The Oresteian Trilogy

Oresteia #1-3

by Aeschylus, Philip Vellacott (Translation)

Aeschylus (525-c.456 bc) set his great trilogy in the immediate aftermath of the Fall of Troy, when King Agamemnon returns to Argos, a victor in war. Agamemnon depicts the hero's discovery that his family has been destroyed by his wife's infidelity and ends with his death at her callous hand. Clytemnestra's crime is repaid in The Choephori when her outraged son Orestes kills both her and her lover. The Eumenides then follows Orestes as he is hounded to Athens by the Furies' law of vengeance and depicts Athene replacing the bloody cycle of revenge with a system of civil justice. Written in the years after the Battle of Marathon, The Oresteian Trilogy affirmed the deliverance of democratic Athens not only from Persian conquest, but also from its own barbaric past.

Genres: Classics, Plays, Drama, Fiction, Mythology, Poetry, Literature

ebook

First published January 1, 459

About the author

Greek Αισχύλος , Esquilo in Spanish, Eschyle in French, Èsquil in Catalan, Eschilo in Italian, Эсхил in Russian.

Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC – c. 456 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.
Only seven of Aeschylus's estimated 70 to 90 plays have survived. There is a long-standing debate regarding the authorship of one of them, Prometheus Bound, with some scholars arguing that it may be the work of his son Euphorion. Fragments from other plays have survived in quotations, and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyri. These fragments often give further insights into Aeschylus' work. He was likely the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy. His Oresteia is the only extant ancient example. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is one of very few classical Greek tragedies concerned with contemporary events, and the only one extant. The significance of the war with Persia was so great to Aeschylus and the Greeks that his epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

So the boys asked the Sibyl, "What do you want?"
And the Sibyl said, "I want to die!"
Petronius, Satyricon.

The God Apollo, speaking through the mouth of the Sibyl, is decrying Rome's corruption. So here, Orestes bewails his father, the King's sin. But he quickly learns you can't fight Sin with sin.

Orestes was so ME, in the Seventies. Calamity followed calamity for me, as for him. The Eumenides that Fate followed up with kept me "pinned and wriggling" on a Procrustean bed for fifty long years afterward.

That Agenbite of Inwit, in my seventies, has nearly abated, down to a faint feeling of being ill at ease. I had to sacrifice fun to find love.

The Oresteia is no fun either. Neither is life - excepting, for some, their toys, and for a few, the enduring legacy of love in their lives.

And Orestes has sinned and must do penance. As must we all.

My Prof in that Freshman Year at uni was the eminently and affably unassuming Head of the tiny Classics Department. Pity, that. Ancient Lit has much to tell us if we only had the ears to hear it.

Things about the tragedy of life, for example.

If you're not acquainted with tragedy in your life you're cruising for a bruising! Sooner or later. Tragedy breeds humility, another thing we don't believe in any more. Alas again.

So Orestes learns humility the hard way.

The hard way, unfortunately, for many of us who'd never learn about tragedy any other way, is also the best way.

And your misfortune will finally turn to love, as mine did.

There ARE Happy Endings.

But to get there, like Goldilocks, we must first go through a Dark, Evil Forest:

A LONG, LONG, LONG way from our loving Grandmother's House.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeing the Oresteia on stage is an overwhelming experience to say the least.

Reading and discussing the drama at university felt like going through the Disney version of it by comparison. Hearing the screams, seeing the blood and madness, following real people on their anxious road down to hellish destruction while they stare at you - the audience - with blind eyes - that is almost more than one can bear, even if one is familiar with the intertwined plays beforehand.

Violence leads to more violence in a brutal chain reaction. That is a curse that the family of Atreus experiences in three consecutive steps. Agamemnon has to choose between political and military success and his "love" for his daughter Iphigenia. He chooses to be a "leader" over being a human, so he sacrifices his daughter on the way to Troy, and thus kicks off the action thriller. Klytamnestra, his wife, follows the call of revenge, as does Orestes, the son. Electra, on the sidelines, cheers on her brother when he kills his mother, and thus participates in the "honour" killings.

Spirals of violence are not unusual in the history of mankind, but unluckily, we don't possess the Greek dramatic device of a deus ex machina to set the score straight and suggest a solution that leads to better understanding and rule of law. Or could one see the international organisations formed after the Second World War, like the UNO or later the EU, as such attempts at reining in the blood lust of humiliated and hurt humanity?

Of eternal contemporary relevance, the Oresteia is hard to stomach but important to consider!

Must read - a classic even after two and a half millennia!

[Jonathan O'Neill · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 ⭐

Tantalus, oh Tantalus, he really screwed the pooch!
There is no beating ‘round the bush, he’s one first order douche!
His envy of the Gods and of their immortality,
led him to try and trick them and invite them o’er for tea.

He set a cauldron boiling, he chopped up his own son,
then lobbed the morsels in the urn, and told them it was done.
As Demeter was chowing down before the food got colder,
he smiled wide and told ‘er she was eating Pelops’ shoulder!

Furious at Tantalus, Zeus sent the pest to Tartarus,
for punishment befitting one who’d do a thing so barbarous.
If t’were only this perdition, it would be no great big fuss,
but his actions, in addition, cursed the House of Atreus!

And therein lies the kernel of Aeschylus’(s) tale,
A family’s curse eternal but for one descendent male.
Cursed to repeat bouts of inter-famil-ial violence,
And suffer irrec-oncil-able moral debts in silence.

It’s a story drenched in filicide, mariticide and matricide,
parenticide or parricide, excuse my synonymicide.
There’ll be cause for wild elation, if someone was wondering,
But ‘fore recon-cili-ation, first must come a sundering

Cue the King of Argos, Agamemnon in the flesh,
Who back from killing Trojans, wants to unwind and refresh,
But faithless Clytaemnestra, Queen whom in his place took tenure,
Slaughters him in retribution for poor Iphigenia

Violence begets violence in the House of Atreus,
And forced to suffer into truth is Princely Orestes.
Instructed by Apollo to avenge one he adored,
He kills his wretched mother, through her chest he pokes a sword.

At least he only murdered his, that seems a mild affliction
Compared to Oedipus of Thebes who shagged his with conviction.
But anyway, enough of that, frivolities aside,
I mentioned some elation, you weren’t thinking that I lied?

In the end this tragedy’s concerned with transformation,
It begins with savagery and ends with civilisation.
Athena turns from force majeure to justice and compassion
The furies turn their hand from roles of vengeance to safe bastion.

It’s occurred to me just now, I’ve bitten more than I can chew,
If you’ve read this far somehow, a thanks is due from me to you.
Apologies to those real poets, to whom this seems a vile abuse,
The cause to which I think it's owed, is reading too much Dr.Seuss.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is pretty fantastic. I'm surprised. I think I like this old Greek trilogy of plays better than all the others that I've read. That's including Oedipus. :P

The translation is pretty awesome, the tragedy is beautiful, and the underlying theme of justice and the balance of power between men and women is stark and heavy.

But isn't it about murder and eye-for-an-eye taken to extremes? Yeah, but it's still more than that.

It's mainly about honoring your children and honoring your parents. It's not as twisted as some of the other Greek plays, but it is pretty horrific. Agamemnon kills his daughter, his wife kills him. Her son kills her. But wait! Apollo sanctions his killing. Alas, the Furies do not. So now we have the older gods versus the new. Parents and children at each other's throats again.

Totally beautiful.

And here we all thought that Zeus only caused chaos, too! To think that he'd welcome the Furies into his court as honored equals.

(Personally, I think it was just a political move. I'm pretty sure that the Furies scared him shitless, too. :)

Great stuff!

[Piyangie · Rating 4 out of 5]

With The Oresteia, I begin my journey of Greek dramatists. I've only read Homer, and both his works are epic poems, not plays. I picked The Oresteia as my first choice because of its link to Homer's works.

The Oresteia is a trilogy. The first play, Agamemnon, tells the tragic story of Agamemnon's return from Troy and his murder by his wife, Clytemnestra. In the second play, The Libation Bearers, Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, avenges his father's death by committing matricide. The third play, The Eumenides , shows us the trial of Orestes, where Orestes is judged. The setting of the first two plays is in Argos, and the third is in Athens. I read a lot of explanatory texts regarding the trilogy before reading the plays, which overwhelmed me with information. They helped, of course, for me to appreciate the plays and understand their wider implications.

The Oresteia is a tragedy. There is a lot of violence and bloodshed. There is also the disturbing issue of matricide (Orestes kills his mother, Clytemnestra, to avenge his father, Agamemnon), and the balance of justice and sin. One thing must be remembered when reading these plays. Aeschylus wrote them for a patriarchal society. So, the balance of justice, as administered by goddess Athena and the citizens of Athens, backed by the god Apollo, is masculine. Orestes's guilt for committing matricide is accepted by the tribunal, yet he goes free because he committed the matricide to avenge his father. And the action was spurred on by the god Apollo. From a feminist point of view, it is a horrible injustice to the mother. But the Greek patriarchal society has different ideas about parentage and the institution of marriage. For them, the "true" parent is the father, and the violation of the sacred institution of marriage is a weightier crime than matricide, justifying matricide. Interestingly enough, this justification doesn't absolve the son of his guilt of matricide. Orestes's guilt is established and accepted by the tribunal, yet the more dominant circumstance that led to his committing the crime acquits Orestes of the criminal charge.

The stories of the first two plays are not new. They are touched in Homer's Odyssey in passing. But the stories come to full life through Aeschylus's pen. The third (and the final now because the fourth play is lost) is new and that is where justice (both god's and man's) is administered. Aeschylus deliberately creates a tribunal of one goddess (Athena) and twelve citizens. So the justice is both god's justice as well as human justice. In Homer's works, we see that all human actions are forced and controlled by the Olympian gods. Aeschylus steps down from all enforcing gods to unite gods and humans in the administration of justice, bringing the concept of democracy and law and order. In Eumenides, the Furies of earth, activated by Orestes's matricide, pursue Orestes, calling for his blood. Athena, through persuasion, appeases them, granting them powers to influence the lives of the citizens of Athens so that they won't harm Athens with their wrath at the acquittal of Orestes. This act is widely accepted as a reconciliation between heavenly and earthly powers, ending the Olympian domination of human life.

The Oresteia is my first experience of reading Aeschylus. I love him as a dramatist. He is meticulous and methodical. The trilogy runs smoothly from one to the other like it's a continuation of one play (which it literary is). The stories warrant moderate action, yet Aeschylus creates enough action to keep the audience's attention. The shortness of each play highlights the drama. The pace is quick and the dialogue changes rapidly from character to character. I very much enjoyed the quick tempo of the plays. Another thing I liked about Aeschylus's writing is how he moderated violence. There is tragedy; there is violence, a lot of it. But Aeschylus tackles them wonderfully. I don't know how an audience would see it (since I've not seen a performance), but as a reader, the moderation helped me read through, enjoy, and appreciate it. I can honestly say that The Oresteia one of the beautiful tragedies I've read.

