Orestes

Overview

Orestes is the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra who returns to avenge his father's murder by killing Aegisthus and his own mother. His revenge brings the Erinyes against him and leads to the famous trial at Athens that brings the House of Atreus cycle toward resolution.

Generation

Post-Trojan War

Notes

Orestes belongs to the final generation of the House of Atreus and stands at the centre of one of Greek mythology's most difficult conflicts between family duty and blood guilt.

His father Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War only to be murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Orestes is still young and is removed from immediate danger. When he later returns to Mycenae, he faces the obligation to avenge his father.

Orestes kills Aegisthus, but the killing of Clytemnestra creates the deeper moral crisis. By avenging Agamemnon, Orestes also becomes guilty of matricide. The same act can therefore be understood both as fulfilment of a duty and as a new blood crime.

This contradiction brings the Erinyes against him. The ancient goddesses pursue Orestes because he has shed the blood of his mother. His story becomes less a simple revenge tale and more a question of whether inherited vengeance can ever end without creating another wrong.

In the most influential surviving dramatic treatment, Aeschylus' Oresteia, Orestes eventually reaches Athens and appeals to Athena. Instead of resolving the dispute through another act of revenge, Athena establishes a court to judge the case.

The Trial of Orestes therefore transforms the story of the House of Atreus. The cycle begins with generations of private vengeance and ends, in Aeschylus' version, with formal judgment and a new civic order.

Orestes is closely connected with Electra, who supports his return and revenge, with Apollo, whose command and protection are important in major traditions, and with the Erinyes, whose pursuit gives his story its lasting moral and religious importance.

Ancient authors do not preserve one single version of Orestes' fate. His madness, purification, wanderings and later adventures vary between traditions, but the revenge against Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, the pursuit by the Erinyes and the problem of matricide remain central to his mythology.