Introduction

Aeschylus’ Oresteia, first performed in Athens in 458 b.c.e., is the sole surviving Greek tragic trilogy, and one of those peaks (like Dante’s Comedy, Michelangelo’s frescoes for the Sistine Chapel, or Bach’s St. Matthew Passion) that loom above the other mountains of Western culture as defining expressions of their age. The presentation by each tragic poet of three tragedies performed in a row was ordained by the rules of the competition at the Great Dionysia in Athens, but there was no requirement to offer three tragedies connected by subject. We know that Sophocles and Euripides did not usually do so. Indeed, Aeschylus may have been the only tragic playwright to use the trilogy on a regular basis as, in effect, a gigantic single drama in three parts. By a happy accident, the one Greek tragic trilogy that has survived the ravages of time nearly intact is exemplary in its structure: three plays, each a whole in its own right but each needing the others to complete the form and meaning of a far greater whole.