Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Penguin Classics (1979), Paperback, 160 pages
Description
Aeschylus I contains ?The Persians,? translated by Seth Benardete; ?The Seven Against Thebes,? translated by David Grene; ?The Suppliant Maidens,? translated by Seth Benardete; and ?Prometheus Bound,? translated by David Grene. 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.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Zohrab
Hard to understand but naturally since they were written in about 500 BC. Most plays are historical reflecting events during those times . Excellent plays opening windows to the ancient times. Great source if one wants to know more about Greek Gods and their legends
LibraryThing member gmicksmith
One of the most classic collections of the best of the Greeks. Prometheus Bound and The Persians are top notch.Seven Against Thebes adds to Antigone in particular. Anything that remains of Aeschylus is priceless.
LibraryThing member keylawk
With an Introduction to each of three plays by Aeschylus. The Suppliant Maidens is the earliest Greek play still preserved, and was produced circa 490 BC. 50 daughters of Danaus flee from Egypt to Argos to avoid forced marriage. The action takes place in a Sacred Grove.
The Persians was produced in
"Seven Against Thebes" is a very strange play, produced ~ 467 BC. Possibly part of a trilogy based on the Oedipal myths. For me the importance of this elusive play lies in the very very clear invocation of "justice" urged upon the audience.
The Persians was produced in
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472 BC, 8 years after the naval battle at Salamis, celebrated by the play. This is the only extant Greek tragedy not based on myth but on a contemporary event. In addition, this is the only tragedian known, ancient or modern, who dared present such a sympathetic picture of the deadly enemies of the audience. In addition, it is the Queen (although never named but as such), not Darius the King, who raises our sympathy. Perhaps precisely because the Athenians were free, fighting the enslaving despots of Persia, Aeschylus demands they comprehend the merits of their foes -- and ours."Seven Against Thebes" is a very strange play, produced ~ 467 BC. Possibly part of a trilogy based on the Oedipal myths. For me the importance of this elusive play lies in the very very clear invocation of "justice" urged upon the audience.
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LibraryThing member MarysGirl
Because I'm not a classicist or poet, I don't usually rate ancient plays. However, I will say this edition with more modern language was easy to read and comprehend. I'm very familiar with the myths and legends referenced in the work and found the stories tragic and affecting. Of the four, I liked
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"Prometheus Bound" best for its discussion of deeper issues such as the nature of tyranny and the need for compassion and kindness. Show Less
LibraryThing member Devil_llama
I rate this work as high as I do only for its classic interest; it is hard to view it as compelling drama in the modern world. Though award winning in its own time, theatre has moved on and left this sort of writing long behind, with all action happening offstage and delivered to the audience as
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long expository speeches by an annoying chorus that is by turns whiny, pompous, and groveling. It is always interesting to see the historical background of a field you are involved in, but this is not what I would classify among the best of classical drama. It doesn't hold a candle to the Oedipus Cycle, or even the author's own Oresteia. It also suffers in that these are mainly fragments of plays, or parts of trilogies or tetrads that are the only remaining parts of the work, so they feel unfinished, or like they start in the middle, which does them no benefit. Overall, recommended for people interested in historical theatre, or in the period in general, but for people wanting compelling drama, probably should look somewhere else. Show Less
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Some have compared Prometheus to Jesus Christ. Certainly the opening scene of Aeschylus's play, with Prometheus splayed upon a rock as he is bound by Hephaestus, invites the comparison. I would not go so far and see the interplay between the Greek gods to be the relevant context for this scene.
Prometheus' crime is not the only reason for his punishment for the chorus tells us that there is a war going on between the "Old" gods (Olympians) and the new generation of Gods. Zeus is seeking to maintain his primacy while Prometheus and his brothers are the dangerous new gods on the block. Atlas is suffering as well carrying the weight of the whole world on his back. The scales are not even - their is nothing like fairness or justice in this world. Prometheus is doomed even as he is visited by Io who is also suffering due to Hera's jealous rage over Zeus's attentions.
Being a god does not seem to lead to a completely pleasant life - there is strife and anger at every turn even for the most powerful. The winners in this play seem to be humans who do not have to relinquish the gifts endowed them by Prometheus. However, even these can be seen as a two-edged sword for our ancestors who had to endure hardships of many kinds in the struggle of living in the world. Prometheus cries out "O sky that circling brings light to all, you see how unjustly I suffer!" (lines 1091-2) Could that be our own cry even today?
