The Persians / Prometheus Bound / Seven Against Thebes / The Suppliants

The Persians and Other Plays

Aeschylus (525-456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the status of high art. The Persians, the only Greek tragedy to deal with events from recent Athenian history, depicts the final defeat of Persia in the battle of Salamis, through the eyes of the Persian court of King Xerxes, becoming a tragic lesson in tyranny. In Prometheus Bound, the defiant Titan Prometheus is brutally punished by Zeus for daring to improve the state of wretchedness and servitude in which mankind is kept. Seven Against Thebes shows the inexorable downfall of the last members of the cursed family of Oedipus, while The Suppliants relates the pursuit of the fifty daughters of Danaus by the fifty sons of Aegyptus, and their final rescue by a heroic king.

Greek Tragedy

Bringing together the masterpieces of classical tragedy in one volume, this is the ideal single-volume introduction for theatre goers, actors, general readers, and students of Classics, English Literature, and Drama.

AESOP probably lived in the middle part of the sixth century BC. A statement in Herodotus gives grounds for thinking that he was a slave. 
 
 
Simon Goldhill (introducer) is Professor of Greek at Cambridge University and a Fellow of King's College where he is Director of Studies in Classics. He has published widely on many aspects of Greek literature, especially tragedy. He is in great demand as a lecturer all over the world, and is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television on classical matters. 
 
Shomit Dutta (editor) was educated at University College Oxford, and King's College London, and has taught classics at Radley College and Harrow School, and Oxford. He is also a freelance arts reviewer, and has published a translation of Sophocles' Ajax (Cambridge).

Agememnon is the first part of the Aeschylus's Orestian trilogy in which the leader of the Greek army returns from the Trojan war to be murdered by his treacherous wife Clytemnestra. In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex the king sets out to uncover the cause of the plague that has struck his city, only to disover the devastating truth about his relationship with his mother and his father. 
Medea is the terrible story of a woman's bloody revenge on her adulterous husband through the murder of her own children.

The Oresteia

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

Far more than the story of murder and vengeance, the Oresteia serves as a dramatic parable of the evolution of justice and civilisation that is still powerful after 2,500 years

Translated by George Thomson, whose classic translation is renowned for its fidelity to the rhythms and multilayered richness of the original Greek

One of the founding documents of Western culture and the only surviving ancient Greek trilogy, this is one of the great tragedies of all time. The three plays portray the bloody events that follow the victorious return of King Agamemnon from the Trojan War. 
Contains Agamemnon, Choephoroe and Eumenides

The Oresteian Trilogy

Three powerful plays on revenge, fate and justice, Agamemnon, The Choephori and The Eumenides

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.

Aeschylus (525-c.456 bc) set his great trilogy in the immediate aftermath of the Fall of Troy, when King Agamemnon returns to Argos, a victor in war. Agamemnon depicts the hero's discovery that his family has been destroyed by his wife's infidelity and ends with his death at her callous hand. Clytemnestra's crime is repaid in The Choephori when her outraged son Orestes kills both her and her lover. The Eumenides then follows Orestes as he is hounded to Athens by the Furies' law of vengeance and depicts Athene replacing the bloody cycle of revenge with a system of civil justice. Written in the years after the Battle of Marathon, The Oresteian Trilogy affirmed the deliverance of democratic Athens not only from Persian conquest, but also from its own barbaric past.

Prometheus Bound and Other Plays

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.

Aeschylus (525&ndash;456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the status of high art. In Prometheus Bound the defiant Titan Prometheus is brutally punished by Zeus for daring to improve the state of wretchedness and servitude in which mankind is kept. The Suppliants tells the story of the fifty daughters of Danaus who must flee to escape enforced marriages, while Seven Against Thebes shows the inexorable downfall of the last members of the cursed family of Oedipus. And The Persians, the only Greek tragedy to deal with events from recent Athenian history, depicts the aftermath of the defeat of Persia in the battle of Salamis, with a sympathetic portrayal of its disgraced King Xerxes. 
 
Philip Vellacott&rsquo;s evocative translation is accompanied by an introduction, with individual discussions of the plays, and their sources in history and mythology.

Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides

The only trilogy in Greek drama that survives from antiquity, Aeschylus' The Oresteia is translated by Robert fagles with an introduction, notes and glossary written in collaboration with W.B. Stanford in Penguin Classics. 
 
In the Oresteia Aeschylus addressed the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. As they move from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, their spirit of struggle and regeneration becomes an everlasting song of celebration. In Agamemnon, a king's decision to sacrifice his daughter and turn the tide of war inflicts lasting damage on his family, culminating in a terrible act of retribution; The Libation Bearers deals with the aftermath of Clytemnestra's regicide, as her son Orestes sets out to avenge his father's death; and in The Eumenides, Orestes is tormented by supernatural powers that can never be appeased. Forming an elegant and subtle discourse on the emergence of Athenian democracy out of a period of chaos and destruction, The Oresteia is a compelling tragedy of the tensions between our obligations to our families and the laws that bind us together as a society. 
 
