The god Prometheus, who in defiance of Zeus has saved mankind and given them fire, is chained to a remote crag as a punishment ordered by the king of the gods. Despite his isolation Prometheus is visited by the ancient god Oceanus, by a chorus of Oceanus’ daughters, by the “cow-headed” Io (another victim of Zeus), and finally by the god Hermes, who vainly demands from Prometheus his knowledge of a secret that could threaten Zeus’s power. After refusing to reveal his secret, Prometheus is cast into the underworld for further torture. The drama of the play lies in the clash between the irresistible power of Zeus and the immovable will of Prometheus, who has been rendered still more stubborn by Io’s misfortunes at the hands of Zeus. The most striking and controversial aspect of the play is its depiction of Zeus as a tyrant. Prometheus himself has proved to be for later ages an archetypal figure of defiance against tyrannical power.

After reading the contents of "Prometheus Bound" I can wholeheartedly recommend anyone read it. This play presents various different real-life and hypothetical dilemmas and important themes while being written almost 2,500 years ago. The play not only provides important dilemmas and themes to consider but also warns of tyrannical rule and presents a situational duality between free will and fate. With modern-day ties linked to protests and dictatorship, this cautionary tale remains relevant to this day. The characters are well-developed, especially Prometheus, whose defiance and suffering inspire sympathy and admiration. The dialogue is poetic and engaging, and the play's structure and pacing build towards a powerful climax. Overall, "Prometheus Bound" is a timeless classic that deserves its place in the canon of Western literature.

An excellent collection of Ancient Greek plays which have stood the test of time. The four plays herein - translated ably by Philip Vellacott - are, along with the three plays of the Oresteia, all that remains of Aeschylus' work.

'Prometheus Bound' is the best, and the reason I picked up this book in the first place. Prometheus' struggle has always been, to my mind, the most compelling of all the Greek myths, but even so I was surprised at just how much depth Aeschylus discovered in the tale. 'Prometheus Bound' is a commentary on tyranny, rationalism, faith, mortality, justice and hubris all rolled into one (in a total of about thirty pages, no less!), with intriguing little suggestions that the story - benevolent Prometheus against the tyrannical Zeus - may not be as clear-cut as is often supposed. I am now even more fascinated by the story of Prometheus than I was going in, and am disappointed that the play's follow-ups, 'Prometheus Unbound' and 'Prometheus the Fire-Bringer', have not survived into modern times.

Having wanted to read just 'Prometheus Bound', the other three plays in the collection turned out to be a nice bonus. All four plays had plenty of poetic turns of phrase and a lofty, yet very human, morality. 'The Suppliants' sees a kingdom take in a group of refugee women who have fled forced marriages, with the king resolving to defy their would-be husbands by force if necessary. 'Seven Against Thebes' tells the story of an assault on the seven-gated city of Thebes, with a brother-vs-brother tragedy that has no small amount of pathos. The final play, 'The Persians', wasn't in my opinion as stellar as the others, but still has enough about it to be worth a read.

All in all, the translated plays were surprisingly accessible (no matter how many ancient classics I read, like The Iliad and The Odyssey, I am somehow always still amazed at just how well they come across) and I feel much more confident about the prospect of reading more Ancient Greek classics going forward. I've always wanted to read Lysistrata by Aristophanes and the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes. Having enjoyed this book so much, I'm probably going to add Aeschylus' Oresteian trilogy to my list too.

Primo approccio con i testi greci antichi, nello specifico qui, le tragedie o come dicono all'origine delle tragedie greche antiche, di Eschilo.
Parliamo di 2500 anni fa circa, dove le opere di Eschilo hanno avuto vita dura, dal 470 a.C. circa, cioè la data in cui sono state scritte, fino al I secolo d.C. sono state soggette a studio da parte dei filosofi dell'epoca, poi il buio fino al XVIII secolo d.C. dove han ripreso vita, ma purtroppo ad oggi ci sono pervenute circa il 7% delle sue opere, quelle qui proposte sono le più conosciute.
Quello che più mi piace e soprattutto mi ispira è la nota mitologica delle avventure di questi testi, quello che invece mi piace meno o che sento meno è la nota tragica, in alcuni troppo accentuata, ma sono delle tragedie, quindi non è che mi potevo aspettare risate a volontà :-D
Delle 4 tragedie, qui presenti, quelle che mi sono piaciute di più sono: Prometeo incatenato ­e Le supplici, soprattutto il primo, forse perchè è il racconto con più connotazione mitologica tra tutte.
Però nel complesso è stata un'ottima rivelazione, anche se la scrittura è molto difficile (non che sia un punto negativo, anzi) e a tratti ho dovuto lasciarlo lì e riprenderlo successivamente o rileggermi pagine intere.
Tutta la parte iniziale, di quest'edizione: l'introduzione, prefazione, spiegazione dei testi con tematiche quali stile letterario, contesto storico ecc..., l'ho trovato fondamentale e molto esaustivo, forse senza non so come sarebbe andata la lettura.
Devo approfondire con altri testi, sia di Eschilo che di altri scrittori greci antichi.

