Agamemnon is only the first play of the great tragic trilogy, The Oresteia. Aeschylus wrote The Oresteia around 458 B.C.E. It is his sole trilogy to survive intact. The two other plays, Choephori and Eumenides (along with a lost satyr play called Proteus), won its author first prize at the Great Dionysia that same year. A dramatic competition whose later victors included Sophocles and Euripides, the Great Dionysia took place once a year in Athens during the festival of Dionysus. The conventions of the competition were such that dramatists were responsible for nearly every aspect of production and staging, from the composition of the plays themselves to the costumes and scenery. In fact,...
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