I’m assuming no one cares about spoilers in this well-known tale, the first in the Oresteia trilogy about revenge killings.

A pre-story event sets this tale in motion. Agamemnon had the ships all ready to go to Troy for the war, but massive winds came to prevent them from sailing. Of course, these were brought on by the goddess Artemis, who was angry at Agamemnon for something, and of course, Agamemnon had to do something about it, so he sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia. Of course!

“Her pleas, her cries of ‘father!’, and her maiden years, were set at naught by the war-loving chieftains. After a prayer, her father told his attendants to lift her right up over the altar with all their strength, like a yearling goat, face down, so that her robes fell around her …”

This didn’t sit well with her mom, Clytemnestra, who stewed over it until Agamemnon returned from the war. She took up with another man, his cousin Aegisthus. Together they plotted to kill Agamemnon, but in this telling, Clytemnestra is the villain.

“…she is--what loathsome beast’s name can I call her by, to hit the mark? An amphisbaena, or some Scylla dwelling among the rocks, the bane of sailors, a raging hellish mother, breathing out truceless war against her nearest and dearest?”

What I found most interesting was the way the Chorus stands for the trial we might have today. I suppose the gods are the judge, but the Chorus argues with the victims and the murderers, pointing out their mistakes and scolding them for their wrongs. Thinking of current trials, this made me wonder what would happen if, instead of a carefully controlled courtroom, we had a Greek chorus to reflect the thoughts of the people?

A fun read. I’ve seen the Mask of Agamemnon in the museum in Athens, and it’s a power experience. I’m giving this rating an extra star for giving me even more to think about when I look at the impression of that tragic face.

"The best told lie bears but a short-lived fruit." Ok so that's still true. Aeschylus, an acknowledged master of Greek drama (circa 450 BCE) brought characters to life that were already calcified at the time he produced this play. His magic still works. Agamemnon, self-centered but brave, his wife Clytemnestra, long suffering, in fact the epitome of long suffering. Cassandra, now a slave, still relegated to speak prophecy that is dismissed. And finally that clever creation of Greek drama, the Chorus, like a friend sitting next to you whispering their thoughts about the movie you're watching.
What struck me most reading this was what hit me the first time I read ancient greek plays, at Hampshire College, reading the funny plays of Aristophanes. Damn, these people are just like, I mean exactly like, modern people. Somehow I expected them to at least be be fully superstitious, and to never question the line about the nobility of war. Not the case. Aeschylus defies both stereotypes and won the award for best play, thereby changing my entire view of ancient people and then, as a logical consequence, my perception of our present day hypocrisy and how it persists despite so many seeing through it.
A couple of the lines, spoken by the Chorus, that surprised me and stay with me:

"Zeus, or what other name
The god that reigns supreme delights to claim,
Him I invoke; him of all powers that be,
Alone I find,
Who from this bootless load of doubt can free
My laboring mind."

Now I know that I share this quest for, hope for, a supreme and caring being in the face of overwhelming doubt. I'm open to any god here. This shared hope adds meaning to my life and makes me less lonely.

"For Mars doth market bodies, and for gold
Gives dust."

That is an anti-war statement for the ages. And lastly, some lines representative of the many in the play, that just resonate across the millenia:

"Whoso fears evil where no harm appears,
Reap first himself the fruit of his own fears."

The experience of reading this ancient work was like a welcome home. The good kind. The version one chooses is important. This one is beautifully rendered in a translation that includes rhyme and meter by John Stuart Blackie (available free on Project Gutenberg) .

4.5 stars. I have been saving the best of Aeschylus for last with the Oresteia, and I wasn’t disappointed. Unlike his other surviving works, Agamemnon has a better balance of dramatic tension and long expository speeches, with an especially effective chorus. Indeed, when they are threatened at the end by Aegisthus, we all feel a sense of injustice from this blood-thirsty tyrant. There is a sense of foreboding as Aegisthus and Clytemnestra wade into the “waves of purple” (both symbolically as they wrap themselves in the purple of royalty, but also quite literally as the latter is covered in fresh blood). We can see that this won’t end well for them.

The play works on its own as a critique of “eye-for-eye vengeance” and the folly of seeking power through violence. (I was reminded of the title of Anatole France’s novel The Gods Will Have Blood.) It also nicely sets the stage for the following two plays in the trilogy, the second of which I am almost finished reading. For the first time while reading Aeschylus, I felt as if I were reading a dramatic epic that had some merit beyond just being lucky enough to have survived from the 5th century BC. I still prefer Sophocles, but I’m glad to have finally found some work by Aeschylus I truly enjoyed.

