To believe that Aeschylus wrote Agamemnon is to trust in continuous human endeavour that has preserved for us the testimony of those who bore witness. This is something that Mary had cottoned on to early in Fraenkel’s class, then in Gilbert Murray’s study atop Boars Hill, and now as a D.Phil. student. She was giving it metaphysical roots in Plotinus’ distinction between existence and reality. The scholar chases down the past through continuous layers of human effort, of copying and reproducing, of retelling and reimagining.
