Customer Reviews

Oresteia

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Again, I compared many different Orestia's and fell in love with this one on Hackett by Meineick.

It reads beautifully and easily and the drama and intensity is unmatched. You also get a believable sense of the characters, and the setting in this one.

It is in my opinion the best modern version that can be most easily performable with no archai-sisms in the language.

I always go with Hackett now that I've found some really excellent translations!

Highly recommended.

The Oresteia is one of the worlds greatest dramatic works. This particular translation is one of the best for academic purposes. An A+++ on any Literary students must have list!

This book was great. Thanks so much. The packaging was also great! Thank you thank you thank you ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

I worked on the production of this translation at The University of South Carolina in 1998. I designed the costumes and masks. Before I began the design process, I read other translations of the script. Peter's translation was done with attention to what the characters were saying, not just the literal dictionary definition of the Ancient Greek. The pacing and flow of the play is great and I recommend it to anyone who thinks that Ancient Greek plays are dull and better left alone.

A couple of lines of interpretation, neither of them original.

1. The establishment of civic justice. Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Orestes are caught in a spiral of blood revenge, with no apparent end, as the Furies demand further revenge for Orestes' killing of Clytemnestra. Athena steps in, not to judge for herself, but to institute a jury of citizens, with her own vote providing the tie-breaker. The Furies are afterwards given a new role, as Eumenides, but no longer propel the cycle of vengeance.

2. The other line is the role of female and male. The Furies defend blood relationships. It is the Furies who demand vengeance for Clytemnestra's death and for Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphegenia (both murders of blood kin by blood kin), but it is Apollo who urges Orestes to vengeance for the death of Agamemnon (a murder of husband by wife -- a civil rather than a blood relationship). The Furies, who are born fatherless and live as virgins, and so are unrelated to the male, are removed from the new institution of civil justice. Athena, although female, was born motherless (sprung from the head of Zeus), and she presides over the establishment of civil justice. Orestes is freed, despite killing his mother, over the objections of the Furies.

Athena presents an especially modern argument of sorts to the Furies (lines 420 to 435), saying, "There are 2 sides to the story." And the turning point seems to be what she says is in 430 -- "So you would rather be called just than act justly?" From then on, the Furies say they will accept Athena's wisdom.

The "called just" vs. "act justly" contrast sounds very modern, in the context. In justice as vengeance, the distinction doesn't have the same significance. The Furies seem from then on swept along in a much more modern perspective, bowing to the more modern sense of civic justice.

The cover on this edition is a really cheap shot by the publisher or authors! It is nothing more than slander -- a malicious, false and injurious statement against the late General Douglas MacArthur! Bah!