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The importance of Æschylus in the development of the drama is immense. Before him tragedy had consisted of the chorus and one actor; and by introducing a second actor, expanding the dramatic dialogue thus made possible, and reducing the lyrical parts, he practically created Greek tragedy as we understand it. Like other writers of his time, he acted in his own plays, and trained the chorus in their dances and songs; and he did much to give impressiveness to the performances by his development of the accessories of scene and costume on the stage. "The Oresteia" is one of the supreme productions of all literature. It deals with the two great themes of the retribution of crime and the inheritance of evil; and here again a parallel may be found between the assertions of the justice of God by Æschylus and by the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel. Both contend against the popular idea that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge; both maintain that the soul that sinneth, it shall die. The nobility of thought and the majesty of style with which these ideas are set forth give this triple drama its place at the head of the literary masterpieces of the antique world. ... Read more

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In this book, Taplin looks for clues to Aeschylus's stagecraft in the texts of the plays themselves, analyzing the exits and entrances that occur throughout his works. ... Read more

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Professor Winnington-Ingram's reputation as an authority on Greek drama is based on a lifetime's careful scholarship. In 1980 the Press published Professor Winnington-Ingram's book on Sophocles and in 1983 he followed it up with some studies on Aeschylus. This book explores the problems in Aeschylus' earlier plays: Persae, Septem contra Thebas and the Daniad trilogy. There is also an emphasis on different aspects of the Oresteia and finally, an examination of the peculiar problems in Prometheus Bound. A view of Aeschylean tragedy emerges - and of the poet's contribution to the development of Greek religious thought. Students of Greek drama will welcome this collection. Greek in the body of the text is translated, so that the book will be accessible to those studying Greek literature in translation and the literature and drama of other cultures. ... Read more

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This remains the major book on Aeschylus' Supplices, its dating and the trilogy to which it belonged. Its first appearance, in 1969, was a response to the publication of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, which indicated a late production date (the 460s BC) for Aeschylus' play. This upset the previous consensus that it was the earliest Greek tragedy to survive: there was, Garvie argued, no longer good reason to suppose that the play belonged to an early stage in its author's development. The book also examines the evidence for reconstruction of the other, lost plays of the trilogy. This new edition (and first appearance in paperback) includes a new preface and bibliography to take account of recent scholarship. Garvie remains convinced that, even without the additional testimony of the papyrus, all the internal from the text of the play points to the 460s, though dome have tried to pull it back to the 470s because it feels like an early play. Some of the salutary lessons to be drawn from the discovery of the papyrus have still to be learnt and it is timely for this reissue to be presented to a new generation of Aeschylean students and scholars. ... Read more

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This early works is a fascinating and absorbing collection of plays translated into English verse. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1920. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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Murray covers Aeschylus' drama. ... Read more

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Aeschylus’ "Agamemnon", opening play of the Oresteia trilogy, with its brilliant theatrical effects, is a masterpiece. The revenge plot is simple, the language and imagery complex and thrilling. The play features two extraordinary women: the powerful, dissembling queen Clytemnestra and the frenzied prophetess Cassandra. It also features another original Aeschylean creation, the omnipresent helpless chorus, forced to bear witness to Agamemnon’s path to death. Through the chorus, the action is seen in the context of justice, destiny and the role of the gods. The play is a serious investigation of man’s problematic ethical nature.This detailed study sets the play against the rich traditions of archaic poetry from which drama had only recently sprung. It considers the ethical dilemmas of the plot in the context of fifth-century Athenian religious and political thinking, and the play’s attitude to women. It engages with the play’s influence on later Attic tragedy, on Seneca’s Roman "Agamemnon", and on some revenge dramas of Elizabethan England. ... Read more

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Very helpful analysis of the Agamemnon
This is a great book to start you thinking deeply as you read the Agamemnon.Highly recommended! ... Read more