Aeschylus has only seven surviving plays to his name. One of those (Prometheus Unbound) is now heavily disputed to be his. Vellacott's translation is of the four that are not the only full surviving trilogy - the Oresteia - which has entered deep into Western culture in its own right.

Self-evidently the survival of these plays, preceding the work of Sophocles and Euripides, testifies to the regard in which he was held but the lack of his other plays (which may have amounted to 90) and the non-survival of those of his rivals suggests that we are seeing only the tip of an iceberg.

Aeschylus was not the only playwright of his time, his audience would have been demanding under conditions that were semi-sacred as well as popular and the dispute over 'Prometheus Unbound' indicates that others could probably reach high levels of attainment.

Still, Aeschylus was clearly regarded as an innovator who reached heights of rhetoric and drama not achieved before, above all (it is said) introducing characters who related to each other and not just singly with the Chorus.

These four non-Oresteian plays still stand up to scrutiny even if we need guidance in order to think our way into what it must have been like to be presented with performances that were as much a type of free form religious and political experience as theatre, at least as we understand it.

Contemporary fashion tends to favour 'The Persians' both because of its unique references to contemporary events and because the modern mind favours what appears to be a transfer of empathy towards the defeated (the Persians) although I think this has been exaggerated.

My favourite - the one that still moves me - is the heroic war poem-drama 'Seven Against Thebes' which seems to capture the barbarism of city-state conflict prior to the Athenian discovery of 'reason' in all its raw energy just as it introduces us to the civic morality of tragedy.

Its masculinity is overt - there is a remarkable scene where King Eteocles upbraids the Theban women for destabilising the war effort through their inability to restrain their sentiments and their excess of religiosity. it is patriarchal but Eteocles has a strong point here.

This heroic rawness is perhaps what Nietzsche had in mind in condemning what Socratic reasoning was to do to the ability of Greeks to maintain their ability to prosper as 'peak humans'. It is less comfortable for our culture to read than faux-empathy in the propaganda against the Persians.

The other two plays read well in Vellacott's translation but they suffer more from being detached from the other plays in their trilogies. The Oresteia works for us today because it 'unfolds' with a form of thesis and antithesis resulting in a synthesis of more civic moral worth based on reason.

The meaning of Greek tragic drama is too complex an issue to deal with in a brief GoodReads review but the religio-political aspects lie in 'squaring' our nature with social obligation especially when various obligations start to clash. Which is to win out?

In 'Seven Against Thebes' King Eteocles is primarily honour bound to defend his City against raiders brought against it by his estranged brother Polyneices (whose lack of proper burial later will be the cause of another great tragedy by Sophocles in 'Antigone').

However, he is also bound not to spill the blood of his brother. Yet fate has decreed that he must fight him to the death at the seventh gate. The fate is written as part of a set of individual crimes with origins in breaching past taboo afflicting blood lines - the Oresteia is another such example.

In this case, the taboos breached are all those surrounding Oedipus, father of both Eteocles and Polyneices by his own mother Jocasta and compounded by Oedipus' curse on his sons because of their rejection of him. Antigone is going to be just the next stage in a succession of horrors.

Eteocles is actually given a choice by his own advisers, to send another hero against his brother or perhaps switch gates which a King could choose to do but Eteocles will not do this. The heroic lies in not avoiding an impossible moral choice with no good end if it is 'fated'.

