In this blog post, we examine how Aeschylus’s personal wartime experiences and the political and social changes in Attica were projected into his tragedies—particularly ‘The Oresteia’—and how they shaped the morality and identity of the Athenian community.

Historical Background

Greek tragedy developed in close tandem with the political and social changes of ancient Athens. The classical culture of Attica flourished during the Persian Wars and gradually began to wane during the Peloponnesian War.
The Persian Wars (490–480 BCE) provided Athens with an opportunity to unleash the internal strengths it had gradually built up through Solon’s reforms, the patronage of commerce and the arts by the tyrant Peisistratos, and Cleisthenes’ democratization. As a result, Athens—which had been virtually a cultural wasteland—became a center of intellectual and artistic activity. By perfecting its own form of democracy, it reached a decisive turning point that established it as the “Greece of the Greeks” or the “School of Greece.” These changes ran parallel to the development of Greek tragedy, which served to convey moral messages to the citizens of Athens and reinforce communal values.
Meanwhile, the Peloponnesian War—a confrontation between the two great powers of Athens and Sparta—lasted from 431 to 404 BCE. Athens’ defeat brought an end to the superior status it had long enjoyed and depleted the internal strength that had made the Age of Pericles possible, leading to the decline of the polis as a whole. Not only did the population and resources dwindle, but the economy, politics, and culture as a whole were weakened, and theatrical performances, festivals, and artistic activities also declined significantly.
The Persian Wars themselves served as an opportunity to establish unity and identity among the Greek city-states. Several anecdotes clearly reveal the contemporary sentiment of attributing mythical and religious significance to the war. For example, it is said that before the Battle of Marathon, an Athenian envoy who had gone to seek Sparta’s aid encountered the god Pan on his return journey through the sparsely populated Mount Parthenion; Pan appeared and promised friendship and assistance, and Athens, in return, built a temple for him. During the Battle of Marathon, a man dressed in a farmer’s tunic is said to have struck down the Persians with a plowshare; he was identified as Echetlos, a hero who had sprung from the sacred soil of his homeland. There is also a legend that, just before the Battle of Salamis, a mysterious light shone down from the Eleusinian Mysteries, and armed giants reached out from the island of Aegina to protect the Greek fleet.
Themistocles, who emphasized naval power to lead the war to victory, remarked of that triumph, “It was not we who accomplished this, but the gods and heroes.” This attitude vividly reflects the sentiments of the Greeks who experienced the war firsthand, particularly the poet Aeschylus.
The resolute determination to defend freedom displayed by the Athenians during the Persian Wars—that is, their absolute will to choose complete freedom or complete destruction—prefigures the characters who would grace the Attic tragic stage in the decades to come.
This was the very era that gave birth to Aeschylus, and in another sense, it could be said that Aeschylus also helped shape that era. The Attic tragedy—that great embodiment of the Greek spirit—was perfected through the convergence of Aeschylus’s genius and the Golden Age of Athens. This convergence was made possible because Athens and Aeschylus had both participated in the same war and shared a similar perspective on its historical significance.
In 480 BCE, at the age of forty-five, Aeschylus took part in the Battle of Salamis, personally experiencing his homeland’s greatest moment; ten years earlier, he had also witnessed the thrilling victory at the Battle of Marathon. In contrast, his brother, Kynegeiros, fell in battle at Marathon.
Aeschylus’s epitaph contains no mention of his works; it simply states that he fought against the Persians at Marathon. This shows that he wished to be remembered as a warrior of Marathon rather than as a poet, and suggests that he took pride throughout his life in having fought for his country’s freedom.
Herodotus wrote that the gods aided the Greeks because they did not want a single arrogant man to rule the continent alone. This perspective—viewing victory as the realization of justice, the triumph of freedom over subjugation, and the victory of self-restraint over arrogance—demonstrates that the worldviews of Herodotus and Aeschylus align in many respects. Aeschylus’s works convey not merely the euphoria of victory, but the profound emotion of a man who has experienced the realization of justice within the flow of history.
The close connection between gods and humans, and the profound solidarity between the state and the individual, form the foundation of Aeschylus’s tragedies. Without the premise of the polis, his serious and profound exploration of the meaning of the gods within the world and the faith in Zeus would be difficult to conceive. In this respect, Aeschylus deserves to be called both the creator of tragedy and a religious contemplative.

