Orestes and Other Plays

Author: Euripides
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141961988
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 483

Book Description
Written during the long battles with Sparta that were to ultimately destroy ancient Athens, these six plays by Euripides brilliantly utilize traditional legends to illustrate the futility of war. The Children of Heracles holds a mirror up to contemporary Athens, while Andromache considers the position of women in Greek wartime society. In The Suppliant Women, the difference between just and unjust battle is explored, while Phoenician Women describes the brutal rivalry of the sons of King Oedipus, and the compelling Orestes depicts guilt caused by vengeful murder. Finally, Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides' last play, contemplates religious sacrifice and the insanity of war. Together, the plays offer a moral and political statement that is at once unique to the ancient world, and prophetically relevant to our own.

Orestes and other plays

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description

Orestes and Other Plays

Author: Euripides
Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
ISBN: 9781420944242
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Book Description
Euripides (480 BC-406 BC) is revered as one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, and produced the largest body of extant work by any ancient playwright. He is considered to be the most modern of the three, and he laid the foundation for Western theatre. His work sticks out from that of his contemporaries because of his colloquial vocabulary, meter and syntax, distinct from the grandiose language of his predecessors. This edition contains six of Euripides' eighteen surviving works, including "Orestes." In writing "Orestes" (408 b.c.e.), Euripides utilized the mythology of the Bronze Age to reflect upon the politics of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. The story takes places after Orestes has murdered his mother to avenge his father, Agamemnon, and follows him as he attempts to save his own life. The play explores themes of man's subordination to the gods and the conflict between natural law and manmade law. In addition to "Orestes" this edition also includes "The Heracleidae," "Andromache," "The Suppliants," " The Phoenician Maidens," and "Iphigenia at Aulis."

Electra and Other Plays

Author: Euripides
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140446685
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Euripides, wrote Aristotle, ‘is the most intensely tragic of all the poets’. In his questioning attitude to traditional pieties, disconcerting shifts of sympathy, disturbingly eloquent evil characters and acute insight into destructive passion, he is also the most strikingly modern of ancient authors. Written in the period from 426 to 415 BC, during the fierce struggle for supremacy between Athens and Sparta, these five plays are haunted by the horrors of war – and its particular impact on women. Only the Suppliants, with its extended debate on democracy and monarchy, can be seen as a patriotic piece. The Trojan Women is perhaps the greatest of all anti-war dramas; Andromache shows the ferocious clash between the wife and concubine of Achilles’ son Neoptolemos; while Hecabe reveals how hatred can drive a victim to an appalling act of cruelty. Electra develops (and parodies) Aeschylus’ treatment of the same story, in which the heroine and her brother Orestes commit matricide to avenge their father Agamemnon. As always, Euripides presents the heroic figures of mythology as recognizable, often very fallible, human beings. Some of his greatest achievements appear in this volume.

Orestes, and Other Plays, by Euripides

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 439

Book Description

Orestes

Author: Euripides
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1625589026
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 83

Book Description
Produced more frequently on the ancient stage than any other tragedy, Orestes retells with striking innovations the story of the young man who kills his mother to avenge her murder of his father. Though eventually exonerated, Orestes becomes a fugitive from the Furies (avenging spirits) of his mother's blood. On the brink of destruction, he is saved in the end by Apollo, who had commanded the matricide. Powerful and gripping, Orestes sweeps us along with a momentum that starting slowly, builds inevitably to one of the most spectacular climaxes in all Greek tragedy.

The Oresteia of Aeschylus

Author: Aeschylus
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781016258470
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Bacchae and Other Plays

Author: Euripides
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141964111
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 446

Book Description
Through their sheer range, daring innovation, flawed but eloquent characters and intriguing plots, the plays of Euripides have shocked and stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. Phoenician Women portrays the rival sons of King Oedipus and their mother's doomed attempts at reconciliation, while Orestes shows a son ravaged with guilt after the vengeful murder of his mother. In the Bacchae, a king mistreats a newcomer to his land, little knowing that he is the god Dionysus disguised as a mortal, while in Iphigenia at Aulis, the Greek leaders take the horrific decision to sacrifice a princess to gain favour from the gods in their mission to Troy. Finally, the Rhesus depicts a world of espionage between the warring Greek and Trojan camps.

Oresteia

Author: Aeschylus,
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019953781X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
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.

The Oresteia

Author: Aeschylus
Publisher: Everyman's Library
ISBN: 0375712682
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
One of the founding documents of Western culture and the only surviving ancient Greek trilogy, the Oresteia of Aeschylus is one of the great tragedies of all time. The three plays of the Oresteia portray the bloody events that follow the victorious return of King Agamemnon from the Trojan War, at the start of which he had sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia to secure divine favor. After Iphi-geneia’s mother, Clytemnestra, kills her husband in revenge, she in turn is murdered by their son Orestes with his sister Electra’s encouragement. Orestes is pursued by the Furies and put on trial, his fate decided by the goddess Athena. Far more than the story of murder and ven-geance in the royal house of Atreus, the Oresteia serves as a dramatic parable of the evolution of justice and civilization that is still powerful after 2,500 years. The trilogy is presented here in George Thomson’s classic translation, renowned for its fidelity to the rhythms and richness of the original Greek.