Some have said that the Oresteia, and the myths upon which it is based, document the struggle between the Bronze Age Hellenes, a matrilineal society worshipping the Triple Goddess, and the Iron Age Dorics, who worshipped the Sky-God.

In such a context, Artemis is the Goddess in her old form, demanding human sacrifice to allow Agamemnon to proceed in his patriarchal mission. According the the old ways, after all, Helen and Paris had done nothing wrong. Under the old dispensation, the woman, especially if she was a Queen, took any lover she chose, even if she was married. Agamemnon and the Greeks represent the new way, in which a woman/wife is property, the theft of which must be answered for.

Agamemnon must compromise with the old law in order to enforce the new. But his death at the hands of Clytaemnestra (his wife, and Helens' sister) is the result of his breaking both laws.

Agamemnons' son, Orestes, follows the law of Zeus in avenging the death of his father. But this involves matricide, the worst crime possible under the old law. Thus Orestes is pursued by the Furies, ancient cthonic deities allied to the Goddess until he conme to judgement before Athena.

Athena is herself one of the old Godesses, but her mythological rebirth from the head of Zeus establishes the God (and thus the male) as the source of both life and wisdom. In her casting the deciding lot in favour of Orestes, the Goddes is finally subject to the God, and Woman to Man.

Seems a tad fanciful to me, I'll allow! Thouhg I can see the myths and plays as a metaphor for social, political and religious changes that made Greek culture what it was.