The Life of Aeschylus

Although there is not much information available regarding Aeschylus’s life and deeds, the surviving records provide important insights into him.
Aeschylus was born in 525/4 BCE as the son of the aristocrat Euphorion and grew up in Eleusis, located about 20 kilometers west of Athens. Eleusis is a place famous for the Mysteries of Demeter. While many scholars have speculated that he was involved in these Mysteries, no direct evidence has yet been found to prove the extent to which they influenced his spiritual worldview. As Aristotle pointed out, the Mysteries—being an object of devotion rather than of intellectual acquisition—differ from the tragic exploration of humanity’s place within the world. According to tradition, he was once put on trial for desecrating these mysteries but was acquitted on the grounds that it was an unintentional mistake made out of ignorance.
In 499 BCE, at the age of twenty-four, Aeschylus competed in his first tragedy contest, vying for the championship against Pratinas and Coerylus. That competition is remembered for an accident in which the wooden seating erected for the audience collapsed. However, according to the Parian marble chronicle, his first victory did not come until much later, in 484 BCE, after which he went on to win a total of 13 times. The figure of 28 found in later records appears to include the number of posthumous performances.
In the years following the Battle of Salamis, Aeschylus accepted an invitation from Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, to stay there and stage a performance celebrating the newly founded colony of Aetna. It is unclear whether the exact title of the play he performed was ‘The Women of Aetna’ or simply ‘Aetna’. He also appears to have restaged ‘The Persians’ for the victors of western Greece who had defeated the Carthaginians at Himera; this play won him the prize in Athens in 472 B.C.
Upon his return to Athens, Aeschylus lost the prize to Sophocles, a twenty-eight-year-old who was competing for the first time in the tragedy competition of 468 BC. The following year, he won again with his “Theban” trilogy, and in 458 BC, he claimed his thirteenth and final victory with “The Oresteia,” his greatest work and the only surviving trilogy. He was 68 years old at the time.
Afterward, Aeschylus went to Gela in Sicily, where he lived until his death in 456/5 BC at the age of 70. There are no clear records explaining why he left his beloved Athens for Gela in his old age. Various speculations abound; the comic playwright Aristophanes even satirized Aeschylus in his comedy ‘The Frogs’, suggesting that he left Athens because he believed the audience did not understand his works. However, there is no evidence of this in ‘The Oresteia’.

Commemoration of Aeschylus and the Status of His Works

After his death, his tomb became a famous site where many people, including poets, paid their respects, and his works were granted various performance privileges as a tribute to him. However, the most original monument to this great tragedian can be found in Aristophanes’ comedy ‘The Frogs’. Although this work contains all manner of bizarre and caricatured elements characteristic of the author, the image of the great Aeschylus is clearly visible within it, and it remains a memorial more valuable than a hundred anecdotes.
It is said that Aeschylus wrote approximately 90 works in total, including satyr plays, but only seven tragedies have survived intact. It is believed that these seven were preserved for posterity largely because they were used as school textbooks.

The Oresteia Trilogy

Overview

In 458 BCE, Aeschylus staged the tragic trilogy known as the “Oresteia”—comprising ‘Agamemnon’, ‘The Libation Bearers’, and ‘The Eumenides’—along with the satyr play ‘Proteus’, winning first prize at the tragedy competition. While the satyr play ‘Proteus’ has not survived, fortunately, the ‘Oresteia’ has endured and is recognized as the only surviving tragic trilogy.

