c. 525–456 BCE

Aeschylus

The first of the great Athenian tragedians. He stages justice as a problem that blood cannot solve, and the city as the only vessel large enough for the Furies.

Built the trilogy as moral architecture and brought the chorus into the center of civic thought.

Primary works

Tragic trilogy · 458 BCE

The Oresteia

Aeschylus

Agamemnon returns from Troy and is murdered; Orestes kills to avenge; the Furies hunt him into Athens, where Athena founds a court. Blood-law becomes civic law—barely.

Civic tragedy