Seneca’s tragedy Thyestes is based on Euripides’ tragedy (now lost) of the same name. It can properly be grouped with other Greek and Roman tragedies Seneca’s tragedy Thyestes is based on Euripides’ tragedy (now lost) of the same name. It can properly be grouped with other Greek and Roman tragedies about the House of Atreus and the Trojan War.
Thyestes' grandfather, Tantalus, murdered his son Pelops to test the gods with a banquet of soups, chops, and roasts made of his son’s body. The angered gods were not deceived, restored Pelops’ life, and dammed Tantalus to eternal torment. Pelops' own sons, Atreus and Thyestes, were to share the throne of Mycenae, but personal ambition drove Thyestes to a long-term adulterous affair with Atreus’ wife and with her help to abscond with the scared ram’s golden fleece — the emblem of Mycenaean kingship.
Enraged, Atreus hungers for absolute revenge of the cruelest kind. This then, Atreus’s revenge on Thyestes, is the core of Seneca’s drama. It is not a tragedy in the usual sense; there is no character development; there is not much of a plot. Instead Atreus rages and acts. Of his brother, he says,
“The traitor dared something huge, he took my wife to help, he took the ram. This is what started it. I’ve wandered about a trembling exile in this country that’s mine. No part of the family is free from traps. My wife is corrupted, The deal we made to share the kingdom smashed. House sick. Children’s blood in doubt. Nothing certain but brother enemy.”
His rage and passion for revenge are unbounded by social or divine norms.
“The best thing about being a king, people don’y just endure what you do, they praise it. . . . Shame, kindness and trust are qualities for private individuals. The king can do what he likes . . . There's nothing I won't do and nothing's enough.”
Under pretense of reconciliation, Atreus invites Thyestes and his three sons to his home. As a pledge of good faith, Thyestes allows his sons to accompany Atreus to a thanksgiving sacrifice. But Atreus’ version of thanksgiving is to murder the boys, to butcher them, and to serve their boiled and roasted remains to their unsuspecting father — a reprise of the banquet their grandfather Tantalus served to the gods. This is the horror that brought the heavy curse down on Atreus and his sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus. It may have been Helen’s face that launched a thousand ships, but it was the curse on the House of Atreus that dammed the Trojans and Achaeans to a bitter ten year war. After the war the curse followed Atreus home; but that’s another story.
Seneca’s play savors rage and revenge in extremis. Accustomed as I am (as we all are) to violence and terror in modern media, it was still shocking to me. As in all stage drama, much is left to the imagination.
This 1995 translation by Caryl Churchill took Seneca’s original text, which like other Senecan plays, was a closet drama to be read rather than performed, and reformatted it for live performance. Concerned that reformatting for the stage may have changed the character of the original, I also read an earlier (1904), more literal translation by Ella Isabel Harris, and found that my concern was unjustified.
The Churchill translation is easy to read but is intense. A knowledge of Greek mythology or a handy reference source would be useful....more
Mythos is the first book in a trilogy by Stephen Fry, a British actor, humorist, and accomplished writer, who retells Ancient Greek myths and tales inMythos is the first book in a trilogy by Stephen Fry, a British actor, humorist, and accomplished writer, who retells Ancient Greek myths and tales in a respectful yet fresh way. He begins at the beginning: the creation of the world, the birth of the Titans, the Giants, and the Gods, their loves and squabbles, and tells of how mankind was formed by them for their amusement.
There are many different iterations in Greek and Roman accounts of these myths and stories. For his own retellings, Fry draws from a number of these sources but turns to Ovid's Metamorphoses most often. He respects and honors the ancient myths and tales but retells them with a contemporary and often light-hearted flair. Myths that tell of the Titans and their parents, Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (earth), are limited to names and traits. It is the Olympians and minor dieties descended from them who have individual personalities and are active among humans. These myths Fry expands into a quite readable series of vignettes and short stories.
Mythos is a non-scholarly but quite respectable and accessible version of the Greek myths. The myths share context and cast and can be read individually at one's leisure.
