The Oresteian trilogy

What is justice? How is it related to vengeance? Can justice be reconciled with the demands of religion, the violence of human feeling, the forces of fate?

These questions, which puzzled thoughtful Athenians in the decades after the battle of Marathon, provided the theme for "Agamemmon", "The Choephori" and "The Eumenides" - those grim tragedies that make up the Oresteian triology.In these plays, Aeschyluys (525bc-456bc) takes as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos - a chain finally broken only by the intervention of the goddess Athene.

Philip Vellacott's verse translation makes available to the modern reader a mile-stone in the history of drama.