Greek tragedies were usually written as trilogies, meaning that Aeschylus also wrote two prequels to
The Eumenides:
Agamemnon and
The Libation Bearers. All three plays center on the tragic House of Atreus and the consequences of Agamemnon’s return from the Trojan War, and together, they make up a group called the
Oresteia. The two other great Greek tragedians of Aeschylus’s time and caliber are Sophocles and Euripides. Sophocles’ great tragic trilogy is made up of the three Theban Plays:
Oedipus Rex,
Oedipus at Colonus, and
Antigone. These works contain elements of Greek tragedy similar to those within the
Oresteia, such as a forewarning Chorus, an emphasis on the divine power of fate, and a series of heroic but flawed main characters. Euripides’ tragedies, too, display similar qualities, with an added emphasis on the plights of female figures within these stories—he is known for tragedies such as
Medea and
The Trojan Women. Also relevant to the narrative of the
Oresteia is Euripides’ play
Iphigenia at Aulis, which recounts the actions of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra before the Trojan War. The most famous accounts of the original Trojan War—the backdrop to the events in the
Oresteia—are Homer’s epic poems the
Iliad and
Odyssey, which formed a foundation for the majority of Classical Greek literature and drama. Modern takes on the story of the
Oresteia include Jean-Paul Sartre’s
The Flies—an adaptation of the Orestes story from an existentialist philosophical perspective—and
Mourning Becomes Electra, which is Eugene O’Neill’s retelling of the
Oresteia set in Civil War America.