Aeschylus (525-456 BC) was born near Athens. He wrote more than seventy plays, of which seven have survived, all translated for Penguin Classics: The Supplicants, The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides. 
 
If you enjoyed The Oresteia, you might like Euripides' Medea and Other Plays, also available in Penguin Classics. 
 
'Conveys more vividly and powerfully than any of the ten competitors I have consulted the eternal power of this masterpiece ... a triumph' 
Bernard Levin 
 
'How satisfying to read at last a modern translation which is rooted in Greek feeling and Greek thought ... both the stature and the profound instinctive genius of Aeschylus are recognised' 
Mary Renault, author of The King Must Die

In the Oresteia - the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity - Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. 
 
Moving from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, its spirit of struggle and regeneration is eternal.

Aeschylus

Lesley Sharp

Hugo Speer

Will Howard

Joanne Froggatt

Full Cast

Niamh Cusack

Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Furies

The classic trilogy about murder, revenge and justice, as heard on BBC Radio 3 – plus a bonus documentary exploring Aeschylus's seminal Greek tragedy 
 
A chilling tale of homecoming, violent death and bloody vengeance, The Oresteia dates back to the 5th Century BC, but its themes still resonate today. At once a family saga, morality tale and courtroom drama, it recounts how two generations of the cursed House of Atreus become locked into a deadly cycle of atrocities. To break the chain, their private vendetta must become public, as questions of guilt and justification are decided in the first ever homicide trial… 
 
Agamemnon 
The Trojan War is over, and conquering hero Agamemnon arrives home to Argos. But victory came at an appalling price – the sacrifice of his eldest daughter, Iphigenia. Now, his wife Clytemnestra is determined to take a grisly revenge … 
 
The Libation Bearers 
Returning from exile, Agamemnon's son Orestes vows to avenge his father’s death by murdering his killer, his own mother Clytemnestra. But where can he find the strength to carry out such a horrific deed? 
 
The Furies 
Having committed matricide, Orestes flees to Delphi. But the remorseless Furies, ancient deities of vengeance, are on his trail and baying for blood. Can the young gods Apollo and Athena save him from a terrible fate? 
 
Adapted by three of Britain’s most imaginative writers, Simon Scardifield, Ed Hime and Rebecca Lenkiewicz, these contemporary versions of Aeschylus’s trilogy are atmospheric, fast-moving and superbly accessible. The star casts include Lesley Sharp as Clytemnestra, Hugo Speer as Agamemnon and Will Howard as Orestes. 
 
Each of the plays is introduced by Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at Kings College London. 
 
Also featured is an episode of In Our Time, in which Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how The Oresteia has fired the modern imagination, inspiring artists ranging from Richard Wagner to T. S. Eliot. 
 
Written by Aeschylus 
 
Agamemnon 
The Chorus – Arthur Hughes, Philip Jackson and Carolyn Pickles 
Clytemnestra – Lesley Sharp 
Agamemnon – Hugo Speer 
Cassandra – Anamaria Marinca 
Calchas – Karl Johnson 
Aegisthus – Sean Murray 
Iphigenia – Georgie Fuller 
Herald – John Norton 
Guards – Steve Toussaint and Harry Jardine 
Adapted by Simon Scardifield 
Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko 
BBC Concert Orchestra Percussionists: Alasdair Malloy, Stephen Webberley and Stephen Whibley 
Singer: Adriana Festeu 
Sound design by Colin Guthrie 
First broadcast BBC Radio 3, 12 January 2014 
 
The Libation Bearers 
Orestes – Will Howard 
Electra – Joanne Froggatt 
Clytemnestra – Lesley Sharp 
The Chorus – Sheila Reid, Amanda Lawrence and Carys Eleri 
Aegisthus – Sean Murray 
Cilissa – Carolyn Pickles 
Pylades – Joel MacCormack 
Servants – David Seddon and John Norton 
Iphigenia – Georgie Fuller 
Adapted by Ed Hime 
Directed by Marc Beeby 
BBC Concert Orchestra Percussionists: Alasdair Malloy, Stephen Webberley and Stephen Whibley 
Singer: Adriana Festeu 
Sound design by Cal Knightley and Colin Guthrie 
First broadcast BBC Radio 3, 19 January 2014 
 
The Furies 
Narrator – Niamh Cusack 
Alecto – Polly Hemingway 
Megaera – Maureen Beattie 
Tisiphone – Carolyn Pickles 
Orestes – Will Howard 
Athena – Chipo Chung 
Apollo – Joel MacCormack 
Clytemnestra – Lesley Sharp 
The Pythia – Priyanga Burford 
Girl – Carys Eleri 
Judge – Sean Murray 
Adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz 
Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko 
BBC Concert Orchestra Percussionists: Alasdair Malloy, Stephen Webberley and Stephen Whibley 
Sound design by Colin Guthrie 
First broadcast BBC Radio 3, 26 January 2014 
 
In Our Time 
Presented by Melyvn Bragg 
With Edith Hall, then Professor of Greek Cultural History at Durham University; Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge; Tom Healy, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London 
Produced by Charlie Taylor 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 29 December 2005

Aeschylus

Books by Aeschylus

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