Introduction
Orestes was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. He was away from Mycenae, sent to safety by his sister Electra, when his father was murdered, and returned years later as a young man to avenge him.
Family
- Father: Agamemnon
- Mother: Clytemnestra
- Siblings: Iphigenia
Vengeance and Its Price
Guided by an oracle of Apollo commanding him to avenge Agamemnon, Orestes killed both his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Matricide, even when divinely sanctioned, provoked the Furies (Erinyes), ancient goddesses of vengeance, to pursue and torment him with madness. In Aeschylus's telling, Orestes is eventually tried and acquitted at a court established by Athena in Athens, a resolution treated as the mythic founding of trial by jury and the end of the House of Atreus's cycle of blood vengeance.
As with all figures of Greek heroic legend, sources diverge on many particulars; the account above follows the most widely transmitted classical tradition.