‘Agamemnon’

Goethe once praised “Agamemnon,” the first play in this trilogy, as “the masterpiece of masterpieces.” It is regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces born of the Greek spirit, alongside the Parthenon by Ictinus and Phidias, and its grand conception and profound ideas rival those of Michelangelo’s work.
That said, it is difficult to view the classical form as fully perfected in this trilogy. Like Aeschylus’s other works, this play also contains many archaic elements. However, these elements can be understood as contributing to the work’s unique vitality, directness, and depth, rather than hindering its perfection.
In this sense, it is no exaggeration to say that few, if any, achieved such a successful balance between the two—lyric poetry and dialogue, dance and action, and the dancing singer and the actor reciting lines—as Aeschylus did during the evolution of Greek tragedy.
From a theatrical perspective as well, this work gives a much more spacious impression than its predecessors. The generous use of a third actor and the revelation of the stage backdrop in front of the main stage (skene) structure expand the scope of the scene. The wall here represents the palace of the House of Atreus—that is, the son’s palace.
Let us first take a closer look at “Agamemnon,” the first play in the trilogy. The drama begins at dawn, just before daybreak. A sentry, lying on the roof at the behest of Queen Clytemnestra, waits for the beacon signaling the fall of Troy while murmuring about his weariness. When the beacon rises, he rejoices wildly, but his joy soon turns to worry—precisely because of the sin and danger lurking within the royal palace.
Although the sentry’s prologue consists of only about 37 lines, it effectively captures the mood of the entire work. The joy of victory is gradually suffocated by a foreboding sense of doom, and eventually, that foreboding engulfs everything like a pitch-black storm cloud. The atmosphere is so bleak that the flashing lightning and pouring rain feel almost like a liberation from long-enduring suffering.
The reason the prologue of ‘The Sentinel’ is followed by the entrance song of the chorus—composed of the elders of Argos—and a substantial amount of song unfolds is that these songs must convey the ideological content not only of ‘Agamemnon’ but of the entire trilogy. Viewed in this light, the significance of the line counts for the three plays (1,673 lines, 1,076 lines, and 1,047 lines) becomes even clearer.
The chorus recites a song that recalls the moment the fleet set sail from the port of Aulis. Agamemnon was forced to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to appease the wrath of the goddess Artemis and quell the headwinds; as a result, humanity groans under the yoke of a cruel inevitability, compelled to choose one of two paths. Unable to make a decision for a long time, Agamemnon finally resolves to sacrifice his daughter, thereby setting the fleet sail.
Although Agamemnon’s decision may appear to be an evil act he committed of his own volition, once he takes action, the chain of sin and punishment resulting from it adds yet another link to his household. As a result, the flames of hatred and vengeance begin to burn in the heart of his wife, Clytemnestra.
In the middle of the prologue comes the famous Hymn to Zeus. This hymn clearly reveals Aeschylus’s view of Zeus: his Zeus is not merely one among the gods, but the god of gods and the guarantor of a just world order. Although Zeus’s ways are difficult to fathom, the core of this hymn is that their ultimate purpose lies in guiding humanity toward wisdom through the path of suffering. In other words, the concept that “wisdom is gained through suffering” (pathei mathos) encapsulates his profound religious view.
This insight is made complete when combined with another insight: the belief that “the sinner is bound to be punished.” Humans commit sins through their actions; sin entails painful punishment; and that suffering, in turn, leads humans to wisdom. Within this causal relationship between sin, punishment, and wisdom, Aeschylus also introduces the unique concept of a “daimon sylleptor”—a spirit that willingly assists one in committing sin. Since his Zeus is a god who guides humans to wisdom through suffering, the contradiction between fateful compulsion—which often manifests as a family curse—and human free will is to some extent resolved within Zeus, making Zeus synonymous with fate.
