Aeschylus
Author
Publisher
Duke Classics
Pub. Date
2012
Language
English
Formats
Description
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays can still be read or performed, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. He is often described as the father of tragedy: our knowledge of the genre begins with his work and our understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived into modern times. Fragments of some other...
Author
Publisher
Duke Classics
Pub. Date
2012
Language
English
Description
Though it tells the stories of the defeated, Prometheus Bound and Other Plays features four tragedies that depict both unfortunate demises and the essence of the fighting human spirit. The Suppliants, the first play of the collection, follows the daughters of Danaus as they flee from the loveless marriages that had been forced upon them. The Persians, perhaps the oldest surviving play in existence, portrays the defeat of the Persian King Xeroxes....
Author
Publisher
Duke Classics
Language
English
Description
The Agamemnon of Aeschylus is the first play in The Trilogy of the Oresteia, which deals with the eternal problem of the evil act causing vengeance which wreaks more evil which must be avenged. Aeschylus declares that the new ruler in heaven, Zeus, heralds the end of this cycle and the beginning of hope. Zeus has suffered and sinned and grown wise, and thereby shows humans how to grow wise also.