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In 1847 Wagner read the Oresteian trilogy, the finest surviving work by Aeschylus. The impact on him of Aeschylus' work, at this crucial time in his development, changed Wagner's entire vision of his own role as an artist. As he wrote in his autobiography: 'I could actually see the Oresteia with my mind's eye, as though it were actually being performed and its effect on me was indescribable. ... My ideas about the significance of drama and of the theatre were, without a doubt, moulded by these impressions ...' Wagner and Aeschylus examines the role that the Oresteia played in the shaping of the Ring, showing how Aeschylus' masterpiece influenced Wagner's at many levels, from the basic idea of using mythical material for a cycle of 'stage festival dramas' right through to profound aspects of subject matter and form and Wagner's conception of the role of music in opera. Two introductory chapters look at the overall relationship between Wagner and Aeschylus; there follows an analysis of the four dramas of the Ring: the points of affinity and the differences, between Wagner's cycle and Aeschylus' are discussed in detail, an approach which throws fresh light on the form and meaning of the Ring. ... Read more

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Publisher: Oxford : ClarendonPublication date: 1881Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Immortal Play, Questionable Edition
There is no denying Agamemnon's greatness and profound importance; it is a foundational text not only in drama but in literature itself and remains a clear masterpiece after nearly 2,500 years. However, since it is part of the Orestia trilogy, and there are many editions with all three plays, it is hard to justify a standalone, especially as one can get all three for little or no more than this.

As the earliest known dramatist whose work survives, Aeschylus' influence is impossible to exaggerate, and this is his greatest known achievement. The story itself is enough to captivate after all this time; the profound tragedy still stirs elements deep within us. This is in large part due to the characters, many of whom have become archetypes. As far removed as they and their events seem from today, they are recognizably human with all-too-human flaws and frailties; we feel for their doomed lives because we see ourselves in them. With its string of intrafamily murders and constant high pitch emotions, the melodramatic plot initially seems to have nothing to do with our world; ditto for the gods, curses, and other such factors. However, the underlying themes are still very much with us - are indeed as relevant as ever and likely always will be. We still struggle with issues like family strife, political succession, revenge ethics, crime and punishment, and the free will question. Agamemnon dramatizes these with unforgettable vividness and provokes at least as much thought as ever. It is essential reading for anyone with even the slightest interest in drama, history, or ancient Greece - indeed, literature itself.

Again, though, it is much better experienced in full and also more affordable and convenient. Readers would do well to get the trilogy, of which I recommend the Robert Fagles translation, which is undoubtedly the best for current readers. It is not that prior ones are inaccurate, but inevitable language changes have made them ever less readable; some may think them more stately, but they lack Fagles' flow and readability. Dedicated Greekless readers will of course want to read several, but neophytes should start with Fagles, the only version most will ever need.

Tragedy Personified
First in a trilogy about the return of the Greeks after the Trojan War.Powerful stuff.Such horrors and tragedy as only the Greeks can master.Agamemnon's father killed his brother's children and set their flesh before him to eat, unknowingly.Agamemnon himself killed his own daughter as a sacrifice to the gods for success in the Trojan War, and when he comes home after ten years (which is where the action begins), his wife, Clytemnestra, stabs him to death in a plot with Aegisthus who was the son of the father who ate his children, and in the next part, Orestes, Agamemnon's son will return and kill them both.Please don't think I'm giving away plot here.Plot is not the point, the writing of it is all.To see it staged by first-rate actors must be a real thrill indeed.

Quick and New
I recieved Aeschylus: Agamemnon right on time and it was crisp and new!

