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# Books in Brief: The Oresteian Trilogy
- URL: https://www.saraburke.net/books-in-brief-the-oresteian-trilogy/
- Published: 2017-11-21T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2022-12-29T06:48:54.000Z
- Author: Sara Burke

[Get the book.](http://amzn.to/2z8HNa1?ref=saraburke.net)

*[The Oresteian Trilogy](http://amzn.to/2hR2Ni4?ref=saraburke.net)* is the foundation of tragedy. You need to read it just like you need to read *[The Odyssey](http://amzn.to/2zU4OB0?ref=saraburke.net).* This was my first time through even though I was familiar with the tropes and scenes through references from other works. The plays are a lot of things, but at its root it’s a metaphor for the ascension of society’s motivation for good from fear of reprisal as embodied in the Furies, to duty (and fear of its retribution) as embodied by Apollo, to a kind of holy rationality, as embodied by Athene and her counsel. It is ultimately a [Whiggish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig%5Fhistory?ref=saraburke.net) work, convinced society moves ever forward in progress towards harmony.

The one thing that shook me as a modern reader coming to the book in 2017, *and* a reader who knows the connotations of “maleness” and masculinity in ancient Greek and Roman writing, was that in the climactic scene of *The Eumenides*, Athene *says* she sides with Orestes, saying that killing a man as his mother killed his father is a worse crime than killing a woman, as Orestes killed his mother, because of “male supremacy in all things”. It’s kind of a shit explanation, especially coming from a woman written by a man.

Anyway, [read the book](http://amzn.to/2hR2Ni4?ref=saraburke.net). It’s embedded in many works of tragedy and worth knowing how the building was built these 2400 years later.