs an adaptation of The Oresteia, in 1968
Written by	Aeschylus
Original language	Greek
Genre	Tragedy

The Oresteia (Ancient Greek: Ὀρέστεια) is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus in the 5th century BCE, concerning the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes, the trial of Orestes, the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and the pacification of the Furies (also called Erinyes or Eumenides).

The Oresteia trilogy consists of three plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides. It shows how the Greek gods interacted with the characters and influenced their decisions pertaining to events and disputes. The only extant example of an ancient Greek theatre trilogy, the Oresteia, won first prize at the Dionysia festival in 458 BCE. The principal themes of the trilogy include the contrast between revenge and justice, as well as the transition from personal vendetta to organized litigation. Oresteia originally included a satyr play, Proteus (Πρωτεύς), following the tragic trilogy, but all except a single line of Proteus has been lost.

Agamemnon

Agamemnon (Ἀγαμέμνων, Agamémnōn) is the first of the three plays within the Oresteia trilogy. It details the homecoming of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, from the Trojan War. After ten years of warfare, Troy had fallen, and all of Greece could lay claim to victory. Waiting at home for Agamemnon is his wife, Queen Clytemnestra, who has been planning his murder. She desires his death to avenge the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia, to exterminate the only thing hindering her from commandeering the crown, and to finally be able to publicly embrace her long-time lover Aegisthus.

The play opens with a watchman looking down and over the sea, reporting that he has been lying restless "like a dog" for a year, waiting to see some sort of signal confirming a Greek victory in Troy. He laments the fortunes of the house, but promises to keep silent: "A huge ox has stepped onto my tongue." The watchman sees a light far off in the distance—a bonfire signaling Troy's fall—and is overjoyed at the victory and hopes for the hasty return of his king, as the house has "wallowed" in his absence. Clytemnestra is introduced to the audience, and she declares that there will be celebrations and sacrifices throughout the city as Agamemnon and his army return.

Upon the return of Agamemnon, his wife laments in full view of Argos how horrible the wait for her husband and King has been. After her soliloquy, Clytemnestra pleads with and persuades Agamemnon to walk on the robes laid out for him. This is a very ominous moment in the play, as loyalties and motives are questioned. The King's new concubine, Cassandra, is now introduced, and this immediately spawns hatred from the queen, Clytemnestra. Cassandra is ordered out of her chariot and to the altar, where, once she is alone, she begins predicting the death of Agamemnon and her own shared fate.

Inside the house, a cry is heard: Agamemnon has been stabbed in the bathtub. The chorus separates from one another and rambles to themselves, proving their cowardice, when another final cry is heard. When the doors are finally opened, Clytemnestra is seen standing over the dead bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra. Clytemnestra describes the murder in detail to the chorus, showing no sign of remorse or regret. Suddenly, the exiled lover of Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, bursts into the palace to take his place next to her. Aegisthus proudly states that he devised the plan to murder Agamemnon and claim revenge for his father Thyestes, who was tricked by his brother Atreus, the father of Agamemnon Clytemnestra claims that she and Aegisthus now have all the power, and they re-enter the palace with the doors closing behind them.

Like most Greek tragedies, Agamemnon is a morally complex play. Agamemnon may be an admired veteran of the Trojan War but it is made clear that many do not approve of the way he sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia. Many citizens resent Agamemnon because they lost their sons and husbands in the war he initiated. Similarly, Clytemnestra is both her husband's murderer and her daughter's avenger; Aeschylus continues to explore the fundamental moral quandary of vengeance and "justified" bloodshed in The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides.

