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 Odyssey is the story of family, love, justice, virtue, and vice. The tale of how they are woven into civilization. On a basic level, it is about a man’s journey home. More deeply, it is about the travails of an abandoned family; it’s about the unlawfulness of swaggering masculinity; it’s about the forbearance of a faithful wife. An epic of many tales about a man of many twists and turns.