The Oresteia is the only surviving trilogy of plays from Ancient Greece, and it is a perfection of the dramatic form. Aeschylus invented tragedy. The Oresteia’s plot is a precursor to Macbeth, but also a parable of civilization; the play's movement mirrors the emergence of rationalism from the chthonic mists of superstition. It is densely symbolic. The meaning of symbols evolve, with psychological significance emerging from mystical primitivism, as the play’s movement simulates the opening of the Apollonian eye of Western civilization.

The Oresteia exemplifies why the early psychoanalysts found Greek myth so fascinating and rich in symbolic meaning; a key with which to unlock the collective unconscious. I was reminded of Freud’s musings in The Interpretation of Dreams. In the Libation Bearers, dreams take on a prophetic function that was once the realm of the oracles. I began having vivid nightmares while reading The Oresteia, and found myself pondering the symbols of my subconscious, under Aeschylus’ spell.

Aeschylus uses Homer as a jumping off point, fleshing out the tale Agamemnon's shade in the underworld told to Odysseus of his murder by his wife, Clyteaemnestra. What results from this premise is a magnificent humanization of Greek myth, and a philosophical exploration of the meaning of justice. Agamemnon's murder was determined by the threads of Fate, as was Orestes' vengeful matricide decreed by Apollo, but this cycle doesn't have to continue. Aeschylus predicts Locke's idea that each man's right to punish a criminal who offends against all mankind must be given up to the higher power of an impartial judiciary, and gives it dramatic form (likewise, he predicts Aristotle's principle of the Golden Mean). When Orestes flees the Furies, who symbolize this ancient form of mob justice, to the shrine of Athena, the goddess establishes Athen's judicial process. This is the culmination of the theme of ancestral guilt, which is not absolved, but judged fairly and democratically. The invention of Athenian democracy is here given artistic embodiment.

There are so many other aspects to this play that I could expand on; its terrifying characters, its sophisticated use of dramatic irony, and its use of the chorus not just for narration but as characters of their own, in a way I've not seen surpassed, but I think I will leave it at that for now.

The Oresteia is a real masterpiece. It's the kind of work you could spend a lifetime rereading, which I look forward to doing. I will likely update this review with more thoughts as future readings reveal more meaning.

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.

Uhvatih se u koštac sa Atrejevcima, ali sam krenuo od kraja – od Euripidove Ifigenije na Tauridi i Ifigenije u Aulidi, tako da je valjalo vratiti se unazad na načalo da zaokružim sagu o deci Agamemnonovoj. Euripid prikazuje završnicu u „Ifigenijama“ kojoj prethodi Elektra, čime objedinjuje sudbine dveju sestara. Kroz njih provlači i sudbinu brata im Oresta. Ali, sam koren ide mnogo pre Euripida – kod Eshila. On u trilogiji „Orestija“ („Agamemnon“ + „Žrtve na grobu“ + „Eumenide“) objedinjuje tragični usud dece Atrejeve i njihovih žena i potomaka.

Za razliku od Euripida koji mi je maestralni pesnik koji naglašava u versama psihološki naboj određenog lika i objašnjava okruženje i razloge te patnje, sve obavijeno lakim mitološkim miljeom kao začinom, Eshilov stil je drugačiji. On je u stanju da plete beskonačne vitice koje neki lik izgovara i čini se nekad da će taj monolog beskonačno da traje dok ne revidira i ne izgovori znanje vaskoliko o datoj temi. To poprilično ume da me umori. Čini se da je akcenat više na samom pričanju nego na onome što se pričanjem donosi, mada ne bih to, ipak, ograničavao na tako uzak pogled.

Agamemnon mi se najviše dopao, jer je tragični naboj možda na vrhuncu i Eshilovi beskonačni monolozi nekako imaju smisao, jer revidira prokletstvo Agamemnonovog oca koje se prenosi i na njega i brata mu Menelaja (kod Tolkina je slična pojava u sagi o deci Hurinovoj) i prikazuje patnju supruge mu Klitemnestre, koja smatra da mora da ga smrću kazni što je na oltar Artemidi priložio kćer im Ifigeniju kao žrtvu, kako bi se njegova jedra iz Argosa napela i otišao u Troju u rat. Ne znajući pravu istinu o Ifigeniji, Klitemnestra ubija muža sekirom u kadi. I to je najupečatljiviji momenat. Orest se smatra pozvanim, i od Apolona dobija odobrenje da zbog toga majci svojoj oduzme život.

Očekivao sam da će u Žrtvi na grobu biti više eshatoloških elemenata, te da će podrobnije da opiše obrede žrtvovanja htonskim božanstvima, ali osim beskonačnih monologa i oklevanja, nije bilo ničeg upečatljivijeg.

