How The Oresteia drew on The Iliad
A documented line of influence: Aeschylus demonstrably engaged Homer’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Iliad
Homer · c. 750 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
The Oresteia
Aeschylus · 458 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
5/10
On The Oresteia’s page
- The Oresteia is draped in Homer — Aeschylus reached back to the Iliad for his characterization and his ethical seriousness
- You'll hear it in the similes and the heroic register; the house of Atreus is folded into a tragic frame built from epic material
- The plot derives from the Agamemnon myth, but the Iliad is the deep well Aeschylus is drawing from
On The Iliad’s page
- Aeschylus called his own plays "slices from the great feasts of Homer" — and the Oresteia is one of the richest cuts
- The trilogy borrows the Iliad's technique wholesale: Iliadic similes of eagles robbed of their young, a Watchman cut from heroic cloth
- The plot itself comes from the Odyssey's Agamemnon myth, but the grandeur — the ethical weight, the heroic register — is straight from this poem