Once it has happened that the allocation of the seventh gate is to him and that the raider on that gate is his brother, the tragedy unfolds as inevitable ... not as a choice or a matter of rational calculation but as an 'ill-fated' moral necessity to do an evil thing less evil than another evil thing.

Of course, the audience is seeing him put his City first but the avoidance of choice cannot have gone unnoticed nor its association with the legendary world's heroic barbarism. Tragedy is here truly cathartic, filled with a vicarious death instinct in which life is truly lived.

The fourteen heroes, raiders and Thebans, are all totally disregarding of death, placing honour and glory ahead of a quiet life, much as we have come to expect from Homer. Perhaps the dramatists want all Athenians to be heroes when necessary ... but only when rationally necessary.

In our own day, this brings us back to the legacy of Nietzsche but also to an awareness that just because God is dead does not mean civilisation is dead. Our general cultural incomprehension of Eteocles' decision-making possibly defines the full victory of 'reason' over 'life'.

This play, set alongside the defiance of 'God' in 'Prometheus Unbound' and the brilliant exposition of girlish terror of quasi-incestuous rape and of social obligation in 'The Suppliants', shows a society living in a state of reason performatively exploring questions of sentiment and honour.

We cannot honestly know what a Greek citizen thought of all this but the fact that such plays were far from unusual and highly regarded suggests that an entire society needed 'drama' in some way to 'square' the conflicts within itself and get debate going about right action.

The gods too are 'real' although it is hard to get a fix on how an ancient actually felt about these capricious and often cruel creations. The overwhelming sense is of the gods, under all-father Zeus, maintaining right order in the world where right order was not always that of reason.

If the city was based on reason among men, nature and society or rather natural social relations in family and tribe and in war were not. The gods, who spoke for right order outside men's rules, ruled this world of natural social relations, right behaviour and right ritual.

'Squaring' civil order with the natural order (including the justified sentiments of society and culture prior to the laws) must have been a constant process of civil and personal negotiation. Greek tragedy helped worked out the limits of the game and educate a populace about them.

In 'The Suppliants'. Pelasgus King of Argos explores every 'reasonable' argument why he should not plunge his people into war to save the 'virtue' of 50 distant relatives threatened with rape by their Egyptian cousins.

In the end, he accepts, having realised that a higher law answerable to the Gods requires that he protect the girls, that he must challenge the Egyptians despite the inevitable grim result. His people agree with him. This is community heroism and truly absurd in the existential sense.

The sense we get is of the very real belief in a 'higher law' provided by the Gods (although this means within a framework laid out with strict justice and order by Zeus) whose breach must lead to tragedy often generations later and that reasoning is there to endorse this law not thwart it.

None of this higher law is systematised as in the religions of the book. It is customary and oral - things everybody knows are right but which have to be policed with frequent reminders directed as much at the forgetful as at the young. Community survival is at stake.

Doing the right thing (which is very different from the Judaeo-Christian faith-based 'being good') is not easy. The lesson of the tragedies is that not doing the right thing creates imbalances in the natural order that will be corrected in time - at the expense of your own blood line.

Drama appears later to move more strongly not so much towards expressing the crisis of heroic sentiments and the tragic results of breaching taboo but more heavily towards civic society as the resolution of the crises created by the old way of doing things - but our evidence remains sparse.

Greek Tragedy is complex and multi-layered, not easily analysed or summarised in secular terms, highly suggestive even while laying out its grim facts with crystal clarity. This is a shame and not a guilt culture. One should be shamed for soiling one's own blood line and 'fating' one's children.

Vellacott is an old translation (1961) but highly readable and directed at credible performance. With minimal academic infrastructure, he points out corrupt texts where they matter and provides indications of the sort of metaphor and references relevant to understanding the plays.

The Suppliant Maidens

It’s difficult to read this one in a historical context, without retreating to modern sensibilities. I understand that it’s theorized that the entire trilogy is really about a justification for contemporary marriage laws, and like ‘The Orestia,’ things turn bloody and a deity ends up going to bat for their follower. But reading ‘The Suppliant Maidens’ by itself, without putting it in historical and literary perspective, but within the context of modern headlines, it’s easy to think it’s about women’s rights and immigrants’ rights.
I was perhaps most intrigued by some of the invocations of Zeus. On a few occasions, they referred to him as ‘Zeus Suppliant,’ and once even he’s referred to as ‘Zeus Stranger.’ I hadn’t come across people calling upon him for protection over those states.
I also enjoyed the occasional references to cows and calves. With the daughters’ lineage to Io being a central issue, recurring mentions of the image of a cow added weight to the plot and reinforced the theme.

