On the surface the Oresteian trilogy appears to be a dramatization of what happened to Agamemnon and his family. Dig a little deeper and the reader may find a dramatization of newer ways of being trumping the old ways.

Generational Changes.

The Oresteian trilogy reveals the dictomy between worldviews
1. Of the gods. The old and the new. According to legend, the old ones were killed or subdued by the new ones. The Fates are among the old ones. Apollo and Athene are among the new ones. A court scene allows the old and new to come to terms with each other.

2. Of the humans. The older and the younger. The older generation provides retribution for murder. The younger wants the retribution to stop. Apollo and Athene of the new gods come to help the younger human generation represented by Orestes.
__________

How the three plays work as a whole.
__________

In the first play Agamemnon, Clytemnestra has calculated how to make Agamemnon pay for his killing their daughter Iphigenia, a payment for fair winds as Agamemnon and the Achaeans leave for Troy. While performing the ritual bathing service, Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon. Then she kills Cassandra, the concubine of Agamemnon.

In the second play The Libation Bearers, Orestes struggles with the decision to kill Clytemmestra or not. The Furies warn Orestes that his killing Clytemnestra for revenge will cause him to be killed in retribution. Apollo assures Orestes of protection against the Furies and of the family curse of murder and retribution to end with Orestes. Orestes decides to trust Apollo. Together Electra and Orestes make a plan. Orestes kills Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.

In the third play, Orestes' case is tried. Will Orestes be chased by the Firies all the days of his life or will Apollo be allowed to protect Orestes for as long as he lives? Clytemenstra's Ghost shows up, demanding that the gods provide retribution for her death by murder. Athene agrees to hear the arguments of the Furies and of Apollo. This play gives Athene an opportunity to shine with the light of Wisdom. She decides how to resolve the argument with Apollo, the Furies, and Orestes happy with the judgment. The new gods have won more power. Orestes is free of the Furies. The Furies accept their loss with amazing amount of grace. A little unbelievable, but acceptable because the new gods must win and further overshadow the old gods. Athene institutes a new way of resolving arguments.
________

Rhetorical Comments.

The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides seems to have been written at the very dawn of formal rhetorical practice. Rhetoric has commonplaces-- when this happens, do this/say that. In this trilogy, we see that when this happens--a dispute, Athene does this--calls a jury--and says that--asks questions and asks for judgment. She has a form or process to follow. Resolution of of disputes led to the earliest practice of rhetoric. Perhaps in Eumenides in the Oresteian trilogy we see the first courtroom play.

Read in preparation of reading Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill.

The Oresteia by Aeschylus (translator: David Mulroy) made Aeschylus’s The Oresteia an easy work to read. Though I did stop and pause when the lyricism of the line grated against the earthy descriptions of violence. At one time this would have stunned me, but now I am able to reason that this is a feature of these works.

The Oresteia is a trilogy of a dysfunctional ruling family, where several murders are committed in the name of justice. The verdict of this trial I thought was bittersweet. On the one hand it puts an end to the cycle of murders, but how it reaches its conclusion negates the mother’s role.



I liked reading Mulroy’s translation more than listening to the BBC’s adaptation of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia. Here, the world, with its motive behind the series of murders made more sense.

This edition comes with notes which include a short biography of Aeschylus, and presents an argument of why the last part should be renamed from Eumenides to The Holy Goddesses. Every page is also annotated, and I noted how different it is reading a play in physical format, for an explanation I had to just look at the bottom of a page. On Kindle the annotation is a link, this takes me to another screen.

But what really won me over of this edition is the poetry, for me it’s 5 stars, especially the parts of the chorus. These extracts I would come back to and read again. For the drama, for me it’s 3 stars, beneath the poetry, the pacing in the last two parts are slowed down by repetition. I appreciate this was the style back in Aeschylus’s time but it was hard to not see this as the plot stagnating. The notes in this edition I would give 4 stars because they were sufficient to give me the context to enjoy this read.

The Oresteia, written in the 5th century BCE, was a Greek tragedy written in three parts by Aeschylus. The trilogy includes the plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides. The Oresteia remains the only complete trilogy of Greek drama that has survived from antiquity.