Iste su mi nade bile i u Eumenidama. Tu, doduše, svojstvo naratora izmešta na neki način sa hora, dodeljujući mu da bude neovaploćeni glas Furija koje progone Oresta zbog njegovog dela. Ponovo nema toliko upliva htonskih elemenata, i Eshil sada pravi sudnicu, na kojoj je osuđeni Feb-Apolon, a njegov branilac Atina, koje Furije smatraju saučesnicima u tom zlodelu. Završnica je potpuna eukatastrofa i fantastičan je Atinin gest da Furijama dodeli svetilište koje, kao božanstva starijeg reda, nisu nikada imale, te od besnih Srda one postaju Eumenide – milosnice.

ماجرا چیست؟
پاریس، شاهزادۀ زیبای تروا، حق نمک میزبان را به‌جای نمی‌آورد و از سرزمین آخایی (یونان)، هلن، همسر زیبای منلائوس، برادرِ فرمانروای یونان، آگاممنون را اغوا می‌کند و با خود به تروا می‌آورد. آگاممنون با هزاران کشتی به سمت تروا لشکر می‌کشد، اما در میانه گرفتار طوفان می‌شود و در دریاها سرگردان. ندایی غیبی به او می‌رسد که چارۀ کار، قربانی کردن دخترش برای پوزئیدون، خدای دریاها است. او این کار را می‌کند و اینگونه دریاها را رام می‌کند؛ اما خشم همسرش کلوتایمنسترا را که در یونان به جای او فرمانروایی می‌کند برمی‌انگیزد. آگاممنون، پس از ده سال، پیروز از تروا بازگشته است؛ اما کلوتایمنسترا که در غیاب همسرش، آیگیستوس، پسرعموی آگاممنون و دشمن خونی او را به بستر خود راه داده است، قربانی شدن دخترش را فراموش نکرده است و سودای قتل شوهر و ستاندن انتقام دخترش را در سر می‌پروراند. نمایشنامۀ اول، «آگاممنون» از برگشتن آگاممنون از تروا آغاز می‌گردد. کلوتایمنسترا به‌خوبی نقش همسری وفادار را بازی می‌کند؛ اما در سکوت و ترسی که وفاداران آگاممنون را فراگرفته است (درحالی که از ماجرای خیانت زن مطلع هستند) در حمام، آگاممنون را به قتل می‌رساند و خود با آیگیستوس دورانی شوم را در یونان آغاز می‌کنند. موضوع نمایش دوم، انتقام گرفتن پسر آگاممنون است از مادر خود و آیگیستوس. پسر که به‌جهت دورماندن از انتقام های خانوادگی به سرزمینی دور کوچانده شده است، با کمک دوست خود و خواهرش، الکترا و البته با حمایت و تشویق «آپولون»، پسر زئوس و خدای عدالت، انتقام پدر را می‌گیرد. نمایش سوم، «الاهگان انتقام» ماجرای دادگاه پسر آگاممنون در پیشگاه خدایان و الاهگان است. الاهگان انتقام که بسیار زشت‌رو هستند و موهایشان از ماران است، هرجا قتلی خانوادگی اتفاق بیفتد، قاتل را دنبال می‌کنند تا انتقام مقتول را بستانند. این قانونی کهن نزد خدایان است. پسر از معبد آپولون گریخته و به معبد «آتنا»، دختر زئوس و الاهۀ خرد پناه می‌آورد. درحالی که الاهگان انتقام درپی اجرای عدالت هستند، آپولون به‌شدت از پسر دفاع می‌کند و او را بی‌گناهی می‌داند که انتقام پدر خود را گرفته است. درنهایت داوری را نزد آتنا می‌برند. آتنا، از سویی نمی‌تواند پسر را به جرم بزرگ کشتن مادر بی‌گناه بپندارد و ازطرفی به دلیل اینکه انتقام پدرش را ستانده مستوجب عقاب نمی‌داند. آتنا، در نهایت تصمیم می‌گیرد برای اولین بار، در داوری از خود انسان‌ها کمک بگیرد و به‌این ترتیب رسمی نو در می‌اندازد. این امر بر الاهگان انتقام که خدایانی قدیمی‌تر از آتنا و آپولون هستند گران می‌اید؛ چراکه رسمی کهن را برمی‌اندزاد. در این دادگاه که قاضیانش بزرگان یونان هستند، پسر بی گناه شناخته می‌شود و بر سرزمین اخایی فرمانروایی می‌کند.
تفسیر من
به نظر من این سه گانۀ آیسخولوس، پدر تراژدی یونان، روایت متمدن شدن اهالی یونان و آغاز حاکمیت خرد بر آن سرزمین است. این امر در تصمیم آتنا در دخالت انسان‌ها در امر قضاوت نمادین شده است. یونانیان که تا پیش از این چیزی نبودند مگر عروسک های خیمه‌شب‌بازی خدایان متعدد و گناه و بی‌گناهی آنان بستۀ هوس آنان بود، حال می‌توانند خود بر بی‌گناهی یا گناهکاری یک متهم حکم صادر کنند و این یعنی حاکمیت خرد بشری به‌جای حاکمیت ارادۀ خدایان. و بیهوده نیست که آتنا این تصمیم خطیر را می‌گیرد؛ چراکه او الهۀ «خرد» است و از نسل جدید خدایان که رسم پدران خود را منسوخ می‌کند و حرمت گزار خرد انسانی می‌گردد. از آن پس انسان بر انسان داوری خواهد کرد و مجلسی از بزرگان برای شهر تصمیم میگیرند؛ نه یک تن و نه تنها خدایان. هرچه در «ایلیاد» و «اودیسه» با تجلی ارادۀ خدایان بر انسان‌ها روبرو هستیم، در اینجا برعکس، با روند مدنیت و در مرکزقرارگیری انسان روبرو هستیم. ازسوی دیگر، دادگاه پسر آگاممنون و حکم انسانها بر بی گناهی وی، خط پایانی است بر رشتۀ طولانی انتقام‌های خانوادگی که از سر رسمی کهن قرن‌ها است در سرزمین یونان حاکم بوده است. حال این قانون و دادگاه است که مجرم را مجازات می‌کند و نه انتقام شخصی. مسئلۀ جرم دیگر شخصی نیست؛ بلکه عمومی است و همه باید برای آن تصمیم بگیرند. واز این منظر نیز این سه‌گانه حرکت به‌سمت تمدن و حاکمیت قانون در سرزمین یونان است.
عبدالله کوثری
شک ندارم که این اثر، یکی از شاهکارهای ترجمۀ این مترجم توانمند است. نثر آهنگین و گاه قافیه‌داری که او در ترجمۀ این سه‌گانه بدان دست‌یافته آنقدر طبیعی و روان جریان یافته است که خواندن را نه‌تنها دچار هیچ سکته و توقفی نمی‌کند، بلکه طعمی از آهنگ و وزن این آثار منظوم کهن را به خواننده می‌چشاند. کوثری در آهنگین و موزون کردن متن راه افراط نپیموده و هرگز طبیعی بودن کلام را فدای موسیقی کلام نکرده است؛ بلکه توانسته بر لبۀ تیغ راه برود و این از مترجمی چون او برمی‌آید و بس.