Deniston Page could not be better
It would be good to have two years of college Greek behind you before starting on Denniston and Page's AGAMEMNON, a Greek text with modern commentary. As a single-volume edition for students, this one could not be bettered: everything is explained and difficult passages are translated in the notes -- about three lines a page are difficult enough to require this treatment. And I mean difficult for everyone, the world's greatest Greek scholars included. The difficulties are very thoroughly discussed. Another reviewer here has said Denniston and Page are dogmatic; not at all: they point out where passages are unclear, disagreed about by scholars, or outright lost. Most of the choruses contain passages so distorted scholars have to guess at what was written, and (assuming their guess is right) exactly what the passages mean. Aeschylus writes a little like Shakespeare in MACBETH: very poetically and not always clearly. In spite of all this, passages, sometimes quite long, of powerful poetry leap out of the page. The play has been compared to KING LEAR and called, along with LEAR, one of the two best tragedies of all time. What's more, it makes you feel, even with Denniston and Page's constant help, that you can really understand Greek if you can understand lines from this play.

Does Revenge Ever End?
I always liked Homer and Sophocles, but I still have a preference for Aeschylus. What makes "Agamemnon" such a great story is that not only is this a story in itself, but it is only part 1 of a trilogy. Part 2 is "The Libation Bearers" and Part 3 is "The Eumenides." Now "Agamemnon" was written centuries before Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida." Nevertheless, the events of "Agamemnon" take place after Shakespeare's play. If you read that play of Shakespeare's, you know that it covers the last few stages of the Trojan War. In Shakespeare's play, Agamemnon is portrayed as a reasonable and competent king who is frustrated at the length of the war, is repulsed by Achilles's vanity, and shows reasonable strength in diplomacy.

Onto the material at hand. The chorus is basically a group of older men who can comment on situations, but can not really interfere. The chorus tells us that Troy has fallen, and Greece is triumphant. We then meet Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra. She blames Agamemnon for the death of her child Iphigenia. So, she naturally wants to kill Agamemnon. The chorus seems to admit that it was strange that the war was fought over Helen who was a willing prisoner. Nevertheless, the chorus sides with Agamemnon when he arrives. Asimov seems to point an interesting angle out: "Such a keen sense of honor is often praised by those who are safe at home." But of course, it is a different story to those who are involved! But of course, any time romance is involved, the voice of reason tends to take a back seat.

Moving on, Agamemnon seems to be a good king in showing his piety in the light of victory. But there is one flaw. He has kidnapped Hector's sister Cassandra. (She was the virgin priestess to Apollo, and that would be the equivalent of kidnapping a nun for pleasure.) Cassandra has the gift of prophecy, but because she tried to run with Apollo's gift 'without paying for it,' Apollo cursed her in that no one would believe her prophecies.

Showing reason, she curses Paris for starting the war with his utterly stupid kidnapping of Helen. She also tells of how Orestes will avenge his father and kill Clytemnestra (in Part 2). But back to the main plot. Clytemnestra plays the devil, and uses Agamemnon's vanity against him which leads to his death. (How disturbing that vanity was the downfall of many men centuries ago, and still is!)

In comes Clytemnestra's lover Aegisthus. He talks of the crimes of Agamemnon's father against his father. What happened was Aegisthus 's father slept with Agamemnon's father's wife. In revenge, Agamemnon's father tricked Aegisthus's father into eating the flesh of his own son. the theme of revenge is further emphasized. It is of course a never ending circle. Though I do find it interesting that Aegisthus finds it fit that Agamemnon should suffer for the crimes of his father. (Yet was Aegisthus's father who started it!)

So, Aegisthus and Clytemnestra can be together for now. But of course in Part 2, we know that they will get their comeuppance. Overall, it's a great story that emphasizes the evils and seeming eternity of revenge.

... Read more

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A study of the last drama of Aeschylus' trilogy concerned with the fortunes of the house of Laius that ends with the story of Oedipus' sons, the enemy brothers, who self-destruct in mutual fratricide but thereby save the besieged city of Thebes. The book's findings, however, far exceed these limits to explore the relationships between language and kinship, as between family and city, self and society, and Greek ideas about the nature of human development and identity. ... Read more

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The Egyptians mesmerized the ancient Greeks for scores of years. The Greek literature and art of the classical period are especially thick with representations of Egypt and Egyptians. Yet despite numerous firsthand contacts with Egypt, Greek writers constructed their own Egypt, one that differed in significant ways from actual Egyptian history, society, and culture. Informed by recent work on orientalism and colonialism, this book unravels the significance of these misrepresentations of Egypt in the Greek cultural imagination in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E.

