T H E C L A S S I CA L R E V I E W 25

characterisation, and his appraisals of many of Euripides’ characters are far from charitable.
Pheres in Alcestis is ‘contemptible’ (p. 9), Hippolytus ‘unappealingly self-righteous’
(p. 30), the old man in Ion ‘repellent’ (p. 79), and the protagonists of Orestes are a ‘terrorist
trio’ marked by ‘nastiness’ (p. 97). None of these positions is inherently unreasonable, but
it would be as well to note that the communis opinio can and has been challenged, for
example in the case of the character of Electra in Electra or Orestes in Orestes. We
might indeed expect an audience to respond in more than one way to any given character
in a single performance. I would be both surprised and disappointed if I ever encountered a
class of students who all held the same opinion regarding the character of Medea. Readers
should perhaps be encouraged to consider not merely whether Orestes is a nasty individual
from the perspective of the Greeks, but what any potential ‘nastiness’ might contribute to
the play. Why, in other words, did Euripides produce characters in the way that he did?
Overall, however, this new edition improves what was already a stimulating and accessible
guide to Euripides’ extant plays and an excellent companion to the volumes by G. and S.

University of Nottingham E D M U N D S T E WA R T
edmund.stewart@nottingham.ac.uk

THE RECEPTION OF AESCHYLUS

C O N S T A N T I N I D I S ( S . E . ) (ed.) The Reception of Aeschylus’ Plays
through Shifting Models and Frontiers. (Metaforms 7.) Pp. xvi + 409,
colour ills. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016. Cased, E152, US$168.
ISBN: 978-90-04-33115-0.
doi:10.1017/S0009840X17001445

This stimulating volume comprises an introduction plus thirteen essays by a stellar line-up
of experienced scholars with significant publication records who specialise in Greek tra-
gedy or a related field. This is the first study to address the reception of Aeschylus holis-
tically, and although the plays of the Oresteia trilogy are understandably explored in most
detail, it is good to see all the extant plays discussed as well as a number of fragments. The
thematic focus is on the processes of ‘editing, analyzing, translating, adapting, and remak-
ing the plays of Aeschylus’ both ‘for the page and the stage’ (p. ix, italics original), empha-
sising a ‘systemic model’ (p. 3) that sees the connections between these processes. Helpful
theoretical guidance is given regarding the terminology of ‘translation’, ‘adaptation’ and
‘remake’ (pp. 6–7), and the volume’s ‘dual perspective’ (p. 22) on audience and readership
is stressed as C. guides us deftly through the interconnections between the chapters in his
exemplary introduction.
In Chapter 1, ‘Editing Aeschylus for a Modern Readership: Textual Criticism and Other
Concerns’, A. Garvie provides an overview of the challenges facing a modern textual critic
in producing an edition of Aeschylus. He gives valuable advice on how to strike a balance
between analysis of text and contexts by, for example, giving measured consideration both
to possible authorial intention and to potential audience responses, ancient and modern.
The discussion draws on his own experience in producing authoritative and indispensable
editions of Aeschylus, most recently Persae (2009), and is informed by an impressive
range of scholarship.
Chapter 2, by J. Hannink and A. Uhlig, ‘Aeschylus and His Afterlife in the Classical
Period: “My Poetry Did Not Die With Me”’, focuses our attention on the ancient contexts