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Played out at the "world's limit" in a bleak setting the drama portrays Prometheus suffering punishment for making humans "intelligent and masters of their minds". (line 444)Prometheus' crime is not the only reason for his punishment for the chorus tells us that there is a war going on between the "Old" gods (Olympians) and the new generation of Gods. Zeus is seeking to maintain his primacy while Prometheus and his brothers are the dangerous new gods on the block. Atlas is suffering as well carrying the weight of the whole world on his back. The scales are not even - their is nothing like fairness or justice in this world. Prometheus is doomed even as he is visited by Io who is also suffering due to Hera's jealous rage over Zeus's attentions.
Being a god does not seem to lead to a completely pleasant life - there is strife and anger at every turn even for the most powerful. The winners in this play seem to be humans who do not have to relinquish the gifts endowed them by Prometheus. However, even these can be seen as a two-edged sword for our ancestors who had to endure hardships of many kinds in the struggle of living in the world. Prometheus cries out "O sky that circling brings light to all, you see how unjustly I suffer!" (lines 1091-2) Could that be our own cry even today?
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LibraryThing member BrokenTune
The Persians and Other Plays is a collection of plays and commentary about plays by Aeschylus (525/4 - 456 BCE).
The book contains the following:
The Persians
Seven Against Thebes
The Suppliants
Prometheus Bound
Each play comes with a thorough introduction of the play itself as well as details of what
This is followed by more commentary and notes on the plays and on related plays that may have existed.
For example, it appears from the commentary that it has long been unclear in what order Aeschylus wrote the plays:
The production of 472 is the only one by Aeschylus that is known to have consisted of four plays whose stories were, on the face of it, unrelated - indeed, they were not even placed in proper chronological order. The first play was Phineus, about an episode in the saga of the Argonauts. This was followed by The Persians; then, jumping back to the heroic age, by Glaucus of Potniae, about a man who subjected his horses to an unnatural training regime and was devoured by them after crashing in a chariot race; and then by a satyr play about Prometheus ("Prometheus the Fire-Bearer" or "Fire-Kindler"). Repeated efforts have been made to find method behind the apparent madness of this arrangement, so far with little success.
As entertaining as it is to imagine someone making a simple mistake when noting down the running order of the plays in Ancient times, this must be quite frustrating to Classicists.
It took me way longer to read this collection than I thought but I don't regret a single minute of it.
While some of the concepts discussed and displayed in the plays were not instantly recognisable to a 20th- and 21th-century reader, the context an explanatory notes provided by Alan H. Sommerstein was so excellent that each of the plays not only made sense but actually made it a joy to discover how Aeschylus' may have raised smiles in some and incensed others of his audiences.
And some ideas and points of view in his plays - especially the description of the Persian's defeat (in The Persians), the exposition that women may refuse marriage (in The Suppliants), and some of the rather humanist views of Prometheus (in Prometheus Bound) - we quite different from what I had expected. Or rather, different from what I have come to expect from the Ancient Greek world when coming to Ancient Greek drama after reading the Greek myths (in whichever version: Apollodorus, Ovid, or any of the modern retellings). But even coming to Aeschylus with some familiarity of other playwrights such a Sophocles, I found Aeschylus surprisingly empathetic, satirical, and ... oddly modern.
CHORUS: You didn't, I suppose, go even further than that?
PROMETHEUS: I did: I stopped mortals foreseeing their death.
CHORUS: What remedy did you find for that affliction?
PROMETHEUS: I planted blind hopes within them.
CHORUS: That was a great benefit you gave to mortals.
PROMETHEUS: And what is more, I gave them fire.
It is easy to think of Prometheus only as the rebel who went against Zeus' wishes and brought fire to mankind, but there is more to him. I loved how Aeschylus focuses not on the fire-bringing alone but also on his shared humanity, and on the prophecy that Prometheus knew of that would lead to the decline of Zeus' power, the proverbial Götterdämmerung of the Ancient Greek gods.
PROMETHEUS:
It's very easy for someone who is standing safely out of trouble to advise and rebuke the one who is in trouble.