‘I sing suffering, shrieking,
Shrill and sad am weeping,
My life is dirges
And rich in lamentations,
Mine honor is weeping,
tI invoke your Apian land,
tYou know my foreign tongue.
tOften I tear my Sidonian veils.
We grant gods oblations
Where all is splendid
And death is absent.
O toils undecipherable!
Where lead these billows?
tI invoke your Apian land.
tYou know my foreign tongue.
tOften I tear my Sidonian veils.’
—Lines 111-130

‘Yet subject to men would I never be!
I plot my course under the stars,
An escape from a heartless marriage.
Take as an ally justice.
Choose the side of the gods.’
—Lines 391-396

The Persians

It was difficult for me to incite much interest in this play, despite having more historical material to work through than the previous play. Part of it was, admittedly, a period of about two weeks spent not reading it. But my main issue was that even with some scholarly analysis to help, I never felt like I understood the message of the play. Was Aeschylus trying to invoke sympathy from his audience for their enemies who tried to enslave them? Why would he do that? Did the audience find some sense of pride in watching a play about their enemy’s defeat? I understand also that the play is supposed to be a part of a trilogy, and that much of the message is likely lost with its two other components.

Seven Against Thebes

I think my main issue with this story was a lack of sympathy for the characters. From what I understood of the plot and its background, Eteocles’ problem seemed to be entirely his own fault. If he and Polynices agreed to rule Thebes together, but Eteocles banished Polynices after the first year, then Polynices is entirely justified in returning in force. Family quarrels expanded to the level involving kingdoms and armies is a great premise, but it’s easy to have a conflict in that situation wherein no one is good or evil, and it’s just people’s own weaknesses and selfishness that bring the conflicts (which can still be interesting, in some cases). The grandiose language and ritual-esque structure of the play didn’t bother me, although it did indeed feel out of place compared to Aeschylus’ other works. Moreso than ‘The Persians,’ this play really felt like I was dropped in the middle of a larger story, and that there was action before the play that the reader is simply not privy to.

Prometheus Bound

Once again, this was my second time reading a work by Aeschylus, and once again it was significantly more enjoyable the second time around. My enjoyment came from two factors: 1) a deeper immersion into the ancient Greek mythological world, and 2) having already read Shelley’s ‘Prometheus Unbound.’ Knowing a bit more about Io, and the dynamic contrast between Hesiod’s and Aeschylus’ interpretation of Prometheus both helped me invest into the story a bit more. I appreciated the similarities that Io and Prometheus shared, definitely. When I originally read this, it was in preparation for reading ‘Unbound,’ and most of it was on a long train ride. I was only paying attention to what was physically going on, really. But reading it now, I can see why the Romantics were so drawn to the story, and why Shelley saw it as the perfect canvas to work Humanism into his sequel. Indeed, it’s easy to read this as Prometheus representing the human spirit or ingenuity, displaced by the new King spirituality and mysticism (or superstition, depending on your views). I was also fascinated by the legitimate importance of the role of fire, and Prometheus’ other contributions to the race of man. Scientifically, the use and control of fire is an evolutionary game-changer. Once humans were able to harness this power, their place in the world completely changed (for a fuller explanation of this, check out the documentary ‘The First Man’ on Curiosity Stream). But it was equally enlightening to read this play under the context of the author’s (maybe not Aeschylus?) intent, raising up the image of the noble underdog banished by the new tyrant. The poetry of this play really spoke to me as well, about to the level that the text of the Orestia did. I was particularly drawn to lines like

‘in helping man I brought my troubles on me;
but yet I did not think that with such tortures
I should be wasted on these airy cliffs,
this lonely mountain top, with no one near.’
—Lines 269-272

‘When a match has equal partners
then I fear not: may the eye
inescapable of the mighty
Gods not look on me.
That is a fight that none can fight: a fruitful
source of fruitlessness: I would not
know what I could do: I cannot
see the hope when Zeus is angry
of escaping him.’
—Lines 901-909

The Great Conversation: What does it say?--I think Aeschylus understood that life, faith, and politics are significantly more complicated than any straightforward moralist would like to think. Many of his characters--including the people in 'The Oresteia'--are multi-dimensional, and have made choices that impact other people in ways they hadn't anticipated. An interesting observation on the books I've read so far: while the technical aspects of the writing seem primitive to me, the characters definitely do not. There is no lack of understanding of human nature here; these plays were created thousands of years ago, for contemporary audiences, and so much of what was true about humans then is true now.

