* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Is Clytemnestra a grieving mother avenging her daughter's murder, or an adulterous wife jealous of her husband's new concubine? Her words suggest the former, but her murder of Cassandra and the fact that she had already taken a lover could support the latter.
* JerkassWoobie: Almost everyone from the play. Clytemnestra (husband killed her daughter and brought home a concubine), Agamemnon (had to sacrifice his daughter to sail to Troy in support of his brother, was stuck there for ten years, and returned to a wife who cheated on and then killed him), Electra and Orestes (both having their father killed by their own mother, sister sacrificed by father and Orestes was honor-bound to kill his mother and got chased down by the Furies for it).
* MoralEventHorizon: It's hard to fault Clytemnestra for murdering Agamemnon (who had had a lot of asshole moments of his own in the surrounding mythos and had also arguably crossed the MEH himself by sacrificing Iphegenia), so Aeschylus makes her less sympathetic by having her also murder the innocent Cassandra for the "crime" of being her husband's SexSlave.
* NightmareFuel: According to contemporary accounts, the Eumenides in the ''Oresteia'' caused fainting and [[BringMyBrownPants sphincter trouble]] in the audience at its premiere.
* RootingForTheEmpire: Goes with the unavoidable ValuesDissonance. To a modern reader, it can be hard to see Agamemnon as anything other than an AssholeVictim getting his just desserts. Subsequently, one may not root very hard for the heroes trying to [[AvengingTheVillain avenge him]].
* TheWoobie: Cassandra, doubly so because she didn't even do anything wrong but died after losing her home and family. What worse is that she knew the entire time what would happen and was powerless to stop it.
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