Once the chorus’s entrance song ends, Clytemnestra appears and gives the elders a lengthy explanation of how the signal fire arrived. However, the elders do not cheer. In the first strophe, the elders sing of Zeus’s judgment against Paris for trampling on the rights of his master and stealing another man’s wife; they then discuss the curse brought upon the Trojan War, in which the entire people shed blood because of one woman.
At this moment, a messenger appears to announce the king’s arrival, rejoicing at his return home and recalling his hardships on the battlefield. Aeschylus heightens the dramatic effect by introducing a simple, boisterous character—who is completely unaware of the true nature of the events—into a scene that had been stifling with foreboding. A similar device appears in the figure of the nurse in ‘The Libation Bearers’.
The second strophe begins with Helen—the cause of the disaster—and proceeds to an interpretation of the overall meaning. Here, Aeschylus makes it clear that he does not fully agree with the contemporary belief in divine jealousy. According to him, if the gods inflict punishment, it is not because they are jealous of human happiness, but because they regulate the world according to the principles of justice.
As this song ends, Agamemnon enters in a chariot. Behind him, Cassandra, the Trojan princess he has taken as a concubine, sits crouched. At this moment, the heavy, ashen clouds that had shrouded the first half of the play darken further into pitch-black storm clouds. Clytemnestra, who has long since betrayed her husband, feigns a warm welcome to the cold and timid Agamemnon, luring him to step onto the purple carpet she has spread and enter the palace.
The chorus, despite witnessing the king’s return, cannot shake off its foreboding. Clytemnestra emerges from the palace once more, attempting to lure another victim inside, but Cassandra remains silent and motionless. Rarely does silence, as a means of expression, carry such profound meaning.
As Clytemnestra exits, Cassandra is seized by a fit. Since Apollo had once granted her the gift of prophecy—a gift no one believed in—the curse of that prophecy now overwhelms her. Alternating between frenzied, hallucinatory songs and calm, suggestive dialogue, she unfolds before our eyes the horrific past of her ill-fated family. This household is, in a word, a slaughterhouse of humanity, its floor stained with blood.
Meanwhile, the ghosts of the children Atreus murdered to entertain his brother Thyestes, along with the Furies, lurk within, singing a hideous song. Another link is about to be added to this chain of sin. Inside the house, a wife is preparing to murder her husband upon his return, and Cassandra herself has no way to escape death. In her final moments, she struggles with her attachment to life, but ultimately walks calmly toward her death inside the palace.
Next, Agamemnon’s scream is heard, and while the chorus hesitates, unsure of what to do, the palace doors swing open to reveal Clytemnestra standing beside the two victims, clutching a bloodstained weapon. Intoxicated by her own actions, she takes pride in the bloodstains on her body, comparing them to the rain from the heavens that nourishes the crops.
Through a long and arduous argument, the Chorus warns her of the horror of her deeds. She stands her ground, showing no remorse and insisting that her actions are justified. Yet at the same time, she realizes that she, too, is bound within the chain of sin and punishment that stretches endlessly from the past into the future for this family.
She attempts to make a pact with the evil spirits of this house to prevent further calamities. As if in response, her lover, Aegisthus, appears; the elders are enraged upon seeing this man, who has been manipulating her from behind the scenes and will now assume the role of master. Had Clytemnestra not restrained him, an open fight would have broken out.
Exhausted to the point of collapse, she had transformed into an ordinary woman who no longer wished to see bloodshed, and finally disappears with Aegisthus into the palace they will now rule together.

