Literature and history dot come. Oh, Hello and welcome to literature and history.

Episode 29, The Mound and the Furies.

This is the third of three episodes on the most famous works of the ancient Greek playwright

Escales, a trilogy of plays called the Orestian trilogy, which premiered in the spring of 458 B.C. in the city of Athens.

If you want to start the story from the beginning, episode 27 is the place to look. The last we saw

arrestees he was being pursued by the Furies, the bloodthirsty deities who were emblems of vengeance to the ancient Greeks.

The name of the third play is The Humanities, which is an alternative name for the Furies, those spirits of revenge for the dishonored

dead. Whatever we call them, the Humanities or the Furies, these creatures at the outset of the play were beginning today

symbolized blood for blood. These monsters sought the life of

arrestees because he had done something shocking.

Orestes had cut his own mother's throat.

And so as we come to the end of the story,

we wonder just what Escales' audience was wondering.

Will Orestes escape the wrath of the Furies, or will he be eaten alive? Or will something altogether different happen?

In the next hour and change, you're going to find out as we open the pages of the final play in the Aristian trilogy,

The Humanities. Let's do a quick review. The whole Arrestian trilogy is about a family, a family called

atrias. This family has a violent streak. Past members have killed children and fed

them to parents. They have murdered uncles and killed in-laws and started wars.

The family's leading warmongers are Agamemnon and Menelaeus,

the aggressors who set in motion the Trojan War.

And following the war at Troy, Agamemnon after 10 years finally headed home.

This is the situation at the outset of the Arrestian trilogy's first play

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