Agamemnon
Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, for favorable winds and then sailed for Troy. For nine years Queen Clytemnestra waited for her husband’s return, remembering all. One night a beacon appears in the sky, signaling victory over Troy. Soon the daughter of King Priam of Troy and Agamemnon’s war prize, Cassandra, accompanies Agamemnon home. To avenge her daughter’s murder, Clytemnestra stabs Agamemnon and Cassandra.
CLYTEMNESTRA:
So it stands, elders of Argos gathered here.
Rejoice if you can rejoice- I glory.
And if I'd pour upon his body the libation it deserves, what wine could match my words?
It is right and more than right. He flooded the vessel of our proud house with misery, with the vintage of the curse and now he drains the dregs. My lord is home at last.

The Mycenaeans curse Clytemnestra.
CHORUS:
Woman! - what poison cropped from the soil or strained from the heaving sea,
what nursed you, drove you insane….
You have cut away and flung away and now the people cast you off to exile, broken with our hate.

The Leader of the elders of Mycenae reminds all who are present that Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, lives and he will avenge his father’s death.
LEADER:
Orestes-
If he still sees the light of day, bring him home, good Fates….Our champion in slaughter!


The Libation Bearers
With the approval of Apollo, Orestes arrives to avenge his father’s death.
CHORUS:
…And for all you love under earth
and all above its rim, now scarf your eyes against the Gorgon's fury-
In, go in for the slaughter now!
The butcher comes. Wipe out death with death.

Orestes kills his mother’s lover and then confronts her.
CLYTEMNESTRA:
Hand me the man-axe, someone, hurry!
Now we will see. Win all or lose all,
we have come to this- the crisis of our lives.
ORESTES:
It's you I want….

The Furies torment Orestes for the murder of his mother and he flees.
ORESTES:
No, no! Women- look- like Gorgons, shrouded in black,
their heads wreathed, swarming serpent….
No dreams, these torments,
not to me, they're clear, real- the hounds of mother's hate….
You can't see them
I can, they drive me on! I must move on-


The Eumenides
Orestes arrives at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, tormented by the Furies. Apollo appears, fights off the Furies and rebukes their Leader.
LEADER:
You commanded the guest to kill his mother.
APOLLO:
- Commanded him to avenge his father, what of it….
And what of the wife who strikes her husband down?
LEADER:
That murder would not destroy one's flesh and blood.

Matricide, explains the Furies, the reason they punished Orestes. He killed his mother, a blood relative, unlike Clytemnestra who merely killed her husband. Athena arrives and the Furies state their case against Orestes. They will allow Athena to judge the merits of their case against him.
ATHENA:
You would turn over responsibility to me, to reach the final verdict?
LEADER:
Certainly.
We respect you. You show us respect.

Athena choses not to judge the case herself but selects ten citizens, Judges, who will cast a vote each to decide the case. As a witness for Orestes, Apollo makes the argument that men alone have claims on their children because they provide the seed while women simply carry the growing fetus. To bolster his case, Apollo points to Athena, who sprung fully formed from Zeus. The ten Judges cast their votes and Athena casts hers for Orestes. The votes are counted, there was a tie, and Orestes wins the case. Athena quickly tries to appease the Furies’ anger. She promises the Furies a home in Athens and the new responsibility, changing their previous black robes to reddish-purple ones, of guarding its citizens.




From The Magus by John Fowles-
“To begin with there was something pleasantly absurd about teaching in a boarding school (run on supposedly Eton-Harrow lines) only a look north from where Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon.”


From Vanishing Point by David Markson-
“Karl Marx reread the Oresteia once every year.”

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!

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...

"... 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)

Un antico proverbio è diffuso tra gli uomini, che la felicità dei mortali, raggiunto il suo culmine, partorisce, non muore sterile: dalla fortuna germoglia alla stirpe dolore insaziabile.



Chiunque è incline a piangere con l'infelice; ma il morso del dolore non gli penetra fino nell'infinito; così, per mostrare di gioire con chi è felice, sforza il suo volto che fa resistenza al sorriso.

