The Oresteian Trilogy

Description

What is justice? How is it related to vengeance? Can justice be reconciled with the demands of religion, the violence of human feeling, the forces of fate? These questions, which puzzled thoughtful Athenians in the decades after the battle of Marathon, provided the theme for "Agamemmon", "The Choephori" and "The Eumenides" - those grim tragedies that make up the Oresteian triology. In these plays, Aeschyluys (525bc-456bc) takes as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos - a chain finally broken only by the intervention of the goddess Athene. Philip Vellacott's verse translation makes available to the modern reader a mile-stone in the history of drama.

Aeschylus was born of noble family near Athens in 525 BC. He took part in the Persian Wars, adn his epitahp represents him as fighting at Marathon. He wrote more than seventy plays, of which only seven have survived. Philip Vellacott has translated Aeschylus and Euripides for the Penguin Classics. He taughts classics at Dulwich College for twenty-four years and lectured on Greek Drama in the USA. He was also a Visiting Lecturer in the University of California. He died in 1997.