Like many plays of the time, Aeschylus' Oresteia is a group of three tragedies that was written for a festival in Athens. However at the end of the third play, the Eumenides, there is no tragic ending, as Orestes survives the Furies and the curse is broken. All three plays, however, concern serious themes that create drama and intensity for Ancient Athenian audiences, that make them not only miserable but angry as well. Typically after these three very serious and sad plays, there would be a sort
violence between and within families, as shown in The Oresteia, written by Aeschylus. In his trilogy, many characters are in this cycle, but Orestes works through the justice system differently as he shows the movement from the cycle of violence to a more civilized form of a justice system, as demonstrated by the court system. Orestes is the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and makes his first appearance in the trilogy’s The Libation Bearers where he is found by his sister Electra and the Chorus