The Libation Bearers

In The Libation Bearers (Χοηφόροι, Choēphóroi)—the second play of Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy—many years after the murder of Agamemnon, his son Orestes returns to Argos with his cousin Pylades to exact vengeance on Clytemnestra, as an order from Apollo, for killing Agamemnon. Upon arriving, Orestes reunites with his sister Electra at Agamemnon's grave, while she was there bringing libations to Agamemnon in an attempt to stop Clytemnestra's bad dreams. Shortly after the reunion, both Orestes and Electra, influenced by the Chorus, come up with a plan to kill both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

Orestes then goes to the palace door, where he is greeted by Clytemnestra. He pretends he is a stranger and tells Clytemnestra that he (Orestes) is dead, causing her to send for Aegisthus. Unrecognized, Orestes is then able to enter the palace, where he then kills Aegisthus, who was without a guard due to the intervention of the chorus in relaying Clytemnestra's message. Clytemnestra then enters the room. Orestes hesitates to kill her, but Pylades reminds him of Apollo's orders, and he eventually follows through. Consequently, after committing the matricide, Orestes is now the target of the Furies' merciless wrath and has no choice but to flee from the palace.

Chorus

The Chorus in The Libation Bearers is distinctly different than the one in Agamemnon. From Agamemnon to The Libation Bearers, the Chorus switches from a collection of old, Argive men, to foreign slave women.^p.46-48 Furthermore, the Chorus in Agamemnon possessed a fearful voice, characterized by their critical commentary on the events and characters of the play. Despite this, they play a passive role and do not influence the plot.^p.47-48 In contrast, The Libation Bearers' Chorus desire vengeance, and influence both Electra's and Orestes' actions, shepherding Orestes towards revenge.^p.48-52

Genealogy of Orestes

The Eumenides

The final play of the Oresteia, called The Eumenides (Εὐμενίδες, Eumenídes), illustrates how the sequence of events in the trilogy ends up in the development of social order or a proper judicial system in Athenian society. In this play, Orestes is hunted and tormented by the Furies, a trio of goddesses known to be the instruments of justice, who are also referred to as the "Gracious Ones" (Eumenides). They relentlessly pursue Orestes for the killing of his mother. Through the intervention of Apollo, Orestes is able to escape them for a brief moment while they are asleep and escape to Athens under the protection of Hermes. Seeing the Furies asleep, Clytemnestra's ghost comes to wake them up to obtain justice on her son Orestes for killing her.

After waking up, the Furies hunt Orestes again and when they find him, Orestes pleads to the goddess Athena for help. She responds by setting up a trial for him in Athens on the Areopagus. This trial is made up of a group of twelve Athenian citizens and is supervised by Athena. Here Orestes is used as a trial dummy by Athena to set-up the first courtroom trial. He is also the object of the Furies, Apollo, and Athena. After the trial comes to an end, the votes are tied. Athena casts the deciding vote and determines that Orestes will not be killed. This does not sit well with the Furies but Athena eventually persuades them to accept the decision; instead of violently retaliating against wrongdoers, become a constructive force of vigilance in Athens. She then changes their names from the Furies to "the Eumenides" which means "the Gracious Ones". Athena then ultimately rules that all trials must henceforth be settled in court rather than being carried out personally.

Proteus

Proteus (Πρωτεύς, Prōteus), the satyr play which originally followed the first three plays of The Oresteia, is lost except for a two-line fragment preserved by Athenaeus. It is widely believed to have been based on the story told in Book IV of Homer's Odyssey, where Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother, tries to return home from Troy and finds himself on an island off Egypt, "whither he seems to have been carried by the storm described in Agam.674".

The title character, "the deathless Egyptian Proteus", the Old Man of the Sea, is described in Homer as having been visited by Menelaus, who sought to learn his future. Proteus tells Menelaus of the death of Agamemnon at the hands of Aegisthus and the fates of Ajax the Lesser and Odysseus at sea. Proteus is compelled to tell Menelaus how to reach home from the island of Pharos:

"The satyrs who may have found themselves on the island as a result of shipwreck . . . perhaps gave assistance to Menelaus and escaped with him, though he may have had difficulty in ensuring that they keep their hands off Helen."

The only extant fragment that has been definitively attributed to Proteus was translated by Herbert Weir Smyth.

