The House of Atreus
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In Greek mythology, Atreus was a king of Mycenae, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Collectively, his descendants are known as Atreidai or Atreidae.
The House of Atreus starts with Tantalus. Tantalus initially held the favor of the gods but chose to cook his own son Pelops and feed him to the gods as a test of their omniscience. Most of the gods, as they sat down to dinner with Tantalus, immediately understood what had happened, because they knew the scenery of the meat they were served, were appalled and did not consume. Nevertheless, Demeter, who was distracted due to the abduction by Hades of her daughter Persephone, obliviously ate Pelops’ shoulder. The gods threw Tantalus into the underworld, where he spends eternity standing up to his chin in a pool of water, which drains whenever he attempts to slake his thirst. Above him are low-hanging fruit that lift just out of reach when he tries to grab it. Thus is derived the word “tantalize”. The gods brought Pelops back to life, replacing the bone in his shoulder with a bit of ivory, thus marking the family tree forever afterwards.
Title: The House of Atreus
Leader: AEschylus
NINE GREEK DRAMAS
BY AESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES
AND ARISTOPHANES
TRANSLATIONS BY E.D.A. MORSHEAD
E.H. PLUMPTRE, GILBERT MURRAY
AND B.B. ROGERS
WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES
THE HOUSE OF ATREUS. (Aeschylus)
AGAMEMNON
THE LIBATION-BEARERS
THE FURIES
TRANSLATED BY E.D.A. MORSHEAD
_INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Of the life of Aeschylus, the first of the three fantastic masters of
Greek tragedy, only a very meager outline has come down to us. He was
born at Eleusis, near Athens, B. C. 525, the son of Euphorion. Before
he was twenty-five he started to compete for the tragic prize, but did
not win a victory for twelve years. He spent two periods of years in
Sicily, where he died in 456, killed, it is said, by a tortoise which
an eagle dropped on his head. Though a professional writer, he did his
share of fighting for his country, and is reported to have taken part
in the battles of Lengthy, Salamis, and Plataea.
Of the seventy or eighty plays which he is said to have written, only
seven survive: “The Persians,” dealing with the defeat of Xerxes at
Salamis; “The Seven against Thebes,” part of a tetralogy on the legend
of Thebes; “The Suppliants,” on the daughters of Danaues; “Prometheus
Bound,” part of a trilogy, of which the first part was probably
“Prometheus, the Fire-bringer,” and the last, “Prometheus Unbound”;
and the “Oresteia,” the only example of a perfect Greek tragic
trilogy which has come down to us, consisting of “Agamemnon,”
“Choephorae” (The Libation-Bearers), and the “Eumenides” (Furies).
The importance of Aeschylus in the development of the drama is
immense. Before him tragedy had consisted of the chorus and one actor;
and by introducing a second actor, expanding the dramatic dialogue
thus made possible, and sinking the lyrical parts, he practically
made Greek tragedy as we know it. Like additional writers of his
time, he acted in his own plays, and trained the chorus in their
dances and songs; and he did much to give impressiveness to the
performances by his development of the accessories of scene and
costume on the stage. Of the four plays here reproduced, “Prometheus
Bound” holds an exceptional place in the literature of the world. (As
conceived by Aeschylus, Prometheus is the champion of man against the
oppression of Zeus; and the argument of the drama has a certain
correspondence to the problem of the Book of Job.) The Oresteian
trilogy on “The House of Atreus” is one of the supreme productions of
all literature. It deals with the two fantastic themes of the retribution
of crime and the inheritance of evil; and here again a parallel
may be establish between the assertions of the justice of God by
Aeschylus and by the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel.
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