Era costumbre en la Antigua Grecia que cada autor trágico presentase tres obras a concurso en los festivales en honor a Dioniso. La Orestíada (compuesta por las obras Agamenón, Las coéforas y Las Euménides), de Esquilo, es la única trilogía que ha pervivido hasta nosotros.
tLa guerra de Troya ha terminado. Sin embargo, el regreso a casa de los vencedores griegos dista mucho de ser triunfal. Agamenón, el caudillo que ha encabezado la flota expedicionaria, vuelve a Micenas únicamente para ser asesinado por su esposa, Clitemnestra, en venganza por el sacrificio de su hija Ifigenia. Después, Orestes, el hijo de ambos, decide hacer justicia alentado por Apolo, y mata fríamente a su propia madre. Pero el asesinato de Clitemnestra no queda impune, y las Erinias, deidades de la antigua justicia, persiguen a Orestes por su crimen. Finalmente, la cadena de muerte y venganza se rompe cuando el Areópago, tribunal de Atenas presidido por Atenea, decide absolver a Orestes.
tMás allá de la sublimidad trágica de los propios textos de Esquilo, la Orestíada simboliza el paso del mundo antiguo al nuevo, de la justicia homérica de los héroes, basada en la venganza y el ojo por ojo, a la sociedad racional de Atenas, basada en los tribunales imparciales del Areópago. La Grecia tribal ha quedado atrás, y la edad de oro de la democracia se abre paso.
tLa representación de estas tres tragedias en un ciclo único en los teatros atenienses debió ser un espectáculo sin parangón. Su lectura, más de dos mil quinientos años después de su concepción, supone una de las experiencias literarias más gratificantes que he tenido la oportunidad de disfrutar.

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.

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.

At the beginning of the fifth century, it was customary for each of the tragedians competing at the festival of Dionysus to present a trilogy of three plays on a related theme, followed by a satyr-play. The Oresteia is the only surviving example of a Greek tragic trilogy, so it has immense importance in the history of drama.

Each of the plays is self-contained; however, the endings of the first two plays transition naturally into the following plays. Each play has its own chorus and an almost separate cast of characters, but the trilogy is united by the basis of the plots and the cycle of legends. There are also underlying themes which continue throughout the cycle of plays and reach their full resolution at the conclusion of The Eumenides.

The main idea of The Oresteia is that injustice and the blood-feud must be eliminated if society is to attain a high level of social organization, which can only be achieved through the introduction of public morality and civic legal processes. The city of Athens, whose patron goddess is the spirit of wisdom, is exalted as the model which men should emulate.

The Oresteia focuses on the legend of the family of Atreus as raw material for examination of different aspects of the theme such as questions about the nature of justice, methods of establishing and maintaining justice, the relationship of justice to vengeance, mercy, the gods, fate, and the social order. It also deals with the related theories that wisdom can be learned only through experience and suffering, that one crime invariably leads to another if the criminal is not punished, that blood, once shed, can never be truly atoned for, and that authority is the foundation of civilization.

After reading Homer, Aeschylus is a logical next step and truly engrossing. Aeschylus's plays hold age-old truths and pose questions about man and his quest for vengeance or justice that ring true today.

When the Oresteia trilogy begins, Troy has been reduced to ashes and Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, returns home victorious. The Oresteia is just a small portion of the family history of the cursed House of Atreus. The trilogy begins with Agamemnon's murder and the rest deals with its consequences, but in truth the previous events of Greek mythology are very much simmering in the background. Beginning with Tantalus killing his own son and feeding him to the gods (who, apart from the distracted Demeter, thankfully knew what was on their plates and declined the meal), the family line is from there on tainted with adultery, betrayal, murder, more cannibalism, boastfulness, arrogance etc.

There are several retellings of the main events of Greek mythology, and in some versions Aegisthus is Agamemnon's killer. In Aeschylus's play, what drives Clytemnestra to kill her husband is the blind need to revenge the death of their daughter Iphigenia. Because Agamemnon had previously angered Artemis with his own haughty idiocy, Artemis tried to stop the Greeks from going to Troy, and the only way to get the fleet sailing was to sacrifice Iphigenia (who, surprisingly, had no problems with being killed). Knowing that Clytemnestra is unaware of Artemis switching Iphigenia with a deer, and that she secretly lives elsewhere as the goddess's priestess, gives the story another level of tragedy.

