The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers, and The Eumenides)


Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. The Aeneid of Virgil Bantam Classics. Detalhes do produto Formato: Reprint 7 de fevereiro de Vendido por: Compartilhe seus pensamentos com outros clientes. Like Homer's works, ancient Greece's famous tragedies never grow old We spent several weeks in a study group, comparing and contrasting it with O'Neill's masterful Mourning Becomes Electra ,a post-Civil War re-telling of the same tale. I originally began reading the Vellacott translation and I almost gave up on reading this trilogy. Switching to Fagles made all the difference. I'd highly recommend this translation!

The beginning commentary by Fagles, The Serpent and the Eagle, is wonderful as well. I am not finished with this book but will continue with a hard copy I am not commenting or reviewing Fagle or the Oresteia I have and continue to read his work. Its the price of this E-Book and the lack of line numbers in the text and the verse as was in the original.

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This is actually a really good read! I got this for a college assignment so I expected it to be somewhat boring but it really held my interest. The actual scene part of the book is a bit hard to understand but they give a translated story version at the beginning that really clears up any confusion. 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: 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 chorus separate from one another and ramble to themselves, proving their cowardice, when another final cry is heard.

When the doors are finally opened, Clytemnestra is seen standing over the dead bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra. Clytemnestra describes the murder in detail to the chorus, showing no sign of remorse or regret. Suddenly the exiled lover of Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, bursts into the palace to take his place next to her. Aegisthus proudly states that he devised the plan to murder Agamemnon and claim revenge for his father the father of Aegisthus, Thyestes, was tricked into eating two of his sons by his brother Atreus, the father of Agamemnon.

Clytemnestra claims that she and Aegisthus now have all the power and they re-enter the palace with the doors closing behind them. Orestes then heads to the palace door where he is unexpectedly greeted by Clytaemnestra. In his response to her he pretends he is a stranger and tells Clytaemnestra that he Orestes is dead, causing her to send for Aegisthus. Unrecognized, Orestes is then able to enter the palace where he then kills Aegisthus, who was without a guard due to the intervention of the chorus in relaying Clytaemnestra's message. Orestes hesitates to kill her, but Pylades reminds him of Apollo's orders, and he eventually follows through.

They relentlessly pursue Orestes for the killing of his mother. Seeing the Furies asleep, Clytaemnestra 's ghost comes to wake them up to obtain justice on her son Orestes for killing her. After waking up, the Furies hunt down Orestes again and when they find him, Orestes pleads to the goddess Athena for help and she responds by setting up a trial for him in Athens on the Areopagus. This trial is made up of a group of twelve Athenian citizens and is supervised by none other than Athena herself.

Here Orestes is used as a trial dummy by Athena to set-up the first courtroom trial. He is also the object of central focus between the Furies, Apollo, and Athena. Athena casts the deciding vote and determines that Orestes will not be killed. She then changes their names from the Furies to "the Eumenides" which means "the Kindly Ones". However, it is widely believed to have been based on the story told in Book IV of Homer 's Odyssey , where Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother, attempts to return home from Troy and finds himself on an island off Egypt, "whither he seems to have been carried by the storm described in Agam.

In the process, Proteus tells Menelaus of the death of Agamemnon at the hands of Aegisthus as well as the fates of Ajax the Lesser and Odysseus at sea; and is compelled to tell Menelaus how to reach home from the island of Pharos. In this trilogy there are multiple themes carried through all three plays.

Other themes can be found and in one, or two, of the three plays, but are not applicable to the Trilogy as a whole and thus are not considered themes of the trilogy. Retaliation is seen in the Oresteia in a slippery slope form, occurring subsequently after the actions of one character to another.

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In the first play Agamemnon , it is mentioned how in order to shift the wind for his voyage to Troy, Agamemnon had to sacrifice his innocent daughter Iphigenia. Therefore, she found a new lover Aegisthus. And when Agamemnon returned to Argos from the Trojan War , Clytaemnestra killed him by stabbing him in the bathtub and would eventually inherit his throne.

Through much pressure from Electra and his cousin Pylades Orestes eventually kills his mother Clytaemnestra and her lover Aegisthus in "The Libation Bearers". And even after he gets away from them Clytaemnestra's spirit comes back to rally them again so that they can kill Orestes and obtain vengeance for her. This part of the theme of 'justice' in The Oresteia is seen really only in The Eumenides , however its presence still marks the shift in themes. After Orestes begged Athena for deliverance from 'the Erinyes ,' she granted him his request in the form of a trial.

