he House of Atreus: the foundation of them laid by Atreus
when, to take vengeance on his brother Thyestes, he served up to him at
a banquet the flesh of his own sons;

His grandsons were Agamemnon and Menelaus: Menelaus' wife, Helen, was
stolen by a guest, Paris of Troy, which caused the great Trojan war.

Agamemnon, who commanded the Greek nations in that war, fretting at the
contrary winds which delayed the setting out of the fleet, was
persuaded by the Seers to slay his own daughter Iphigenia, to appease
the Deities;

Her mother Clytaemnestra treasured up this wrong all through the ten
years' war, and slew Agamemnon on his return, in the moment of victory,
slew him while in his bath by casting a net over him and smiting him to
death with her own arm;

Then she reigned in triumph with Aegisthus her paramour (himself one of
the fatal house), till Orestes her son, who had escaped as an infant
when his father was slaughtered, returned at last, and slew the guilty
pair;

For this act of matricide, though done by the command of Apollo,
Orestes was given up to the Furies, and driven over the earth, a
madman, till in Athens, on Mars' Hill they say, he was cleansed and
healed.

Cassandra too was involved in the fall of Agamemnon: the Trojan maiden
beloved of Apollo, who bestowed upon her the gift of prophecy; when she
slighted the God's love, Apollo--for no gift of a god can be
recalled--left her a prophetess, with the doom that her true
forebodings should ever be disbelieved. She, having thus vainly sought
to save Troy, with its fall fell into captivity, and to the lot of
Agamemnon, with whom she died.

The name of Orestes would suggest the proverbial friendship of Qrestes
[Transcriber's note: Orestes?] and Pylades, formed in Orestes' trouble
and never broken.

TRILOGY OF THE ORESTEIA

FIRST PLAY: IN THE MORNING:

_AGAMEMNON_

PROLOGUE

_The Permanent Scene is decorated to represent the facade of the Palace
of Agamemnon, at Argos; the platform over the Central door appearing as a
Watch-tower. At intervals along the front of the Palace, and especially
by the three doors, are statues of Gods, amongst them Apollo, Zeus, and
Hermes. The time is supposed to be night, verging on morning. Both
Orchestra and Stage are vacant: only a Watchman is discovered on the
Tower, leaning on his elbow, and gazing into the distance._

The Watchman soliloquizes on his toilsome task of watching all night
through