Aeschylus: Choephori

Produced in 458 BC, Aeschylus' Choephori is the second play in the Oresteian trilogy. The bloodshed begun in the first play with the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra is here continued when Agamemnon's son Orestes avenges his father's death by killing Clytemnestra. It is not until the third and final play, Eumenides, that peace is restored to the family of the Atreidae. This edition takes into account the large amount of recent research on the play and tackles the problems presented by an unusually corrupt text. The introduction discusses the pre-Aeschylean 'Orestes' tradition in literature and art, as well as the place of Choephori within the Oresteia, its imagery and dramatic structure, the questions of staging the play, and the manuscript tradition. The Greek text and critical apparatus are those of D.L. Page (OCT). The commentary looks at problems of style, dramatic technique, and interpretation of the play, and before each scene is discussed an analysis of its contribution to the drama as a whole is supplied.