YMMV / The Oresteia

• Alternative Character Interpretation: 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.
• Jerkass Woobie: 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).
• Moral Event Horizon: 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 Sex Slave.
• Nightmare Fuel: According to contemporary accounts, the Eumenides in the Oresteia caused fainting and sphincter trouble in the audience at its premiere.
• Rooting for the Empire: Goes with the unavoidable Values Dissonance. To a modern reader, it can be hard to see Agamemnon as anything other than an Asshole Victim getting his just desserts. Subsequently, one may not root very hard for the heroes trying to avenge him.
• The Woobie: 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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