Orestes was the Greek hero who killed his mother, Clytemnestra, to avenge the murder of his father, Agamemnon.
Orestes was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and the brother of Electra and Iphigenia. While Orestes was away, Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus killed Agamemnon after his return from Troy. In the Homeric tradition, Orestes later returned to Mycenae and killed both perpetrators, making his mother’s death part of the revenge.
The act created a moral crisis because Orestes had avenged his father but committed matricide. The Furies pursued and tormented him, driving him toward madness. In Aeschylus’s Eumenides, Apollo supports Orestes, and Athena arranges a formal trial at Athens. His acquittal transforms a cycle of private blood vengeance into a public legal judgment.
Electra is sometimes mistaken for the killer because she is central to the revenge plot and urges Orestes to act. Aegisthus was the other victim, not the avenger. Orestes was later associated with rule in Mycenae, Sparta, and much of the Peloponnese.