This trilogy is absolutely brilliant and a must read because it marks the origins of Western democracy and its patriarchal and patrilineal aspects and it is ever relevant. Especially today. Also, the prof who did this with us is also absolutely brilliant and attending her lectures on this text felt like receiving revelation, I'm not even exaggerating.

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.

I actually read this twice. Back-to-back in the style of Mortimer Adler. The first time through I read it with only some of the initial commentary of the translator. Additionally, I had some background provided by a Great Courses lecture. The second time through I read along with the translator's entire commentary. I would have enjoyed the trilogy very much without the second reading but it was with the second reading that I developed a real appreciation for the work.

Mind you, I'm a skeptic when it comes to literary analysis. As someone who has put words on a page in an attempt to create something meaningful, I understand that sometimes a writer chooses words for no more compelling reason than she is hungry and wants to get up to get a snack. I always imagine that literary analysts are arguing over the meaning of word choices and metaphors that were chosen because Aeschylus was in a hurry to finish a thought before he tucked into his hummus and pita chips. "Let's do that nets and robes thing again. Throw an eagle in there. People love eagles. Jayzus, I'm so sick of this play already. I'm starving. Why did I pick this career? I hate myself. I'm never going to have this finished for the Dionysian revels."

But I did cherry pick the translator's thoughts for insight and gave more weight to his ideas than mine given that he is a noted scholar of Ancient Greece and I'm a stay-at-home-mom who has read more issues of People magazine than I care to enumerate here.

More than a few traces of Shakespeare in here, by the way. Some lines just shamelessly lifted, if you ask me. Which you shouldn't. See above.

*Edit - That makes it sound like Aeschylus lifted from Shakespeare. I'm not quite THAT stupid. But I understand if you thought so. I did, naturally, intend to suggest that Shakespeare (if that IS his real name) bogarted some lines from Aeschylus.