I read Mythos as an audible book narrated by the author. Stephen Fry is an excellent narrator and his inflections, pauses, and emphases add much to the enjoyment of the book. The hardcover edition contains images and photographs....more
Loosely structured as a dialogue, The Nature of the Gods is an exposition of the metaphysics of the Epicurean (founded by Epicurus), Stoic (founded byLoosely structured as a dialogue, The Nature of the Gods is an exposition of the metaphysics of the Epicurean (founded by Epicurus), Stoic (founded by Zeno), and Academic (founded by Plato) schools of philosophy at the time of the Roman Late Republic. Cicero is uniquely suited to this study: as a young man he was an Epicurean, was then for some time a Stoic, but for much of his life found the most satisfactory approach to fundamental questions in the Academy.
The metaphysics discussed include the nature of being: is existence infinite in time, or did it spontaneously come into being, or was it created from nothing by a god, or was it shaped from preexisting chaos by a demiurge? Are there gods at all, or is there one god, are there many gods with powers of their own, or are the many gods simply aspects of one god? What role does god, or do the many gods, play in human life? Are they involved, do they care? Are they benevolent, indifferent, or malignant? Are all entities and events predetermined; are humans bound by fate; do humans have real choice?
Cicero has not written a history. He has lived these schools of thought; he learned from the leading philosophers of this time; he was one of them and he talked about these things with his friends. That this is a contemporary account of philosophical thinking in Rome at a crucial time in its history makes this especially interesting to me. No one has answers to these foundational questions about existence and humanity but we must keep asking them, and we must try to understand as best we can how others in other times pondered them.
Others will say, "Why ask questions for which there is no answer?" I submit that these may be the most important questions of all because seeking is in itself a truly human thing. It is the antidote to merely accepting “received and revealed truth.”...more
A re-imagining of Euripides' Andromache and her story as told in Book III of the Aeneid. In Racine's re-telling Astyanax, Hector and Andromache's boy,A re-imagining of Euripides' Andromache and her story as told in Book III of the Aeneid. In Racine's re-telling Astyanax, Hector and Andromache's boy, survives the destruction of Troy [surprise!]; he and his mother are taken as slaves by Achilles' son, Pyrrhus (aka Neoptolemus). The capricious gods, fate, heroes and their fall are core in classical Greek Tragedy. But here in Racine's re-telling are overwhelming unrequited sexual love (and hate), passions that submerge reason, judgement, and even memory. Hermione, Menelaus' daughter, is obsessed with Pyrrhus; Orestes, Agamemnon's son, is obsessed with Hermione; Pyrrhus is obsessed with Andromache; Andromache is obsessed with her son, whom she protects by any means, and her dead husband. Over-the-top drama to be sure, yet bound within the 16th century reading of the "unities" in Aristotle's Poetics namely that dramas should have one action, occur in one place within the course of one day. All of which makes for an intense play tightly constrained by form.
Seneca's version of Aeschylus' Agamemnon is a so-called closet drama to be read rather than performed. This at first is off-putting in that there are Seneca's version of Aeschylus' Agamemnon is a so-called closet drama to be read rather than performed. This at first is off-putting in that there are more speeches than dialogues.
Seneca has a certain amount of sympathy for Clytemnestra. She has good reason to be enraged with Agamemnon who quite literally sacrificed their daughter to speed the Greek fleet on to Troy, who abandoned her for ten years, who took up with captive Trojan women and indeed brings home with him a Trojan mistress. Still, she wonders if she should forgive all that to honor their marriage vows.
CLYTEMNESTRA Love for my husband conquers and turns me back. Return we thither whence ‘twere well never to have come away. E’en now let us reseek purity and truth, for never too late is trod the path to honesty; whose repents his sin is well-nigh innocent.
To that her lover retorts:
AEGISTHUS Whither art borne, mad one? Dost believe or hope that Agamemnon is still true to his marriage vows?
No, she does not believe that. Her fury knows no bounds. She entangles Agamemnon in a gown she has sewn herself and when Aegisthus' knife fails to kill him, she steps in and beheads Agamemnon herself with an Amazonian axe. Her fury extends beyond the pale to her children whom she also sets out to murder. Aegisthus cools her fury and saves the lives of the children.
Clytemnestra changes in a moment from a penitent seeking reconciliation to a monster. All was fated by the curse on the House of Atreus.
My rating of this play increased considerably on a second read with the translator's notes by my side....more
Menelaus and Orestes are immoral cowardly cads. Noble Andromache survives thanks to Peleus. Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, who has incurred Apollo’s angeMenelaus and Orestes are immoral cowardly cads. Noble Andromache survives thanks to Peleus. Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, who has incurred Apollo’s anger, is slaughtered at Delphi.