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 26 T H E C L A S S I CA L R E V I E W

and reception of Aeschylus’ plays whose importance Garvie had noted. Starting from
Aristophanes’ Frogs, Hannink and Uhlig argue carefully and persuasively, based on frus-
tratingly limited evidence coming mainly from tragedy, comedy, the Life of Aeschylus and
the fact that Aeschylus’ popularity declined in the fourth century BCE, that Aeschylus’ plays
were actively reperformed within his own lifetime.
In Chapter 3, ‘Prometheus Bound in Translation: “the True Promethean Fire”’,
J.M. Walton discusses English-language translations of one of the three most popular
Greek tragedies in translation (coming third after Agamemnon and Antigone). Beginning
with Charlotte Lennox’s 1759 translation into English of Brumoy’s 1730 Le théâtre des
grecs, which included a description of Prometheus in Chains, Walton takes us on a fascinat-
ing and learned tour, quoting from a wide variety of translations from across the centuries and
highlighting links to their cultural contexts. One concluding observation underlines the rela-
tively high number of female translators of this play, creating a natural link to Chapter 4,
‘Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes: Women, War and the Hecht/Bacon Translation’, by
D. Roberts, where the collaborative translation of Helen Bacon is analysed, as is the earlier
translation of Anna Swanwick among otherwise male translators. Roberts powerfully demon-
strates the significance of social and historical context on the process of translation, showing
how the Vietnam War, with associated reports of rape, as well as the influence of Freudian
theory in the academy, loom large over the linguistic choices made by Hecht and Bacon.
Chapter 5, ‘Aeschylus in the Balance: Weighing Corpses and the Problem of Translation’,
by R. Rehm, brings us back to the caricature of Aeschylus in Aristophanes’ Frogs and to the
broader issue of translating Aeschylean language. Focusing on the Aeschylean metaphor of
‘weighing in the balance’, used throughout his works in relation to death, Rehm puts forward
a thought-provoking argument on the impossibility of any contemporary translation to do
justice to the metaphor. This is the case not only because the experience of weighing with
scales and counterweights is foreign in a digital world, but also, and more importantly,
because Western culture is, for the most part, entirely divorced from the physicality of
death. Rehm’s concluding suggestion that a directorial choice might most readily convey
that physicality, through the possibilities afforded by theatrical production, exemplifies the
bridging of approaches to the reception of Aeschylus that this volume promotes.
From a single Aeschylean metaphor we turn to a cognitive analysis by P. Meineck, dis-
cussing how individual words and images may have functioned in the original performance
of the Oresteia in Chapter 6, ‘Cognitive Theory and Aeschylus: Translating beyond the
Lexicon’. Examining primarily the text of Agamemnon, Meineck opens by making arrest-
ing observations on the multisensory experiences of the original audience. For example,
the smell of butchered and roasted sacrificial meat from the sanctuary next to the theatre
must have influenced audience responses to Ag. 1309–10. The main part of the paper
applies theories of spatial processing and cognitive surrogacy to the Aeschylean text in
an analysis also informed by deep knowledge of Classical Athenian landscape and culture.
Meineck offers exciting new ways of understanding Aeschylus as live theatre.
Where Meineck acknowledges the significance of auditory experiences in the ancient the-
atre and, sadly, the loss of ancient music, the authors of Chapters 7, 8 and 9 focus on extant
musical adaptations of Aeschylus. S.B. Ferrario, ‘Aeschylus and Western Opera’ (Chapter 7),
seeks to answer why Aeschylus was an unpopular choice for operatic treatment until his rising
popularity in this art form over the course of the late twentieth century. In her impressively
broad-ranging discussion she shows how the plot structure and content of Aeschylus’
plays accounted for their limited use in opera from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries,
and also how these same aesthetic challenges, along with the thematic concerns of his traged-
ies, sparked a renewed interest in his works from the 1960s onwards. Early operatic engage-
ments with Aeschylus, such as Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (1848) and Taneyev’s

