The second play of the trilogy is called The Libation Bearers and takes place about seven years after the events in Agamemnon. In it, Agamemnon's son Orestes is ordered by the god Apollo to avenge his father, so he returns to Argos and plots with his sister Electra to kill both their mother Clytemnestra and stepdad Aegisthus. He proceeds to carry out their plan and is successful, though he does have some hesitation about killing his mother, which he soon overcomes. For the crime of committing matricide, however, the Furies (goddesses of vengeance) descend on Orestes, forcing him to flee.
While at my nephew's 15th birthday party, I had a look at the reading he's currently doing for (home) school. Aeschylus was a Greek playwright who lived in the 5th century BC. He was quite prolific, having written, it is believed, between 70- 90 plays over the course of his life although sadly, only seven of them survive today. He managed to write all these while intermittently fighting in the Persian Wars, defending Athens against Darius I- at the Battle of Marathon, no less- and against Xerxes I at the Battle of Salamis and again at the Battle of Palataea. Besides the historical significance of these battles, they also provided fodder for Aeschylus' plays; one of his surviving works is entitled The Persians, and the Battle of Salamis figures prominently in it. Oresteia is a trilogy of plays written by Aeschylus, based around the Trojan War, specifically the murder of Agamemnon, who returns from the war just in time to get murdered (stabbed in his bathtub long before Marat got around to it) by his wife Clytemnestra (twin sister to Helen of Troy) and her lover Aegisthus (whose family had mostly been murdered by Agamemnon's father... it's complicated). Clytemnestra hated her husband because he had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to appease the gods in order to be successful in battle. It probably didn't help that he also came back from the war with his concubine Cassandra in tow; she also ends up dead. This happens in the first play entitled, sensibly enough, Agamemnon. The second play of the trilogy is called The Libation Bearers and takes place about seven years after the events in Agamemnon. In it, Agamemnon's son Orestes is ordered by the god Apollo to avenge his father, so he returns to Argos and plots with his sister Electra to kill both their mother Clytemnestra and stepdad Aegisthus. He proceeds to carry out their plan and is successful, though he does have some hesitation about killing his mother, which he soon overcomes. For the crime of committing matricide, however, the Furies (goddesses of vengeance) descend on Orestes, forcing him to flee. The third play The Eumenides picks up with Orestes being relentlessly pursued by the Furies. He gets some help from Apollo- which only seems fair, since it was his idea in the first place. Under the protection of Hermes, Orestes heads for Athens to plead his case before the goddess Athena. The Furies follow him there, egged on by Cltemnestra's ghost, who wants to see her son punished for killing her. Athena puts Orestes on trial, picking a group of twelve citizens of Athens to decide the case. At the end of the trial, they vote but it is a tie. Athena casts the tie breaking vote, and votes in favour of Orestes, sparing his life. The Furies are, well, furious, but Athena talks them down, convincing them to stop going about looking to wreak vengeance on people; she renames them The Eumenides (the Gracious Ones). Athena also declares that all trials must from now on be settled in court, not by people taking matters into their own hands.
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