The nature of true and feigned nobility, the woman question, the pettiness of the gods, democracy and tyranny, mocking Sparta, mankind’s strife and sorrow.
An excellent introduction - to be read after reading the tragedy for the first time - after then read the play a second time for better understanding and appreciation....more
Aias is not the name we usually associate with this classic greek tragedy by Sophocles. The translators note: “Aias is his Greek name. Despite the famAias is not the name we usually associate with this classic greek tragedy by Sophocles. The translators note: “Aias is his Greek name. Despite the familiar Latinized form, Ajax, we have used the Greek name throughout. Chiefly for reasons of sound. The Greek name suggests a cry of pain, which is dramatically exploited by Sophocles.”
In the Illiad Ajax is a Greek warrior hero who defends the Greeks from Trojan attacks—he is the defender who will not be moved. Ajax is in this sense the mirror of Achilles, the swift-footed warrior hero who attacks. When Achilles is killed in battle, it is Ajax who at great risk to himself retrieves his armor from the Trojans. As an inexhaustible defender of the Greeks, and as the warrior who reclaimed Achilles' amor, Ajax demands that the armor be given to him. But he is a man of few words and so losses the armor in Greek Council which assigns it to Odysseus, the dissembler with the “silver tongue.”
Ajax flares up in rage, mirroring Achilles’ rage, but now against the Greeks who betrayed and dishonored him, and he storms out for murderous revenge. To save the Greeks, Athene intervenes and disorders Ajax’s mind so that he rages into nearby grazing lands and massacres sheep, cattle, and herders, thinking all the while that they are Greeks. He brings the hacked-up bodies back to his tent and only then realizes that his trophies are animals and herders instead of Greeks. After much agonizing Ajax in his humiliation cannot live with such shame and dishonor; he kills himself dramatically and, for us in the audience, memorably.
In the mores of the Illiad suicide is surely ignoble. The play asks: is Ajax the warrior hero no longer a hero because of his shameful and ignoble acts at the end? To paraphrase Ajax here: if noble-born, a man must live and die nobly and a hero. I am reminded of a line attributed to Solon, "Call no man happy until he is dead."
After his death the Atreidai plan revenge on traitor Ajax by dishonoring his body. Surprisingly, even though Ajax had most of all raged against Odysseus for, as Ajax saw it, dishonorably and dishonestly appropriating Achilles’ armor, it is Odysseus who calms the angry waters of revenge on the dead man's body.
Sophocles seems to wonder, is the time of heroes like Ajax and Achilles passing? And is this now the beginning of the time of the glib, clever man like Odysseus?
In Greek tragedy rough action takes place off stage, and is later unrolled to us by witnesses. There is one scene is Aias which just about—nearly—breaks that rule. Even though he doesn’t quite break the rule, Sophocles doesn’t flinch from bloody, even shocking, tableaus. Ajax’s suicide and its aftermath are high drama impossible to forget.
This Aias is part of an Oxford University Press series of translations of extant Greek tragedies which pair as co-translators an accomplished classicist-scholar with a poet. The poet in this instance is the much-accomplished Richard Pevear, better known to us as a foremost translator of Russian literature....more
There are some sixteen extant classical Greek tragedies that find their inspiration in myths and stories of the House of Atreus and the Trojan War, anThere are some sixteen extant classical Greek tragedies that find their inspiration in myths and stories of the House of Atreus and the Trojan War, and more specifically in the Illiad. Rhesos is less well known than others in this group perhaps due to a question of authorship for not all scholars agree that Rhesos was written by Euripides. And not all critics have been kind to Rhesos. One recently wrote (1972) that it was a play "to see, to enjoy, and to forget." I have no opinion on the question of authorship, but I do take issue with dismissive criticism and maintain that Rhesos is a well imagined Greek tragedy.
The classical Greek tragedians did not simply retell traditional stories. Although the Rhesos playwright began with an episode from Book X of the Illiad, he reimagined it. Hector in Rhesos, for example, is not the Hector we know from the Illiad. In the play he is emotionally volatile, foolishly brave, swayed by the options of others, suspicious, and indecisive. He leads from behind.
Odysseus is the character most often reimagined by the tragedians. Depending upon the play he is wise or merely clever, brave or cautious, cruel or kind, selfish or generous. In Rhesos he is the Greek most feared by the Trojans, more so than Agamemnon or even Achilles. In the Illiad Odysseus leads a scouting party behind Trojan lines to the camp of King Rhesos and his Thracian army where others in the party kill sleeping Rhesos and his court while Odysseus stands by. In Rhesos it is a murderous and cruel Odysseus who does the killing while others stand by.