More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/

[Steve]

Let good prevail ! So be it ! Yet what is good ? And who is God?


As many deeply conservative societies have discovered time and time again - societies in which there is only one right order and this order is warranted by the highest authorities recognized by the society - when change comes, and come it always must,(*) not only do those in power tumble, but the authority of the gods/priests, ancestors, laws, whatever the highest authorities happen to be in that society, comes into question. New myths, new gods/priests, new stories must be told to justify and establish, reassure and mollify the people whose ideological or religious supports have been pulled out from beneath them. In the city of Athens during the Golden Age, this was done in the agora - the marketplace - and in the theaters.

In his lifetime Aeschylus (ca. 525 - 456 BCE) witnessed the invasion of Attica by huge Persian armies, the bold abandonment of the fortified city of Athens and withdrawal, twice, of the Athenian people behind the wooden walls of the Athenian navy, and the multiple defeats of the Persians and their allies (including other Greeks) by the hugely outnumbered Athenians and their Greek allies.(**) He also witnessed the political transition from tyranny to isonomy to democracy in Athens and the concurrent growth of Athens from just another small, unimportant Greek city-state to major power. He himself contributed greatly to the transition of Greek tragedy from a religiously inspired performance/rite involving a chorus and a single actor to something we his distant descendants can recognize as powerful theater.

During the transition from tyranny to democracy, when first the middle class (essentially landowning farmers and artisans) and then the lower class (the thetes) acquired a direct voice in Athenian politics, political activity was carried out not only in the agora, the popular assembly and the Council of Five Hundred, but it was also performed on stage.




Remains of the Theater of Dionysus Eleuthereus, where Aeschylus' dramas were performed


Indeed, the theater was so important in Athenian public life that plays were produced at all the most important public festivals and addressed conflicts troubling the Athenian policy makers; the populace flocked to see them and talk about them. In 461 BCE the last step to democracy in Athens was initiated with the stripping of all but ritual responsibilities from the Aeropagus, a body of men drawn essentially from the city's aristocracy. The lower and middle classes formed the overwhelming majority on the remaining decision making organs of the state and were therefore in power, for a while.

Curiously enough, while all this innovation was going on, in Athens one of the most damaging epithets was "innovator." So the men who willed the demotion of the Aeropagus, led by Ephialtes (who was later murdered for his trouble), had to argue that the Aeropagus had usurped its powers (quite false) and thus the removal of the aristocrats from the center of power was a return to the status quo ante (even more false - but we all know that democratic decision-making has precious little to do with the truth). The Athenians needed a more efficacious justification for this change. They also needed a soothing of the many riled spirits brought about in the populace by all these changes. In the Oresteia,(***) first performed in 458, Aeschylus did all of this and much, much more.

During this Golden Age playwrights wrote trilogies, which were intended, performed and perceived by audiences as coherent wholes. The Oresteia is the only one which has come down to us intact. The three plays are structured together with both dramatic and ideological intent.

At the end of the Trojan War, Agamemnon returns victorious to his palace. But ten years earlier, in order to thwart the will of Artemis and still the fierce winds keeping the fleet on the Greek shore, he had sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, and his wife, Clytemnestra, has neither forgotten nor forgiven. She slays him horrifically, and now it is their son, Orestes, who is obliged by the received morality to revenge his father by killing his mother. High drama and madness ensues, but behind all that excitement is the structure of Aeschylus' purpose - justify the new order, the new morality.

At the very outset of the trilogy the chorus recalls that even the gods have changed and changed again, from the rule of Ouranos through that of Kronos to Zeus with son killing father before the father could do the same to the son. And one cannot be sure of doing the right thing by obeying a god, since the gods themselves disagree about right and wrong. Uncertainty has been established: perhaps the received ways are mutable.

I'm not going to try to summarize the complicated plot and recall the many striking characters. From this beautiful, moving and complex masterpiece I just want to draw out here the one theme I've been working on in this review. When Orestes kills Clytemnestra at Apollo's urging, the Erinyes, the Furies - representing the old order, the old morality - hasten to avenge the matricide by tearing Orestes apart. But Apollo and Athena, representing the new order and morality, intervene. The passages involving the Furies are particularly haunting, both dramatically and poetically. The new order is confirmed with a trial in which Athena casts the deciding vote - Orestes is acquitted. Athena convinces the Furies to accept the verdict, and they are then given a place of honor (though not power) and agree to ensure the city's prosperity. The old is replaced by the new, honored and bound into the polis; all's well that ends well (except for the house of Atreus). Despite Aeschylus' efforts, Athens' new democracy did not last long, but that is another story...



(*) As Sophocles has Ajax say in the eponymous play:

Long, immeasurable time brings everything hidden to light and hides what is apparent. Nothing is not to be expected. Change is the law of the world.

(**) Aeschylus was in the battle at Marathon and most probably also at Salamis. In fact, the epitaph on his gravestone, possibly written by himself, mentions Marathon and not his plays:

This tomb the dust of Aeschylus doth hide,
Euphorion's son and fruitful Gela's pride
How tried his valour, Marathon may tell
And long-haired Medes, who knew it all too well.

(***) Read in the translations of Robert Fagles and of Philip Vellacott; Fagles' is more terse and colloquial, while Vellacott's is more "literary," more redolent of older, elevated diction. Both are very readable, but I do prefer Vellacott's.

Rating

http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/118...

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play has memorable scenes of great dramatic intensity, like when Clytemnestra faces his son, among others. The comments in this edition are fascinating and offer real meaning to the idioms and cultural references of a people so close to us and ancient.

[Davide Borrelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Every translator has priorities, whether they are recognized or not; and the leading priorities of this version of the Oresteia are to bring out the vivid musicality of the expression and the theatricality of its potential performance."

Oliver Taplin

We often underestimate the fact that, whenever we read the Greek classics, what lies before us is a translation. There are outstanding translations, good translations, and mediocre ones. More often than we realize, our opinion of a work from the ancient world depends as much on the quality of its translation as on the priorities of the translator.

Personally, I fully agree with the words Oliver Taplin uses to introduce his translation of the Oresteia, which I consider one of the finest available in English. Every word of the Greek text can be rendered in many different ways, depending on the effect the translator wishes to achieve. Taplin's aim is to convey to the modern reader not only the musicality of Aeschylus' language but, above all, the dramatic power of its performance, attempting to recreate, as faithfully as possible, the impression that the staging of the three plays of the Oresteia must have made upon an Athenian audience. I believe he succeeds brilliantly, despite the obvious difficulty of transferring into English a poetic metre conceived for a language so fundamentally different.

When approaching a work of such importance, I believe we should also make an effort of imagination. We should try to see ourselves as citizens of fifth-century Athens. This is not easy without at least some knowledge of the city's history. At that time the Athenians were living through one of the most extraordinary periods of their civilization. For the first time in history, they had created the form of government we now call democracy. They had defeated the mighty Persian Empire, defending their freedom against an enemy vastly more powerful than themselves. And after the horrors of the Persian Wars, they could look to the future with the optimism of people who had ceased to be subjects and had become citizens.

If we read the Oresteia in this spirit, it becomes easier to understand how Aeschylus was able to address universal themes that continue to speak to every age, regardless of changing sensibilities.

In the Agamemnon , the first play of the trilogy, Talthybius, the king's loyal herald, recounts the horrors of war: the hardships of military campaigns, deprivation, the loss of comrades-in-arms, and the misery that followed the sack of Troy, when the Achaean soldiers wandered through the city's houses in search of a roof beneath which they could finally find rest. The glory of battle belongs to kings and heroes; for the ordinary soldiers there remain only cold, hunger, fear, and the burden of fighting a war whose decisions were never theirs to make.

The Oresteia, however, is not merely a meditation on war. It is also a celebration of the birth of a new world. Against the long chain of blood vengeance within the House of Atreus, Aeschylus sets a different order, one that reaches its fulfilment through the intervention of Athena. Civilization demands that private vengeance give way to public justice. The father who sacrifices his daughter, the wife who murders her husband to avenge that sacrifice, and the son who kills his mother only to be driven into madness all belong to the old world, where justice is measured in blood and violence breeds only more violence.

To that old order Aeschylus opposes another: the order of the "polis" , in which the community itself becomes the guardian of justice. The verdict delivered in the Eumenides does far more than bring the story of the House of Atreus to an end. Symbolically, it marks the transition from the law of vengeance to the law of the city.

To anyone who has not yet discovered this masterpiece, I can only recommend reading it while trying, for a few hours, to leave the modern world behind. Imagine yourself seated on the marble steps of an Athenian theatre on a mild spring afternoon. The sun is slowly sinking towards the horizon. An actor steps onto the stage and, like one of the ancient bards before him, begins the story. Around you, thousands of spectators listen in almost sacred silence. Suddenly the chorus bursts into the orchestra, commenting on the action, sharing the suffering of the characters, giving voice to the hopes and fears of the city, and carrying the drama forward through song.

Remember that, for most of the performance, you will see only one or two actors on stage. Each character enters to recount the past, decide the present, or seek guidance for the future. Then allow yourself to be carried away by the story. You may discover that, after twenty-five centuries, Aeschylus is still speaking about us.

[Roy Lotz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Greeks had an intoxicating culture, or at least it seems to us. All of the iniquities and superstitions of the ancient people have been buried or lost, leaving only the perfect skeletons of buildings and the greatest of their literary productions. As a result, they strike us as a race of superpeople. This trilogy certainly furthers this impression, for it is a perfect poetic representation of the birth of justice and ethics out of the primordial law of retaliation.

The most basic ethical principal is loyalty. We are born into a family, establish reciprocal relationships with friends, become a contributing member of a mutually supporting group, and so naturally feel bound to treat this network of people with the proper respect and kindness. But loyalty has several problems. First, one’s family, friends, and group are largely determined by chance—and who is to say that our family and friends are the most worthy? Second, loyalty does not extend outside a very limited group, and so does not preclude the horrid treatment of others. And, as the Greek plays show us, the bounds of loyalty can sometimes cross, putting us in a situation where we must be disloyal to at least one person.

This is the essential problem of Antigone, where the titular character must choose between loyalty to her city or to her dead brother, who betrayed the state. This is also the problem faced by Orestes, who must choose between avenging his father and treating his mother properly. In Sophocles’ play, the problem proves intractable, leading to yet another string of deaths. But Aeschylus shows that by submitting the bonds of loyalty to a higher, impartial court that we can resolve the contradictions and put an end to the endless series of mutual retaliations that loyalty can give rise to.

The rise of judicial procedures, and of concepts of ethics that extend beyond loyalty to fairness, was a crucial step in the rise of complex societies. Aeschylus has given us an immortal dramatization of this epochal step. But, of course, this play is more than a philosophical or historical exercise. It is a work of high drama and poetry, worthy to stand at the first ranks of literature for its aesthetic merit alone. The Greeks continue to enchant.

