Agamemnon, King of Argos, returns to Greece a victor in the Trojan War. He has brought with him the seer Cassandra as his war-prize and concubine. Awaiting him is his vengeful wife Clytemnestra, who is angry at Agamemnon's sacrifice of their daughter Iphigeneia to the gods, jealous of Cassandra, and guilty of taking a lover herself. The events that unfold catch everyone in a bloody net, including their absent son Orestes.

Aeschylus (525/4-456/5 B.C.E.) was the first of the three great tragic dramatists of ancient Greece, a forerunner of Sophocles and Euripides. His early tragedies were...

First presented in the spring of 458 BCE at the festival of Dionysus in Athens, Aeschylus' trilogy Oresteia won the first prize. It is the only surviving example of the ancient trilogy form for Greek tragedies. David Mulroy's fluid, accessible English translation with its rhyming choral songs does full justice to the meaning and theatricality of the ancient Greek.

First presented in the spring of 458 BCE at the festival of Dionysus in Athens, Aeschylus' trilogy Oresteia won the first prize. It is the only surviving example of the ancient trilogy form for Greek tragedies. David Mulroy's fluid, accessible English translation with its rhyming choral songs does full justice to the meaning and theatricality of the ancient Greek.