Aeschylus' prose certainly deserves five stars, so dense and moving. Even though his primary focus in Oresteia was ethics, justice, crime/punishment, and changes in social order, the subjective emotions and psychologies of characters are conveyed powerfully. Orestes is not really "heroic" in a Homeric sense, but he presents a less egoistic and more god-fearing type of man in a tormenting pursuit of righteousness. The Oresteia combines both tragic and comic elements, and presents both optimism and pessimism towards justice and morality. I give it four stars only because the ending is a bit too quick and not completely satisfying, especially considering how amazing the opening of the watchman scene is.

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.

Não é preciso acreditar nos antigos deuses gregos para apreciar o valor e as lições dos mitos.

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.

38. The Oresteian Trilogy: Agamemnon; The Choephori; The Eumenides by Aeschylus, translated by Philip Vellacott
first performed: 458 bce
format: 197 page paperback - 1965 Penguin classics
acquired: 2006, from my neighbor
read: June 9-10, 17-22
rating: 3½ stars

The story of Orestes is told in The Odyssey, where he comes across as a hero of a tragedy, and a role model for young princes. Agamemnon, a valiant warrior but also somewhat incompetent as leader of the Greeks, or Achaens, returns home from Troy with a Trojan Princess, Cassandra, as his prize. He is unaware that his wife, Clytemnestra, has been seething over Iphingenia, and has a taken a lover, the son of Agamemnon's spurned uncle, Aegisthus. Iphigenia was the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. When the Achaeans sailed for Troy, the entire fleet got stranded by the winds on a island. Agamemnon sent for Iphigenia and had her sacrificed, and the winds changed. We know from The Odyssey that Agamemnon lands home and is immediately killed, along with Cassandra, by Clytemnestra herself. And that later, Orestes, who feels cheated of his thrown, avenges his father, and kills and his mother and her lover, Aegisthus. And that he is praised for this. This is Aeschylus's raw materials, if you like.

The trilogy was put to verse by Phillip Vellacott. This is the first play I've read in verse. I made quick work on other plays in prose translations, even the slow reader I am, reading a play in maybe 45 minutes. In verse, I had to slow down. (Actually first I had to find the rhythm, and then, once I found it, I couldn't really get out of it. It would hang around. ) It becomes a totally different animal in verse, so much so, that I feel more disconnected from the original than at any other time, just because of how different the prose and verse experience are. I'm reading a translator's creation as much as, or more than that of Aeschylus.

The plays themselves tend to have a few dramatic scenes, and then lots of other dialogue of mixed interest, and dull parts somehow becoming prolonged. n  Agamemnonn will culminate in Clytemnestra, with bloody sword, standing over a bloody bathtub filled with the corpses of Agamemnon and Cassandra, Agamemnon still covered in the robe Clytemnestra used to tangle him up in before she attacked. But first there is the play. Agamemnon and Cassandra arrive, and Clytemnestra welcomes them warmly with a famous speech where everything she says references Iphigenia (There is the sea—who shall exhaust the sea) or her coming murder of Agamemnon (she tells him, in praise, ...if by care and cost I might ensure safe journey's end for this one life.) Poor Cassandra serves almost as dark humor. She is cursed to prophecy but not be understood. So she prophecies her own murder as the chorus, struggling to make sense of what she says, guides her to it.

n  The Choephorin are the libation bearers. They join Electra, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's surviving daughter, to make a sacrifice at Agamemnon's grave, and there interact with Orestes and make a plan for vengeance. There is a lot of dialogue and reasoning out of things here, and it goes on and on a bit. But for a powerful moment it all seems for naught. Orestes works his plan, kills Aegisthus, and then his mother walks in, unarmed. What takes place is the most dramatic set up I have come across with Aeschylus. She commands him, like a parent, then she pleads, and then she confronts him (Are you resolved, my son, to murder your own mother?) and then she warms him, and then they head off stage...

At least up to this point, very little action happens in these plays. It's all dialogue, and, what appears to be, more and more elaborate sets. The action itself happens off the stage.

n  The Eumenidesn are the Furies, and they are after Orestes for vengeance for killing his mother. There is no escape. But this is a political play, in Athens' heyday. A trial takes place in the temple of Athena. Apollo will prove incompetent at Orestes's defense, but Athena will right everything, relieving Orestes of guilt and while soothing the Furies' anger. There is a cosmology in play. The Furies predate Zeus, they are part of and represent the older gods, the chthonic gods, and follow rules of their own making and nothing can control them. Athena, representing Athens itself, represents the new. She frees Orestes of the blood oaths of continual vengeance, found in the outskirts, bringing peace and order and some legal structure, basically civilizing. It's all very dull when put to drama.

This is apparently the only trilogy to survive from Ancient Greece. I read it while wondering what gave it that extra touch that allowed it to be saved (or was it just pure chance.) There are some memorable scenes - both bloody and dramatic, and also clever and tragically playful. At least that's my take of the moment.