[Ali Ahmadi · Rating 4 out of 5]

چشم در برابر چشم، یا اگر برای عزیزتان اتفاق می‌افتاد...

پیش‌نوشت: به‌نظرم «اسپویل کردن» اسطوره و تراژدی‌های کلاسیک بی‌معناست، اما اینجا درباره‌ی داستان و پایانش حرف خواهم زد، و اینکه چطور با وجود فاصله‌ی ۲۵۰۰ ساله و شکاف‌های فرهنگی عظیم، هنوز متن مهمی برای ماست.

در سه‌گانه‌ی اورستیا با زنجیره‌ای از قتل، نفرین و انتقام طرفیم. زنجیره‌ای که شروعش نه در نمایشنامه، بلکه به سال‌ها قبل‌تر برمی‌گردد و اگر کسی اراده نکند که نظم چیزها نو شود، می‌تواند تا سال‌ها بعد هم ادامه پیدا کند.

تانتالوس پسرش را می‌کشد—خدایان نفرینش می‌کنند—آترئوس (نوه‌ی تانتالوس) پسران برادرش توئستس را می‌کشد و آن‌ها را به پدرشان می‌خوراند—توئستس آترئوس را نفرین می‌کند—آگاممنون (پسر آترئوس) دختر خودش ایفیژنیا را قربان می‌کند—کلوتمنسترا (همسر آگاممنون) و اگیستوس (پسر دیگر توئستس) از آگاممنون انتقام می‌گیرند—اورستس (پسر آگاممنون) از کلوتمنسترا و اگیستوس انتقام می‌گیرد—الاهگان انتقام به دنبال اورستس می‌روند...

برای خاندان تانتالوس و مردم یونان، خون مساوی‌ست با خون بیشتر و عدالت مفهومی‌ست صلب و کاملن ناظر به گذشته که هیچ نگاهی به آینده ندارد. کسی از اگیستوس (یا کلوتمنسترا) نمی‌پرسد که گیرم تو از آگاممنون انتقام پدرت (یا دخترت) را گرفتی، بعدش چه؟ همانطور که کسی از اورستس نمی‌پرسد که با مکافات کشتن مادر به انتقام‌جویی خون پدر چه خواهی کرد؟ که اگر بپرسند، احتمالن این جواب را می‌شنویم که اولن ما نفرین‌شده‌ایم! دومن، قانون کهن همین بوده، هست و خواهد بود! و بلاخره، اگر برای پدر/دختر/مادر خودتان هم اتفاق می‌افتاد، همین حرف را می‌زدید؟

قرن‌ها بیایم جلو و برسیم به زمان و مکان خودمان و سیل اعدام‌ها و قصاص‌ها. طیف گسترده‌ای از مردم با اعدام‌های سیاسی مخالف‌اند، اما درباره‌ی قاتل و متجاوز نظرشان همان است که بود: این آدم حقش مرگ است، که اگر زنده بماند دوباره همین کار را می‌کند و اگر مخالفید حتمن به این خاطر است که برای عزیزتان اتفاق نیفتاده. دلایل مخالفین اعدام هم پرشمار است: احتمال مجازات بی‌گناه، برگشت ناپذیر بودن، خطر سؤاستفاده‌ی سیاسی، بازدارندگی ناچیز و غیره. هیچ کدام از این دلایل امروزی را نمی‌توانیم در اورستیا ببینیم (و قرار هم نیست ببینیم،‌ چون اعدام به خودی خود در آن زمان موضوعیتی نداشته)، اما شباهتی پررنگ هم وجود دارد. زنجیره‌ی خون در پایان قطع می‌شود، چون قرار است از غریزه و قانون فردی عبور کنیم و به خرد جمعی و فضای بین‌الاذهانی تکیه.

این کار در توان یک انسان نیست و از خدا برمی‌آید. در پایان سه‌گانه، این آتناست که دادگاهی برپا می‌کند که نظم نویی جایگزین شود. اگر تاکنون جواب خونِ ریخته خونِ بیشتر بود تا دل خنک شود و عدالت برقرار، حالا هیئت منصفه‌ای هست که اعضایش نه ربط مستقیمی به جنایت اتفاق افتاده دارند و نه احتمالن برای عزیزشان این اتفاق افتاده. (البته که شاید برای یکی اتفاق افتاده باشد و شاید بر رای‌ش هم تاثیر بگذارد، اما او تنها یک نفر از جمع است.) البته، لازم است بگوییم که طبیعتن تصمیم آتنا نه بر اساس حقوق بشر قرن بیستمی، بلکه به این خاطر است که زن پست‌تر از مرد است و خونش آنقدر ارزش ندارد که کس دیگری به خاطرش کشته شود، به خصوص که آن کسِ دیگر دلیلی محکم برای کارش داشته. اما با این همه هنوز هم می‌توان این را پرسید که چرا خدایان که یک وظیفه‌ی مهم‌شان جلوگیری از شورش و بدعت بوده و حفظ کردن همه چیز همانطور که هست، ناگهان تصمیم می‌گیرند که آیینی کهن و —تا آن زمان— منطقی را کنار بگذارند؟ مفسرین اعتقاد دارند که این مضمون بنیادین نمایشنامه بازنمایی دو تغییر است: اول گذار اسطوره‌ای از جوامع مادرسالار به پدرسالاری (که بسیار قبل‌تر از زمان نگارش متن رخ داده) و دوم برقرار نظام قضایی جدید در یونان در قرن پنجم قبل از میلاد. همان‌قدر که اولی سرچشمه‌ی بسیاری از مشکلات امروزی ماست، دومی نه پادزهر همه‌ی مشکلات، اما گامی مهم است برای عبور از این وضعیت. این که قبول کنیم قصاص نه تنها درمان، که مرهم هم نیست برای قانون متحجرانه‌ای که به پدر و شوهر و راننده‌ی تاکسی و مرد عابر حق کشتن زن «بی‌حیا» را می‌دهد، و از قضا دقیقن جزئی از همان قانون است که باید نو شود.

خوانده‌شده از ترجمه‌ی عبدالله کوثری‌.
(یادداشتی جداگانه بر مجموعه‌ی نمایشنامه‌های آیسخولوس از نشر نی می‌نویسم + یادداشت‌هایی کوتاه‌‌تر مثل این بر هر نمایشنامه)

پ.ن. ترجمه فارسی دیگری از محمود حسینی زاد و برای انتشارات آگه هم وجود دارد که از کیفیت آن بی‌اطلاعم.

[Ines · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ma io povera stolta cosa posso mai scrivere di questa Opera? mi sono veramente sentita super ignorante, non ricordo piu' niente di ciò che ho studiato ....... ho fatto una fatica bestia, ma ho veramente goduto ogni passaggio della tragedia di Clitennestra e soprattutto della povera Ifigenia...
Agamennone, mi spiace, l'ho odiato da subito....( ragionando da madre del 21°sec.!!)
Per la seconda e la terza parte.....ho dovuto chiedere aiuto ovunque, persino alle figlie liceali, che fatica!! Le Coefore e Le Eumenidi le ho trovate complicate e piene di incastri e personaggi a cui il mio povero cervello non riusciva proprio a stare dietro....
Mia figlia, presa da pietà, mi ha allungato la dispensa facilitata per il Liceo...
Ho detto tutto!!
( ho proprio dimenticato tutto quello che ho studiato al Classico... che vergogna!!)

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can only vouch for this Robert Fagles' translation, but yes, astonishingly gripping after more than 2,400 years.

[Jennifer (Insert Lit Pun)]

"I have suffered into truth"

"You know the rules, now turn them into justice."

"The outrage stands as it stands, you burn to know the end..."

"Never try to cut my power with your logic."

"We spoil ourselves with scruples, long as things go well."

"Old men are children once again, a dream that sways and wavers into the hard light of day."

...Which is all to say that this trilogy is bananas and savage and graceful, and that Aeschylus was doing Shakespeare things about two thousand years before Shakespeare. More thoughts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-boc...

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

For people who didn't notice Marina Hyde's column in today's Guardian:

Having been instrumental in forcing the last two prime ministers out of office, Boris Johnson is on a hat-trick. Can he do it? Can Big Dog play his cards in such a way that a third prime ministerial scalp will be his – his in more ways than one? The answer feels like a hard yes, but this never-ending Greek tragedy is certainly taking its time. How’s your stamina? Like me, you maybe feel the Boristeia is dragging on a bit. Seemingly three plays in, Shagamemnon is still with us.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/13/26: I read and reviewed each of the three plays in the last month after seeing a one-act condensed version this summer. 459 AD! The trilogy is essentially one long story about the nature of justice, and how it can be best enacted. Revenge, or the rule of law? Agamemnon returns after ten years of an unpopular war of his own choosing. He and his men were the victors, and part of their spoils include a number of slaves, mostly women, including one who becomes his lover. One price of the war is that in order to win the war he had to sacrifice his only daughter.

When he got home after ten years, lover and female slaves in tow, having had his own daughter murdered, Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra decides to kill him; this seems understandable, except we find that she, too, had taken a lover, Agamemnon's cousin, who now becomes king. Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, avenges his father's death by killing his mother and her new husband,and new king.

Gods Apollo and Athena step in to govern Athens, where The Furies want the death of Clytemnestra avanged Ultimately Athena sets upa. troibunal, a kind of jury trial to collectively decide whether it is best to kill Orestes or stop the trail to vengeance. The jury is split six to six, and Athena decides to spare Orestess and establish the rule of law and a more democratic means of enacting justice. The story has interesting and even understandably anguishing political and psychological dimensions. If you are reading or seeing The Odyssey, you could do worse than to delve into other ancient stories that would seem to have something to say to our present moment.

8/10/26: I read this trilogy decades ago, but last night saw a roughly one-hour adaptation of it at my village summer repertory theater, outdoors. I know, that is pretty condensed, and if you are a fan of these plays yo will say, oh, that's like the Reader's Digest version of the plays, come on, don't see that, but i found it brought back memories of it all, in all its anguish. And whet my appetite to read them, though I already had begun rereading Agamemnon in preparation for seeing the production. And of course there are always various versions of plays to help you get a different angle on the central themes and stories (our local Shakespeare company almost every year puts on a different version of Macbeth--with puppets, then a condensed version, different period stagings, and so on.

This production might be deemed "experimental," featuring four actors who also switched to playing other parts, including the Chorus. Then, since the play assumed we were the forum in Athens, including a short version of the trial, we were allowed to vote (yes, with actual pieces of paper) on how we judged the debate about what had transpired and how we should proceed.

One reason I decided to see it is that you today so rarely get to see Greek drama, so that was a treat, and the audience was appreciative. Another reason I wanted to see this performance is that--after an hour break--the company performed Hamlet, so there was a kind of theatrical exploration from two dramatic perspectives (at least!) of issues of revenge and justice (among other things). Since these issues are relevant to today's political landscape, I appreciated how the two plays provide rich literary food for thought. The timeless relevance of literature to the world we live in.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

And the blood that Mother Earth consumes
clots hard, it won’t seep through, it breeds revenge
and frenzy goes through the guilty,
seething like infection, swarming through the brain.