Looking in particular at issues of identity, otherness, and cultural anxiety, Phiroze Vasunia shows how Greek authors constructed an image of Egypt that reflected their own attitudes and prejudices about Greece itself. He focuses his discussion on Aeschylus Suppliants; Book 2 of Herodotus; Euripides' Helen; Plato's Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Critias; and Isocrates' Busiris. Reconstructing the history of the bias that informed these writings, Vasunia shows that Egypt in these works was shaped in relation to Greek institutions, values, and ideas on such subjects as gender and sexuality, death, writing, and political and ethnic identity. This study traces the tendentiousness of Greek representations by introducing comparative Egyptian material, thus interrogating the Greek texts and authors from a cross-cultural perspective. A final chapter also considers the invasion of Egypt by Alexander the Great and shows how he exploited and revised the discursive tradition in his conquest of the country.

Firmly and knowledgeably rooted in classical studies and the ancient sources, this study takes a broad look at the issue of cross-cultural exchange in antiquity by framing it within the perspective of contemporary cultural studies. In addition, this provocative and original work shows how Greek writers made possible literary Europe's most persistent and adaptable obsession: the barbarian. ... Read more

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Through three intertwined histories Jane Austen's Textual Lives offers a new way of approaching and reading a very familiar author. One is a history of the transmission and transformation of Jane Austen through manuscripts, critical editions, biographies, and adaptations; a second provides a conspectus of the development of English Studies as a discipline in which the original and primary place of textual criticism is recovered; and a third reviews the role of Oxford University Press in shaping a canon of English texts in the twentieth century. Jane Austen can be discovered in all three.
Since her rise to celebrity status at the end of the nineteenth century, Jane Austen has occupied a position within English-speaking culture that is both popular and canonical, accessible and complexly inaccessible, fixed and certain yet wonderfully amenable to shifts of sensibility and cultural assumptions. The implied contradiction was represented in the early twentieth century by, on the one hand, the Austen family's continued management, censorship, and sentimental marketing of the sweet lady novelist of the Hampshire countryside; and on the other, by R. W. Chapman's 1923 Clarendon Press edition of the Novels of Jane Austen, which subjected her texts to the kind of scholarly probing reserved till then for classical Greek and Roman authors obscured by centuries of attrition. It was to be almost fifty years before the Clarendon Press considered it necessary to recalibrate the reputation of another popular English novelist in this way.
Beginning with specific encounters with three kinds of textual work and the problems, clues, or challenges to interpretation they continue to present, Kathryn Sutherland goes on to consider the absence of a satisfactory critical theory of biography that can help us address the partial life, and ends with a discussion of the screen adaptations through which the texts continue to live on. Throughout, Jane Austen's textual identities provide a means to explore the wider issue of what text is and to argue the importance of understanding textual space as itself a powerful agent established only by recourse to further interpretations and fictions. ... Read more

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Agememnon is the first part of the Aeschylus's Orestian trilogy in which the leader of the Greek army returns from the Trojan war to be murdered by his treacherous wife Clytemnestra. In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex the king sets out to uncover the cause of the plague that has struck his city, only to disover the devastating truth about his relationship with his mother and his father.Medea is the terrible story of a woman's bloody revenge on her adulterous husband through the murder of her own children. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent Intro to Greek Tragedy, Without Being Overwhelming
I wanted to buy a book containing a representative sample of the three extant ancient Greek tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripedes) as a gift. It was either this one or the Bantam collection edited by Moses Hadas - a mass market edition. I'd read the Bantam one, and it contains a number of the plays by each, plus an Aristophenes comedy, in a perhaps slightly stiff translation. It was actually tough to ascertain the contents of this Penguin book, as no shop seemed to have it, and there was no "look inside" feature for it on Amazon, so I went ahead and bought it. I'm not disappointed.
It contains less plays than the Bantam: Just Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Euripedes' Medea. It also has a nice intro about Greek Tragedy, and selections from Aristotle's Poetics. Having fewer plays than the Bantam, it feels a lot less crammed. I was pleased by the selection, as I personally think they're the single best play of each playwright. Decent translations.
So...if you're looking for something to serve as a nice sampling of Greek Traj, perhaps for someone new to the genre, without running the risk of overwhelming, it's a good choice. ... Read more