The Women Offering Libations

The second play, ‘The Women Offering Libations’, resembles the first in its structure. A single individual plunges into the chain of sin and punishment that binds the House of Atreus through a criminal act, and once plunged in, cannot help but realize the significance of that causal relationship. In this play as well, the events do not unfold in earnest until after several stages of preparation.
Although only a fragment of the prologue remains—in which Orestes speaks at his father’s grave—the fervent prayer of this innocent young man, who has just returned home upon reaching adulthood after living abroad, stands in stark contrast to the somber conclusion of ‘Agamemnon’. Before the prayer ends, Orestes sees women in mourning attire, led by Electra, approaching with a libation offering; he and his friend Philades hide to observe the procession’s purpose. In fact, it was a gift sent by Clytemnestra—startled by a nightmare—to the deceased’s tomb as a gesture of reconciliation.
However, as Electra calls for the libation, she does not pray for her mother but instead prays for Orestes to return and avenge their father’s death. Orestes discovers a lock of hair and footprints left at the tomb as a sign of mourning and instinctively realizes his brother has visited. When he reveals his identity, Electra welcomes him as her father’s son, her brother, and the king, and Orestes declares that he has received a command from Apollo to avenge their father’s death. The chorus, composed of the two siblings and women in mourning, sings a long lament at the tomb and then devises a plan for Orestes to enter the palace.
This lament holds significant meaning for Orestes’ future actions. Although Orestes had been determined to kill his mother from the start, a decisive shift occurs in the priority of his motives before and after the lament. Before the lament, Orestes cited Apollo’s command; but after hearing of his father’s humiliation and his sister’s suffering, he exclaims, “She must pay!” and accepts the murder of his mother not as a divine command but as his own will. Here, we once again witness the dual motivation of divine will and human will. The fact that human action can take on two faces in a single moment is a defining characteristic of Aeschylus’s tragedies.
The play does not reveal the true nature of the events until past its midpoint. Orestes, disguised as a traveler from Phocis, delivers the news of his son’s death to Clytemnestra, and she invites the guest and his companion inside. She then instructs a servant to go fetch Aegisthus and entrusts this errand to Orestes’ nurse. Here, the nurse—a simple and innocent woman—is thrust into an extremely tense scene, heightening the dramatic effect. Believing Orestes’ death to be true, the nurse weeps and recalls how she had devotedly cared for him in his childhood.
This scene also serves as a crucial turning point in the plot. Although the nurse had originally been instructed to bring Aegisthus in accompanied by armed guards, upon receiving a hint from the Chorus that Orestes is not dead, she subtly alters her instructions at the decisive moment. As the Chorus’s song ends, Aegisthus appears alone, without guards, and is soon struck down by Orestes’s sword.
Clytemnestra, who has rushed out at the servant’s cry, hears the words, “A dead man is killing a living man,” and instantly grasps the full extent of what has happened. The evil spirit of her family awakens within her, and she shouts for an axe, but it is already too late; with Orestes standing firm before her, there is no turning back. She repeats “My son!” in an attempt to change her mind, but she cannot alter fate, and Orestes ultimately drags her into the palace to kill her.
The palace doors then swing open, revealing the sight of the murderer standing beside his two victims. Orestes calls upon the Sun God as a witness to justify his actions and shows the people the cloak Agamemnon was wearing when he died. However, as if to say that countless excuses are useless, a dark shadow of terror engulfs his consciousness. As the terrifying forms of the Furies—summoned by his mother’s spirit—appear before his eyes, he loses his mind and rushes off the stage. This finale, which ends with Orestes’ madness, is one of the most gripping scenes in Aeschylus’s plays.

