Agamemnon (Oresteia, #1):The First Strike

The Libation Bearers (Oresteia, #2): The Course of The Curse

Eumenides (Oresteia, #3): Pending

A “Oresteia” é uma peça relevante enquanto extensão do universo de Tróia, já que dá conta dos eventos que se sucedem à chegada a casa do vitorioso Agamémnon, o rei grego que partiu para vingar a honra do irmão Menelau. Tendo a guerra durado 10 anos, no regresso tinha à sua espera a esposa e o seu povo, mas tinha também uma provação. Agamémnon regressa na posse de Cassandra, uma das filhas do rei de Tróia, Príamo. Mas aquando da sua partida, seguindo as profecias, aceitou sacrificar a sua filha Ifigénia, algo que a sua esposa, Clitemnestra, nunca lhe perdoou.

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A primeira parte da peça, que dá pelo nome de Agamémnon, termina com o desenlace da provação. A segunda parte, Coéforas, traz para a cena os seus filhos, Electra e Orestes, que querem vingar o pai. Na parte final, a Euménides, dá-se o fechamento a elevar a racionalidade acima da emoção, depois de vingança atrás de vingança, Atena é chamada a tomar partido, mas decide pela criação de um tribunal, com direito a litigação e um júri popular.

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"O remorso de Orestes" ou "Orestes perseguidos pelas Fúrias" (1862) de William-Adolphe Bouguereau

O valor da peça é indiscutível, mas não sendo a primeira tragédia, da Grécia antiga, que leio, não posso dizer que tenha sido um prazer de ler. Ésquilo, ao contrário de Sófocles e Eurípides, parece-me ficar muito mais refém da representação. Ou seja, estas peças apesar de chegarem até nós escritas, são guiões de representação teatral. Enquanto tal, não contém em todas as dimensões do mundo-história imaginada pelos criadores. O texto de Ésquilo parece servir mais de estrutura e pauta, deixando toda a carga emocional, e corretamente, para os atores. É aos atores que cabe a dramatização, o texto per se não tem poder para sair da narração.

Julgo, também, que outro factor que pode contribuir aqui para o minorar do prazer da leitura tem que ver com a simplicidade da ação e enredo. Ésquilo apresenta uma linha de ação de cada vez, nunca se desviando dos personagens em cena, nem do que os move, fazendo parecer tudo muito estático, e por isso até menos credível. Ainda assim, acredito que o texto quando levado a cena, pela força da representação em modo trágico, possa criar todo um impacto distinto.

A peça final, ou desenlace do todo é o mais relevante e impressiona ler, porque nos dá a perceber como há 2500 anos, o berço da nossa civilização, tinha já uma concepção tão avançada de justiça e democracia, nomeadamente como forma de controlo do instinto humano.

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A memorable reading experience.There's something really uncanny about these plays. I can't quite put my finger on it...

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.

M'ha costat, he suat, però l'he acabat i m'ha agradat. A l'equip de Clitemnestra sempre!

"... 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)

A mini description of the family of Argos: revenge on revenge on revenge on revenge. Enjoy your read.

Agamemnon: 4 stars
I'll always be team Clytemnestra, you can never make me change my mind. She was right, this is obvious if you read Iphigeneia.  Agamemnon killed her child (it's not his child, he wasn't quite a father) for a war. Is war more important than your own child? And Clytemnestra just waited and waited for ten years to take her revenge. And when Agamemnon returns, he acts like nothing is wrong between them. Like he never sacrificed Iphigeneia. But there's nothing like the rage of a mother whose child has been murdered. Especially when the murderer is her own husband. So she murdered him. She paid blood with blood. Don't try to convince me that Agamemnon was a victim. Because he was not.

