Review (PDF) Aeschylus II: The Oresteia (The Complete Greek Tragedies)
Aeschylus II contains “The Oresteia,” translated by Richmond Lattimore, and fragments of “Proteus,” translated by Mark Griffith. 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.
Series: The Complete Greek Tragedies
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 3 edition (April 19, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0226311473
ISBN-13: 978-0226311470
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #20,223 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Dramas & Plays > Tragedy #7 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Ancient & Medieval Literature > Greek #11 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Ancient & Medieval Literature > Ancient & Classical
Still the best combination for the average (undergrad) reader of accuracy and readability. Though I've never gotten over the fact that Lattimore inaccurately translates two DIFFERENT words as "daring," one of them being the Greek word "hubris." The result is that Helen is described as having hubris, directly contrary to the intent of the text (Paris, NOT Helen, is the epitome of hubris; Helen is something else, a kind of force of nature and a wild animal raised to deadly effect as a tame housepet, according to one metaphor).
Reading the original tragedians is a mind cleanse. Aeschylus has the knack for hard dark descriptions of destiny. Characters trapped in karmic trajectories that were initiated before they were even born. Abraham was stopped from killing Isaac, but Agamemnon's sacrifice of his favorite daughter to achieve the sack of Troy, brings down the famous house of Atreus. The description of her sacrifice curdles the blood & in the third play in the trilogy, the chorus of furies that chase Orestes, really gets off great lines in what is the world's 1st court room drama. Also Cltemnestra's dream of suckling a snake is a deep image for the ages.
This is a pretty decent set of plays by Aechylus. I found the format of the book very easy to follow and interesting to read.I would recommend this book, as well as the first book (Aeschylus I) to anyone who want to read some of the Greek tragedies or anyone who wants to know more about this famous Greek tragedian. This book has the whole Oresteia within it, except for the final part, in which only fragments of the play survive, which the introduction of the book explains in greater detail.
They say Aeschylus was a great dramatist. Maybe you had to be there, in ancient Greece, to appreciate him. I find him boring and stuffy.Supposedly his plays were musicals, and we have none of the music. Small wonder I'm bored. Imagine West Side Story with the characters reciting the songs.The characters are annoying. We're supposed to feel sorry for Agamemnon, a murderer, slaveholder, rapist, and proponent of genocide. I don't think so. I don't really care when Clytaemnestra kills him. Why not? He had it coming, for many reasons. He murdered his own daughter just to get a smoother cruise to Troy. What an ass.Read it for its scholarly value, but don't pretend you enjoy it. You're not fooling anyone.
Greek: Greek Recipes - The Very Best Greek Cookbook (Greek recipes, Greek cookbook, Greek cook book, Greek recipe, Greek recipe book) Aeschylus II: The Oresteia (The Complete Greek Tragedies) Aeschylus I: Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides (The Complete Greek Tragedies) (Vol 1) GREEK MYTHOLOGY: Greek Gods Of Ancient Greece And Other Greek Myths - Discovering Greek History & Mythology - 3rd Edition - With Pics (Greece, Greek, Egyptian ... Greek History, Mythology, Myths Book 1) The Complete Aeschylus: Volume I: The Oresteia: 1 (Greek Tragedy in New Translations) The Complete Aeschylus: Volume I: The Oresteia (Greek Tragedy in New Translations) Aeschylus I: The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliant Maidens, Prometheus Bound (The Complete Greek Tragedies) All That You've Seen Here Is God: New Versions of Four Greek Tragedies Sophocles' Ajax, Philoctetes, Women of Trachis; Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (A Vintage original) Greek Tragedies 1: Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound; Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Antigone; Euripides: Hippolytus Greek Tragedies, Volume 2 The Libation Bearers (Aeschylus), Electra (Sophocles), Iphigenia in Tauris, Electra, & The Trojan Women (Euripides) The Oresteia of Aeschylus: A New Translation by Ted Hughes Aeschylus I: Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides Eight Great Tragedies: The Complete Texts of the World's Great Tragedies from Ancient Times to the Twentieth Century The Pocket Oxford Greek Dictionary : Greek-English English-Greek Aeschylus: Agamemnon (Cambridge Translations from Greek Drama) Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus (The Complete Greek Tragedies) Euripides V: Bacchae, Iphigenia in Aulis, The Cyclops, Rhesus (The Complete Greek Tragedies) Euripides I: Alcestis, Medea, The Children of Heracles, Hippolytus (The Complete Greek Tragedies) Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers (The Complete Greek Tragedies) Euripides I: Alcestis, The Medea, The Heracleidae, Hippolytus (The Complete Greek Tragedies) (Vol 3)
