3.5
Aeschylus II
ByPublisher Description
In the third edition of
, Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most have carefully updated the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining their vibrancy for which the Grene and Lattimore versions are famous. New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond.
Each volume also includes an introduction to the life and work of the tragedian and an explanation of how the plays were first staged, as well as notes addressing textual uncertainties and a glossary of names and places mentioned in the plays. The result is a series of lively and authoritative translations offering a comprehensive introduction to these foundational works of Western drama.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesAeschylus II Reviews
3.5
“read this book for a class and the stories weren’t bad it was just extremely hard to read which made it unlikeable. i liked the stories but the writing was just not good and the beginnings were all extremely boring. was fine to read for class but i would never read outside of class”
“Aeschylus has two bodies of work extant. (Most ancient plays are lost to the dusts of time.) The two bodies of work we have are: A) the Orestia, a complete trilogy, and B) 4 other random plays that were all part of a trilogy, but since we don't have the other plays in those trilogies, that makes our understanding of them not as complete.
This is composed of four plays: The Suppliant Maidens, Persians, Seven Against Thebes, and Prometheus Bound.
The Suppliants is one of the first plays ever. Back in this era, the chorus was the main character. That was dropped pretty quickly, but it's just interesting to me that that's even what the convention/rule was for a while. It also has an interesting historical bent, where it reveals some of the ancient interminglings between the Egyptian and Greek bloodlines."
The Persians is remarkable: it’s written for a Greek audience about their enemies, and it casts the audience’s enemies in such a sympathetic light as has perhaps never been done since. The Greeks had just beaten the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. The terrible misfortunes that befell the Persian army one after another is riveting to read about in verse.
This was a war between freedom (democracy) and slavery to the Persians. Aeschylus himself had fought in the war against the Persians. So for them to cast the Persians in such a sympathetic light, for them to actually empathize with how hard the news must have struck the Persians that they had lost, to go so strongly against nationalistic fervor and transcend that, is quite amazing. Having sympathy for your enemy is one of my highest spiritual goals. I wish I could have seen how the Athenians reacted to this play!
Seven Against Thebes is about the seven champions who assaulted the seven gates of Thebes when they tried to take the city. It's notably lacking in plot or much modern interest, but has some beautiful descriptions nonetheless. But it was very forgettable.
Prometheus Bound is interesting. It's the easiest to read, also quite strange: it’s about Hephaestus, alongside Might and Violence, binding Prometheus to a rock as punishment from Zeus for giving man fire and other technologies. It’s an underdog story where all the characters are gods.
At first it was always denigrated as being too bombastic and for the fact that all of its characters are essentially gods or otherwise totally unlike man. However, interest in it has been revitalized and it's now considered a great work. I found some of its passages to be the most beautiful and striking; there is zero plot, but I'm glad that I read it.
Considering how ancient that these plays are, I consider it amazing that Aeschylus developed his themes so strongly, and the evocative imagery he uses that have been reused ever since also make these plays a reflection of his greatness. While reading these fragmented plays is not the most satisfying experience, I would recommend reading Persians especially, although I would still place the Oresteia far above these others.
If only we had the full trilogies that these plays were taken from, they could be much more meaningful. I imagine in particular that Prometheus Bound could be the first act in a trilogy where Heracles comes and unleashes him later. I also would love to see how Persians fits into the bigger trilogy that it was taken from.
Aescyhylus, I tip my hat to you. Thank you for being one of the great forerunners of history who started so much.”
About Aeschylus
is a professor of classics and of theater, dance, and performance studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Albany, CA. Trained at Cambridge, Griffith is an enormously accomplished expert on the Greek Tragedies.
studied at Harvard, Oxford, and Yale and is currently professor of ancient Greek at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and a visiting member of the Committe on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He divides his time between Pisa, Florence, and Chicago.
(1906–1984) was a poet, translator, and longtime professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr College.
(1913–2002) taught classics for many years at the University of Chicago. He was a founding member of the Committee on Social Thought.
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