Greek Tragedies 2: Aeschylus: The Libation Bearers; Sophocles: Electra; Euripides: Iphigenia among the Taurians, Electra, The Trojan Women

By Mark Griffith, Glenn W. Most, David Grene and Richmond Lattimore

Greek Tragedies, Volume II contains Aeschylus’s “The Libation Bearers,” translated by Richmond Lattimore; Sophocles’s “Electra,” translated by David Grene; Euripides’s “Iphigenia among the Taurians,” translated by Anne Carson; Euripides’s “Electra,” translated by Emily Townsend Vermeule; and Euripides’s “The Trojan Women,” translated by Richmond Lattimore.
 
Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classicists David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, those translations combined accuracy, poetic immediacy, and clarity of presentation to render the surviving masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in an English so lively and compelling that they remain the standard translations. Today, Chicago is taking pains to ensure that our Greek tragedies remain the leading English-language versions throughout the twenty-first century.
 
In this highly anticipated third edition, Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most have carefully updated the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining the vibrancy for which our English versions are famous. This edition also includes brand-new translations of Euripides’ Medea, The Children of Heracles, Andromache, and Iphigenia among the Taurians, fragments of lost plays by Aeschylus, and the surviving portion of Sophocles’s satyr-drama The Trackers. New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond. In addition, each volume includes an introduction to the life and work of its tragedian, as well as notes addressing textual uncertainties and a glossary of names and places mentioned in the plays.
 
In addition to the new content, the volumes have been reorganized both within and between volumes to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship on the order in which the plays were originally written. The result is a set of handsome paperbacks destined to introduce new generations of readers to these foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Apr 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9780226035628

Book preview

Notes

THE LIBATION BEARERS

AESCHYLUS

Translated by Richmond Lattimore

INTRODUCTION TO AESCHYLUS’ THE LIBATION BEARERS

The Libation Bearers is the second tragedy in Aeschylus’ Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides), which was produced in 458 BCE. Each play of the trilogy can be studied and interpreted as an independent drama, separately from the other two.

The dramatic time is some ten years after Agamemnon. Clytaemestra and Aegisthus rule in Argos, oppressing Electra, the daughter of Clytaemestra and Agamemnon, and tyrannizing the citizens. Electra has remained loyal to her father’s memory, and hopes for revenge. Orestes, her brother, has grown up in exile, likewise contemplating vengeance on his father’s killers. He returns with his comrade Pylades, is recognized by Electra, and with Electra’s help plots, and himself carries out, the murder of Clytaemestra and Aegisthus.

Sophocles in his Electra and Euripides in his Electra told the same story. The important features special to Aeschylus are as follows. The recognition is begun through Electra’s identification of a lock of her brother’s hair, deposited on Agamemnon’s tomb, and of his footprints. The brother and sister, with the chorus of Clytaemestra’s slave women, speak and chant a long invocation to the spirit of Agamemnon and the gods of the earth, working themselves up to an act of which they sense the horror. Electra then leaves the stage, does not reappear, and takes no further part in the action. Aegisthus is killed first, offstage, and Orestes confronts Clytaemestra before the audience, then forces her inside the palace and kills her there. At the end, Orestes cannot enjoy his triumph. As he stands over the corpses, justifying his act, the horror comes upon him and his mind sees the Furies of his mother (the Erinyes, or Eumenides), who pursue him from the stage. The story of this pursuit and the eventual release of Orestes is told in The Eumenides.

All three dramatists have made the murders be accomplished by deception. Orestes presents himself disguised and is not recognized at first by his mother and her husband. In Aeschylus, the intrigue is reduced to its simplest terms. Much of the tragedy’s force comes from the spellbinding rhythms and imagery of the invocation and the choral odes.

THE LIBATION BEARERS

Characters

ORESTES, son of Agamemnon and Clytaemestra

PYLADES, his friend

ELECTRA, his sister

CHORUS of Asian serving-women

A SERVANT (doorkeeper)

CLYTAEMESTRA, queen of Argos; now wife of Aegisthus

THE NURSE, Cilissa

AEGISTHUS, now king of Argos

A FOLLOWER of Aegisthus

Scene: Argos, in front of the palace.

(Enter Orestes and Pylades, from the side.)

ORESTES

(Enter the Chorus, with Electra, from the other side.)

(Orestes and Pylades conceal themselves, to one side.)

CHORUS [singing]

STROPHE A

ANTISTROPHE A

STROPHE B

ANTISTROPHE B

STROPHE C

ANTISTROPHE C

EPODE

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

(To the Chorus.)

CHORUS [singing]

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

CHORUS LEADER

ELECTRA

(Orestes comes forward from his place of concealment.)

ORESTES

ELECTRA

ORESTES

ELECTRA

ORESTES

ELECTRA

ORESTES

ELECTRA

ORESTES

ELECTRA

ORESTES

ELECTRA

ORESTES

ELECTRA

ORESTES