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The great poet's powerful translation of the classic trilogy of Greek drama.

With Tales from Ovid, Ted Hughes was recognized as a superb interpreter of the classics, and with his Birthday Letters, addressed to Sylvia Plath, he was revealed to a large public as a poet of extraordinarily deep feeling. The Oresteia of Aeschylus caps a remarkable year for his poetry.

Aeschylus (525-456 b.c.) was, with Sophocles, the greatest classical Greek dramatist. The Oresteia--Agamemnon, Choephori, and Eumenides--tells the story of the house of Atreus: after King Agamemnon is murdered by Clytemnestra, their son, Orestes, is commanded by Apollo to avenge the crime by killing his mother, and he does so, bringing on himself the wrath of the Furies and the judgment of Athens. Hughes's "acting version" of the trilogy is itself a great performance; while artfully inflected with the contemporary, it has a classical beauty and authority. The Oresteia of Aeschylus deserves to become the standard edition for English-language readers and for the stage, too.Amazon.com Review
During the final years of his life, Ted Hughes poured much ofhis energy into translating the classics. Given the triumph of theBirthday Letters,some readers may regret this canonical moonlighting. Yet it's hard tofeel shortchanged by the work Hughes did produce: his version of Ovid was a brilliantblend of Latinate suavity and contemporary grit, and he negotiated thealexandrines of Racine's Phèdre withspectacular ease. Now we have his translation of the Oresteia,which was commissioned by the Royal National Theater in the late1990s. Has Hughes done right by Aeschylus?

The answer would have to be yes--with a couple ofqualifications. Hughes made no secret of the fact that he was after an"acting version" of the trilogy, one that would convey the power ofAeschylus's classic bloodbath to a modern audience. He has thereforetaken more liberties with the text than we might expect, chopping andchanneling the original to fit his own conception. Perhaps the resultis closer to what RobertLowell called an "imitation"--an attempt to capture the work'sspirit without precisely mimicking its form. In any case, thisOresteia succeeds on both counts. The darkness and destructivemovement of the original remain intact in the Hughes's free-verselines:

The men of Troy are a litter of corpses,
Rubbish-heaps of corpses. Troy on its hill
Cascades with blood, as under a downpour
Of bodies from the heavens,
Shattered and entangled with each other
In every passage--mutilations,
Amputations, eviscerations. The women
Are kneeling, shoulders heaving, with eyes hidden,
Over what were yesterday
Husbands, fathers, sons.
They labour at a grief that is already
The first labour of slaves.

Customer Reviews (4)

Great story, great translation, great read: surprises galore
What a story! What a bloodbath ! It leaves the catsup'y-trite bluster of the typical Hollywood slasher pic in the dust. And it is Hughes who accomplishes this through his translation. Perhaps saying "story by Aeschulus" is not offering the old-timer his due... doubtless, when read in the Greek, the original had the flash and spurt of Hughes' version. But lacking the ancient tongue you'll find some pretty tame translations scattered around the cannon. I know, I checked. (I was so stunned at one of the more brutal story elements that I went to a library copy. Sure enough, Agamemnon's father really did stew his brothers' children and serve them up to his brother - brewing up the similarly brutal chain of revenge and recriminations that the story revolves around. But in the library's vanilla version this segment read more like a particularly dry autopsy report).

