This commentary discusses Aeschylus' play Agamemnon (458 BC), which is one of the most popular of the surviving ancient Greek tragedies, and is the first to be published in English since 1958. It is designed particularly to help students who are tackling Aeschylus in the original Greek for the first time, and includes a reprint of D. L. Page's Oxford Classical Text of the play. The introduction defines the place of Agamemnon within the Oresteia trilogy as a whole, and the historical context in which the plays were produced. It discusses Aeschylus' handling of the traditional myth and the main ideas which underpin his overall design: such as the development of justice and the nature of human responsibility; and it emphasizes how the power of words, seen as ominous speech-acts which can determine future events, makes a central contribution to the play's dramatic momentum. Separate sections explore Aeschylus' use of theatrical resources, the role of the chorus, and the solo characters. Finally there is an analysis of Aeschylus' distinctive poetic style and use of imagery, and an outline of the transmission of the play from 458 BC to the first printed editions.

The sense of difficulty, and indeed of awe, with which a scholar approaches the task of translating the Agamemnon depends directly on its greatness as poetry. It is in part a matter of diction. The language of Aeschylus is an extraordinary thing, the syntax stiff and simple, the vocabulary obscure, unexpected, and steeped in splendour. Its peculiarities cannot be disregarded, or the translation will be false in character. Yet not Milton himself could produce in English the same great music, and a translator who should strive ambitiously to represent the complex effect of the original would clog his own powers of expression and strain his instrument to breaking. But, apart from the diction in this narrower sense, there is a quality of atmosphere surrounding the Agamemnon which seems almost to defy reproduction in another setting, because it depends in large measure on the position of the play in the historical development of Greek literature.

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.

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In this innovative rendition of The Oresteia, the poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson combines three different visions -- Aischylos' Agamemnon, Sophokles' Elektra, and Euripides' Orestes, giving birth to a wholly new experience of the classic Greek triumvirate of vengeance. Carson's accomplished rendering combines elements of contemporary vernacular with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy, opening up the plays to a modern audience. --from publisher description.

Three classic Greek tragedies are translated and critically introduced by Edith Hamilton.

Aeschylus' Agamemnon, first produced in 458 BC, is the opening play in his Oresteian trilogy. Agamemnon returns home after the Trojan Wars with his concubine Cassandra and is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. The ensuing blood feud continues until the third and final play, Eumenides, when peace is finally restored to the house of the Atreidae. It is a powerful and moving play which is difficult to interpret and which for a long time lacked an English edition.

Classic trilogy by great tragedian deals with the bloody history of the House of Atreus. Grand in style, rich in diction and dramatic dialogue, the plays embody Aeschylus' concerns with the destiny and fate of both individuals and the state, all played out under the watchful eye of the gods.