In 2002, Theatre Kingston mounted a production of The Oresteia and included a new reconstruction of Proteus based on the episode in The Odyssey and loosely arranged according to the structure of extant satyr plays.

Contemporary background

Some scholars believe that the trilogy is influenced by contemporary political developments in Athens. A few years previously, legislation sponsored by the democratic reformer Ephialtes had stripped the court of the Areopagus, hitherto one of the most powerful vehicles of upper-class political power, of all of its functions except some minor religious duties and the authority to try homicide cases; By having his story being resolved by a judgement of the Areopagus, Aeschylus may be expressing his approval of this reform. It may also be significant that Aeschylus makes Agamemnon lord of Argos, where Homer puts his house, instead of his nearby capitol, Mycenae, since about this time Athens had entered into an alliance with Argos.

Adaptations

Key British productions

In 1981, Sir Peter Hall directed Tony Harrison's adaptation of the trilogy in masks in London's Royal National Theatre, with music by Harrison Birtwistle and stage design by Jocelyn Herbert. In 1999, Katie Mitchell followed him at the same venue (though in the Cottesloe Theatre, where Hall had directed in the Olivier Theatre) with a production which used Ted Hughes' translation. In 2015, Robert Icke's production of his own adaptation was a sold out hit at the Almeida Theatre and was transferred that same year to the West End's Trafalgar Studios. Two other productions happened in the UK that year, in Manchester and at Shakespeare's Globe. The following year, in 2016, playwright Zinnie Harris premiered her adaptation, This Restless House, at the Citizen's Theatre to five-star critical acclaim.

Chronology of adaptations

• 1894: Spanish composer Manuel Manrique de Lara adapted the trilogy into his own trilogy of symphonic poems, which premiered in 1894.
• 1895: Composer Sergei Taneyev adapted the trilogy into his own operatic trilogy of the same name, which was premiered in 1895.
• 1965-66: Composer Iannis Xenakis adapted vocal work for chorus and 12 instruments.
• 1967: Composer Felix Werder adapted Agamemnon as an opera.
• 1969: The Spaghetti Western The Forgotten Pistolero, is based on the myth and set in Mexico following the Second Mexican Empire. Ferdinando Baldi, who directed the film, was also a professor of classical literature who specialized in Greek tragedy.
• 1974: Rush Rehm's translation of the trilogy was staged at The Pram Factory in Melbourne.
• 2007: Yaël Farber's MoLoRa, a post-apartheid South African adaptation of the Oresteia set during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. The play was awarded three Naledi Theatre Awards.
• 2008: Theatre professor Ethan Sinnott directed an ASL adaptation of Agamemnon.
• 2008: Dominic Allen and James Wilkes, The Oresteia, for Belt Up Theatre Company.
• 2009: Canadian author Anne Carson's An Oresteia, an adaptation featuring episodes from the Oresteia from three different playwrights: Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Sophocles' Electra, and Euripides' Orestes.
• 2014: French rapper D' de Kabal made his own adaptation of the Oresteia in his rap and hip hop play Agamemnon with the collective R.I.P.O.S.T.E. and the music and theatre artists Arnaud Churin and Emanuela Pace.
• 2016: The trilogy This Restless House by British playwright and director Zinnie Harris revisits the Oresteia, putting women in the center. Part one is Agamemnon's Return, a play of its own premiered in Scotland, followed by The Bough Breaks and Electra And Her Shadow.
• 2019: American playwright Ellen McLaughlin and director Michael Khan's The Oresteia, premiered on April 30, 2019 at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, DC. The adaptation was shown as a digital production by Theatre for a New Audience in New York City during the COVID-19 Pandemic and was directed by Andrew Watkins.

Translations

See also

• The Oresteia in the arts and popular culture
• Mourning Becomes Electra – a modernized version of the story by Eugene O'Neill, who shifts the action to the American Civil War
• The Flies – an adaptation of The Libation Bearers by Jean-Paul Sartre, which focuses on human freedom
• Live by the sword, die by the sword – a line from the trilogy