Now I can be drawn into a gory tale by a good talespinner like a Stephen King just as much as any other guy... but there is more than spinning of yarn and sloshing of blood here. There is a way in which Hughes' inevitably modern take on the translation subtly exposes the deep cultural differences between those fine ancient peoples and our equally-fine selves. We haven't become more or less vicious or more or less clever - but we have changed in fundamental ways. This tale, in this telling, does suggest, over and over, how a culture's sense of self, of free- or enchained-will, of god(s), and of the inevitable whirl of the cosmic wheel can produce truly different constituents. Different versions of the "God-meme" or even the "self-meme" can deeply infect and transform a culture-centered species like ours.

We've heard for so long how our "Western" tradition sprouts from Athens, but in this telling, those folks have a sense of their place in the universe which is deeply, subtly alien. It made me think of a long ago reading of Julian Jaynes' breathtakingly-titled: "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind.", which posits that ancient minds were explicitly pre-conscious... gods as literally heard voices in the head. This is certainly an odd idea, but one that opens up the notion that radically different kinds of minds could well exist in a homo sapiens transport system.

Hughes delivers this sense of the fundamental other-ness of the Greek world-view through the powerful mix of pre-modern sense of self and of justice delivered in modern speech forms. This contrast builds, appropriately, from the underlying story of Aeschulus, to the confrontation with the deeply primal Furies near the end. It sent chills down my spine to hear their rendering of the cold heartless core of their universe... and to contrast it with the countering argument of Athena for a more reasoned and rational justice. How can Orestes be driven to matricide by the command of one god (buttressed by hair-raising threats) and then be condemned to an even more bitter doom by another group of immortals for accomplishing his mission? The degree to which my own sense of fairness was bruised by the events leading up to this denouement exposed the power of the schism between primal and modern that seems to lie at the heart of the tale.

I won't tell you how it ends, but that's saying something! A thousands-of-years-old story in free verse dramatic form that turns out to be a 'page-turner'! Its a wonderful discovery that will lead me next to Hughes' other translations from his last few years, and might grab you as well.

Made Me Realish Afresh the Power of Language
This may not be the most literal translation of "The Oresteia," but it has to be the most linguistically sensuous and emotionally gripping of them all - conveying the full power of one of the most complex tragediesof all time. A friend of mine recently won raves for his performance ofAgamemnon in a Los Angeles production of "The Greeks," so I hadspent quite a bit of time re-reading Aeschylus (not in the original, I'mafraid) and was reasonably familiar with other translations, but this isthe one I would read over and over, for the sheer power and beauty of it,and the way it tackles (enhances?) the emotional complexity of eachsituation the characters are thrust into. It's an inspiration as well as atreasure.

Made Me Realish Afresh the Power of Language
This may not be the most literal translation of "The Oresteia," but it has to be the most linguistically sensuous and emotionally gripping of them all - conveying the full power of one of the most complex tragediesof all time. A friend of mine recently won raves for his performance ofAgamemnon in a Los Angeles production of "The Greeks," so I hadspent quite a bit of time re-reading Aeschylus (not in the original, I'mafraid) and was reasonably familiar with other translations, but this isthe one I would read over and over, for the sheer power and beauty of it,and the way it tackles (enhances?) the emotional complexity of eachsituation the characters are thrust into. It's an inspiration as well as atreasure.

Orestes for the modern world
As a professor teaching classics in Regents CollegeMaster of Liberal Studies Program, I am always looking for translations that will entrance my students and give them that sensation of the marvelous that many of them can find only in videos and MTV. Hughes' translation of "TheOresteia" is a perfect choice. Sure, there may be in some passages alot more of Hughes than of Aeschylus, but if that's what it takes toreincarnate those ancient and bloody tragic figures, it's a price wellworth paying. After reading this book, I think my students will see"The Sopranos" as just another soap opera. ... Read more

