Agamemnon is such an impressive piece of theatre. Even to this day, it has a kind of tension so rarely achieved in any piece of theatre since. It set in stone many of the conventions of horror literature. The great unknowable evil lurking underneath the plot is an omnipresence, hanging over all of the dialogue, and flavouring all of the characters' interactions.

The following two plays are more cerebral, and taken together they complete the thematic journey of the trilogy: from chaos to order, and from evil to virtue. They provide a necessary counterbalance to the chaos of the first play, and finally (in Eumenides) serve as a reckoning of the events of the first and second plays.

I first read these plays in the Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro translation. My second reading was in Fagles' translation. Both are very good, and I struggle to choose between them. Fagles appears to be more literal, and Burian/Shapiro appears to be more lyrical.

My slightly weird and rambling years-old review is below.

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I'm quite conflicted about rating this. Beyond any doubt at all, Agamemnon, the first of the trilogy, is a masterpiece of the highest order. It's a superbly tense story with an awesome (and very emotionally affecting) climax. The two plays that follow, although great in their own ways, are not so tense as the first. Libation Bearers continues the story of Agamemnon and is centered around the late general's tomb. And then there's Eumenides which is mostly a courtroom trial (although rather an unusual one, in that Apollo appears as a witness and Athena contributes frequently).

The third play reminded me a lot of Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot. No doubt he was influenced in no small part by Aeschylus. Regardless, I found the courtroom sequences of Murder in the Cathedral to be quite surreal. And I found that same surrealism as present in Eumenides - perhaps even more so than it was in Eliot's play. In Eliot's play there were no gods present at the trial.

None of this is intended as a negative criticism of course. It's just what struck me foremost. Perhaps I should re-read Murder in the Cathedral. So much of modern literature takes on a different appearance when you go back to the sources - and there's no earlier source of drama than Aeschylus.

O poveste superbă, cu multe teme fundamentale, executate magistrale.

შენ რო შვილს მაჰკლავ, შენც მოგკვლენ, არც შენ მკვლელს შაარჩენს გვარია...

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!

I hadn't read The Oresteia since school. I don't remember them being so metal, or that they contain a legal drama. These may be the most brutal works I have ever read. I must have been absurdly callous and half-asleep when I first read them. They are also an endless source of references from Slayer to Kurt Vonnegut to Shakespeare to Game of Thrones to Neil Gaiman and on and on through out recorded culture. Reading these as an adult gives me a brief sense of playing a glass bead game with all the culture I have experienced between my two readings.

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.

The Oresteian Trilogy contains three works by Aeschylus: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and Eumenides. My audio version, which is read by a full cast, also includes an excerpt from Proteus in The Odyssey that refers to Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus. It was performed in 458 BCE and is the only Greek drama that survives in its entirety. It is a story of vengeance and justice. In the first part, when Agamemnon returns from Troy, his wife Clytemnestra takes revenge on him for his role in the sacrifice of their daughter Iphegenia. In The Libation Bearers, Orestes and Electra take revenge on their mother Clytemnestra. In Eumenides, Orestes goes on trial for killing Clytemnestra, with Athena as judge, the Furies as prosecutors, and Apollo speaking for the defense. It reflects the changes in Greek society at the time, told as a clash between the old gods and the new order. This Greek tragedy is written in an eloquent manner. It is surprisingly modern in its translation by Ian Johnston and adaptation by Yuri Rasovsky. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the classics. I think audio is a wonderful way to gain an appreciation for how it may have been performed.

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.

Aristophanes তার বই The Frogs এ Aeschylus কে ট্রাজেডিয়ানদের ভেতর সবচেয়ে সেরা হিসেবে দেখিয়েছেন। না সরাসরি বলেননি। তবে Sophocles যখন বলেছিলো সে Aeschylus এর সাথে লড়বেনা Pluto এর সাথে চেয়ারে বসে খাবার খাওয়ার ব্যাটেলে তখনই কিছুটা আন্দাজ করা যায় যে Aristophanes Aeschylus এর পক্ষে বেশি।

অ্যারিস্টোফানিজ এর মতে তিন Tragedians দের ক্রমানুসারে সাজালে
প্রথমঃ Aeschylus
দ্বিতীয়ঃ Sophocles
তৃতীয়ঃ Euripides

এই ক্রম পাওয়া যায়। আর Aristophanes যেহেতু তাদের সমসাময়িক লেখক তাই ধরে নেওয়া যায় Aeschylus হয়তো প্রথম অবস্থানেই ছিলো। আমি Greek tragedy খুব কম পড়েছি। তারপরও বিবেচনা করলে আমার কাছে Sophocles কে ভালো লেগেছে বেশি।

Aeschylus এর Oresteia সিরিজে তিনটা বই। Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers এবং Eumenides/ The Furies.

