Aeschylus, lyric, and epic

As everyone knows, the Oresteia depicts the killing of king Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra. Taking the Orestes myth as its case study, this chapter examines the impact of Stesichorus, and of other lyric poetry, on Aeschylus, before turning to the influence of that other great super-genre of archaic poetry, namely epic, including but not limited to Homer. Born probably in Metaurus in south Italy and most commonly associated with Himera on the north coast of Sicily, Stesichorus was active for some period between roughly 610 and 540. Stesichorus's was not the only lyric account important for Aeschylus's telling of the myth. Almost nothing survives of a poem on the subject by Xanthus, a poet of whom we know nothing, not even his place of origin. Pindar's entire account of the myth is so short that it can be quoted in full.