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The Oresteia, which includes Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by legendary Greek playwright Aeschylus. It is widely considered to be among the top Greek tragedies of all time. This great trilogy will surely attract a whole new generation of Aeschylus readers. For many, The Oresteia is required reading for various courses and curriculums. And for others who simply enjoy reading timeless pieces of classic literature, this gem by Aeschylus is highly recommended. Published by Classic Books America and beautifully produced, The Oresteia, which includes Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides would make an ideal gift and it should be a part of everyone's personal library. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Mythos of Equity in Law
There are two tasks here for a reviewer, to say something rudely meaningful about the Oresteia, one of the seminal works of world literature, and to pass some sort of judgment on the current translation, in this case by the great American poet Robert Lowell. The star-rating system is of no utility in such a situation; five hundred stars wouldn't suffice for the original text, though three or four would be ample for the English version per se.

The Oresteia, by the Athenian Aeschylus(525-456 BCE), is the only surviving complete trilogy of Greek drama; the three plays, originally performed in a single day, are "Agamemnon", "Orestes" (The Libation Bearers), and "The Furies". The first two dramatize: 1. the murder of Agamemnon, by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, upon the Argive king's return from the Trojan War, 2. the slaying of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra by her son Orestes, as commanded by the god Apollo and assisted by his sister Electra. These plots are based on Homeric legends already of venerable antiquity in the lifetime of Aeschylus, and they have received the most theatrical attention in recent centuries, as representing perplexing moral dilemmas. The third play of the trilogy, however, is quite antithetical to Homeric tradition; in it, Orestes is guided to Athens by the 'younger' gods Apollo and Mercury, to escape the inexorable curse of revenge represented by The Furies, the pre-Olympian immortals who pursue Orestes as a matricide. Athenian justice, personified by the goddess Athena, intervenes; Athena conducts a trial, with a jury of twelve mortal Athenians, which acquits Orestes on the grounds of 'equity' rather than strict observance of legalities, and despite the threats of the Furies against the welfare of the city. In the end, Athena persuades the Furies to 'settle' in Athens as spirits of a newer justice. The whole trilogy, therefore, is above all a foundational paean to the Athenian democracy, comparable in ways to Shakespeare's Henry VIII as an acclamation of cultural pride. It's the third play of the trilogy that swept Athenians audiences with rapture at the playwright's genius. I dug out my two copies of the Oresteia, this one by Lowell and another by E.D.A. Morshead from 1909, in response to my recent reading of I.F. Stone's "The Trial of Socrates".

Robert Lowell's 'Oresteia' is not a translation so much as an abridged adaptation, intended to be staged as a three-act play of ordinary length for a modern audience. I've never seen such a staging, and I'm skeptical that it would be successful. But honestly, I've never seen a 'faithful' staging of any Greek drama that I thought truly successful. Adaptation is surely "the way to go" for the modern theater, but Lowell didn't "go" far enough. His version has the advantage of being fairly crisp and readable as dramatic prose, but it's too selective and skimpy as full translation. That is to say, it's neither "fish nor fowl" - neither a stageable play nor an ample translation. I was in fact a student of Robert Lowell's at Harvard when he began the project, and I know from conversation that he had two goals in mind; 1. the fostering of a new model of translation, as exemplified in his book "Imitations", and 2. the fulfillment of the Renaissance humanists' efforts to re-invent 'civic' drama of the highest cathartic seriousness, such as they supposed the Athenians had supported. Lowell effectively abandoned the Oresteia project after completing the first two plays; he returned to it after the Vietnam struggles, in 1977, just a year before his death. He never saw it produced in its entirety.

The Morshead translation, first published as vol. 8 of The Harvard Classics, is unreadable, full of pompous syntax and jangling rhymes, replete with archaic language that alludes more to Medievalism than to classic Greece. It has been re-issued as a Dover Thrift Edition but, to be blunt, it should be retired forevermore. Any poor reader who encounters Aeschylus in this form first will never be tempted to look at another Greek drama. ... Read more