I’d give this ten stars. The trilogy creates an arc, a link from blood sacrifice and burnt offerings to the nascent construct of something resembling jurisprudence. Superstition giving way begrudgingly to law. While the final trial isn’t exactly one by peers, it is amazing to contemplate. This trilogy is simply wicked in all senses of the term. The sacrifices made for good fortune in the Trojan War are a bit too close to home and an eloquent vengeance awaits the conquering hero when he returns from the trenches to rebuke accolades and be greeted instead with just desserts.

I was astonished. As I noted I’ve felt my entire life like Cassandra.

[Jesús De la Jara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una de las grandes piezas maestras del Teatro Griego, que muestra un panorama muy oscuro e ineludible a los personajes que se involucran en esta historia. Es patético, a pesar de todo lo que representa Agamenón, en cuanto a defectos, cómo un héroe griego recién llegado puede tener semejante destino. Pero luego le toca el turno a los hijos de éste Orestes y Electra para tomar protagonismo. Orestes es un gran personaje y vaya qué antiguo puede haber sido esta obra y cómo puede ser modelo, si no estructuralmente, sí en el argumento y en la humanidad del propio Orestes, sus miedos, sus recelos, su gran culpa. Claro que la humanización con Esquilo no alcanza su máximo punto, pero eso no le quita para nada lo trágico y legendario.

[Paul Ataua · Rating 4 out of 5]

2014 Version

Yet another version of ‘The Oresteia’, this time produced by BBC3 and broadcast in 2014. I love Greek myths and especially the stories surrounding the House of Atreus and this was a fairly good modernization with a short introduction to each of the three plays. Agamemnon, the first play, was excellent, ‘The Libation Bearers’, the second one, was good, while ‘the Furies’, the final play, was a little disappointing. Despite the drop off, it was well worth the time spent listening. If you have never had to suffer a classical education, it might be worth reading a wiki or summary of the House of Atreus to get the best out of the experience. This is not a spoiler as the original audiences were already well versed in the myths and were more interested in what Aeschylus did with those myths.

[E. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foreword
Acknowledgements
A Reading of 'The Oresteia': The Serpent and the Eagle

--Agamemnon
--The Libation Bearers
--The Eumenides

The Genealogy of Orestes
Select Bibliography
Notes
Glossary

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

....Just passed the Libation Bearers. Aeschylus has a way with ironic, monumental dialogues which portend tremendous climaxes. The language is so deep and seeps into the interaction- apparantly he suggests that there are no good options in life, merely the best of the worst, and that one must take their place amid the roil. Wisdom. This resonates with me, in the way that a drama read on the page will, as I imagine the perfect language and staging to bear witness to it....bigger review to follow, as it deserves much more than this.

....Finished. Five stars throughout. Coruscatingly direct, rich, earthy, and sublunary. Wisdom writing as mythology as poetry as black drama as cultural history. The trilogy is, I think, an actual example of literature as a catharsis for a national, cultural wound. Athens is seething after the trauma of the Trojan War.

Aeschylus, a former decorated solider himself, writes not only a gripping moral tragedy of family but of historical moment. The poise is unbearable at times. IF you surrender to the language and the momentum of the situation, of the irreversible circumstances, the annihilating power of the story and the words will blow you away.

This is written almost 2500 years ago and, yes the cliche is true- it's ripped from the headlines. Or more precisely the secret heart of the headlines. it's all there: inter-familial rage, impossible situations which call for revenge, justified killers who are justified in killing justified killers, war, the aftermath of war, sexual infidelity, gender roles, mourning, pulic/private, individual/political conflicts...

The narrative arc slopes upward again and again and falls and settles into an empty stage of dust, rumblings and omens of retributions and unbalanced scales calling for justice. Like any good drama it suspends disbelief in midair as you watch characters you know are only going to move closer to their predetermined end while holding on to the edge of your seat to see what happens next.

The characters are strong and tastefully lit. They've seeped into our collective unconscious, our cultural heritage- noble, tormented, insecure and niaeve Agamemnon, bitter and cunning and oppressed and grand Clytemnestra, sleazy and arrogant Aegisthus. Then you've got the weatherbeaten Chorus, the frenzied truth-telling doomed moonchild Cassandra, Electra of the offerings and doubt. Haunted, determined Orestes plagued by the truly gruesome, grotesque Furies with snakes in their hair and blood dripping from their eye sockets...Athena, Apollo...

Hell, we can easily include the citizens of Greece itself, sitting in the Theater of Dionysus itself, which just happens to be carved into the side of a hill. The chorus is addressing the assembled audience, certainly, and the Gods and Furies are (or can be) as well. There's some meta here, no doubt about it.

It can be applied in a variety of circumstances; Bobby Kennedy quoted from the first play on the night MLK was shot to the black community in Philadelphia, Karl Marx reread it every year, Eugene O'Neil adapted it for a modern stage, Freud was all over it, Yeats and Faulkner and Nietzsche made plenty of hay out of referencing it.

There is much to be said about the play itself, its role in Greek society, how it exhibits the transition from revenge and blood-feud to democracy and self-governance, the history of the cultural mythologies surrounding it.

About...now would be the time for me to admit that I really have no fucking idea how these ideas play out in the grand scheme of ancient history or on the political stage of Aeschylus's time. Not really anything more than some half-digested and barely-remembered diatribes some teachers of mine went on back in undergrad. My fault for all this, not theirs, no sir.

Lucky for me (and you, too, dear reader!) the introduction and background appears in the form of translator Fagles' and scholar Stanford's "The Serpent And The Eagle" an eloquent, erudite and informative nigh- hundred page prose poem.

But don't take my word for it:

"War, war, the great gold-broker of corpses
holds the balance of the battle on his spear!
Home from the pyres he sends them,
home from Troy to the loved ones,
heavy with tears, the urns brimmed full,
the heroes return in gold-dust,
dear, light ash for men: and they weep,
they praise them, 'He had skill in the swordplay,
'He went down so tall in the onslaught,'
'All for another's woman.' So they muster
in secret and rancour steals
towards our staunch defenders, Atreus' sons.

And there they ring the walls, the young,
the lithe, the handsome hold the graves
they won in Troy; the enemy earth
rides over those who conquered."


"Who- what power named the name that drove your fate?-
what hidden brain could divine your future,
steer that word to the mark,
to the bride of spears,
the whirlpool churning armies,
Oh for all the world a Helen!"


"Victory, you have sped my way before,
now speed me to the last."

"The nightingale- O for a song, a fate like hers!
The gods gave her a life of ease, swathed her in wings,
no tears, no wailing. The knife waits for me.
They'll splay me on the iron's double edge."

"Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death
and the stroke that hits the vein,
the haemorrhage none can staunch, the grief,
the curse no man can bear."

"Red from your mother's womb I took you, reared you...
nights, the endless nights I paced, your wailing
kept me moving- led me to a life of labour,
all for what?
And such care I gave it...
baby can't think for itself, poor creature.
You have to nurse it, don't you? Read its mind,
little devil's got no words, it's still swaddled.
Maybe it wants a bite or a sip of something,
or its bladder pinches- a baby's soft insides
have a will of their own. I had to be a prophet.
O I tried, and missed, believe you me, I missed,
and I'd scrub its pretty things until they sparkled.
Washerwoman and wet-nurse shared the shop.
A jack of two trades, that's me,
and an old hand at both...
and so I nursed Orestes,
yes, from his father's arms I took him once,
and now they say he's dead,
I've suffered it all, and now I'll fetch that man,
the ruination of the house- give him the news,
he'll relsih every word."

"Lift the cry of triumph O! the master's house
wins free of grief, free of the ones
who bled its wealth, the couple stained with murder,
free of Fate's rough path.

He came back with a lust for secret combat,
stealthy, cunning vengance, yes,
but his hand was steered in open fight
by the god's true daughter,
Right, Right we call her,
we and our mortal voices aiming well-
she breathes her fury, shatters all he hates.

Life the cry of triumph O! the master's house
wins free of grief, free of the ones
who bled its wealth, the couple stained with murder,
free of Fate's rough path.

Apollo wills it so!-
Apollo, clear from the Earth's deep cleft
his voice came shrill. 'Now stealth will master stealth!'
And the pure god came down and healed our ancient wounds,
the heavens come, somehow, to life our yoke of grief-
Now to praise the heaven's just command.

Look, the light is breaking!
The huge chain that curbed the halls gives way.
Rise up, proud house, long, too long
your walls lay fallen, strewn along the earth."

"This, this is our right,
spun for us by the Fates,
the ones who bind the world,
and none can shake our hold.
Show us the mortals overcome,
insane to murder kin- we track them down
till they go beneath the earth,
and the dead find little freedom in the end.

Over the victim's burning head
this chant this frenzy striking frenzy
lightning crazing the mind
this hymn of Fury
chaining the senses, ripping across the lyre,
withering lives of men!

Even at birth, I say, our rights were so ordained.
The deathless gods must keep their hands far off-
no god may share our cups, our solemn feasts.
We want no part of their pious white robes-
the Fates who gave us power made us free.

Mine is the overthrow of houses, yes,
when warlust reared like a tame beast
seizes near and dear-
down on the man we swoop, aie!
for all his power black him out!-
for the blood still fresh from slaughter on his hands.

So now, striving to wrench our mandate from the gods,
we make ourselves exempt from their control,
we brook no trial- no god can be our judge."

"But for me to suffer such disgrace...I,
the proud heart of the past, driven under the earth,
condemned, like so much filth,
and the fury in me breathing hatred-
O good Earth,
what is this stealing under the breast,
what agony racks the spirit?...Night, dear Mother Night!
All's lost, our ancient powers torn away by their cunning,
ruthless hands, the gods so hard to wrestle down
obliterate us all."

"A spell-
what spell to sing? to bind the land for ever? Tell us.

Nothing that strikes a note of brutal conquest. Only peace-
blessings, rising up from the earth and the heaving sea,
and down the vaulting sky let the wind-gods breathe
a wash of sunlight streaming through the land,
and the yield of soil and grazing cattle flood
our city's life with power and never flag
with time. Make the seed on men live on,
the more they worship you the more they thrive.
I love them as a gardener loves his plants,
these upright men, this breed fought free of grief.
All that is yours to give.
And I,
In the trials of war where fighters burn for fame,
will never endure the overflow of Athens-
all will praise her, victor city, pride of man."

"Yes and I ban
the winds that rock the olive-
hear my love, my blessing-
thwart their scorching heat that blinds the buds,
hold from our shores the killing icy gales,
and I ban the blight that creeps on fruit and withers-
God of creation, Pan, make flocks increase
and the ewes drop fine twin lambs
when the hour of labour falls.
And silver, child of Earth,
secret treasure of Hermes,
come to light and praise the gifts of god."


