Customer Reviews

The Oresteian Trilogy: Agamemnon; The Choephori; The Eumenides (Penguin Classics)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's easy to see why Aeschylus is still revered as one of the great dramatists of the ages. 2500 years later The Oresteia still presents poetical problems of great urgency, probing the darkest depths of the human psyche. While Agamemnon, the first work in this trilogy, is the most lauded, all three are of nearly equal value.

I'm of two minds regarding Vellacott's translation. For the most part the language is vivid and the verse is spacious and eloquent, though his fixed rhyme (which has no analog in the original Greek) is sometimes distracting -- particularly as he is in the all-too-frequent habit of forcing rhyme with ostentatious enjambment. That really breaks the flow.

With a verse translation this admittedly free in its rendering, I'm always left with the nagging question of which images belong to the author and which to the translator. When I want to experience a great work of the canon that can be a bit troubling.

These quibbles aside, Vellacott's translation does an outstanding job of framing the vital images of Aeschylus' trilogy with vigor, and overall my reading experience was first rate.

This is the quintessential tale of ritual sacrifice (homicide), blood debt, self-conflicted justice, patricide, guilt, and (ultimately) the divinely bestowed rule of law (reason). Written 2500 years ago, perhaps it's where respect for law originated. If before clan/society/religion (honor) demanded unthinking sacrifice and revenge, Aeschylus advocates divinely endorsed law as a mediator of the irrational (and emotional): reason alone can tame the madness.

Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Electra, Orestes, and Aegisthus have since appeared in millions of derivative venues as dramatic models under different names. None approach the power of this work. I read this translation 30 years ago: it remains vivid and memorable.

Aeschylus (525-456 BC) is the father of Greek tragedies (one legend reports that Dionysus himself commanded Aeschylus to write them). Of the seventy tragedies that he wrote, only seven have survived to the present day. These three plays form the most complete tetralogy that we have (a tetralogy contained three tragedies and one satyr play - a semi-religious, semi-mocking performance that acted as a postlude to the tragic trilogy) - only the satyr play is missing.

In Agamemnon, the Greek king returns from the Trojan War, with his prize of the Trojan prophetess Cassandra. Cassandra knows that Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, will kill them, but she is fated to be not be believed. And so, the deed is done.

In The Libation Bearers, Clytemnestra has a nightmare that she gave birth to a snake, and so she sends her daughter Electra to Agamemnon's grave to pour out a libation. However, Electra meets her brother, Orestes, and the two plot revenge upon their mother, and her loved. And so, murder begets murder.

In The Eumenides, Orestes is fleeing the Furies, who are pursuing him for murdering his mother. Orestes flees to Apollo, who sends him on to Athens, to be judged by Athena herself.

This is an excellent trilogy. Even though it is over 2,000 years old, it still makes an interesting read. In particular, I enjoyed The Eumenides, with its battle of supernatural beings, and its showcasing of the development of Western jurisprudence. Overall, I found this to be an interesting and informative book, one that I do not hesitate to recommend to everyone.

"Agamemnon" is the first of the Oresteia trilogy (the only extant Greek trilogy) and should be required reading of all university students. The trilogy won First Prize at the Greater Dionesia in 458 B. C. Agamemnon returns to Argos from the Trojan War. He is killed by his wife Clytemnestra and his first cousin Aegisthus. Clytemnestra's reasons for the murder of both Agamemnon and Cassandra were questioned even in ancient Greece: was it for revenge for the death of her daughter Iphigenia or was it for her adultery with Aegisthus? In one of Pindar's odes (c. 474 B. C.), "Pythia 11", he asks: "Was it Iphigeneia, who at the Euripos crossing was slaughtered far from home, that vexed her to drive in anger the hand of violence? Or was it couching in a wrong bed by night that broke her will and set her awry?" The Oresteia trilogy is a study in justice. Agamemnon's death must be avenged; but, this means matricide. Orestes, in the next play, should not have been the hand of vengence. "The Libation Bearers" (or, "The Choephoroi"), the second play in the trilogy, is the earliest known play containing an intrigue as the main plot. Electra, sister of Orestes, has been sent to the grave of Agamemnon to offer a libation. Clytemnestra is attempting to placate the spirit of her dead husband. When she and Aegisthus are killed by Orestes, Orestes finds that now the Furies will pursue him rather than his mother. In the last play, the Eumenides (or the Erinyes), daughters of Night who avenge crimes committed by offspring against parents and who punished people who fail to keep their oaths, seek Orestes. Apollo purifies Orestes by washing him in pigs' blood. But the Erinyes reject Apollo's order to leave Orestes alone. The conflict is resolved via a trial overseen by Athena. Athena succeeds in restraining the Erinyes who are persuaded to make their home in Athens and will now be able to punish violence done within the polis. This play is the earliest known drama containing a complete change of scene.

Four stars is because of the translation. While Vellacott, whose translations of Euripides I love, captures the mood, his rhythmical verse somehow obscures the meaning, at least in the less didactic passages.

Having said that what comes across is a story whose drama to me can only be rivalled by the great stories of the Old Testament, or by Hamlet, whose dilemma is in some ways a mirror of that of Orestes.

Orestes' father Agamemnon has been murdered on his return from victory in the Trojan war by Orestes' mother Clytemnestra, who has shacked up with Aegisthus and who grieves the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia made by Agamemnon to ensure a wind for his fleet on its way to Troy.

This family, the house of Atreus, was under a curse anyway, following the cruel murder by Agamemnon's father of his brother's children.

Orestes murders Clytemnestra and Aegisthus and is then pursued by the Furies. The whole drama of the plays is about his decision to do this and the agonies he is likely to incur whether he does it or not.

The Oresteian Trilogy is a classic set of tragedies, centring around the royal family of Argos, and sparked off by the infamous back-stabbing wife of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra. The translation reads well, but the over-extended dialogue may become tedious for readers who prefer something punchier. Aeschylus does not achieve great 'closure', especially with Orestes himself, a hero who fades from view at the end, overshadowed by the deal being struck by the immortal Athene and the Furies.

Similarly, certain plot lines lack sophistication, whereby characters drop out of the story, or events are telegraphed well before occurring, and then occur entirely as expected. However, there are a couple of genuinely gripping passages buried between the acres of soul-searching. In a less secular age immortal intervention might be seen as a natural plot device, but here it takes the fate of Orestes out of his own hands, when we might prefer to see how he deals with his deeds himself. Then again, maybe that's the point.