Soundtrack:
(The Suppliant Maidens) Lowercase Noises, ‘I Want to Live Again’

This is a review of Prometheus Bound. Reviews of other plays in the same book are found elsewhere (see below)



Peter Paul Rubens


Prometheus, discoursing on his gifts to mankind:

... At first
Mindless, I gave them mind and reason. - What I say
Is not censure of mankind, but showing you
How all my gifts to them were guided by goodwill. -
In those days they had eyes, but sight was meaningless;
Heard sounds, but could not listen; all their length of life
They passed like shapes in dreams, confused and purposeless.
Of brick-built, sun-warmed houses, or of carpentry,
They had no notion; lived in holes, like swarms of ants,
Or deep in sunless caverns; knew no certain way
To mark off winter, or flowery spring, or fruitful summer;
Their every act was without knowledge, till I came.


This play was the first in a trilogy. The others, both lost, were Prometheus Unbound (in which Zeus presented his case for the justness of his punishment of Prometheus) and Prometheus the Fire-Bringer. The translator, Philip Vellacott, in his excellent introduction to the four plays, expresses the view that it is difficult to imagine what material was left to cover in the last play, though it's assumed that somehow a resolution of the cases made by Prometheus and Zeus in the first two plays was concocted.


- - - - - - - - - -



Set the play at the dawn of human existence, or perhaps at a time when Greek "civilization" was thought to have been no more than barbaric, with little use of man's mental faculties. In Greek mythology this was in the time of the Titans. (See below)

Edith Hamilton cautions us, "The Greeks did not believe the gods created the universe. It was the other way about: the universe created the gods. Before there were gods Heaven and Earth had been formed. They were the first parents. The Titans were their first children, and the gods were their grandchildren."

The Titans were sometimes called the Elder Gods, and were supreme in the universe for an untold amount of time. The most important was Cronos, who ruled over the other Titans until his son, Zeus, dethroned him and seized power.

There were other notable Titans: Ocean, the river that encircled the earth; his wife Tethys; Hyperion, the father of the sun, the moon, and the dawn; Mnemosyne, which means Memory; Themis (Justice); and Iapetus, important because of his two sons – Atlas, who bore the world on his shoulders, and Prometheus, who was the savior of mankind. (from Hamilton, Mythology)



So, Prometheus: the savior of mankind. Why did mankind need a savior? Where did men come from?

The human race was created in the time of the Titans. But, says Vellacott,

man was early recognized as a regrettable failure, and kept in a state of wretchedness and total subservience. Force ruled everything; reason and right were unknown. The Titans were a race of gigantic size and strength, and [at least in one version of the myth] no intelligence; until in one of them, Prometheus, emerged rational and moral qualities, ranging from cunning and ingenuity to a love of freedom and justice. The knowledge that the future lay with such intangible principles rather than with brute strength, was a secret possessed by Earth, who imparted it to her son Prometheus. This certainly set Prometheus at the side of Zeus, son of Cronos, in rebellion against his father and the older dynasty; and by Prometheus' help Zeus and the other 'Olympian' gods won the day and thenceforward ruled the universe.

But Prometheus was not only an immortal; he was also a son of Earth, and felt a natural sympathy with the earth's mortal inhabitants. The race which Zeus despised and planned to destroy, Prometheus saw as capable of infinite development. He stole fire from heaven and gave it to them; and he taught them the basic mental and manual skills. In so doing he frustrated Zeus's plan to create a more perfect race… What win our favor for Prometheus is largely the fact that he believed in, and wanted to help, the human race as it is, full of both noble achievement and pitiable squalor, honoring both goodness and wickedness… But though in this play the balance of feeling is in favor of Prometheus, even the sympathetic Chorus rebuke him for pride: and it is clear that Zeus's case has yet to be presented.

the play

Like the other plays in this volume, there are no jumps in time, or changes of setting. Prometheus is present on the stage throughout. The Chorus is present on the stage from the time they enter right up to the end. The other characters enter and leave the stage, presenting the minimal "scene change" that apparently was accepted in early Greek drama.

