The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides (Translated by E. D. A. Morshead with an introduction by Theodore Alois Buckley)

By Aeschylus

The importance of Aeschylus in the development of drama cannot be overstated. Before him tragedy had consisted of the chorus and one actor; and by introducing a second actor, expanding the dramatic dialogue, and reducing the lyrical parts, he practically created Greek tragedy as we know it. Like other writers of his time, he acted in his own plays, and trained the chorus in their dances and songs; and did much to improve the performances by his development of scene and costume on the stage. “The Oresteia” is Aeschylus most famous work, a trilogy of dramas that includes “Agamemnon,” “The Libation Bearers,” and “The Eumenides.” In the first work of the trilogy, Agamemnon, King of Argos, is returning home from the Trojan War. Clytemnestra, his wife, awaits his return by planning his murder. She is angry for the murder of their first born daughter, Iphigenia, which Agamemnon has sacrificed in order to appease the goddess Artemis. The second drama, “The Libation Bearers,” is concerned with the revenge by Agamemnon’s children, Electra and Orestes, against Clytemnestra, for the murder of their father. The final play in the trilogy, “The Eumenides,” details the trial of Orestes for the murder of his mother. This collection of dramas brilliantly deals with the themes of revenge and justice and stands to this day as one of the most important collection of works from classical antiquity. This edition includes an introduction by Theodore Alois Buckley and follows the verse translations of E. D. A. Morshead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781420950960

Aeschylus

Aeschylus (c.525-455 B.C) was an ancient Greek playwright and solider. Scholars’ knowledge of the tragedy genre begins with Aeschylus’ work, and because of this, he is dubbed the “father of tragedy”. Aeschylus claimed his inspiration to become a writer stemmed from a dream he had in which the god Dionysus encouraged him to write a play. While it is estimated that he wrote just under one hundred plays, only seven of Aeschylus’ work was able to be recovered.

Book preview

cover.jpg

THE ORESTEIA

(AGAMEMNON, THE LIBATION-BEARERS, AND THE EUMENIDES)

By AESCHYLUS

Translated by E. D. A. MORSHEAD

Introduction by

THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY

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

By Aeschylus

Translated by E. D. A. Morshead

Introduction by Theodore Alois Buckley

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5107-3

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5096-0

This edition copyright © 2015. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: A detail of Design for Aeschylus: The Eumenides, c. 1919 (pencil & w/c on paper), Ricketts, Charles (1866-1931) / Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Images.

Please visit www.digireads.com

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

AGAMEMNON

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

AGAMEMNON

THE LIBATION BEARERS

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

THE LIBATION BEARERS

THE EUMENIDES

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

THE EUMENIDES

Introduction

Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, was born at Eleusis, 525 B.C. His early employment to watch the grapes in a vineyard is traditionally reported to have led to the development of his tragic genius, and possibly to some less excusable propensities of his character, in which the god Bacchus was equally concerned. He first appeared as a tragedian in 499 B.C., with Choerilus and Pratinas for his competitors. In 490 B.C., he distinguished himself at the battle of Marathon, in company with his brothers Cynegeirus and Ameinias. In 484 B.C., he gained his first tragic victory, and in 480 B.C., he fought at Salamis: thus, as Schlegel{1} observes, he flourished in the very freshness and vigor of Grecian freedom, and a proud sense of the glorious struggle by which it was won, seems to have animated him and his poetry. This warlike vein is conspicuous in the Persae and Seven against Thebes, while the Agamemnon is replete with pathetic illustrations of the toils, dangers, and sufferings, of a soldier’s life.

His journeys into Sicily involve some intricate questions, but the received opinion seems to settle his first visit in 468 B.C., immediately after his defeat by Sophocles, and he probably spent some time there, if the use of Sicilian words in his later plays may be adduced as an argument. The other journey was probably ten years after, 458 B.C., and, as Müller thinks, was undertaken in consequence of the aristocratic notions so freely expressed in his Eumenides, which were too openly opposed to the interests of Pericles’ party, then in the ascendant, to render Athens a safe abode for our poet. Other accounts state that a charge of impiety was the real cause of his second departure, and that he only escaped the fury of the populace, through the intervention of the Areopagus. His death took place at Gela, 456 B.C.. The story is, that an eagle having mistaken his bald head for a stone, dropped a tortoise upon it in order to break the shell, and that the blow proved fatal. There seems, however, little doubt but that our poet died in the ordinary course of nature, as his advanced age would render probable.

The number of plays written by Aeschylus is doubtful, but, as in the case of Sophocles, seven only have survived the ravages of time. Among these seven we are fortunate in possessing a complete trilogy, consisting of the Agamemnon, Choephorae, and Eumenides. The remaining plays are the Prometheus Bound, the Seven against Thebes, the Persians, and the Suppliants.

In criticizing the plays of Aeschylus, due regard must be had to the state in which Aeschylus found the drama, and to the difference between his earlier and later works, as far as the existing specimens allow us to judge.

