3 plays by Aeschylus

I just wanted to record here that I tried to analyze these plays, did a search to make sure I understood them and found that I certainly did not!! There is a huge back story to these plays!!!! Before I read any Greek play again, I'm going to check out the plot summary and find out all the back stories, there were a lot of back stories to the Iliad too, like the Trojan horse that just simply are not written down in the story and you practically have to think like an ancient Greek to get it.

So here is what I wish I had known when I read Agamemnon, Choephoroe and Eumenides, this is a summary and not exact:

It all started with Agamemnon's grandfather, Pelops. Pelops won his wife unfairly in a chariot race and then murdered his accomplice afterward. But before the accomplice died, he cursed Pelops and his family. Then Pelops had 2 sons, Thyestes and Atreus. Thyestes commited adultery with Atreus' wife so Atreus banished him. Thyestes asked to come back and be forgiven and Atreus agreed and served him a wonderful banquet in which he served to Thyestes, Thyestes' own 2 murdered sons to eat. Thyestes was livid and left, and had another son, Aegisthus, possibly in an incestuous relationship with his remaining living daughter in order to avenge the deaths of his sons. And that is the curse referred to on the house of Atreus.

Atreus had two sons, Menelaus and Agamemnon. Menelaus married Helen who was stolen by Paris and taken to Troy which is what the Trojan war was all about. Agamemnon married Clytaemnestra who was the twin sister of Helen although Helen was fathered by Zeus and Clytaemnestra was fathered by a mortal. So anyway, Agamemnon of course wanted to help his brother for many reasons against Troy, but when they went to sail away there was no wind because the goddess, Artemis, was mad at somebody for killing a rabbit and demanded Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigeneia, as a sacrifice to atone for the rabbit. So Agamemnon delivered his daugher to be sacrificed at the temple of Artemis without the knowledge or consent of Clytaemnestra, her mother, and then he was gone to Troy for 10 years.

While Agamemnon was gone, Clytaemnestra hooked up with Aegisthus, the son of Thyestes, the cousin of Agamemnon, and they ruled Argos together and planned to kill Agamemnon when he returned. They sent Orestes, the son of Clytaemnestra and Agamemnon, into exile so that he would not be able to claim the throne, and treated Electra, his sister, like a slave.

The first play, Agamemnon, starts when Agamemnon is returning from Troy.

Also, interesting to note is that Cassandra, daughter of Priam, king of Troy, and the slave to Agamemnon, refused to have sex with Apollo at some point prior, and so Apollo refuses to help her in her need when she knows she will be murdered along with Agamemnon.

There!! I think I got it all!! After finding this all out, the plays have so much more meaning and depth. I will write about it after our next discussion as I'm sure we'll come up with some more interesting ideas!!! Wow!! Those Greeks had an imagination, no wonder we are still interested, it's quite the back story!!!