And that's not even the ending. Not quite. Sorry to go on like this but I wanted to see what I'd have to do to come close to using up all the allotted characters I have left. (9,000 more to go...) It's worth the rant.

I was very curious several times throughout reading this as to how the play would actually be staged to avoid the kind of overshadowed clumsiness staged productions tend do to the text. Sometimes I think plays are better read within the theater of the mind. You can hear the voices of the characters in your own imagination, the stage is set the way it seems to you. The blocking, music and camera angles are totally your call, as well, so in an odd way there's very little blocking you from perfect immersion.

Best to read it alone, aloud by water, because it contains the ancient, roiling toll of the sea.

[Dragos C Butuzea · Rating 5 out of 5]

agamemnon - cel ucis de nevastă în baie

după 10 ani de război troian, agamemnon, după ce a cucerit bogata cetate troia, se-ntoarce acasă.

criminala clitemnestra
prefăcându-se că nu mai putuse de dorul lui, nevastă-sa, clitemnestra, îl întâmpină pe covor roșu. dar ea e sora curviștinei elena care-a provocat războiul, și n-are scrupule, așa că-l omoară pe agamemnon în cadă, la prima baie, în mod sadic. o omoară și pe una dintre amantele pe care învingătorul și-o adusese cu el, pe prorocița blestemată să nu fie crezută, casandra. iată, criminala sadică, cum povestește isprava:

CLITEMNESTRA
Atunci, zăcând, el își dă duhul, iar sângele, țâșnind din rănile străpunse, mă împroașcă, picături întunecate, nu mai puțin plăcute pentru mine, decât e roua sclipitoare, dar dumnezeiesc, pentru semințele din muguri. (p.79)

iaca și amantul
aflăm apoi că în vremea asta, cât timp bărba-su se războia departe, ea și-a tras amant, pe vărul mai laș al soțului, egist. nu era el prea bun la războaie - căci n-a plecat la troia - însă era expert, se pare, în sexul cu femeia altuia iar mai apoi convingerea ei să-l omoare.

ceea ce corul bătrânilor cetății îi reproșează:

Ești o muiere! Ai rămas acasă, pândind să se
întoarcă luptătorii din război!
Ai pângărit culcușul unui bărbat de seamă, ai pus
la cale moartea maimarelui oștirii! (p.89)

oare merita războinicul agamemnon să fie ucis de nevastă-sa în baie, după 10 de ani de lupte cu troienii?
- ucigașa zice că da, pentru că și-a jertfit fiica, pe ifigenia, înainte de plecarea la război.
- amantul ucigașei zice că da, pentru că tatăl lui agamemnon i i-a servit tatălui lui egist, la masă, pe propriii copii la dejun, așa că blestemat să fie!

Va dăinui o lege, cât Zeus va dăinui pe tron:
„Vinovatului pedeapsă!“ (p.86)

hoeforele

a doua piesă e cea mai slabă din trilogie. are două părți principale:
1) una în care cei doi copii orfani de tată - oreste și electra - își plâng peste ani tatăl
2) oreste, fiul ucisului agamemnon, îndemnat de oracolul din delphi, își ucide mama și pe amantul acestuia, egist.
nimic spectaculos.

eumenidele - cea mai mișto piesă a lui eschil

fără îndoială, mai abitir decât prometeu înlănțuit, eumenidele (binevoitoarele) este cea mai șmecheră din piesele lui eschil.
de ce?

cine erau eriniile?
pentru că personajele sunt eriniile (furiile la romani), care pornesc după ucigașul de mamă, oreste, să-l înnebunească de cap, ca pedeapsă pentru matricid.

eriniile sunt personaje horror, care fac parte din zeitățile vechi, născute (potrivit theogoniei lui hesiod) din picăturile de sânge scurse în gaia, de la castrarea lui uranos.
sunt ființe înaripate, cu șerpi împletiți în păr sau în mâini și au în mâini torțe sau bice.
au lăcaș în erebos sau în tartaros.

Născute pentru rele, hălăduiesc în umbra din care
se împărtășește răul și sub pământ, în Tartaros,
de oameni urgisite și de zeii din Olimp. (p.151)

rolul eriniilor este de a-i pedepsi pe oameni: pe prorocii care prevestesc prea mult, dar mai ales pe criminali, care zdruncină echilibrul omenirii și care trebuie să purifice prin canoane, dacă nu înnebunește.

cum le „rezolvă“ atena pe erinii și le face blânde?
ele nu se supun zeilor, nici chiar lui zeus, și se iau în gură chiar cu apolo sau cu atena. doar că șmechera atena le transformă din răuvoitoare în binevoitoare, care-i binecuvântează pe greci. astfel, folosindu-se de unealta tribunalului aeropagilor, soarta lui oreste este luată din mâna eriniilor (a blestemului crimei) și dată pe mâna oamenilor.

este o acțiune de îmblânzire a stihiilor originare, a schimbării legilor talionului în legile jurisprudenței. iar oreste este prilejul oportun.

nu mai spun despre prezența în piesă a templului de la delphi, centrul lumii elene, unde preoteasa pythia, muritoarea care ședea deasupra crăpăturii din pământ care emana aburi, și care profețea destinele elenilor, se sperie ea însăși de erinii.

iată ce spun eriniile despre dreapta măsură:
- Nici anarhie, nici puteri despotice, iată măsura. (p.180)
- Neîngrădit de teamă, care muritor mai știe să rămână drept? (p. 180)
- Nu te-nvoi să-ți petreci în
orânduire anarhică viață,
dar nici sub noime despotice,
Cumpănește în toată măsura,
așa-i rânduiala divină
împotriva puterii cu toane. (p.171)
- Cel care, singur, fără să fie silit,
se poartă cu dreptate,
va dobândi fericirea;
el nu va pieri niciodată cu totul,
În schimb, răzvrătitul obraznic,
care a strâns, împotriva dreptății,
de-a valma, atâtea grămezi
de comori ticăloase,
fără-ndoială, va fi nevoit
să-și coboare pânza, cu vremea,
când va sta îngrozit
lângă verga corăbiei ruptă. (p.172)

dincolo de acțiunea plină de personaje mitologice și de zei, eschil pune niște probleme. este, dincolo de poet, un filozof care aduce în mintea spectatorilor idei și probleme ce țin de viața oamenilor în genere și de cea de zi cu zi.

[Yigal Zur · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read now no. 2. the main conflict between son and mother. the erotic freedom of the women - the mother is destructive for the son, as he is suppose to get the heritage. "you killed my father, how can i live with you?"
amazing conflict. great writing. still.
a lot of build up for me as i write a new thriller.

[Elena Sala · Rating 5 out of 5]

AGAMEMNON is a chilling revenge play, the first play of a trilogy of plays written by Aeschylus, one of the few Ancient Greek dramatists whose work has survived from antiquity. The trilogy was first produced in the spring of 458 BCE in the city of Athens.

Agamemnon, in the works of Homer, is the brutal king of the Achaeans during the Trojan War, and this play is about his return home after Troy has been defeated and utterly destroyed. This play, however, is not directly related to the Iliad or his rivalry with Achilles, but about the outcome of his past actions and to the myth of the House of Atreus.

The House of Atreus is cursed. The story is gruesome and this might not be the right place to deal with it in detail: it involves murders, adultery, incest, infanticide and cannibalism. Agamemnon is the fourth generation of this cursed House. The myth tells of wrongs done to avenge old wrongs which lead to newer wrongs, a veritable chain of evil and derangement.

So Agamemnon returns home victorious from the Trojan War and has to face a new war, a domestic war. He has to face his wife Clytemnestra, who is very, very, very angry. You see, Agamemnon found himself in trouble when he wanted to launch his fleet at Aulis. Adverse winds prevented the huge fleet of Achaeans from sailing to Troy. A seer tells Agamemnon that only one thing would stop the bad winds. He had to slaughter his own daughter, young Iphigeneia, to appease Artemis, and all would be well. Agamemnon accepts without resistance.

Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigeneia. The Achaeans took young Iphigenia out to the ocean, and forced her over an altar there. They gagged and murdered her, so that the winds would take them to Troy, so that the war in Troy could start in earnest. After the horrendous sacrifice, the Achaeans were able to sail off to Troy in order to exact their vengeance and bring Helen back.

Clytemnestra has not forgotten or forgiven this evil deed and for ten years she has been waiting to exact her own vengeance. She has taken a lover, Aegisthus, who will help her out. Clytemnestra rejoices when Agamemnon returns home safely, but not because she loves him. She wants to kill him herself, and she does.

AGAMEMNON is about the violent death of a returning conqueror. He has murdered his daughter, sailed off to Troy, proved a nightmare to the city for a decade, pissed off Achilles -the real hero of the Iliad- and then, after defeating Troy, destroyed it, killed its inhabitants, and made Cassandra, its princess, into a personal sex slave. But we all know that the story doesn't end with the toppling of a cruel tyrant. The next two plays will deal with the aftermath.

[Paul of Bethesda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Or is revenge not the way to go after all? Many an Athenian must have asked just this sort of question after watching a performance of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, from the time when this trilogy of plays was first performed at the Theatre of Dionysus, on the Acropolis in Athens, in 458 B.C. The Oresteian trilogy of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides may be 2500 years old, but these plays are downright modern in the way they encourage the modern reader or viewer to meditate on revenge, its causes, and its consequences.

In our modern world, we are used to being told that it is wrong to seek revenge. At the same time, however, every human being knows the feeling of being wronged, and the strength of that immediate, atavistic wish to repay wrong for wrong. The ancient Greek attitude toward revenge was just as contradictory. On the one hand, Greek civilization had its beginnings in the warrior culture that had won the Trojan War – an honor culture in which one always had to be ready to defend with violence one’s own good name and that of one’s family. On the other hand, Athens in 458 B.C. was just a few years into its experiment in democracy. No doubt the Athenians knew that vengeance and democracy are incompatible – that “an eye for an eye” leaves the whole world blind.

That seemingly contradictory attitude toward revenge makes its way into The Oresteia -- a trilogy of plays that wastes no time moving from spousal murder and coup d’état to matricide. The first play in the trilogy, Agamemnon, chronicles the Mycenaean king’s return from Troy after the Greek victory in the Trojan War. Little does Agamemnon know that he is a marked man; his wife Clytemnestra has taken a lover, Aegisthus, and the two plan to murder Agamemnon. Clytemnestra seeks revenge against her husband because, to secure a favorable wind when the ships were first sailing for Troy, Agamemnon ordered the sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia (a story told in Euripides’ play Iphigenia at Aulis). For this reason, there is a decided double edge to lines like the one in which Clytemnestra tells a herald bringing the news of the Greek victory, “Now for the best way to welcome home/my lord, my good lord….” (p. 125).