Although Iphigenia's death was considered a necessary act to appease Artemis, it's no wonder that Clytemnestra's motherly love turns into cold hate when she thinks she's been the victim of a heinous betrayal. She's described as being a steel-hearted bitch, who thinks like a man and wraps her victims in her trap. When she's accused of being hysterical like a woman, she calmly denies it and is happy to have driven murder, madness, and grudge out of her house.

While Clytemnestra's perverted and illogical sense of justice is obviously wrong, Aeschylus's portrayal of her isn't black and white or one-dimensional. In Agamemnon's absence, Clytemnestra had started an affair with Aegisthus (who's after the throne he believes belongs to him), but it remains unclear whether Aegisthus truly loves her and Clytemnestra was an independent agent in starting the relationship, or if she's just a victim of another unscrupulous man.

Clytemnestra is also shown as the prototype of an ultimate femme fatale. She's hated not because she murders someone, but because she dares to strike a powerful man down, who is respected by his enemies and is considered as the head of the household. Agamemnon's home is his castle, but the cunning and insolent Clytemnestra smears it with blood, spews hatred out of her snake-like mouth, and uses her sexuality to get what she wants. She willfully abandons her position as the keeper of the hearth and the dutiful wife and mother (and this, ladies and gentlemen, Orestes considers a worse crime than Aegisthus's, who "only" plotted with Clytemnestra to seize the throne from Agamemnon and would probably have eventually killed the legitimate heir Orestes as a threat!).

If Clytemnestra had sought justice for her daughter, would she have gotten it? In her twisted head full of grief, the murder might have been the only way out she saw, the only way to avenge her daughter's supposed murder. The grudge just kept on growing, while she was forced to patiently wait for her husband from the war (despite having someone to warm her bed, which admittedly was probably a fun distraction). A husband who further disrespected her by bringing the prophetess Cassandra with him, intending to keep her as his concubine.

Interestingly, Clytemnestra's sister, Helen of Troy, is portrayed as almost equally treacherous woman, who might not have killed anyone with her own hands, but she's perceived as having deliberately caused the Trojan War. Instead of being the pawn of goddesses or the victim of Paris's rape/abduction like in other retellings, here she's referred to as a whore. Paris, who willingly took Helen to Troy despite the fact that he must have known the consequences, is apparently just a poor wet rag without a will of his own, and who allowed himself to be seduced by Helen's feminine wiles.

Further on in the trilogy, Agamemnon's and Clytemnestra's son Orestes returns home from exile, and the tone changes. Although I prefer the feverish madness and the atmosphere of pending doom of the first part of the trilogy, the presence of gods keeps the second half almost as interesting. The argument about whether Orestes deserves punishment for what he did to avenge his father's death ends in voting. It's a great demonstration of how gods were a major part in deciding the fate of humans and in punishing those who upset the peace, but also how gods aren't perfect and often get into disagreements.

Orestes ends up being chased by the spooky Furies hungry for punishment (I'd love to see on stage the scene when they frst appear, because that's some real gothic eeriness right there), although Apollo and Orestes's sister Electra sided with Orestes and goaded him into his act. This disagreement is the highlight of the second half, although Apollo's reasoning is ridiculous: a mother is not the parent, just a carrier of the seed of the father, so it's ok to kill your mother, if she killed the head of the household! (asswipe...). In tradition of Greek tragedies, Oresteia ends hopefully, and a new legal system is established, one that moves away from revenge towards fair trials. We're left with the echo of the always relevant issue: good thoughts breed kindness, but hatred and arrogance spawn misery and bloodbaths.

Note: Since Oresteia is rife with metaphors and references to Greek mythology, it's a good idea to invest in an edition with good footnotes, appendixes, an introduction, and whatever else makes the reading easier. I was lucky to have read an excellent Finnish translation, that was modern enough to make it easy to understand, but not too much to take away from the beautiful lyricism of the text.

Note 2: Pierre-Narcisse Guérin's n  Murder of Agamemnonn has been one of my favorite paintings ever since I saw it in Louvre in 2007. The smouldering colours and the look of rage in Clytemnestra's eyes are just breathtaking, and can never be reproduced in a mere photo of the work.