On a side note, I was struggling mightily with the Richmond Lattimore translation. Then I discovered the Robert Fagles and Ted Hughes translations, which are both fantastic in their own ways. Fagles captures the “voice” of the ancient Greek, while Hughes gives a swiftly moving, poetic, and almost-cinematic modern treatment that is still surprisingly true to the other two translations. I recommend both Fagles and Hughes, and I wonder if my distaste for previous dramas by Aeschylus may have been due in part by reading some stilted and dry Lattimore translations.

Best Greek play I have read so far. Excellent use of the Greek chorus (better than I've seen in any other Greek play). The symbolism is precise and well written/used.

I think this book should be taught for Women's Literature classes because of the interesting roles of Cassandra and Clytaemestra. Each in their own are complex characters that steal the play.

Definitely a must read of Greek literature.

Oh hell yeah LFG

Αξεπέραστο έργο. Ίσως εκ των σπουδαιότερων που γράφηκαν ποτέ.

This is Part One of the Oresteia Trilogy. Compared to the openers of other Greek trilogies, I would rank this above Prometheus Bound (which I found pretty dull), but below Oedipus Rex.

Os persas, de Ésquilo, apresentada pela primeira vez em 472 a.C., é considerada a peça teatral grega mais antiga que chegou até nós.
Ao contrário das demais tragédias que conhecemos, tem a particularidade de tratar um tema real, e não de estórias da mitologia. Para os atenienses que assistiram à peça, o assunto era bastante conhecido. Provavelmente a maioria deles lutou contra os persas ou esteve de algum modo envolvido na luta, afinal, são tratados fatos que aconteceram menos de 10 anos antes, quando da tentativa de Xerxes invadir a Grécia continental, em 480 a.C.
A ação se passa no palácio real em Susa, na Pérsia. Está-se, pois, muito longe dos combates. Há, apenas, a narração dos fatos. O próprio Xerxes só irá aparecer no episódio final. Isso não quer dizer que seja algo aborrecido. Há um crescente na tensão. De início, há uma sensação de mal-estar, de algo que não vai bem. Depois, a rainha, viúva do falecido Dario, tem um sonho — sempre um sinal dos céus — do desastre. Chega um mensageiro com as más notícias e o fantasma (chamemo-lo assim) é invocado para dizer o porquê da derrota. Por fim, temos a chegada de Xerxes.
De início tem-se o desarranjo do mundo. É o desafio aos deuses (a hybris) motivada pela cegueira desvairada do protagonista. Mesmo que ausente da ação, sabemos que Xerxes não apenas invadiu a Grécia, mas também (isso não está na peça, mas sabemos que o público tinha conhecimento disso) enfurecidamente destruiu os templos gregos por onde passava, inclusive em Atenas.
O mundo (no caso de Xerxes e dos persas) se põe em desarranjo, coisa que para os gregos era insustentável. Era preciso que as coisas voltassem a um estado de ordenamento, que é o vai se dar no final da peça, não sem antes toda uma dose de sofrimento e de purgação.
Ninguém escapa ao seu destino, é o que nos diz Ésquilo e, principalmente, ninguém escapa ao destino pelo que fez, como foi o caso de Xerxes.
Por fim, belíssima tradução do Junito Brandão, que foi um dos grandes helenistas que o Brasil conheceu. Falecido em 1995, deixou uma vasta obra, que merece ser conhecida.

why is everyone in greek tragedies so damn expressive

"Porque Zeus puso a los mortales en el camino del saber, cuando estableció con fuerza de ley que se adquiera la sabiduría con el sufrimiento"

El corifeo no se cansa de soltar factous.

crazy how short greek plays feel when you don’t have to translate them for an entire semester

If libations were proper to pour above the slain,
this man deserved, more than deserved, such sacrament.
He filled our cup with evil things unspeakable
and now himself come home has drunk it to the dregs.

This is a morally complex play for a modern reader. At first we side with Clytaemnestra, who claims to have remained faithful to her husband, while he has been sleeping with concubines and has killed his daughter. We cheer when he is killed by Clytaemnestra. But then we learn that she has had a lover all along, and the chorus almost unfailingly takes the side of Agamemnon. I don't know what I'm supposed to think. I don't know for sure what the Greek audience would have thought. I look forward to discussing this play in class and maybe understanding it better thereafter. I do think these lines, from near the beginning of the play, are relevant to the question:

A man thought
the gods deigned not to punish mortals
who trampled down the delicacy of things
inviolable. That man was wicked.

Also something WEIRD is going on with gender roles in this play. Merits thinking about.