How The Oresteia drew on The Odyssey
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 Odyssey
Homer · c. 725 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
The Oresteia
Aeschylus · 458 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
8/10
On The Oresteia’s page
- The Oresteia dramatizes a myth the Odyssey can't stop retelling — the failed homecoming that haunts Odysseus's successful one
- Aeschylus keeps Homer's frame but shifts the weight: in the Odyssey the killer is Aegisthus, here the murder belongs to Clytemnestra
- Reading the Odyssey first shows you the version Aeschylus is answering — and how much darker he makes it
On The Odyssey’s page
- The story Homer keeps telling on the side becomes Aeschylus's whole trilogy
- Throughout the Odyssey — Nestor in Book 3, Menelaus in Book 4, Agamemnon's own shade in Books 11 and 24 — the murder of Agamemnon is the cautionary foil to Odysseus's safe homecoming
- Aeschylus took that recurring moral paradigm and built the Oresteia on it, reworking Homer's frame for the tragic stage