Greek tragedies were usually written as trilogies, meaning that Aeschylus also wrote
Agamemnon, a prequel to
The Libation Bearers, and
The Eumenides, the sequel. All three plays center on the tragic House of Atreus and the consequences of Agamemnon’s return from the Trojan War, and together they make up a group called the
Oresteia. The two other great Greek tragedians of Aeschylus’s time are Sophocles and Euripides. Sophocles’ tragic trilogy is made up of the three Theban Plays:
Oedipus Rex,
Oedipus at Colonus, and
Antigone. These works contain elements of Greek tragedy similar to those within the
Oresteia, such as a forewarning Chorus, an emphasis on the divine power of fate, and a series of heroic but flawed main characters. Euripides’ tragedies, too, display similar qualities, with an added emphasis on the plights of female figures within these stories. He is known for tragedies such as
Medea and
The Trojan Women. Also relevant to the narrative of the
Oresteia is Euripides’ play
Iphigenia at Aulis, which recounts the actions of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra before the Trojan War, and
Electra, which portrays a different version of the events within
The Libation Bearers, focusing much more heavily on Electra than Orestes. The event of the Trojan War—the backdrop to the
Oresteia—are most famously related in Homer’s
Iliad and
Odyssey, epic poems that formed a foundation for the majority of Classical Greek literature and drama. Some modern takes on the story of the
Oresteia are Jean-Paul Sartre’s
The Flies—an adaptation of the Orestes story from an existentialist philosophical perspective—and
Electra, Eugene O’Neill’s retelling of the
Oresteia set in Civil War America.