The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides (Penguin Classics)
by Aeschylus
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Book Summary Information
Author: AeschylusContributor: W. B. Stanford
Translator: Robert Fagles
Edition: Paperback
Published: 1984-02-07
ISBN: 0140443339
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: A fine collection of Aeschylus' magnum opus.
Summary: 5 Stars
All drama exists in the shadow of the three great tragedians of Ancient Greece; Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. They wrote scores of plays apiece, but only scattered works of those survive. Of Aeschylus' body of work survives the least: plays numbering a mere seven. However, Aeschylus was cut a bit of a break, because three of those surviving seven form the only complete trilogy of plays from Ancient Greek theatre: the Oresteia (Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex", "Oedipus at Colonus", and "Antigone" are often grouped together as the "Theban Plays", but they are not a proper trilogy, which, in Greek theatre, was three interlinked plays performed together in one festival, alongside a fourth satyr play; the satyr play that accompanied the Oresteia has been lost.
The scene is the aftermath of the Trojan War, where at least 50% of all Greek mythology seems to have its roots; the victorious Agammemnon returns home, taking with him the despoiled Trojan Princess Cassandra, cursed by Apollo to forever speak truth and never be believed. The war is over, but the echoes persist; indeed, the tragedy has its beginnings in the war's beginning, when Agammemnon, in order to facilitate the armada's crossing of the Aegean, sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. His wife Clytemnestra, understandably, resents this; perhaps less understandably, she has been unfaithful to her husband in his long absence, and, together with her new lover Aegisthus, plots to kill her husband, as well as poor Cassandra. The repercussions of this redound through the next two plays, "The Libation Bearers" and "The Eumenides", as Agammemnon and Clytemnestra's son Orestes, together with his sister Electra, must decide how to avenge their father's murder. Orestes is in a Catch-22, having to reconcile contradictory demands of divine justice: avenging his father means murdering his mother, a crime to the Eumenides, while not avenging his father will offend Apollo.
When looking at Greek drama from a modern perspective, the aspect that many people find the most challenging is the use of Choruses. The first play, "Agammemnon", makes the heaviest use of the Chorus, and I consider it the weakest of the three (by virtue of being the first, it also has a lot of setup). The following "The Libation Bearers" and "The Eumenides" are stronger, with more limited Choruses, and, since the crux of the latter, especially, are debates with dialogue, there is no sense that important actions are occurring offscreen (which was a major trope in Greek drama). These types of stories remain an acquired taste, but they are very enjoyable to those who get used to them. Aeschylus here uses the whole trilogy, and particularly the final play, to dramatize the development of current ideas concerning justice; explanations are given here for the existence of the twelve-man jury, for example.
While I consider Sophocles to be the greatest of the three tragedians, Aeschylus' magnum opus is well worth the time of fans of classical drama and mythology.
All The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides (Penguin Classics) Customer Reviews
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