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Aeschylus the oresteia trilogy6/20/2023 Written in the years after the Battle of Marathon, The Oresteian Trilogy affirmed the deliverance of democratic Athens not only from Persian conquest, but also from its own barbaric past. The Eumenides then follows Orestes as he is hounded to Athens by the Furies' law of vengeance and depicts Athene replacing the bloody cycle of revenge with a system of civil justice. Beginning with Agamemnon, which describes Agamemnon's return from the Trojan War and his murder at the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra, and continuing through Orestes' murder of Clytemnestra in Libation Bearers and his acquittal at Athena's court in Eumenides. 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. The Oresteia by Aeschylus, the only extant trilogy among the Greek tragedies, is one of the great foundational texts of Western culture. Clytemnestra's crime is repaid in The Choephori when her outraged son Orestes kills both her and her lover. Aeschylus II contains The Oresteia, translated by Richmond Lattimore, and fragments of Proteus, translated by Mark Griffith. Agamemnon depicts the hero's discovery that his family has been destroyed by his wife's infidelity and ends with his death at her callous hand. Aeschylus (525-c.456 bc) set his great trilogy in the immediate aftermath of the Fall of Troy, when King Agamemnon returns to Argos, a victor in war.
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