Cassandra's importance in Oresteia

             Aeschlyus's trilogy, The Oresteia, is a tragic manifesto that painfully paints a bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. In the first respective play of the trilogy, "Agamemnon," the character of Cassandra plays a vital role to the play and the trilogy as a whole, in numerous distinct ways. Cassandra, as seer and prophetess, connects the present with the past, and more importantly, draws a foreshadowing veil of doom for the future. In her short yet powerful scene after meeting Clytaemnestra, the mischievous wife of Agamemnon, Cassandra gives a voice, a past, and a portrait to each of the three plays in the trilogy. Moreover, she is able to accomplish this remarkable feat in a divinely poignant manner. Cassandra possesses a woeful vulnerability as victim to both Apollo, her architect of prophecy, and Clytaemnestra, her murderer.
             "Agamemnon," the first play of The Oresteia follows the ill fate of the victorious King of Argos, Agamemnon. Upon arriving home from war, royal mistress, Cassandra, at his side, Agamemnon is brutally murdered by his own wife, Clytaemnestra and accomplice, Aegisthus. Clytaemnestra distraught and enraged over Agamemnon's affair with Helen of Troy, coupled with his horrid sacrifice of their own daughter for warfare victory, joins forces and bed with the malicious heart of Aegisthus. The vengeance lies deep within Aegisthus, child of Thyestes, who was the hapless man who ate his own children, fed to him by Agamemnon, himself. It is because of this villainous act that Agamemnon meets his untimely death, for it is later revealed that Aegisthus was the one who concocted the bloody murder in honor of his father's retribution. Tragically, Cassandra, uninvolved, likewise meets her demise at the hands of the two butchers.
             The first time we, as an audience, view Cassandra is during the arrival of Agamemnon to Argos. While Clytaemnest...

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