As the first play of The Orestia opens, the Trojan war is ending. The watchman, straggling the Atreidae’s roof dogwise, sees the beacon signaling victory in Ilium. Agamemnon returns home with Cassandra, a prophetess and daughter of Priam, as a concubine. He has been gone for ten years, with the human sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia as his farewell. Once home he is greeted by the duplicitous Clytaemestra. She conspires with her lover Aegisthus to kill Agamemnon and seize the reins of power.

The scene opens; Prometheus, the fore thinking one, has defied Zeus in giving various knowledge to mankind, thus incurring his wrath. Hephaestus is nailing Prometheus to a craggy mountain face reluctantly, spurred on by Might and Violence. The immediate parallels with the fall of Man present themselves in the modern context. The imagery is inverted, with the rebel suffering at the hands of a tyrannical ruler of the universe for helping mankind.