The Oresteia: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Oresteia, credited to Aeschylus, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

The Oresteia is a trilogy by Aeschylus, one of the foremost playwrights of ancient Greece. It encompasses three plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Furies. It tells the tragic tale of the House of Atreus, whose inhabitants have been cursed and are doomed to play out their bloody, vengeful destinies. At the beginning of the first part, the Trojan War has ended and the Greek general, Agamemnon, is returning victorious to his wife Clytemnestra. Yet she finds it difficult to forgive his sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia, who was killed to ensure the Greek fleet fair winds in their voyage to Troy. Her desire for vengeance, and its dire consequences, instigates the action of these poetic tragedies. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett) Cast list: AGAMEMNON, king of Mycenae, read by StephenC AEGISTHUS, cousin to Agamemnon, read by mb ORESTES, son of Agamemnon, read by David O'Connell CLYTEMNESTRA, wife of Agamemnon, read by Christie Nowak CASSANDRA, a Trojan princess, read by Kristin Hughes ELECTRA, sister of Orestes, read by Claire Goget APOLLO, god of the Delphic oracle, read by Andrew Lebrun ATHENA, goddess of wisdom, read by Catharine Eastman PYTHIA, a priestess of Apollo, read by Kirsten Ferreri A WATCHMAN at Mycenae, read by Joe Earley A HERALD from Troy, read by tipaew NURSE to Orestes and Electra, read by Elizabeth Klett ATTENDANT of Aegisthus, read by Fr. Richard Zeile of Detroit ATTENDANT WOMAN of Athena, read by Jennifer Stearns NARRATOR read by Justin Barrett CHORUS in Agamemnon, read by Andy Minter CHORUS in The Libation-Bearers, read by Jc Guan CHORUS in The Furies, read by Kara Shallenberg, Rosalind Wills, and Christie Nowak PYLADES, read by Annoying Twit

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Oresteia
• Author credits: Aeschylus
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 7
• Listed recording duration: 4:19:33

Catalogue topics

• drama
• classic
• tragedy
• greek

Track guide

1. 0 - Dramatis Personae — 2:10
2. 1 - Agamemnon, Part 1 — 1:00:35
3. 2 - Agamemnon, Part 2 — 47:52
4. 3 - The Libation Bearers, Part 1 — 39:32
5. 4 - The Libation Bearers, Part 2 — 35:00
6. 5 - The Furies, Part 1 — 39:41
7. 6 - The Furies, Part 2 — 34:46

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.