The Merciful Goddesses

The prologue to the third play, ‘The Merciful Goddesses’, begins on a peaceful morning in Delphi. Apollo’s priestess, entering the temple reverently, rushes out in terror, and as the front doors of the temple swing open, the audience is confronted with the terrifying sight she has witnessed. Orestes sits beside the navel of the sacred earth, holding a bloodstained sword and an olive branch, while a group of the Furies (the Erinyes) sleeps around him.
Apollo approaches Orestes and promises him salvation. He tells him that Hermes will lead him to the statue of Athena, where he will meet a judge who will resolve the matter. After Orestes departs for Athens, Apollo, the god of light, expels the Furies—the daughters of the night—from his temple.
The part where Orestes heads for Athens is Aeschylus’s adaptation of the legend. According to the legend, Apollo—who had ordered the matricide—purified Orestes of his sin single-handedly at Delphi. However, Aeschylus likely believed that order and justice within the House of Atreus could not be restored through external means alone—such as purifying human blood with animal blood or repelling the Furies with a god’s bow. The fact that this play features two distinct settings symbolizes that a greater purification is added to Apollo’s purification.
When the setting shifts to the Temple of Pallas Athena on the Acropolis of Athens, we see Orestes clinging to the statue. The Furies discover him, chase him down, surround him, and dance in a circle while singing a song of bondage. As the dance subsides, they reveal that they, too, hold an honorable place within Zeus’s grand cosmic order. In other words, as the daughters of the night, they are beings who demand atonement for every drop of blood ever shed, and their role is to remind people of this truth.
A short while later, Athena, the goddess of light, also acknowledges this point. Her declaration—to the effect that “Do not banish all that is fearsome from the city. For if nothing were feared, who among men could ever be righteous?”—reflects an attitude that accepts the ontological significance of the Furies.
After the chorus’s song ends, Athena returns to the Acropolis and, upon witnessing the strange scene unfolding near her statue, inquires about the truth of the matter. Athena’s predicament in ‘The Suppliants’ is similar to that of the king. One cannot drive away both those seeking salvation and their persecutors at the same time. However, the daughter of Zeus devises a clever plan. The goddess decides to bring forth the finest citizens, as if to establish a court that will henceforth judge murder cases for all eternity.
The subsequent scene should be understood as taking place on the Hill of Ares, that is, the Areopagus. Under Athena’s guidance, the elders selected as jurors enter, followed by Apollo himself, who enters to plead on Orestes’ behalf. The chorus’s argument and Apollo’s defense reveal a larger conflict lurking beneath the surface. As the son of Zeus, Apollo argues on behalf of the world of the young gods—a patriarchal society—and thus, to him, Agamemnon’s death appears a greater crime than matricide. In contrast, the goddesses of vengeance represent the old world, where a mother meant everything.
Once both sides have finished their statements, Athena declares that this newly established court, under the name “Ares’ Hill,” will serve as a bastion of justice to replace blood vengeance and will henceforth adjudicate murder cases for all eternity. According to predetermined rules, if the vote results in a tie, the defendant is found not guilty; thus, Athena—the goddess born from Zeus’s head—casts the deciding vote in Orestes’ favor.
Through this trial scene, Aeschylus greatly extols the state as a bastion of justice, but at the same time reveals the limitations of human judgment. The fact that the votes are tied suggests that the conflict in ‘The Oresteia’ cannot be resolved by human wisdom alone. It is thanks to divine grace that Orestes is saved and freed from the cycle of sin and punishment. Orestes, shedding tears of gratitude, swears eternal friendship to the city of Athens, which has saved him, and promises that the spear of Argos will never again be directed toward Attica.
The remaining task is to bring about reconciliation in the realm of the gods. The Furies, having lost the trial, threaten to bring disaster upon Athens in their rage; however, after a lengthy debate, Athena, displaying the elegant, lucid, and pious spirit of Attica, finally wins them over.
The underground forces, which are both the realm of death and the source of life, also possess the power to bestow blessings. The Furies now become “Merciful Goddesses,” granted sanctuary in Athens, where they generously bestow blessings. In the finale, a torchlight procession begins to guide the Merciful Goddesses to their newly prepared abode. This festive procession—in which not only the women accompanying Athena but also the actors, the jury, and the audience all participate—leaves the theater singing under Athena’s leadership and winds its way through the city. Now, even in the realm of the gods, the conflict has been amicably resolved.
Just before dawn breaks, the symbolic meaning of this trilogy—which begins with the Mycenaean royal family, steeped in curses and sin, and ends in the city of Athens, where democratic trust and justice reign—is light emerging from darkness. The entire work is a long march from darkness to light, from passion to self-restraint, and from barbarism to civilization, with each step bringing us closer to the light. And this spirit of ceaseless struggle toward goodness is ultimately rooted in faith in Zeus as the just ruler of the world.