The oresteia

Synopsis

With Tales of Ovid, this author was recognized as a superb interpreter of the classics, & with his Birthday Letters, addressed to Sylvia Plath, he was revealed to a large public as a poet of extraordinarily deep feeling. The Oresteia of Aeschylus caps a remarkable year for his poetry. Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) was, with Sophocles, the greatest classical Greek dramatist. The Oresteia - Agamemnon, Choephori, & Eumenides - tells the story of the house of Atreaus: after King Agamemnon is murdered by Clytemnestra, their son, Orestes, is commanded by Apollo to avenge the crime by killing his mother, & he does so, bringing on himself the wrath of the Furies & the judgment of Athens. The authors "acting version" of the trilogy is itself a great performance; while artfully inflected with the contemporary, it has a classical beauty & authority. The Oresteia of Aeschylus deserves to become the standard edition for English-language readers & for the stage, too.