Here's a synopsis.


- It begins with Prometheus being dragged onto the stage by STRENTH and VIOLENCE (are these minor Titans? children of the Titans? I'm not sure. This may be an example of the fact that many of the relations between non-human beings in Greek mythology are notably ambiguous, even seemingly contradictory from one tale to another.)

At any rate, there really is some action on the stage to open the play. HEPHAESTUS, the god of Fire, follows these three onto the stage. He doesn't really want to be there, because he understands what he is supposed to do. His opening speech establishes Aeschylus' setting for the play:

For you two, Strength and Violence, the command of Zeus
Is now performed. You are released. But how can I
Find heart to lay hands on a god of my own race,
And cruelly clamp him to this better, bleak ravine?
And yet I must; heart or no heart, this I must do.
To slight what Zeus has spoken is a fearful thing.
[to PROMETHEUS] Son of sagacious Themis, god of mountainous thoughts,
With heart as sore as yours I now shall fasten you
In bands of bronze immovable to this desolate peak,
Where you will hear no voice, nor see a human form;
But scorched with the sun's flaming rays your skin will lose
Its bloom of freshness. Glad you will be to see the night
Cloaking the day with her dark spangled robe; and glad
Again when the sun's warmth scatters the frost at dawn.
Each changing hour will bring successive pain to rack
Your body; and no man yet born shall set you free.
Your kindness to the human race has earned you this.
A god who would not bow to the gods' anger – you,
Transgressing right, gave privileges to mortal men.
For that you shall keep watch upon this bitter rock,
Standing upright, unsleeping, never bowed in rest.
And many groans and cries of pain shall come from you,
All useless; for the heart of Zeus is hard to appease.
Power newly won is always harsh.

Hephaestus rivets each of the arms to the rock. He is then commanded by Strength to "drive straight through the chest with all the force you have/the unrelenting fang of the adamantine [unbreakable] wedge." Once this is done, the three leave Prometheus to his misery.

Prometheus cries out,

See with what outrage
Racked and tortured
I am to agonize
For a thousand years!
See this shameful prison
Invented for me
By the new master of the gods!
…
I know exactly every thing
That is to be; no torment will come unforeseen.
My appointed fate I must endure as best I can,
knowing the power of Necessity is irresistible.
Under such suffering, speech and silence are alike
Beyond me. For bestowing gifts upon mankind
I am harnessed in this torturing clamp. For I am he
Who hunted out the source of fire, and stole it, …
And fire has proved
For men a teacher in every art, their grand resource.
That was the sin for which I now pay the full price,
Bared to the winds of heaven, bound and crucified.
…

- The CHORUS now enters in a winged ship and speak to Prometheus at length. They leave the ship, and gather around Prometheus as OCEANUS arrives, seated on a winged four-footed creature. She insists that she feels great friendship toward him, and admonishes him to be less proud, in this new regime in which Zeus has achieved rule over the other gods.

- Next Io enters. This is the longest "scene" in the play. Io, the virgin daughter of the king of Argos, is a fellow victim, indirectly, of Zeus. When Zeus first saw her he desired her. His wife Hera became aware of the attraction before a union had been consummated, and took steps to prevent it by transforming Io into a cow, then set the giant Argus to watch over her. Zeus had Hermes kill Argus, but Hera responded to this by sending a gadfly to torment Io, driving her from place to place all over the known world.

The Chorus asks Io to tell her story, and as she does Prometheus recounts his personal knowledge of Io's travail, and even tells her what will befall her in the future before she finds salvation from the enmity of Hera and the lust of Zeus.

- Finally Prometheus is visited by the last character, Hermes, who has been sent on an errand by Zeus. It seems that Zeus has foreknowledge that a son of his will cause his downfall, and Zeus wants Prometheus to use his powers to reveal to him who the mother of this child will be.