The Agamemnon of this play seems somewhat more sympathetic than the antagonistic king of Homer’s Iliad; when Clytemnestra invites him to walk upon crimson tapestries like a barbarian potentate, Agamemnon demurs, saying, with a humility that an Athenian audience would have found appropriate, that “only the gods deserve the pomps of honour/and the stiff brocades of fame. To walk on them…/I am human, and it makes my pulses stir/with dread” (p. 137). Nonetheless, his pious humility notwithstanding, Agamemnon is doomed to die at the hands of his wife and her lover.

Likewise doomed is Cassandra, the Trojan princess brought home as a slave by Agamemnon (another act of Agamemnon’s that is unlikely to improve Clytemnestra’s mood). Cassandra is blessed with the gift of prophecy, but cursed with the knowledge that no one will believe her prophecies. Knowing that she and Agamemnon are about to die at the hands of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, Cassandra looks ahead – accurately, as always – to future events when she remarks that “We will die,/but not without some honour from the gods./There will come another to avenge us,/born to kill his mother, born/His father’s champion” (p. 155). That promise of retribution aside, the play Agamemnon ends on a grim note, with the chorus of old Argive men indignant at the murder of their king, but helpless to do anything against the new tyranny of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

The man alluded to in Cassandra’s anguished speech – the man fated to avenge his father by killing his own mother – is, of course, Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; and as The Libation Bearers begins, Orestes has come home to Argos, accompanied by his friend Pylades. Once Orestes and his sister Electra have found each other, they plan their revenge. Orestes learns that Clytemnestra, plagued by evil dreams and fearful that she will face divine vengeance for her crime of husband-murder, has ordered that a group of enslaved women serve as libation bearers, offering sacrifices to the gods in an attempt to expiate Clytemnestra’s crime. Scornfully, Orestes asks of his mother’s after-the-fact repentance, “Why did she send libations? What possessed her,/so late, to salve a wound past healing?/To the unforgiving dead she sends this sop,/this…who am I to appreciate her gifts?/They fall so short of all her failings” (p. 200). No show of remorse on Clytemnestra’s part – no set of pious prayers mouthed by enslaved libation bearers forced to pray for a murderess whom they despise – is going to sway Orestes from his path of vengeance.

What does, momentarily, shake Orestes from his vengeful path is simple, human emotion - his natural feelings of filial affection toward his mother. The killing of Aegisthus, the original evil stepfather, is an easy enough thing; but then Clytemnestra opens her robe to reveal the breasts with which, many years before, as a young mother, she suckled the baby Orestes. “Wait, my son – no respect for this, my child?/The breast you held, drowsing away the hours,/soft gums tugging the milk that made you grow?” (p. 216) Orestes is momentarily paralyzed by coming face-to-face with the paradoxical reality that he can only avenge his father by killing his mother: “What will I do, Pylades? – I dread to kill my mother!” (p. 217) It is left to Pylades to speak as the voice of god-ordained revenge: “What of the future? What of the Prophet God Apollo,/the Delphic voice, the faith and oaths we swear?/Make all mankind your enemy, not the gods” (p. 217). Thus steeled by Pylades’ invocation of divine will, Orestes proceeds with his own fateful act of matricide.

I call it “fateful” because, divine will or no, Orestes still faces consequences for killing his mother. The mere fact that he acted in response to divine command does not exempt Orestes from a terrible, elemental punishment – to be forever pursued and driven mad by the Furies, hideous snake-haired monsters whose entire purpose, in the Olympian worldview, is to punish certain particularly heinous crimes such as matricide.

It matters not that, as the leader of the chorus of formerly enslaved women states, Orestes has “set us free, the whole city of Argos,/lopped the heads of these two serpents once for all” (p. 224). For Orestes, there is only the ultimate, fundamental horror of seeing, everywhere he turns, “Women – look – like Gorgons,/shrouded in black, their heads wreathed,/swarming serpents!” (p. 225). Orestes’ fate, barring some sort of divine intervention, is to be forever driven mad by the Furies, constantly running from them – “they drive me on! I must move” (p. 225) – in a vain search for shelter or relief. The Libation Bearers ends on this grim note, with only the vague hope expressed by the choral leader that “One thing will purge you. Apollo’s touch will set you free from all your…torments” (p. 225).

“Eumenides” means “kindly ones,” and therefore it seems counterintuitive that the concluding play in this trilogy, a play about the snake-haired, avenging Furies, should be titled The Eumenides (The Kindly Ones). Yet the manner in which Aeschylus resolves this seemingly unresolvable dilemma reveals much regarding the playwright’s beliefs regarding both justice and the relationship between divinity and humankind.

At Apollo’s behest, Orestes, pursued by the Furies, has made his way to the Acropolis of Athens, where he throws himself upon the mercy of Athena, the city’s patron goddess. The Furies meanwhile vow to pursue Orestes unto death, prompted in part by the urgings of the ghost of Clytemnestra, who calls upon the Furies to avenge her murder: “Never forget my anguish./Let my charges hurt you, they are just” (p. 236).

Reluctantly, the Furies agree to let Athena serve as judge between them and Orestes, and the goddess of wisdom lectures the Furies on their narrow and harsh conception of justice, telling them that “you are set on the name of justice rather than the act”, and adding that “Injustice…should never triumph thanks to oaths” (p. 250). The Furies’ defense of their code of vengeance comes to seem legalistic, pettifogging – when Orestes asks why the Furies did not hound Clytemnestra for killing her husband Agamemnon, the leader of the Furies responds, “The blood of the man she killed was not her own” (p. 258). Apollo himself witnesses on behalf of Orestes, and in a traditional Athenian-style trial, Orestes is acquitted by a tie vote.

Yet in response to the Furies’ rage at being denied the victim of their vengeance, Athena offers them a new mission – to become protectors, with her, of the city of Athens: “Look,/it is all yours, a royal share of our land –/justly entitled, glorified forever” (p. 270). The Furies, albeit somewhat reluctantly, accept Athena’s offer; and in the process of forswearing revenge, they cease to be hideous monsters, and become benevolent deities – Eumenides, “kindly ones.” The anti-vengeance message in this resolution of the trilogy seems clear. Additionally, an Athenian spectator of Aeschylus’ time might have thought of the way Athens’ legal system moved from the cruelty of Draco – a man whose laws were so harsh that he gave the world the word “draconian” – to the more enlightened code of the lawgiver Solon.

In the resolution of The Oresteia, we also learn a great deal regarding Aeschylus’ religious sensibilities. I had always heard Aeschylus described as being, of Athens’ three great playwrights, the most conventionally reverent, with his later successors Sophocles and Euripides being more willing to challenge convention – as if Aeschylus was driving around Athens in a chariot with a bumper sticker on the back saying ZEUS SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT, AND THAT SETTLES IT. The truth, unsurprisingly, is more complex. Both in The Oresteia and in Aeschylus’ other surviving plays, there is indeed a suggestion that human beings must learn how to serve the gods more reverently – but there is also a corollary suggestion that the gods must likewise learn how to rule over humankind more justly. The divine and the human must find a way to reach out toward each other.

And, as mentioned above, this trilogy’s reflections upon the subject of vengeance are quite modern. Teaching The Oresteia for a “What Is Literature?” class at Penn State University, I found myself pairing the trilogy with Steven Spielberg’s film Munich (2005). The film, which details the Israeli government’s efforts to kill the Palestinian “Black September” terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics, provides, like The Oresteia, a thoughtful look at revenge and its ramifications.

At first, the film’s main character, Mossad agent Avner Kaufman (played by Eric Bana), accepts without too much question the decision by Prime Minister Golda Meir’s government that the blood of the murdered Israeli athletes must be repaid with the blood of their Palestinian killers. Yet as Avner sees the Palestinians with their families, hears from them tales of oppression and dislocation similar to the experience of many Israelis, faces the prospect that the taking of revenge may involve the unintended sacrifice of innocent lives, he begins to question the mission in which he is engaged. Few things could be more modern, or more enduringly relevant, than a story of whether or not to take revenge.

This Penguin Books edition of The Oresteia, rendered into English by the great translator Robert Fagles, includes a helpful introductory essay, informative notes, and a useful glossary. It is a great way to get to know the first complete, surviving trilogy of tragic plays from classical Greece.

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

BBC Radio 3 adaptation by Simon Scardifield, Ed Hime & Rebecca Lenkiewicz

I've had a couple of false/slow starts with the written Oresteia this year, so to tick off a 'Classic Tragedy' category in a reading challenge, I listened to this production of the three plays, which is packaged with an old half-hour In Our Time episode about Aeschylus' trilogy. (I'd have preferred a production using Robert Fagles' translation, to read along, but couldn't track one down.) The blurb for the Audible edition says that Edith Hall introduces each play; as I listened to the four separate segments online I didn't hear that, but Hall is one of the speakers in the In Our Time discussion. The whole lot adds up to four and a half hours, and all speakers are engaging and dramatic, so it works well as an audiobook that can be taken in almost effortlessly whilst doing other things.

At time of writing I've not read further than the early part of Agamemnon (before the eponymous king speaks), so I can't compare most of these radio versions with a translation that strives to be more faithful to the original - but from that opening, and other info I already knew about the plays (including from part of of Fagles' introduction, and a lecture series by Peter Meineck), it's clear these are modern versions with noticeable differences. Each of the three plays is adapted by a different writer; I'm not sure whether it's because I'm more familiar with Agamemnon that I found the first one most engaging, or if it was simply that Scardifield's version of the first play was the best of these three.

Quotes here are from audio, and may not be exact as they came from notes typed in a hurry using abbreviations.

To make the watchman's opening narrative and exposition more natural, Scardifield has given him a new young assistant, a former shepherd lad. As this teenager has just started the job, the older watchman tells him about their task, the beacons they are to look out for, and a bit about the history of the war. The radio format allows for flashbacks to the beginning of the war, including soldiers waiting and grumbling as the ships are stuck in port, Calchas' proclamations, and Iphigenia being lured with a promise of marriage to Achilles. The two watchmen are fleshed out as characters; the older one is an ex-fisherman and also set up some of the beacons on other islands. The young lad is starstruck on meeting Clytemnestra and Aegisthes. It was a bit blurry to me which voices constituted the chorus, but the adaptation gives a strong sense of a working-class presence in the play when, after the watchmen have informed Clytemnestra of the beacon, they get talking to an older woman in the street, who was once a prostitute in the soldiers' camp before the army sailed.

The adaptation has these mechanicals performing a sacrifice of Clytemnestra's best heifer on her behalf, which I wasn't sure about, but at any rate their conversation was interesting. There's the typical mix of opinions you find among working-class characters in a contemporary adaptation, some more religious and respectful of leaders, others resentful and opinionated about, for example, men coming home as ashes in jars. (Again, Ancient Greek history isn't an area I specialised in, so whilst this felt like a deliberate analogy for modern experiences, I can't say for certain.) We get typical contemporary comments on Classical religion like "gods that go about sticking their deathless dicks in anything that takes their fancy".

