Books by Aeschylus

The Persians, Aeschylus' earliest surviving tragedy, holds a fascination both for readers of Greek drama and Greek history. Not only is it the earliest existing play in the Western tradition, it is drawn directly from the playwright's own experiences at the battle of Salamis, making it the only account of the Persian Wars composed by an eyewitness. And as pure tragedy, it is a masterpiece. Aeschylus tells the story of the war from the Persian point of view, and his pride in the great victory of Greeks is tempered with a real compassion for Xerxes and his vanquished nation. Lembke and Harrington have rendered this stunning work in a modern translation that loses none of the original's dramatic juxtaposition of serenity and violence, hope and despair.

Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro's masterful translation of The Oresteia, originally published in 2003, is being repackaged for the collected volumes in the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series. Burian will add Greek line numbers and update the introduction and bibliography.

Originally published in 1899, this book contains the Greek text of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound. The tragedy is prefaced with a history of Prometheus in Greek myth and an attempted reconstruction of the other two plays in the Prometheus trilogy, of which Prometheus Bound is the only extant piece.

Intended to be both read as literature and performed as plays, these translations are lucid and readable, while remaining staunchly faithful to the texts.

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.

The Oresteian trilogy (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides) established the themes of Greek tragedy - the inexorable nature of Fate, the relationship between justice, revenge, and religion. The plays dramatize the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra, the revenge of her son Orestes, and his judgement by the court of Athens. This new translation seeks to preserve the plays' qualities as theatre and as literature.

Aeschylus (c. 525-456 BCE) is the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great art forms. Seven of his eighty or so plays survive complete, including the Oresteia trilogy and the Persians, the only extant Greek historical drama. Fragments of his lost plays also survive.

Aeschylus' Oresteia is a tragedy of inescapable killing within one family, such that each generation must avenge it in kind. This new and close translation tries to preserve its theatrical and poetic qualities: introductory and explanatory matter emphasizes the interconnection of scenes, ideas, and language which distinguishes this unique work, the only trilogy to survive from Greek tragedy.

An accurate and highly readable new translation with introduction, extensive explanatory notes, and up-to-date bibliography of four of Aeschylus' plays, including the unique historical tragedy Persians and the hugely influential Prometheus Bound.

"What David Slavitt does, as the early Roman poets did, is to take a poem as his 'model' and make it his own by creating in late twentieth-century English an appropriate equivalent of the ancient poem. His Oresteia is the most lively and readable version known to me."-Gordon Williams

A collection of plays that focuses on three playwrights' - Peter Meineck, Cecelia Eaton Luschnig, and Paul Woodruff - treatment of the same events in the House of Atreus. It is suitable for those interested in Greek literature, theater history, or mythology.

This paperback edition replaces the hardback first published in 1957.

"Choephori" is the second play in the Oresteian trilogy. This edition takes into account recent research on the play and tackles problems presented by an unusually corrupt text. It looks at the questions of style, dramatic technique and interpretation.

The formidable talents of Anthony Hecht, one of the most gifted of contemporary American poets, and Helen Bacon, a classical scholar, are here brought to bear on this vibrant translation of Aeschylus'' much underrated tragedy The Seven Against Thebes. The third and only remaining play in a trilogy dealing with related events, The Seven Against Thebes tells the story of the Argive attempt to claim the Kingdom of Thebes, and of the deaths of thebrothers Eteocles and Polyneices, each by the others hand. Long dismissed by critics as ritualistic and lacking in dramatic tension, Seven Against Thebes is revealed by Hecht and Bacon as a work of great unity and drama, one exceptionally rich in symbolism and imagery.

Aeschylus' great trilogy of Greek tragedies: Agamemnon, Choephori (Libation-Bearers) and Eumenides (The Furies).

Treating ancient plays as living drama.

The work of these three Athenian playwrights became the touchstone for drama for the next two and a half thousand years. This volume contains the earliest surviving Greek tragedy, an archtype of the human condition, a jealous wife's mistake, a moral debate, an anti-war play and a play of paradoxes.

"The Oresteia" by Aeschylus, a trilogy among the Greek tragedies, is considered to be one of the great foundational texts of Western culture. This title is a translation of this work.

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.

Contains the Greek texts of the seven extant plays of Aeschylus: "Persae", "Septem contra Thebas", "Supplices", "Agamemnon", "Choephoroe", "Eumenides", and "Prometheus Vinctus".

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. 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 s evocative translation is accompanied by an introduction, with individual discussions of the plays, and their sources in history and mythology.

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.