Prometheus mocks Hermes, claiming that he will not share this knowledge with the god who is responsible for his torments. Hermes warns Prometheus, and the Chorus, who seem to defend him, that they'll be sorry for being so pig-headed. Once Hermes leaves, his warning about Zeus' thunder and lightning comes to pass, and Prometheus cries, "Now it is happening; threat gives place to performance. The earth rocks; thunder, echoing from the depth/Roars in answer; fiery lightnings twist and flash… The cataclysm advances visibly upon me, Sent by Zeus to make me afraid.

Oh Earth, my holy mother,
O sky, where sun and moon
Give light to all in turn,
You see how I am wronged!"



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Previous review: Americanah
Next review: Varieties of Disturbance
Older review: The Numbers Game

Previous library review: Seven Against Thebes Aeschylus
Next library review: The Suppliants Aeschylus.

Four for Prometheus Bound, which was excellent and chill-inducing on a level not felt in a long while. I am not sure I love Seth G. Benardete's translation style - choppy and grand. Introductions in this volume were stellar and hugely enriched my enjoyment of the plays, particularly the forewords for Prometheus Bound and The Persians.

Great plays!! I particularly loved "Prometheus Bound"!

Persialaiset ja Seitsemän Teebaa vastaan eivät oikein jaksa innostaa minua, mutta Turvananojat ja Kahlehdittu Prometheus onneksi pelastavat kokoelman, etenkin Prometheus-näytelmä (jonka olen lukenut aiemmin jo englanninnoksena) on aika huippu. Maarit Kaimion suomennokset ja johdannot kullekin näytelmälle selityksineen ovat moitteettomia.

Persialaisten "ongelma" on yksinkertaisesti vain se, että näytelmän aihe (Persian kuninkaan Kserkseen sotaretken epäonnistuminen ja sen aiheuttama suru) ei minua yhtään kiinnosta. Muutenhan näytelmä on kyllä ihan mielenkiintoinen lajinsa edustaja - esim. se on ainut meille säilynyt kreikkalainen tragedia, joka ei käsittele myyttiä vaan historiallista tapahtumaa.

Toisaalta Seitsemän Teebaa vastaan perustuu minua henkkoht kiinnostavaan mytologiseen aiheeseen (Oidipuksen poikien Eteokleen ja Polyneikeen kamppailu Teeban kuninkuudesta), mutta sen käsittely kyseisessä näytelmässä ei minua oikein vakuuta. Suurimmaksi osaksi siksi, että keskeisenä hahmona on misogynistinen Eteokles.

Sen sijaan Turvananojissa keskeisessä roolissa on - sangen epätavallisesti - näytelmän kuoro, joka koostuu Libyan kuninkaan Danaoksen 50 tyttärestä. Naiset anovat turvaa Argoksen kaupungista, sillä he eivät halua mennä naimisiin Egyptin kuninkaan poikien kanssa. Kunpa koko näytelmätrilogia, jonka ensimmäinen osa Turvananojat on, olisi säilynyt!

Myös Prometheus-trilogia olisi mielenkiintoista lukea kokonaisuudessaan - Kahlehdittu Prometheus on sekin trilogian aloittava näytelmä. Se kertoo Prometheuksesta, jota Zeus-ylijumala on rankaissut kauhistuttavalla tavalla kahlitsemalla hänet kallioon rautakiila rinnan lävitse lyötynä. Prometheuksen voi nähdä kapinallisena, joka yrittää taistella yksinvaltiastyrannia vastaan.

Precious each one and delightful. How towering a monument, this Prometheus Bound.

An interesting collection of plays but over all I have mixed feelings about them. Each had some great points to them but I can't help feeling some sort of lackluster thoughts. The plays, by today's and even later classical playwrights standards fell slightly flat. I could not help but think that nothing substantial had happened. I am aware that these plays are one part of a trilogy so I do not grudge Aeschylus or think these are not worth reading, but it did feel like a single act over a complete play. That being said, these plays were still an enjoyable and insightful experience and I feel that this read was time well spent. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in classical tragedy
Out of the 4 plays presented here The suppliants and The Persians were by far my favourites. I found the threat of ritual pollution threatened by the daughters of Danaus and the tricky position the king was put in to be absolutely riveting ideas. The Persians was such a great read. I got what I expected in terms of Athenian boasting but the Persians were surprisingly human. While you felt the pride the Athenians would have felt you also feel the crushing defeat and uncertainty of the Persians. Overall, interesting concepts and executions. Footnotes were minimal and not very useful