Agamemnon Resources

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Online texts of Aeschylus's seven surviving plays.

'70s TV adaptation of Aeschylus's trilogy.

It's Belgian.

This movie doesn't really have anything to do with Aeschylus's Agamemnon, but it does prominently feature characters suffering from (or so it seems) a "Cassandra Complex." This means that they think that they can predict the future, but no one believes them. Whether the Aeschylus connection is there or not, we at Shmoop recommend it: it's an awesome movie.

Agamemnon (played by Sean Connery) has a bit part in this time travel adventure. This movie doesn't really have anything to do with Aeschylus's play either.

This papyrus fragment is from a "satyr play" by Aeschylus, entitled the Dictyulci, or "Net-pullers." A satyr play is a comic play, which a chorus made up of satyrs – weird little half man half goat dudes. Traditionally, every year, a tragedian would write one tragic trilogy and a satyr play to accompany it.

This is a bust of Aeschylus. Chances are it was not done from life, but it can give you some idea of what ancient people after Aeschylus imagined that he looked like.

This gold funerary mask was found at the ancient site of Mycenae by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (same dude that discovered Troy) in 1876. For no good scientific reason –other than that he thought it was cool – Schliemann decided to name it "The Mask of Agamemnon." So, there's really no historical connection between this mask and the Agamemnon who is the hero of our play. (Anyway, Aeschylus's version places Agamemnon in Argos, not Mycenae, remember?) That said, it's a pretty awesome mask, and could definitely be said to convey something of Agamemnon's character. What do you think?

The twentieth century Irish-born English painter Francis Bacon painted a famous "Triptych" based on Aeschylus's Oresteia. Who or what do you think this painting represents?