Choephori

Produced in 458 BC Aeschylus'' Choephori is the second play in the Oresteian trilogy. The bloodshed begun in the first play with the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra is here continued when Agamemnon''s son Orestes avenges his father''s death by killing Clytemnestra. It is not until the third and final play Eumenides that peace is restored to the family of the Atreidae. The introduction discusses the pre-Aeschylean ''Orestes'' tradition in literature and art as well as the place of Choephori within the Oresteia its imagery and dramatic structure the questions of staging the play and the manuscript tradition.