Aeschylus' three-play cycle, the Oresteia, presented his Athenian audience with murder within a royal family poisoned by previous crimes and wartime decisions. Agammemnon returns from Troy to be killed by a vengeful Clytemnestra. Their son Orestes returns home to avenge his father, to kill his mother, and he is punished by the Furies for matricide. The trial has to move from Mycenae to Athens, where Apollo enters the court to speak. What is justice and where does it lie in these plays, the only single day's trilogy to survive from the classic period of Athens' festival of Dionysius?

Park Avenue Armory has scheduled Robert Ickes' Oresteia for this June through August 2022.

This seminar meets over three Thursdays:
January 27: Agamemnon
February 17: The Libation Bearers
March 10: The Eumenides

Professor McDonough recommends the translation of the Oresteia by C. Collard, published by Oxford University Press; other translations are also welcome.