When Agamemnon finally returns, bringing a captured Trojan princess with him as a mistress, Clytemnestra puts her plans into action.

Clytemnestra has been vengefully plotting Agamemnon's death the entire time he's been away and has begun an adulterous relationship with Aegisthus, a kinsman of Agamemnon's (who has his own reasons for taking revenge on the king). The first play of the trilogy, titled Agamemnon, takes place several years after these events. Guilt ridden, Agamemnon nevertheless did as the goddess told him-and in doing so, triggered the wrath of his wife Clytemnestra, who, while he was at war, plotted revenge of her own. Agamemnon was then told by the goddess Artemis that the only way he could get a favorable wind was to sacrifice his daughter to her. As they attempted to sail for Troy, the Greek armies found there was no wind. They were seeking revenge on Paris, a prince of Troy, for his having kidnapped Helen, the beautiful wife of Menelaus, another king/general.

The Oresteia is set several years after the Trojan War, in which Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae and a general in the Greek army, fought alongside other Greek kings/generals to destroy the city of Troy. One of the few surviving complete examples of Classical Greek drama, the trilogy is populated by archetypal characters, whose actions explore themes relating to the nature and purpose of revenge, and the relationship between humanity and spirituality (the gods). This trilogy of plays, written a number of years B.C.E., dramatizes one of the earliest, most culturally significant myths of Ancient Greek civilization-how a series of revenge/power-motivated murders in the family of King Agamemnon of Mycenae eventually leads to the establishment of democratic (as opposed to natural) justice.

The oresteia trilogy aeschylus