The myth of the family of Atreus was portrayed by each of the three great dramatists of the Golden Age of Athens: Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. Euripides's play Iphigenia in Aulis recounts the moving story of Agamemnon's attempt to sacrifice his daughter. Euripides's other extant plays on the House of Atreus are Orestes and Electra.

Sophocles also wrote an Electra (c. 409 B.C.), although this play assumes Iphigema's death and focuses on the plight of her sister, Electra, and brother, Orestes, exacting revenge against Clytemnestra.

Aeschylus wrote a trilogy on the myth called the Oresteia. In the first of the trilogy, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon in vengeance for sacrificing their daughter. In the second play, The Libation Bearers, Orestes kills Clytemnestra to avenge his father, and in the final play, The Eumenides, Orestes is tried and acquitted in an Athenian...