Agamemnon by Aeschylus translated by Robert Potter

Number of roles: ten; five ladies and five gentlemen

King Agamemnon, chief leader of the Greek armies, after ten years, returns victorious from the Trojan War to Argos. In his entourage, he is leading Cassandra, daughter of the slain King Priamos of Troy, as his captive and concubine – the seer, who was cursed to always predict the truth, but never to be believed.

Agamemnon’s wife, Queen Clytemnestra, has not forgotten that, at the outset of the war, the king had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis in order to obtain favourable winds for the Greek fleet on their sail to Troy. Clytemnestra, plotting with her lover Aigisthos, perfidiously invites Agamemnon to enter the palace on a purple carpet, suggests him to repose in the bathroom, and – while he changes his dress – treacherously murders him.

Eight years later, Clytemnestra and Aigisthos are ruling Argos with an iron fist, having suppressed the citizens through intimidation and imprisonment, and enslaved the captives carried off from Troy. Electra, daughter of Clytemnestra and the late King Agamemnon, together with a procession of Trojan servants, the Libation Bearers, produces offerings to Agamemnon’s tomb.

She desperately hopes for the unlikely return of her brother Orestes, who has been growing up at a distant court since before their father’s death. Against all odds, Orestes returns, is reunited with his sister, and takes revenge on Aigisthos – and his mother.

Though, having committed matricide – the most heinous crime in Ancient Greece – Orestes will now be hunted by the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance. He takes refuge in the temple of the goddess Athena, who is given the unsolvable task to break the endless chain of violence and revenge through a word of justice.

The three plays “Agamemnon”, “The Libation Bearers” and “The Furies” – together referred to as the “Oresteia” – form the oldest completely transmitted theatre trilogy of human literature.