[.ca] Penguin Classics Oresteia (ISBN 0140443339)

Very Readable, but not the best:
Robert Fagles is an excellent translator generally, and if you have never read the Greek classics before, I would recommend this one. He puts more emotion and excitement into the plays than most of his contemporaries do. However, even though I love Fagles and was quite impressed by his Homer translations, his Aeschylus is probably not the best out there. If you are looking to truly study Aeschylus rather than just read it for pleasure, I would recommend, instead, the Lattimore translation. It is far harder to get into initially, but more rewarding, as the translation is more literal yet still superb. Do not be afraid!

Translation is OK, but probably not the best...:
I read this for an ancient political theory class, and while the translation is lucid, it seems awkward in many places and not very poetic. My teacher uses both this translation and another (the Lattimore, I believe) in class, and the latter is more poetic. I couldn't say which is more accurate, however. This trilogy is a classic, though, and is definitely worth reading.

Did Orestes kill his mother ?:
Aeschylus ( 525-456 B. C.) is one of the greatest poets in history and is the oldest of the three Tragedy Poets ( the others are Sophocles and Euripides). The Oresteia is the only Greek trilogy that survived. In the first part - Agamemnon - he tells how the Greek commander is murdered by his wife Clytaimnestra an her lover Aigisthus short after his homecoming. His wife wanted to revenge the death of her daughter Iphigeneia, sacrificed by Agamemnon ten years earlier ( at the very beginning of the Trojan war ). The second part - The Libation Bearers - Orestes helped by his sister Electra, kills his mother and her lover Aigistus. In the third part - The Eumenides - Orestes is pursued by the three goddesses who seek revenge in their turn, urged by his mother. I like this trilogy mainly because at a given moment you could say that Orestes is only imagening things. I don't want to spoil so I guess you have to read this work to know what I mean.

A Great Tragedy- A Great Translation:
Before we had courts and rule of law, justice went by a different name- revenge. The greek playwrite Aeschylus mythologizes the creation of law and justice through allegorical representation, using the events of the Trojan war and the intercession of the gods as a basis for understanding the ancient Greek system of justice, on which all European courts are based. This translation is a very fluid interpretation of the original greek, and much less stilted than other's I've seen. Highly recommended to fans of ancient literature.

"The house breathes with murder":
This book consists of three major parts -- first, the long essay, "The Serpent and the Eagle", which is a very good narrative of what is going on for those who are not immediately familiar with the work (like me). Those who have extensive experience in studying this trilogy might find this unnecessary, but it is helpful to the lay reader trying to connect with vague high school or college recollections of this play. The second part is the trilogy itself, and it still doesn't lose any potency. If Fagles' thesis is to be believed, then the play is a meticulous journey from savagery and blood-feud into civic identity and suppression of the personal vendettas, leading to the ascendency of Athens after the war with the Persians. Aeschylus lived from 525 to 456 B.C., so that would put him in the pre-Socratic period and prior to the period of Athens' decline, so this civic victory over the furies that governed the blood-feud might be dimiinished by subsequent events. However, as a theatrical device to bring the vendetta (which, as the end of "Agamemnon" details, started a generation prior to the play with a grotesque feast of children) to its ultimate dilemma -- Clytemnestra avenging her daughter's death on the battlefield by killing the perpetrator, her husband -- Orestes having to avenge his father's death by killing his mother -- and the trial among the gods that resulted -- isn't any less relevant as a curb to seeking the most savage retribution at the expense of possibly a higher justice. The last part of Fagles' version is a line-by-line commentary that helps explain certain translated phrases. All in all, for both the layman and the expert, there are parts of this book worth keeping on the library shelf.