The Liberation Bearers: 5 stars
Okay, this one was my absolute favorite of the three. I've seen this play so many times, both as a theatre play and as a movie. I've read it many times, both as an original story and as a retelling (Electra, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Flies / Les Mouches) and yet I don't think I'll ever get bored of it. It always makes my heart beat faster. Orestes taking revenge on his mother because she took revenge on his father because he killed his daughter (Orestes' sister). How much more complicated can this get? I think it really shows how, once rage has awaken, it won't stop until everyone is affected. And it doesn't care who is family and who is not, revenge will be taken no matter what. This theme is just so strong. But this play also makes me wonder when did Clytemnestra change so much? She did what she did for her child, Iphigeneia, and yet now we see her not caring for the rest of her children. I suppose that this also means that, once you've felt hate, real hate, not just dislike, you can never unfeel it.  And probably just the act of murder changed her so much, even if her revenge was reasonable  

The Eumenides: 3 stars
Okay, so this one wad my least favorite. I don't know, perhaps I had too high expectations because the other two were perfect. But this one was basically a trial. It did have some interested parts, but I guess I kinda liked it just because it included Orestes, whom I love. Otherwise I probably wouldn't like it. A bit of a disappointment but who cares? The other 2 were great.

Probably more 3.75 rounded up!

”he’s here, somewhere, cowering like a hare....
the reek of human blood-it’s laughter to my heart!”

So I’ll do this in three parts as it is 3 plays. These plays combined are called “The Orestia” and tells the homecoming of Agamemnon, his murder, and the revenge his son and daughter take in return... and then the consequences of that.

I have read “Agamemnon“ by Aeschylus once before, in a book called “Greek Tragedy” by Penguin Books. While I can’t remember who the translator for that book was, this full recounting of The Orestia was done by Robert Fagles.

The first play, “Agamemnon” follows said character in his ‘welcome back home’ after fighting in Troy (in Aeschylus’ play this is in Argos and not Mycenae as told by Homer). Here he is greeted by his wife Clytemnestra... who is obviously still hateful and bearing a resentful grudge towards Agamemnon due to his involvement and planning in the sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigeneia. No surprises there. So being the vengeful queen she is- she gets her just revenge (in my opinion).

This play also shows Cassandra, the prophetess, and Agamemnon’s ‘spoil of war’. She prophesies all of these deaths but has the unfortunate ability that everything she prophesies will not be believed (thanks Apollo- note the sarcasm).

Anyway, next we move onto “The Libation Bearers” (play 2). Here we follow the children of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon (well... the surviving children I mean). Electra has not seen her brother, Orestes, in years and wishes to take revenge on Clytemnestra for her part in killing their father.
The first half of this play focuses on Orestes and Electra meeting again (after a long time apart) and the awful ‘clues’ Electra follows to convince herself that Orestes is at Agamemnon’s tomb. These clues consist of a lock of hair and a footprint...It is no wonder Euripides made fun of these absurd ‘clues’ in his play “Electra”.

As always, my interest picked up when there’s blood shed and when Orestes grapples with his moral thoughts. Again, Electra is also a vengeful female character (there’s a pattern to this in this trilogy).

The final play “The Eumenides” follows my all-time-favourite Furies who hunt down those who have committed crimes, such as matricide, and torment them. They are after Orestes in this one.
I enjoyed this play probably the most out of the three. This play involved the Gods too (well Athena and Apollo) and the Furies. I just loved the Furies in this, and their vengeance and torment and love for destruction.
This play also features a great court scene where you get to see Athena in her military prowess and strategy hold a trial about Orestes’ crimes.

While it was great to finally read The Orestia- I loved the powerful vengefulness in these plays, and how a family curse has effected each generation- my translation of this just wasn’t the best. I really liked the power of words of some of the passages and the emotions portrayed- it was great to imagine how an actor in a play might show this. However, I found the book layout to not be as clear as I would’ve liked it, and flicking backwards and forwards would take me out of the passages of what was being said.
In addition to this, this translation uses the word “bitch” which wasn’t really needed... and was also not a word used in Ancient Greek (I think?).

Some parts of these plays, for me, moved at a slower pace that I did lose my focus. However, most of the time it would pick up again and I’d be interested to find out what happened in the end.
I would say that The Libation Bearers was probably my least liked play of the three- I think the beginning was a little too slow for my liking, and I was eye rolling hard at the clues, however this play did eventually pick up once the killing deeds are about to begin.

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.

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.

clytaemnestra did nothing wrong.

can't change my mind

I enjoyed reading this back in school after I had read The Iliad & The Odyssey. I haven't read them in years, but still remembered a lot of the names. Still, I thought I should read a summary of this first since it is an audio play, complete with the chorus. It was really good & I'm glad that I did read the Wikipedia article first. You can find it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresteia

The twisty way the gods used men & people used each other makes this fascinating. Glad I listened to it this time. That's far better than reading it.