I was surprised how much Cassandra protested, as of course she'd know it would make no difference, but Ancient Greek tragedy is a very different emotional mode for starters. I liked the choice of accents here. Calchas - the representative of the archaic religious world the trilogy marks a move away from - is the most noticeably old-school posh in these productions, the sort of voice you'd have once expected Classical tragedy to be spoken in almost entirely. Other characters are northern English, though the royals more lightly, leaning towards RP - and Cassandra is played by a Romanian actress using her accent to emphasise she is from a different society to the Argives.

It is all effortlessly immersive with a strong sense of drama and strong personalities, as it should be. Additions, such as Menelaus throwing his and Helen's bed into the sea and sobbing and brooding on the beach for two days, had the right high tragic feel, as did lines like "as fate thunders past I just want to feel its breeze, instead I feel like I'm strapped to its wheels". I was glad also that it made the play feel historically specific and situated, as I hadn't wanted to dwell on the weight of its universality at the moment. Yet this version was one of those that seemed to add to the original rather than reductively boxing it in, as some radically modern versions of ancient classics can. (The more I read about Maria Dahvana Headley's Beowulf the less keen I am on the idea of it.) I was taken aback when I listened to a short clip of Scardifield discussing his Agamemnon adaptation that he homed in on the same words "specific" and "universal" that I'd found myself thinking about when listening to the play. The writer achieved his aims then.

The Libation Bearers needs context for a lot of modern Western readers who aren't already well-versed in Greek history. It almost goes without saying these days that one would understand why Clytemnestra wanted to avenge Iphigenia, and to assume there would have been solidarity with the dead sister among her surviving siblings, even if they were also frightened of their mother. Yet this is not, of course, the attitude of Electra and Orestes. Their sense that it was much worse for their mother to kill their father than it was for their father to kill their sister is related to the Greek idea - contradictory to modern science, that the father was the true parent, as mentioned in The Furies. (And that in theory at least, men could even reproduce alone as with Zeus producing Athena.) It is thoroughly contextualised by Hall in In Our Time, though I didn't listen to this until afterwards: Electra only appears in the first half of play, performing libations, and then the mourning song with Orestes once they are reunited: unlike her mother, she only speaks the words that proper, well-behaved girls do - religious & mourning language and thereafter is sidelined for the conflict between male and powerful, transgressive female. But as Orestes is fundamentally a dutiful son, he, as Hall points out, he needs his mate to talk him into killing Clytemnestra. Ed Hime's adaptation seemed to do its job fine but it didn't wow me the way Scardifield's Agamemnon did - though this could have been because I had least pre-existing knowledge of this play out of the three here.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz's version of The Furies uses a narrator, which on the one hand seemed like cheating slightly, but also makes the action easy to follow for those unfamiliar with the basic plot. (There was quite a bit about it in Meineck's lectures so I was already aware of it.) Last week I read this article and review by Emily Wilson, about the Oresteia and new translations (thanks to Alwynne for posting it). Wilson complains about the heavy preponderance of Oresteia translations by men and the lack of feminist commentary on the Furies / Eumenides in the editions under review, and so it was interesting to stumble into one of the few versions put into English by a woman playwright. Because of this I particularly noticed the grand dramatic vehemence of the Pythia in arguing with Apollo about him trampling over ancient divinities, in warning about how men think so much of themselves in life but are dust when they die, and how she talks sarcastically about the higher value put on the death of a father; she proclaims that Orestes should wander like a neglected outcast. And likewise Apollo's attempt to banish the Furies (who were also characterised at the beginning of the play by a stench) to places of torture and execution, and the phrasing that they are not not women, but creatures, and should live in caves with lions, aberrations. Athena, presented by Aeschylus as a just and neutral force (though one who gets short shrift from some modern commentators), says here that the system of trial she brings is "counsel untouched by thought of gain" and she decides she "shall not call the death of Clytemnestra worse", also addressing the Pythia respectfully by acknowledging "you are far older". The Pythia accedes, and there is another invocation of fertility as primarily male, as Athenians are promised near the end, "Your flocks will multiply. Pan will teach them to bear twins."

I don't tend to get on very well with Emily Wilson's commentary, in pieces like the LRB review linked above or in her Odyssey introduction, and Edith Hall on In Our Time made similar points in a way that I found more amenable and interesting. I had no idea from Wilson's article of the historical context of what she says there, whereas Hall explains that "since de Beauvoir, feminist scholars and also those of the psychoanalytic school like Melanie Klein" (and, another speaker added, even since Karl Marx), "the Oresteia has been taken as the charter myth of male domination, slamming the door on women in western culture, art and society until Nora walked out of the Doll's House". She later adds that it is also "the charter myth of the state and of trial by jury", that fear is now supposed to be of the state's justice system, not of the family - and another says that it transforms ancient myth into civic myth.

(And in symbolically authorising an impersonal, centralised system over kin networks, it paves the way for Westernisation itself, as per The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich - although that traces the practical origins of the process to first-millennium Christian prohibitions on cousin marriage, with, so far at least, insufficient discussion of the extent to which these were actually enforced.)

However, Hall didn't answer the question I found myself with after reading Wilson's piece: why could this even have been a turning point for women? I see no reason to have expected it to have been: in mythological terms it's going from a system in which a king could sacrifice his daughter without being stopped, to a system of court and law in which women also had very little say or power. The type of system changed but its gender politics didn't.

Perhaps there is a mythological memory/analogy of greater equality between the sexes before the rise of Bronze Age city states. Archaeological research on the strength evident from prehistoric women's bones"suggests that the sexual differentiation of labor became greater or more formalized after the Neolithic than during it." (Quote from here. Study here.) But that isn't the story of the actual Oresteia: Clytemnestra is already aberrant in its world; it is goddesses and other supernatural female beings who have power equivalent to their male counterparts, not typical mortal women. The civilised and gender-ambiguous Athena can be contrasted with the wild and chthonic Furies and Pythia - but she also contrasts, as a patron of Athens, with the wild and chthonic and male Poseidon. If it's anything it's another increment rather than a door slamming suddenly.

Even Fagles' introduction has an almost incantatory spiritual heft which seems bold and unusual for a Penguin Classic these days - a very welcome relic of the 1970s as far as I'm concerned (so I'm sorry to hear talk of his translation being superseded as the contemporary default by the Oliver Taplin edition). Whilst there were a few seismic moments in these adaptations, that mode wasn't sustained in the same way. Yet it also made them more approachable at a time when I wasn't up for several days' worth of reading in the heightened ancient tragic mode.

I'd certainly recommend these recordings if you enjoy modern prose adaptations like this - though as to how close the bulk of them are to the originals, you'll need to get a verdict from someone who knows those better.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The penguin classics version is to be particularly recommended - The translation works very well and the 90 page introduction is just brilliant.

As for the plays, well...they are essential reading obviously. And like all great works in translation, one should really read 2 or 3 different versions in order to get as close as possible to the “original”. The Fagles translation should certainly be one of those versions.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oresteia is the only surviving trilogy of Greek tragedy plays, performed in 458 BCE - two years before Aeschylus's death in 456 BCE. This review summarises all three plays as a trilogy, and because I think that it's easier to read them if you know what to expect, I do give away all the relevant plot points.

The first play, "Agamemnon", is about betrayal: King Agamemnon returns home to Argos after the successful sacking of Troy (in modern-day Turkey), only to be killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover, Agamemnon's cousin, Aegisthus, who had taken over Agamemnon's rule in his absence. Clytemnestra is wrathful because her husband sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia, in order to placate the god Artemis and secure calm winds for the voyage to Troy, and kills Agamemnon in his bath. They also murder Cassandra, his spoils of war, the prophetess cursed to never be believed who sees her own death but is, of course, disbelieved. Such is the curse of Agamemnon's family continued.

The second play, "Libation Bearers", is about just revenge, or deliverance. Clytemnestra and Agamemnon's son Orestes returns from another kingdom where he was sent to live, having learned from the oracle Loxias of his mother's murderous betrayal. Through Loxias he is given leave by the god Apollo to exact revenge by killing his mother and her lover. When he arrives at the palace he goes first to the tomb of his father to pay his respects; there he encounters his sister Electra, also in mourning. With the help of the palace servants, he disguises himself as a traveller bearing news of his own death so as to trick his way inside and see Aegisthus privately. He slews him and then his mother, who knows she is going to her death but does not fight it.

The third play, "Eumenides", is about justice and change - it displays a new way of seeking justice, that in a new court-of-law, with the verdict decided by a group of citizen jurors in Athens. The Furies are hounding Orestes, demanding payment for the matricide. Orestes seeks out Apollo's temple and Apollo's protection, and then Athena (Pallas Athena), goddess of war, wisdom and justice (among many other things). Athena decides to hold a trial to hear the case, with the Furies the prosecution and Apollo defending Orestes. Athena casts her own vote in Orestes' favour, and the result is a tie: Orestes goes free. The Furies threaten to destroy the land but Athena placates them instead into protecting it, and decrees that henceforth a trial by jury shall always be used to decide such cases.

That's the general overview of this trilogy of Greek tragedies, though there is a lot more going on in the details. I did struggle a bit, reading these short plays, because it's so hard for me to concentrate these days. I found my mind wandering continuously, thoughts intruding, and even when I made the effort to focus I often had to re-read passages several times and then admit defeat. The notes do help, but the fact remains that I had trouble with the structure of many lines, that like obscure poetry they alluded me. Full of metaphor and requiring a great deal of knowledge to get the mythic and historical references, a lot of "Agamemnon" in particular was hard to follow, in particular the Chorus' chants, like when they tell the story of the family curse (I only know that's what it's about from reading the intro and some notes. Other names are often used - like Ilion, for Troy, or Pallas, for Athena - and like an optical illusion the lines seem to double in on themselves so you don't know what the hell is really being said, or so it seems to me, like it's a language I don't know. It gives me a headache.

Yet, on that note, it also made me wonder (an intruding thought among many), how these plays would have been heard by ordinary people, just as Shakespeare's plays were heard by the poor and uneducated as much as the rich - regardless, they all understood them, didn't they? I mean, the style of speech was understandable in all its convolutions and beseechings. We struggle to follow all the lines in Shakespeare today - it just makes me really recognise how much verbal language has changed, verbal English (I know Greek isn't English, but the translation honours the original). But I digress.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this story. We've all heard the story of Troy even if you haven't read The Illiad, and you've probably heard of Agamemnon and Cassandra too. Aeschylus wasn't the only playwright to create plays based on this myth of Agamemnon's murder - Euripides, for example, who came just after Aeschylus died, wrote one too. I've studied some ancient Greek plays, years ago, but I don't really have a background in it. To me, as a modern-day reader and an emancipated woman, I can't help but find them almost misogynistic in tone, even though scholars have apparently seen Clytemnestra as an early feminist figure for taking over the male role of ruler - the translator, Christopher Collard, Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Wales, says in his introduction that "it seems unnecessary to think of her as more than a playwright's imaginative construction for the sake of his drama." (p.xxvii) But there are far stronger anti-women sentiments voiced in these plays, especially the third one. (I want to bring it up not because I'm offended or anything, but because it's an interesting theme, to me at least, and because I vaguely remember when I studied Greek plays in university that strong, powerful, mad women are a common theme - but more than that, I can't remember!)

