The Oresteian Trilogy: Agamemnon; The Choephori; The Eumenides (Penguin Classics)

The Penguin edition is riddled with errors on the Kindle. They didn't bother to proofread what the scanner spit out, so you get "bahn" for "balm," "hing" for "king," etc. One of my students wasn't sure what to make of Clytemnestra's retort: "Is feet so great a burden?" He had no trouble understanding it when we showed him the print version: "Is fact so great a burden?" I know some Kindle content is this way, but thought I could trust a Penguin classic on Kindle.It's a great set of plays, if you get a version you can read.

Quite simply a classic piece that shows one of the earliest examples of a two or in this case 3 act play

Product was in good condition!! The book was just not the one I needed.

Bad condition

With Greek plays you live and die by your translation--Vellacott is as good as it getsStan

Daughter needed for school .

I originally began reading this translation by Vellacott, and I almost gave up on this trilogy. I am not a fan of translations that attempt to keep a rhyming scheme in English. The sentence structure was awkward as well, reminding me of the days long ago when I was struggling through my first readings of Shakespeare in high school.Switching to Fagles' translation made all the difference for me! I'd highly recommend that translation (titled "The Oresteia," and also published by Penguin) over this one. The beginning commentary by Fagles, The Serpent and the Eagle, is wonderful as well. The two translations are only 10 tens apart, but it feels more like there are 100 years between them.

Four stars is because of the translation. While Vellacott, whose translations of Euripides I love, captures the mood, his rhythmical verse somehow obscures the meaning, at least in the less didactic passages.Having said that what comes across is a story whose drama to me can only be rivalled by the great stories of the Old Testament, or by Hamlet, whose dilemma is in some ways a mirror of that of Orestes.Orestes' father Agamemnon has been murdered on his return from victory in the Trojan war by Orestes' mother Clytemnestra, who has shacked up with Aegisthus and who grieves the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia made by Agamemnon to ensure a wind for his fleet on its way to Troy.This family, the house of Atreus, was under a curse anyway, following the cruel murder by Agamemnon's father of his brother's children.Orestes murders Clytemnestra and Aegisthus and is then pursued by the Furies. The whole drama of the plays is about his decision to do this and the agonies he is likely to incur whether he does it or not.

I've intended to read these for years, and was nudged into finally doing so by a reference in another book. I'm not going to attempt to review Aeschylus - that is way beyond my capacity, and has already been done by thousands of others over the intervening millennia. Suffice to say that the question of vengeance vs. justice is still relevant today. This edition is particularly good for its preface and notes, which are invaluable for inexperienced readers of Greek tragedy (like me).

Of all the translations of the Greek tetralogy I have read, this remains the best.

Quick delivery. Good product.