I knew that, all along. I did the wrong thing intentionally, intentionally, I won't deny it: by helping mortals, I brought trouble on myself. But I certainly never thought I would have a punishment anything like this, left to wither on these elevated rocks, my lot cast on this deserted, neighbourless crag. Now stop lamenting my present woes: descend to the ground and hear of my future fortunes, so that you will know it all to the end. Do as I ask, do as I ask. Share the suffering of one who is in trouble now: misery, you know, wanders everywhere, and alights on different persons at different times.
The book contains the following:
The Persians
Seven Against Thebes
The Suppliants
Prometheus Bound
Each play comes with a thorough introduction of the play itself as well as details of what
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we (think we) know about the history of the plays performances and how they may have influenced other Classical plays and playwrights, references in which inevitably have been used to date the plays themselves. This is followed by more commentary and notes on the plays and on related plays that may have existed.
For example, it appears from the commentary that it has long been unclear in what order Aeschylus wrote the plays:
The production of 472 is the only one by Aeschylus that is known to have consisted of four plays whose stories were, on the face of it, unrelated - indeed, they were not even placed in proper chronological order. The first play was Phineus, about an episode in the saga of the Argonauts. This was followed by The Persians; then, jumping back to the heroic age, by Glaucus of Potniae, about a man who subjected his horses to an unnatural training regime and was devoured by them after crashing in a chariot race; and then by a satyr play about Prometheus ("Prometheus the Fire-Bearer" or "Fire-Kindler"). Repeated efforts have been made to find method behind the apparent madness of this arrangement, so far with little success.
As entertaining as it is to imagine someone making a simple mistake when noting down the running order of the plays in Ancient times, this must be quite frustrating to Classicists.
It took me way longer to read this collection than I thought but I don't regret a single minute of it.
While some of the concepts discussed and displayed in the plays were not instantly recognisable to a 20th- and 21th-century reader, the context an explanatory notes provided by Alan H. Sommerstein was so excellent that each of the plays not only made sense but actually made it a joy to discover how Aeschylus' may have raised smiles in some and incensed others of his audiences.
And some ideas and points of view in his plays - especially the description of the Persian's defeat (in The Persians), the exposition that women may refuse marriage (in The Suppliants), and some of the rather humanist views of Prometheus (in Prometheus Bound) - we quite different from what I had expected. Or rather, different from what I have come to expect from the Ancient Greek world when coming to Ancient Greek drama after reading the Greek myths (in whichever version: Apollodorus, Ovid, or any of the modern retellings). But even coming to Aeschylus with some familiarity of other playwrights such a Sophocles, I found Aeschylus surprisingly empathetic, satirical, and ... oddly modern.
CHORUS: You didn't, I suppose, go even further than that?
PROMETHEUS: I did: I stopped mortals foreseeing their death.
CHORUS: What remedy did you find for that affliction?
PROMETHEUS: I planted blind hopes within them.
CHORUS: That was a great benefit you gave to mortals.
PROMETHEUS: And what is more, I gave them fire.
It is easy to think of Prometheus only as the rebel who went against Zeus' wishes and brought fire to mankind, but there is more to him. I loved how Aeschylus focuses not on the fire-bringing alone but also on his shared humanity, and on the prophecy that Prometheus knew of that would lead to the decline of Zeus' power, the proverbial Götterdämmerung of the Ancient Greek gods.
PROMETHEUS:
It's very easy for someone who is standing safely out of trouble to advise and rebuke the one who is in trouble.
I knew that, all along. I did the wrong thing intentionally, intentionally, I won't deny it: by helping mortals, I brought trouble on myself. But I certainly never thought I would have a punishment anything like this, left to wither on these elevated rocks, my lot cast on this deserted, neighbourless crag. Now stop lamenting my present woes: descend to the ground and hear of my future fortunes, so that you will know it all to the end. Do as I ask, do as I ask. Share the suffering of one who is in trouble now: misery, you know, wanders everywhere, and alights on different persons at different times.
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Subjects
Language
Original language
Greek (Ancient)
Original publication date
458 BCE c.
Physical description
160 p.; 7.1 inches
ISBN
0140441123 / 9780140441123
Local notes
Prometheus Bound. The Suppliants. Seven Against Thebes. The Persians