In "Agamemnon", the king himself speaks of the gods' undivided and just support for the destruction of Tory, saying "it was for a woman that Troy was ground into dust..." (p.23)

Apollo has the worst denouncement, though, when he says during the trial in "Eumenides":

The so-called mother is no parent of a child, but nurturer of a newly seeded embryo; the parent is the one who mounts her, while she conserves the child like a stranger for a stranger, for those fathers not thwarted by god. [p.103]

And Athena makes her judgement thus:

It is my business in this case to give my judgement last; and I shall cast this vote of mine for Orestes. [...] I do so because there is no mother who gave me birth, and I approve the masculine in everything - except for union with it - with all my heart; and I am very much my father's: so I will set a higher value on the death of a woman who killed her husband, a house's guardian. [p.105]

(Athena, a rational goddess, is the daughter of Zeus, born of his head.)

So combined with Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter, his other daughter Electra's idolatry of her father, Clytemnestra's usurping of a man's role and adultery, the gods' promotion of the masculine over the feminine is rather like having the last word. Bit hard to gainsay a god.

I bring up the theme of women in these plays because I feel it is relevant in questioning, what is Clytemnestra's greatest crime here? Why does Orestes feel the need to kill her rather than bring her to justice? Certain lines jump out at me that make it apparent that her greatest crime was taking on a man's role, and therefore depriving Orestes of his inheritance. In "Libation Bearers", Orestes says of his decision to kill his mother,

"Many desires are falling together into one; there are the gods' commands, and my great grief for my father; besides, it oppresses me to be deprived of my property, so that our citizens, who have the finest glory among men, and honour for their heart in sacking Troy, should not be subjects like this of a pair of women. [p.59]

(By "pair of women" he refers here to his mother's lover Aegisthus, who he calls "effeminate at heart".)

I wonder whether she would have been so abominable in mens' eyes if she had not sought to rule, which she was doing in her husband's absence anyway. It is so easy in mythology to lay all blame and evil and everything that goes wrong, at the feet of women. What scapegoats we make! Though to be fair, if Athena had not cast her own vote, Orestes would have been found guilty, for her vote made it a tie in which case she decreed he would be pardoned. The majority of jurors voted against him.

Which brings me to the big idea of the trilogy of plays, though: justice itself. Here we have the myth of how the first court of law, the first trial, began and was institutionalised in Athens, making it the most sophisticated and modern city-state in Greece. With the Furies trying to avenge Clytemnestra's murder and losing, they bemoan the change: "You younger gods! The ancient laws - you have ridden them down! You have taken them out of my hands for yourselves!" [p.106] The tied verdict, though, helps Athena, the patron of Athens, placate the Furies by saying they have not been dishonoured, and the goddess moves quickly to give the Furies a new role, that of protecting Athens rather than bringing destruction upon it for losing the trial. In doing so, she posits the city as the pinnacle of all things, blessed by the gods and made fortunate by the Furies who she gives the role of "keeping both land and cit on the straight way of justice." (p.111) In telling the story of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's downfall, this trilogy of plays gives us the mythologised story of how Athens became great - to an Athenian audience, so it's very much a self-aggrandising story.

There's lots more going on here; I've barely scratched the surface. I don't feel I can give it a rating, so I've given it a 3 because it's so middle-of-the-road. In terms of the general plot, it brought to mind "Hamlet" and also "Macbeth" - it's true that everything borrows from everything else, and stripped down, I'm sure there are probably only about three real plots or something (or was it seven? I think there's a book on this already!). It's tricky to read because all the action happens off the page; or rather, it happens in speech, making it fairly bogged-down with details, but this was also an interesting aspect of the plays. It was hard to read Cassandra and Clytemnestra's dialogue when they are both aware they are walking to their deaths - there's real emotion in those lines. The chants of the chorus are the hardest to read, being like poetry rather than prose and requiring significant background knowledge to understand.

A note on this edition: This is a new 2002 translation by Christopher Collard for Oxford World's Classics, and it's more of an academic translation than a popular, readable one. There is a long introduction and essay by Collard on the characters, the theatre production of the plays, dramatic form and so on, as well as extensive notes in the back. It comes with a summary of the three plays - which it's a great idea to read first or it's hard to follow what's going on - as well as a chronology of Agamemnon's family and a map that shows Greece and Turkey, which I really appreciated. All in all, it's a very thorough translation, noting when lines and words are missing from the original manuscripts, and probably your best choice if you're studying the plays.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fagles, in his introduction, says that The Oresteia comes from 'one of the great flowering periods of Western civilisation'; Aeschylus himself was part of the forces that defeated the Persians at Salamis and Plataea, just as he had done ten years before when he fought in the Greek victory at Marathon. These victories over the Persians are what triggered this 'flowering period' in Greece.

Within fifty years of the Persian defeat the dream had faded, and before the end of the century Athens, overextended abroad and overconfident at home, lay defeated at the mercy of her enemies, a Spartan garrison posted on the Acropolis and democracy in ruins.

Fagles is presumably alluding to Lysander and his actions here following Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War [for this war, see: Thucydides]. But in 458 BCE, this was yet to come; Aeschylus was sixty-seven years old when he produced The Oresteia. To us, it is a trilogy of three plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides, but it was once a quartet, though the fourth play, Proteus, is lost. Aeschylus referred to his work as '"slices from the banquet of Homer"' and interestingly 'deepened Homer with even older, darker legends and lifted him to a later, more enlightened stage of culture.' Fagles says it 'erupts into a moral struggle never told by Homer'; or, as Nietzsche says of Aeschylean tragedy: "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." It is a story about revenge, but beyond revenge, also justice and the price we pay for it. Can we always justify justice? Fagles claims The Oresteia is 'our rite of passage from savagery to civilisation'.



Agamemnon begins brilliantly with a watchman trying to stay awake as he looks keenly for a signal-fire to say that Troy has fallen.

Dear gods, set me free from all the pain,
from the watch I keep, one whole year awake . . .
propped on my arms, crouched on the roofs of Atreus
like a dog.
I know the stars by heart,
the companies of the night, and there in the lead
the ones that bring us snow or the warm summer,
bring us all we have—
our great kings blazing across the sky,
I know them, when they sink and when they rise . . .
and now I watch for the light, the signal-fire
breaking out of Troy, shouting Troy is taken.
So she commands, full of her high hopes.
That woman—she manoeuvres like a man.

And when I keep to my bed, soaked in dew,
and the thoughts go drifting through the night
and sleep's aide, good dreams . . . not here,
it's the old comrade, terror at my neck.
I mustn't sleep, no—
[Shaking himself awake.]
Look alive, sentry.
And I try to pick out tunes, I hum a little,
a good cure for sleep, and the tears start,
I sob for all that's come to the house. So badly
managed now. Men die and things go down.

Oh for a blessed end to all our pain,
some godsend burning through the dark—
[Light appears slowly in the east; he struggles to his feet and scans it]
I salute you!
You dawn of the darkness, you turn the night to day—
I see the light at last.

What follows is the story of Agamemnon's return. It seems humorous to 'spoil' a play from 458 BCE, but I won't. All I'll say is: if you, like many, disliked Agamemnon in The Iliad, then you will enjoy reading his fate in The Oresteia. It ends, in The Eumenides with an actual trial, seeking justice. (As ever though, the gods like to intervene.)



Aeschylus is the 'father of tragedy' and one of the first few writers I am reading in my new journey through Ancient Greek primary sources. My reading list as it stands is as follows. I have long since read Homer (and studied him), so from there I moved laterally (enough) to Hesiod and then 'down' to Sappho. I jumped ahead slightly with Aeschylus, but I have taken a backwards step now to read Aesop (who was around some one-hundred years before Aeschylus). Some I've already read as indicated below in the timeline list. If anyone knows of any writers between the writers I've listed, please inform me. There seems to be no compiled list of Ancient Greek primary sources (in chronological/historical order) anywhere online, surprisingly, so I am constructing it myself as my knowledge grows.

Homer (read)
Hesiod (read)
Sappho (read)
Aesop (reading)
Aeschylus (reading)
Pindar
Sophocles (read Theban Plays)
Herodotus
Euripides (read Bacchae)
Thucydides (read)
Aristophanes
Xenophon
Plato (read Republic and numerous dialogues)
etc.

[♥Milica♥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soooo when can I see this on stage and why not?

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"... que cidade ou homem poderá venerar a Justiça, se viver sem sombra de medo no seu coração?"

Atreu e Tiestes são irmãos gémeos. Quando Atreu (rei de Micenas) descobre que o irmão é amante da sua mulher, decide vingar-se: mata os filhos de Tiestes e convida-o para um banquete, dando-lhos a comer. Salva-se o mais novo, Egisto.
Atreu é pai de Agamémnon. Durante o tempo em que este esteve ausente, na guerra de Tróia, Egisto torna-se amante da mulher do primo, Clitemnestra, e planeia vingar-se do crime cometido por Atreu, matando Agamémnon.
Antes de partir para Tróia, Agamémnon, sacrifica à deusa Ártemis, a sua filha Ifigénia. Clitemnestra nunca lhe perdoou a morte da filha e alia-se a Egisto na vingança.
No fim da guerra, Agamémnon regressa a casa, acompanhado por Cassandra, princesa de Tróia, e são assassinados por Clitemnestra e Egisto.
Após a morte de Agamémnon, o filho, Orestes, é enviado para casa de um tio de onde regressa anos depois com a incumbência, ordenada por Apolo, de vingar a morte do pai. É ajudado por Electra, que odeia a mãe e nunca lhe perdoou ter assassinado o pai, ansiando por vingança.
Depois de Orestes matar Clitemnestra e Egisto é perseguido pelas Erínias - as vingadoras dos crimes de sangue, neste caso o de matricídio.
Em julgamento, presidido pela deusa Atena, Orestes é absolvido e as Erínias são transformadas em Euménides (Benevolentes) - seres da justiça e não da vingança.

Oresteia são três peças de teatro sobre crime e castigo; vingança e justiça; julgamento e absolvição.
Em Agamémnon é representado o assassinato de Agamémnon e de Cassandra por Clitemnestra e Egisto; em Coéforas a morte de Clitemnestra e de Egisto por Orestes e em Euménides o remorso e o julgamento de Orestes.


(François Perrier - The Sacrifice of Iphigenia)


(Evelyn De Morgan - Cassandra)


(Pierre-Narcisse Guérin - Clytemnestra and Agamemnon)


(John Collier - Clytemnestra)


(William Blake Richmond - Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon)


(Bernardino Mei - Orestes slaying Aegisthus and Clytemnestra)


(John Downman - The Ghost Of Clytemnestra Awakening The Furies)


(Franz Stuck - Orestes And The Erinyes)