In accordance with the advice of the god Apollo, Orestes has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge the death of his father Agamemnon at her hands.

Despite Apollo's earlier prophecy, Orestes finds himself tormented by Erinyes or Furies to the blood guilt stemming from his matricide.

The play begins with a soliloquy that outlines the basic plot and events that have led up to this point from Electra, who stands next to a sleeping Orestes.

Orestes, in supplication before Menelaus, hopes to gain the compassion that Tyndareus would not grant in an attempt to get him to speak before the assembly of Argive men.

However, Menelaus ultimately shuns his nephew, choosing not to compromise his tenuous power among the Greeks, who blame him and his wife for the Trojan War.

He and Orestes begin to formulate a plan, in the process indicting partisan politics and leaders who manipulate the masses for results contrary to the best interest of the state.

To inflict the greatest suffering, they plan to kill Helen and hold her daughter, Hermione, hostage in order to escape harm.

Aeschylus' play Eumenides, the third part of his surviving Oresteia trilogy, enshrines the trial and acquittal of Orestes within the foundation of Athens itself, as a moment when legal deliberation surpassed blood vengeance as a means of resolution.

As such, the fact that Euripides' version of the myth portrays Orestes being found guilty and resorts to bloodshed and blackmail to escape has been interpreted as deeply problematic for Athenian identity.

Orestes first played at the Dionysia during the waning years of the war, both Athens and Sparta and all of their allies had suffered tremendous losses.