এই তিনটা বই বা ড্রামা Agamemnon এর যুদ্ধ থেকে ফেরত আসার পরের কাহিনী নিয়ে রচিত। তার দীর্ঘ যুদ্ধ থেকে ফিরে আসার পর খুন হওয়া, বদলা নেওয়া, বদলা নেওয়া এই মুখ্যত কাহিনী। বদলা নেওয়া দুইবার বলার কারন হচ্ছে পরের দুই বই Revenge এর উপর। তিনটাই যদিও Revenge Tragedy তারপরও Agamemnon এ একদম শেষের দিকে ব্যাক্ত করা আর পরের দুইটাতে শুরু থেকেই।

ব্যাক্তিগত ভাবে Agamemnon (5) আমার খুবই ভালো লেগেছে। সাথে পরের দুইটাও { The Libation Bearers (4), Eumenides (4) } তবে মনে হয় Agamemnon এর হাইটে পৌঁছাতে পারেনি।

Agamemnon এর গল্প যেমন মারাত্বক তেমনি ডায়লগও। Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Cassandra, Chorus সবারই উপস্থিতি মনোমুগ্ধকর। আর এটাতে একটা সাসপেন্স, থ্রিল টাইপ ভাব আছে যেটা অপর দুটাতে নাই। আর Agamemnon এ একটা খুনের ভেতর দিয়ে আরো কাহিনী সমন্ধে জানা যায়। আগের করা ভায়োলেন্স গুলা আরকি। The Things People Do For Love ( Agamemnon, Clytemnestra দুজনের ক্ষেত্রেই প্রযোজ্য)

The Libation Bearers এ সামানে আসেন Oresteia সিরিজের Orestes. মূলত বাবার হত্যার প্রতিশোধ নিতে। এই বইয়ে Clytemnestra যখন তার নিজের ব্যাপারে বলে, Agamemnon দুরে থাকার কারনে কষ্ট, চাহিদা এসবের বিবরণ যখন দেয় তখন কেন জানি Clytemnestra এর সাইড নিতে ইচ্ছে করে। সব মানুষের সব প্রয়োজন। মৌলিক চাহিদার উর্ধ্বে কেউ নেই। আবারো বলা যায় The things people do for love.

Eumenides বা The Furies ও Revenge Tragedy তবে এখানে যেহেতু পরিবারের কেউ আর বাকী থাকেনা তাই দায়িত্ব নিতে হয় অন্যদের। আমি মনে করি এটা সিরিজের মধ্যে দুর্বল বই। তবু শেষ জানার জন্য চমৎকার।

আহ যতই গ্রিকদের পড়ছি ততই ভালোবাসা বেড়ে যাচ্ছে। মানুষ এত বুদ্ধি নিয়ে বেঁচে ছিলো কেমনে! আর সবচেয়ে বড় কথা এত আগের যুগে মানুষ এরকম ছিলো! তারা বিজ্ঞানে আমাদের মতো উন্নতি না করলেও সবদিক দিয়ে আমাদের থেকে এগিয়ে ছিলো। এখন এসব প্লে লাইভ দেখার অপেক্ষাতে ❤️

PR: 4.33 (তিন বই গড় করলে)

Like so many other things that I've been reading lately, Aeschylus's trilogy is concerned with human beings thrown into the crucible of extremest intensity, pressured from every direction my conflicting obligations, driven to violent action and violent remorse. Few poets are as willing as Aeschylus to stare into the profound darkness of human suffering and name the curse that seems to hold us to the wheel of our own violence. Yet, even fewer are ultimately as hopeful about the possibility of our breaking that wheel, of our suffering a way through to wisdom and truth. In this way, Aeschylus is a religious poet who believes in redemptive sacrifice. And by placing his faith in the power of civic institutions to domesticate the chthonic forces of our souls and turn them toward public service, he is also a political poet. At a time when it is hard for poets to be either of these things, a time when our families and our politics seem equally bound up in sterile cycles of fear and retribution, Aeschylus may have much to teach.

5 ⭐

Tantalus, oh Tantalus, he really screwed the pooch!
There is no beating ‘round the bush, he’s one first order douche!
His envy of the Gods and of their immortality,
led him to try and trick them and invite them o’er for tea.

He set a cauldron boiling, he chopped up his own son,
then lobbed the morsels in the urn, and told them it was done.
As Demeter was chowing down before the food got colder,
he smiled wide and told ‘er she was eating Pelops’ shoulder!

Furious at Tantalus, Zeus sent the pest to Tartarus,
for punishment befitting one who’d do a thing so barbarous.
If t’were only this perdition, it would be no great big fuss,
but his actions, in addition, cursed the House of Atreus!

And therein lies the kernel of Aeschylus’(s) tale,
A family’s curse eternal but for one descendent male.
Cursed to repeat bouts of inter-famil-ial violence,
And suffer irrec-oncil-able moral debts in silence.

It’s a story drenched in filicide, mariticide and matricide,
parenticide or parricide, excuse my synonymicide.
There’ll be cause for wild elation, if someone was wondering,
But ‘fore recon-cili-ation, first must come a sundering

Cue the King of Argos, Agamemnon in the flesh,
Who back from killing Trojans, wants to unwind and refresh,
But faithless Clytaemnestra, Queen whom in his place took tenure,
Slaughters him in retribution for poor Iphigenia

Violence begets violence in the House of Atreus,
And forced to suffer into truth is Princely Orestes.
Instructed by Apollo to avenge one he adored,
He kills his wretched mother, through her chest he pokes a sword.

At least he only murdered his, that seems a mild affliction
Compared to Oedipus of Thebes who shagged his with conviction.
But anyway, enough of that, frivolities aside,
I mentioned some elation, you weren’t thinking that I lied?

In the end this tragedy’s concerned with transformation,
It begins with savagery and ends with civilisation.
Athena turns from force majeure to justice and compassion
The furies turn their hand from roles of vengeance to protection

It’s occurred to me just now, I’ve bitten more than I can chew,
If you’ve read this far somehow, a thanks is due from me to you.
Apologies to those real poets, to whom this seems a vile abuse,
The cause to which I think I owe it, is reading too much Dr.Seuss.

probably my favourite greek tragedy so far, it’s just so richly filled with texture, character development and lush writing.