This is the first example of proper litigation in the trilogy and illuminates the change from emotional retaliation to civilized decisions regarding alleged crimes. In addition, Athena set up the ground rules for how the verdict would be decided so that everything would be dealt with fairly. By Athena creating this blueprint the future of revenge-killings and the merciless hunting of the Furies would be eliminated from Greece. Once the trial concluded, Athena proclaimed the innocence of Orestes and he was set free from the Furies.

The cycle of murder and revenge had come to an end while the foundation for future litigation had been laid. There are many didactic motives in the Oresteia , one of them being the matter of moral responsibility. The characters in the play often face difficulty when it comes to accepting the blame for their actions. Two main characters that are prime examples of this are Orestes and Agamemnon.

Citation Styles for "Oresteia : Agamemnon, the Libation bearers, the Eumenides"

Moral responsibility is "the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission, in accordance with one's moral obligations. It can be argued that Agamemnon did not accept moral responsibility for sacrificing his daughter, Iphigenia, in order to be able to sail to Troy without the wind interfering. This does not mean that Agamemnon was not morally responsible.

Both sides of the argument stand; that because of the circumstances surrounding his actions, Agamemnon cannot be seen as morally responsible, or, no matter the circumstances, he was morally responsible for killing his daughter.

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However, with Apollo stepping in to tell the truth about what had occurred, that he had in fact pushed Orestes to kill his own mother, Orestes can be seen to hold no moral responsibility over the death of Clytaemnestra. Clytaemnestra is another character that is able to be analyzed in terms of moral responsibility, her premeditated killing of Agamemnon was an act of revenge and allows for us to see her as morally responsible for her husband's death.

The theme of revenge plays a large role in the Oresteia.

The Oresteia

It is easily seen as a principal motivator of the actions of almost all of the characters. It all starts in Agamemnon with Clytaemnestra, who murders her husband, Agamemnon, in order to obtain vengeance for his sacrificing of their daughter, Iphigenia.

About The Oresteia

The Oresteia (Ancient Greek: Ὀρέστεια) is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus in The trilogy—consisting of Agamemnon (Ἀγαμέμνων), The Libation Bearers . The final play of the Oresteia, called The Eumenides ( Εὐμενίδες. bahana-line.com: The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides (): Aeschylus, W. B. Stanford, Robert Fagles: Books.

The death of Cassandra, the princess of Troy, taken captive by Agamemnon in order to fill a place as a concubine, can also be seen as an act of revenge for taking another woman as well as the life of Iphigenia. Later on, in The Libation Bearers , Orestes and Electra, siblings as well as the other children of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, plot to kill their mother and succeed in doing so due to their desire to avenge their father's death.

The Eumenides is the last book in which the Furies, who are in fact the goddesses of vengeance, seek to take revenge on Orestes for the murder of his mother. It is also in this part of the novel that it is discovered that the god Apollo played a part in the act of vengeance toward Clytaemnestra through Orestes.

The cycle of revenge seems to be broken when Orestes is not killed by the Furies, but is instead allowed to be set free and deemed innocent by the goddess Athena. The entirety of the play's plot is dependent upon the theme of revenge, as it is the cause of almost all of the effects within the play.

The House of Atreus began with Tantalus , son of Zeus, who murdered his son, Pelops , and attempted to feed him to the gods. The gods, however, were not easily tricked and so banished Tantalus to the Underworld and brought his son back to life.

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Later in life Pelops and his family line were cursed by Myrtilus , a son of Hermes, catalyzing the curse of House Atreus. Pelops had two children, Atreus and Thyestes , who are said to have killed their half-brother Chrysippus , and were therefore banished. Thyestes had a son with his daughter and named him Aegisthus, who went on to kill Atreus.

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The Johns Hopkins University Press. In his response to her he pretends he is a stranger and tells Clytaemnestra that he Orestes is dead, causing her to send for Aegisthus. In this trilogy there are multiple themes carried through all three plays. Cleveland Museum of Art. She warns Orestes that if he kills her he will be cursed, but Orestes is not swayed, and persuaded to the task by Apollo and Pylades , despite his misgivings he kills Clytemnestra. There is also an underlying metaphorical aspect to the entire drama: There is also a significant amount of animal symbolism in the plays, and humans who forget how to govern themselves justly tend to be personified as beasts.

Leading up to here, we can see that the curse of the House of Atreus was one forged from murder and deceit, and continued in this way for generations through the family line.