When we are told that Aeschylus formed the dialogue of the Athenian stage, by adding a second actor, it is evident that the preceding dramas must have consisted of little else than a recitative and chorus alternately following each other. The single actor probably detailed some legend possessing a mythological or local interest, while the chorus relieved the monotony by songs and dances connected with the subject. If we consider the earliest specimens of our own drama, we shall find the dialogue heavy, and consisting of long paragraphs, whilst the more modern stage limits these lengthy speeches to narrative, argument, or soliloquy. But in the Suppliants of Aeschylus, (which some scholars consider the most ancient specimen of the Greek drama that has descended to us in a complete form,) we shall find that the chorus, are really the chief personages in the piece, and, as Aeschylus is considered to have limited the functions of the chorus, it follows that the single actor was rather subservient to carrying on the story, than the hero of it. And this agrees with Aristotle’s account, that Aeschylus introduced an actor of first parts, evidently showing that the histrionic abilities previously required in the actor were of an inferior order. Throughout the whole play of the Suppliants, the pathos rests entirely with the chorus, the speeches of Danaus and the king are quiet and didactic, and even the herald lacks the haughtiness with which such persons are elsewhere invested. Setting aside the chorus, the whole play exhibits a dead level of moral common places and mythical details. It might indeed be read and performed with characters omitted. As far as the corrupt state of the choruses will allow us to judge, they were genial, brilliant, and graceful, but the very nature of a chorus destroyed all individualization. Their griefs, joys, and emotions, were common to all their number; there were so many heroines, that there was no heroine.

here is another feature in the Supplices, which points to its extreme antiquity, and that is, its undramatic character. In the first chorus we are told as much as we know at the end of the play. Like the prologues prefixed to the comedies of Terence (unnecessary, as the plot is always the same), the opening chorus contains the whole argument of the piece. The Danaïdes have fled from Egypt to avoid the lawless love of their kinsmen, they crave protection, are admonished to behave themselves; they obtain protection, and, it is to be hoped, follow their father’s advice. There is, in fact, something half comic in the whole story, and the effect could only have been heightened by a concluding play in the trilogy (if there was any), in which their punishment should have been set before the eyes of the spectator, with real tubs and real water.

After what has been said on the subject of the Suppliants, the reader will perhaps be surprised to find that Schlegel considers the Persae, both in point of choice of subject, and the manner of handling it, undoubtedly the most imperfect of all the extant tragedies of this poet. Aeschylus certainly labored under the same disadvantages as Lucan and Silius Italicus, in having chosen a subject too near his own time to possess a mythical interest, and too much depending upon narrative to be truly dramatic. But he successfully appealed to the feelings of the audience, who doubtless listened to this panegyric upon Athens with as much satisfaction as an English audience applauded the braggart prologues spoken upon occasion, during the last century. There is too great a desire in German critics to elevate the standard of Athenian refinement. The conclusion of the Persians savors too much of ridicule, to excite any high feelings of commiseration, and this play, like the Seven against Thebes, ought to have ended sooner.

But in the episodes Aeschylus has shown great power. The prevailing notion throughout the play is of a deity favoring the Athenians, and overthrowing the haughty yoke of the Persians. The atheistic impiety of Xerxes is hinted at, and his too-late repentance is an instance of the fatalism found throughout the Agamemnon, and pervading the Aeschylean drama. The piety of the Greeks, on the contrary, is powerfully contrasted, and the deity is accordingly represented as beginning the fight. This description of the sea-fight is wonderfully animated, and could be written only by an eyewitness of the victory of Salamis, while the description of the fate of the miserable remnants of the Persian army, as detailed by the messenger, is in the highest degree graphic.

Nor was the evocation of Darius less pleasing to an Athenian mind. The ancient prophecies of Bacis and others, which, although they might refer to mythical events, were nevertheless greedily seized upon, and applied to the present moment, and the recognition of ancient local traditions by supernatural powers, was an agreeable sacrifice to the vanity of the Athenians. Every man would have exclaimed with Hamlet:

——Touching this vision here,

It is an honest ghost——

Nay, Aeschylus has excited a feeling of pity for the defeat of the Persians, by the amiable dignity with which he has invested the character of their former lord. The quiet, substantial steadiness of Darius is the most powerful satire upon the intemperance of their subsequent ruler that can be imagined, and the whole evocation is invested with a mystical solemnity that makes us forget its ideality.

Many critics consider the Persians as the earliest of the extant plays of Aeschylus, but for the reasons above stated, I am inclined to give the higher antiquity to the Suppliants.

If the Seven against Thebes was connected with the Eleusinians, as Müller thinks, I scarcely believe that Aeschylus would have ended with an anticlimax, by introducing the lamentations of Antigone and Ismena over their fallen brothers. When this critic says, "this concluding scene points as distinctly as the end of the Choephorae to the subject of a new piece, which was doubtless ‘the Eleusinians,{2}’" he asserts too much. In the first place, it is clear from Plutarch (Thes. p. 14, A.), that the burial of the chieftains was effected by Theseus under a truce, not by violence. If, therefore, matters were amicably arranged, why should Antigone be closely connected with this subject. The fact is, Müller has told us a great deal that we do not know, but has overlooked the only point that Plutarch tells us respecting the Eleusinians, which, unfortunately contradicts his whole theory. We might as well say that the threats of the Mycenian elders, at the end of the Agamemnon, necessarily required the Choephorae, to open with their revolt, as that, because Antigone threatens to bury her brother, Aeschylus was obliged to make her do so in another play, of which all our knowledge only proves the contrary. The theory of tetralogy has been carried much too far.

The Seven against Thebes is doubtless an early play, and is as undramatic as the Persians. But the high tone of true Grecian chivalry which reigns throughout, the splendid individuality of the characters, despite their one common feature of physical valor, is equal to anything, even in Aeschylus. The description of each warrior is not only a physical and heroic, but an ethical picture. The high-souled Amphiaraus, whose destiny led him to that death his wisdom foresaw, whose fate impelled him to that society his sense shrunk from, is pathetically contrasted with the mad boldness of the other chieftains,—his religion with their impiety—his modesty with their idle vaunting—his wisdom with their recklessness. And when Eteocles praises him, we almost forget that he too lies under the ban of fate. So good does Eteocles seem by his praise of the good.

In allusion to the question of a connection between dramas, it may be worthwhile to observe the different degrees of fatalism that influence the minds of the two brothers in