The stagecraft is brilliantly imaginative. The setting is a Trojan bivouac near the Greek encampment. It takes place over one night beginning in darkness and ending with the dawn. The only light is that of Trojan campfires and the distant fires of the Greeks. The sentries' reports are vague and confused, and the darkness magnifies speculation and mistrust. An Athenian audience would see the play performed in daylight so it would have to imagine the darkness in its mind's eye. Today, this play performed in a modern theater with lighting effects, would be amazing....more
Cyclops is a form of ancient Greek play unfamiliar to modern readers. It is a satyr play and is indeed the only such play to have survived entire fromCyclops is a form of ancient Greek play unfamiliar to modern readers. It is a satyr play and is indeed the only such play to have survived entire from fifth century BCE Athens. Satyr plays and tragedies were performed together during festivals of Dionysus, who among other things was the patron deity of the theater in Athens. For each festival, a panel of judges selected three playwrights to compete and each entered three tragedies and a satyr play. An individual playwright’s entries were performed as one group on the same day beginning in early morning and concluding by early afternoon. The tragedies could be, but need not be, trilogies. After them came the satyr play which was “a burlesque version of a traditional myth, named for the chorus of satyrs … One ancient critic neatly characterized satyr drama as ‘tragedy at play’” (David Konstan in his Introduction to this edition).
In Euripides’ re-telling Silenus, a drinking buddy of Dionysus, and his satyr sons have been captured by Polyphemus, the Odyssey's Cyclops, who uses them as servants and herders, When Odysseus and his crew arrive on his island, Polyphemus captures them too and intends to eat their man-flesh. In this retelling Odysseus is mild-mannered, reasonable and straightforward, not the sly liar he can be in Homer’s telling. Odysseus here stands for civilization and order while Polyphemus and the satyrs represent barbarism and wildness.
Reading a satyr play changed my perspective on Greek tragedy. Tragedies were never intended to be experienced in isolation. Each tragedy was connected in an intimate way with two other tragedies and a satyr play in a tetralogy. There are no extant tetralogies and but a few surviving tragedy trilogies, or tragedies we know that were performed as a set of three....more
If I could give this translation of The Oresteia more than 5 stars I would. ******* Like other translations in the series Greek Tragedy in New TranslaIf I could give this translation of The Oresteia more than 5 stars I would. ******* Like other translations in the series Greek Tragedy in New Translations this magnificent version is from a collaboration between a classicist and a poet. It is not a line-by-line literal translation but rather a rendering in contemporary poetry within the framework and under the oversight of a classicist. The result is for readers of English an eminently readable Oresteia supplemented and enriched by an important introduction and endnotes that expand on certain aspects of the text and discuss staging of the plays in classical Greece. A very useful glossary of names is also provided. If you read only one Oresteia this should be it....more
Helen dramatizes an alternative myth about Helen, she of the thousand ships. According to the telling, Helen was never unfaithful to Menelaus, never aHelen dramatizes an alternative myth about Helen, she of the thousand ships. According to the telling, Helen was never unfaithful to Menelaus, never absconded to Troy, never was responsible for the horrific Trojan War. Instead, miffed at Aphrodite’s beauty contest win, Hera set out to deny Aphrodite the win by whisking Helen off to Egypt, and substituting a doppelgänger. The unfaithful and vain Helen of the Iliad was not in fact the real Helen; the real Helen was faithful, chaste, loyal, an ideal Spartan woman hidden away in Egypt.
Menelaus, shipwrecked on Egypt’s shores with the sham Helen he carried with him from Troy (cf. Trojan Women), discovers real Helen and after some batter about who is who, accepts her; that done, Helen’s doppelgänger fades away.
There are a number of similarities here with Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Tauris. Like Helen, Iphigeneia is whisked away by the goddess to a foreign land. Her brother is shipwrecked and, on discovering her, engages in the same sort of recognition banter. In both cases, it is the women who plan and effect the daring escapes against all odds. The male characters are not particularly noble or even very bright.
