Readers likely will be familiar with the format of this volume, the sixth to appear in the ‘Looking at’ series edited by David Stuttard. In addition to a translation of the play, Stuttard provides a short introduction (on myth, play, playwright, context, staging and his approach to the translation) and gathers a dozen essays on the play by some of the most eminent anglophone scholars of Greek tragedy.
Giving the contributing scholars the freedom to address issues that interested them results in a collection reflecting many of the play’s most salient issues, with little overlap. Edith Hall (‘Eating children is bad for you: The offspring of the past in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon’) presents a rich essay, focussing on the background of the Hesiodic account of the Erinyes’ birth from the blood of the castrated Uranus and the resulting curse that serves as a paradigm for the family curse in the trilogy. The imagery that blurs animal and human sacrifice and sees ruin in terms of reproduction underscores the perversion of norms throughout this family’s history. Alan Sommerstein takes up the vexing question of Agamemnon’s choice in sacrificing Iphigenia in ‘Agamemnon at Aulis: Hard choice or no choice?’ and lays out a very clear analysis of the issues, conflicts and constraints. His conclusion that Agamemnon’s decision was inevitable but was indeed a choice (37) is reached also by Robert Garland (‘Agency in Agamemnon’), who cites the valuable notion of ‘double motivation’ (99).
Alex Garvie (‘Homecoming of Agamemnon’) effectively describes the play’s several elements that conform to the patterns of nostos (‘return’), including the fact that neither the returning hero nor his home community is the same as before he left. Similarities between the play’s two powerful female characters, Clytemnestra and Cassandra, are explored by Hanna Roisman (‘Clytemnestra and Cassandra’), particularly the parallels between the ‘tapestry scene’ and Cassandra’s fiery utterances and trampling of her mantic trappings. Appreciation of the role of ritual, alluded to, performed and perverted, in Greek tragedy has grown in recent decades, and Richard Seaford, who has contributed much to this appreciation, explores in ‘Ritual in Agamemnon’ how three rites of passage are treated in the play: wedding rites, funerals and mystic initiation. Sophie Mills (‘Let the good prevail’) surveys the many examples of wishes/prayers that things turn out well, looking in part through the useful prism of the difference between human and divine time. Michael Carroll teases out similarities to and difference from traditional, particularly Solonian, notions of excessive wealth in ‘Wealth and injustice in Agamemnon’.
In ‘There is the sea—who can drain it dry? Natural and unnatural cycles in Agamemnon’, Rush Rehm argues that the playwright ‘exposes the dangers of assuming—as Clytemnestra does—that the endlessly regenerative powers of nature can restore whatever humans inflict on it’ (119). Anna Uhlig (‘Similes and other likenesses in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon’) takes a fresh look at the play’s figures of similitude, with particular attention to the collective power of these images (‘almost function[ing] like another character in the dramatic action’, 135) and to the echo of the opening of Iliad 3 in the parodos’ vulture simile. Isabelle Torrance reminds us in ‘Agamemnon, warfare, and its aftermath’ how much the brutality of war and its consequences informs one’s understanding of the play, and then surveys three modern poetic responses/translations of it (Seamus Heaney, Louis MacNeice and Colm Toíbín). This penultimate essay leads readily into the final essay (‘Revenge for murder seen through modern eyes: Recent reception of Aeschylus’ Oresteia’), in which Betine van Zyl Smit looks at adaptions by Steven Gerkoff, Yael Farber and Zinnnie Harris.
As a translator, Stuttard seeks to produce a text that is both ‘accurate’ and ‘actable’ (9) while at times ‘expanding the denser images, developing passages or images so that their full impact can be felt’ (10). In this translation, ‘slightly modified’ (9) from the one used in the original performance in 1999, he opts for a prose rendition and succeeds in offering a very readable and, Isuspect, actable version of this extraordinary play. Occasionally, the diction is oddly recherché when the original is not (for example, ‘murrain’ [1018], ‘dragoman’ [1062], ‘cicatrize’ [1248]) and, inevitably, there are places where one might challenge or quibble about a choice of word or phrase. One phrase that particularly jars is ‘leash of certainty’ for ἀνάγκας λέπαδνον (more commonly translated something like ‘yoke-strap of compulsion’) in Agamemnon’s decision to sacrifice his daughter (218).
The scholars all wear their (considerable) learning lightly. Footnotes are modest and the argumentation, even when rich, is not dense. Anyone coming to this wondrously complex drama, whether as a novice or even as a veteran, will benefit from this volume. Iadd that it is attractively produced, and Inoted very few typographical slips.
