Aeschylus

Oliver Taplin

The most renowned of Aeschylus' tragedies and one of the foundational texts of Western literature, the Oresteia trilogy is about cycles of deception and brutality within the ruling family of Argos. In Agamemnon, afflicted queen Clytemnestra awaits her husband's return from war to commit a terrible act of retribution for the murder of her daughter. The next two plays, radically retitled here as The Women at the Graveside and Orestes in Athens, deal with the aftermath of the regicide, Orestes' search to avenge his father's death, and the ceaseless torment of the young prince. A powerful discourse on the formation of democracy after a period of violent chaos, The Oresteia has long illuminated the tensions between loyalty to one's family and to the greater community. Now, Oliver Taplin's "vivid and accessible translation" (Victoria Mohl) captures the lyricism of the original, in what is sure to be a classic for generations to come.

Agamemnon, Women at the Graveside, Orestes in Athens

The Oresteia

One of the founding documents of Western culture and the only surviving ancient Greek trilogy, the Oresteia of Aeschylus is one of the great tragedies of all time. The three plays of the Oresteia portray the bloody events that follow the victorious return of King Agamemnon from the Trojan War, at the start of which he had sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia to secure divine favor. After Iphi-geneia’s mother, Clytemnestra, kills her husband in revenge, she in turn is murdered by their son Orestes with his sister Electra’s encouragement. Orestes is pursued by the Furies and put on trial, his fate decided by the goddess Athena. Far more than the story of murder and ven-geance in the royal house of Atreus, the Oresteia serves as a dramatic parable of the evolution of justice and civilization that is still powerful after 2,500 years. The trilogy is presented here in George Thomson’s classic translation, renowned for its fidelity to the rhythms and richness of the original Greek.

Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides

A Reading of 'The Oresteia': The Serpent and The Eagle

aybüke

‘Cry, cry for death, but good win out in glory in the end.’ The ominous refrain beats drum-like through the opening stanzas. What glory can be wrung from so much grief?

 Aeschylus presents our lives not only as a painful series of recognitions but as an initiation into stronger states of consciousness. Perhaps most great tragedy conveys this double thrust of shattering and confirmation. Tragedy is a challenge and a trap, a vehicle for our character and our fate. It was Apollo, as Oedipus tells his friends, who multiplied his pains, ‘but the hand that struck my eyes was mine and mine alone’...

...his tragic spirit of suffering and regeneration.

 The ecstasy of Dionysus became ennobling. He became Olympian; he shared Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. The suffering god was transformed into a saviour, but not in the way of later martyrs who reject this life. Dying into life, into more coherent, vibrant forms of life was the way of Dionysus and his people.

Through Dionysus, in other words, men might be restored, not by escaping their nature but by embracing it, not by expiating their guilt but by exercising it constructively. Here was a father, an authority who challenged us to challenge him. Only by acting out our fantasies against him - by ritualistically dismembering his body and partaking of his strength - could we become ourselves, human, seasoned, strong.

 He is the god who dies, the hunter who is hunted, the render who is rent - but all to be reborn. According to one legend Hera was enraged that Semele had borne the child-god by Zeus; she commanded the Titans to tear him limb from limb and eat him raw. So they did, and Zeus consumed them with lightning and Dionysus with them. But he was restored, and from the Titans’ ashes with their residue of his blood the race of man sprang forth, part Titan and part god, rage and immortal aspiration fused.

They sought escape in the purges of Apollo, a god of self-restraint. They appealed to his opposite, Dionysus, a god of ecstasy who may have promised more. We will never be certain of his nature - what follows is sheer conjecture - but our intimations point to a god of paradox. Dionysus, son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Semele, was born of the earth and yet is always striving for the sky.

... - a people felt themselves in the grip of an angry father-god. His injustice was their fate; his judgement was the measure of their guilt.

The suffering of Atreus and his sons is a very old and yet a very modern matter. They are less removed from us than we might like to  think. They are cursed, their lives are an inherited disease, a miasma that threatens the health of their community and forces them, relentlessly, to commit their fathers’ crimes. It is as if crime were contagious - and perhaps it is - the dead pursued the living for revenge, and revenge could only breed more guilt.

Ceej Manaloto

Black and white and everything in between!

Would've loved to have witnessed Aeschylus' plays (esp this) at firsthand.

First performed in 458BC, Aeschylus's trilogy of plays - known collectively as The Oresteia - remains perhaps the great masterpiece of Ancient tragic drama. Telling the bloody story of the House of Atreus, Aeschylus's tragedy stages an eternal debate about justice and revenge that remains relevant more than two millenia later. Now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series in this classic and authoritative translation by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, this book contains the text of all three plays - Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides - with extensive scholarly annotation throughout.

Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides

Zeke Taylor

vera

reread (220622)  /  how do you even rate greek tragedies? simply, you don't, so i will not (five stars in my heart). anyway, the oresteia: what did i just read and why does it resonate with me so much? do we ever have a choice in our fates or are they really so predetermined? if my father's father is cursed, what does that mean for my own bloodline? are we able to make our own choices or do we live as the gods demand us to? thinking of u, aeschylus. 

Euripides

Sophocles

A Bold, Iconoclastic New Look at One of the Great Works of Greek Tragedy In this innovative rendition of The Oresteia, the poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson combines three different visions—Aischylos' Agamemnon, Sophokles' Elektra, and Euripides' Orestes—giving birth to a wholly new experience of the classic Greek triumvirate of vengeance. After the murder of her daughter Iphegenia by her husband Agamemnon, Klytaimestra exacts a mother's revenge, murdering Agamemnon and his mistress, Kassandra. Displeased with Klytaimestra's actions, Apollo calls on her son, Orestes, to avenge his father's death with the help of his sister Elektra. In the end, Orestes, driven mad by the Furies for his bloody betrayal of family, and Elektra are condemned to death by the people of Argos, and must justify their actions—signaling a call to change in society, a shift from the capricious governing of the gods to the rule of manmade law. Carson's accomplished rendering combines elements of contemporary vernacular with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy, opening up the plays to a modern audience. In addition to its accessibility, the wit and dazzling morbidity of her prose sheds new light on the saga for scholars. Anne Carson's Oresteia is a watershed translation, a death-dance of vengeance and passion not to be missed.

Agamemnon by Aiskhylos; Elektra by Sophokles; Orestes by Euripides

An Oresteia

madina

my ENAMOR...something with this play gradually lessened each play because damn that agamemnon translation will never top any of the other two. i will forever remember poor kassandra, ugh, im so.

"Where I come from people say bad shit
happening
when they mean death.
Another quaint barbarian idiom is real bad
shit happenin--
that covers blood on the floors
and a houseful of swords."

The Oresteia Agamemnon, Women at the Graveside, Orestes in Athens

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