Helen is not a Greek tragedy. There are elements here that are even comic to a modern reader, although I’m not sure that’s what Euripides intended. Actually, I’m not at all sure what he intended. I found the play shallow, the characters uninteresting, and the dialogue forced and over-the-top. This being Euripides there are some memorable turns of phrase and odes, even in translation. Overall I found the play lacking in emotion, and the catharsis one experiences in Greek tragedy completely absent. The extended introduction to this volume works hard to make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear, and perhaps some might find illuminating and convincing augments here. I did not.
Euripides wrote some 90 plays, 19 of which are extant. This in not one of the better ones....more
Hecuba, Queen of Troy, wife of Priam, mother to nineteen children including Hector, Paris, Cassandra, Polyxena, and Polydorus, is the central characteHecuba, Queen of Troy, wife of Priam, mother to nineteen children including Hector, Paris, Cassandra, Polyxena, and Polydorus, is the central character in this eponymous tragedy and in Trojan Women. In both tragedy falls upon her in the loss of her husband, her land, city and peoples, and her children. In both her grief is beyond expression. The absent gods offer no sympathy and no relief. Through all of Trojan Women and half of Hecuba, though enraged by those that brought this upon her and her city, she determines to bear her fate despite the horror and her anguish. But in the second half of Hecuba she falls still further and savagely revenges herself. Her retribution is horrific, in the eyes of other characters, even unpardonable. This is a different Hecuba than the one we thought we knew; from the depths of unfathomable loss and despair, she falls still further; her very humanity is lost. Hecuba is tragedy piled upon tragedy.
That tragedy is set in coastal Thrace after the destruction of Troy and the enslavement of Hecuba and other Trojan women. Calm winds prevent the Greek fleet from sailing, so the army has chosen Polyxena, Hecuba’s beloved and only surviving daughter, as a blood sacrifice. Polyxena accepts her fate with dignity; there are worse things than dying, she says. By comparison, in Trojan Women Hecuba rejects this: “Life means hope. In death there is nothing at all.” Now, in Hecuba she begs to be killed alongside her daughter. Even this is denied her. She discovers the body of her youngest son who has been brutally murdered. Her despair turns into inhuman wrath and vengefulness.
Greek tragedy is nothing if not intense and emotionally moving. Hubris, a fall, revenge, anger, and despair are tragic themes, but here there is a hopelessness that overwhelms. There are no gods to console or assist, there is no deus ex machina, there is only unjust, implacable fortune. Polyxena alone escapes the unjustness and wretchedness, but only by accepting early death, even as a blood sacrifice, as preferable to living.
I recommend reading Trojan Women, also by Euripides, before reading Hecuba. Euripides is a playwright for the ages, and in Hecuba he moves beyond the conventions, which made him controversial in his day. Reading a tragedy like Hecuba is a matter of a few hours, but expect to spend several days afterward thinking about it … I know that’s the case for me.
This translation is part of the “Greek Tragedy in New Translations” series that I so admire....more
Some maintain that Trojan Women is not a true Greek tragedy because it does not portray the fall of the great. In fact, the fall happens before the opSome maintain that Trojan Women is not a true Greek tragedy because it does not portray the fall of the great. In fact, the fall happens before the opening scene which is set outside the walls of Troy the day after the city had fallen. All the Trojan men have been killed; only women and children are left to the tyranny of the Greeks. There is no conventional plot in the play; it begins in suffering and despair, which only increase during the play, and which ends in even greater suffering and overwhelming despair. Euripides gives us no relief from death, suffering, and despair.
He shows us that everyone involved in this terrible war is a victim. There were numberless deaths on both sides, the Trojans being the obvious victims, but the Greeks suffered greatly too. The dead left widows and orphans; those who survived were ten years away from home, farm, and family. We also see that the gods Poseidon and Athena, whose temples and priests have been desecrated by the Greeks as they destroyed Troy, conspire to harry the Greeks as they sail home, to destroy their ships, to kill many, and for even those who escape the angry gods, to delay their arrival home for years.
It’s generally thought that Trojan Women is Euripides screed against war, its atrocities, and its great losses. There are no winners; no one escapes unchanged ... so much for the glories of war. We feel great pathos for the Trojan women; we experience strong emotions without being buried by them.
The stagecraft in this play is remarkable ... but you should discover this for yourself. Unfortunately, as readers we experience only written words and not the sound, music, and dance that Euripides intended to amplify and vivify the script. The translation, part of the "Greek Tragedy in New Translations" series, opens up this wonderful play to readers of today with a very helpful introduction and an excellent glossary....more
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