Orestes

Euripides · 408 BCE · Play · Greek · Classical

Six days after killing his mother, Orestes lies sick and hallucinating in Argos while the citizen assembly prepares to vote on whether he and Electra are to be stoned; Menelaus arrives home from Troy and declines to spend any standing on them. Cornered, the two of them and Pylades settle on a plan that turns on Helen and her daughter. Written as Athens was losing the war, its picture of a city in which nobody behaves well is the bleakest of the answers to Aeschylus.

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Lineage

• responds to ↑ The Oresteia
  Aeschylus · 458 BCE · Play

Attributes

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