Clytemnestra
Queen, avenger, and the play’s most intelligent will.
Ancient Greek · 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
Characters
Orestes
The son trapped between two unforgivable commands.
The Furies
Old gods of the mother’s blood, who will be housed, not abolished.
Themes
Justice
From vendetta to tribunal: a city inventing a way not to eat itself.
The unwritten law
What the household owes the dead, and what the city owes the living.