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 T H E C L A S S I CA L R E V I E W 27
Oresteia (1895), Ferrario argues, were deeply personal pieces for their composers.
Twentieth-century operas based wholly or in part on Aeschylean tragedy have an experimen-
tal dimension (Carl Orff’s 1968 Prometheus, Andrew Earl Simpson’s 2006 The Furies) or a
political one (Mikis Theodorakis’s 1999 Antigone).
Following this instructive survey comes D. Munteanu’s ‘Aeschylus’ Cassandra in the
Operas of Taneyev and Gnecchi’ (Chapter 8), which highlights the structural and musical
similarities between Sergei Taneyev’s 1895 Oresteia and Vittorio Gnecchi’s 1905
Cassandra, as well as their comparable reception histories (successful initial productions, fol-
lowed by obscurity and then revival in the twenty-first century). Munteanu explores how both
operas engage with the Aeschylean original, and demonstrates how these neglected works
were pioneering and influential in re-establishing Cassandra as a potential operatic heroine.
The next chapter, ‘Pop Music Adaptations of Aeschylus’ Plays: What Kind of Rock
Was Prometheus Fastened To?’ (Chapter 9), by K. Wetmore, focuses on four productions
from twenty-first-century America that translate the Greek tragic experience for their audi-
ences. Two have a serious political agenda. Will Power’s hip-hop The Seven (2001–2008),
‘samples’ and ‘mashes up’ Aeschylus in representing legacies of violence and disem-
powerment in ways that can be related to the black community, while The American
Repertory Theatre’s Prometheus (2011), supported by Amnesty International, made
Prometheus into a prisoner of conscience with a musical score written by rock composer
and political activist Serj Tankian. By contrast, entertainment seems to be the main concern
of Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s The Oresteia (2008–2009) and The Troubadour Theatre
Company’s ABBA-inspired Abbamemnon (2014), neither of which bear the weight of
the original tragedies.
Chapters 10, 11 and 12 underline different types of traumatic engagement with
Aeschylus. In Chapter 10, ‘Aeschylus as Postdramatic Analogue: “a Thing Both Cool
and Fiery”’, P. Monaghan discusses the potential of Aeschylean tragedy for postdramatic
theatre. Surveying some of the more experimental theatrical engagements with Aeschylus,
Monaghan posits, in a thought-provoking and broad-ranging discussion, that the ‘discord-
ant and incommensurable elements’ in Aeschylean tragedy observed by Nietzsche may be
given new life through Lehmann’s concept of the ‘aesthetics of undecidability’ in postdra-
matic theatre (p. 251). Postdramatic responses to Aeschylus, Monaghan proposes, tend to
be either ‘cooling’ and Apollonian by, for example, making language more accessible, or
‘fiery’ and Dionysian by, for example, increasing the physicality of performance. Moving
from traumatic transformation of the text we turn to images of trauma generated by the text
in Chapter 11, ‘Voices of Trauma: Remaking Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in the Twentieth
Century’, by L. Hardwick. Focusing on three communications of traumatic experience
from Agamemnon – the Watchman’s speech, the Herald episode and Cassandra’s monody
– Hardwick examines how the adaptations of two Irish poets, Louis MacNeice and Seamus
Heaney, function both within and beyond personal and contemporary experiences of
trauma. Hardwick persuasively demonstrates how such responses to Aeschylus may
enhance ‘the aesthetic and political agency of trauma’ (p. 281). Chapter 12, ‘The
Oresteia in Kannada: the Indian Context’, by V. Guttal, confronts us with further complex-
ities regarding the trauma of adapting Greek tragedy for an Indian audience.
Acknowledging both the imperial origins and the anti-colonial politics of Classical litera-
ture in India, Guttal gives an overview of Greek tragedies that have been translated and
adapted into Kannada (spoken in the state of Karnataka in south western India). Of
Aeschylus’ plays, Agamemnon has been the most popular, with four versions, the
Oresteia as a whole has been translated twice, and there is one Persians and one
Prometheus Bound. The successful staged version of the Oresteia (Orestis Purana) in

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 28 T H E C L A S S I CA L R E V I E W

2015, directed by Venkataramana Aital, invoked Indian myths and practices in represent-
ing and communicating the Aeschylean text.
The final chapter, ‘Two Centuries, Two Oresteias, Two Remakes’, by H. Moritz, high-
lights the effects of contemporary theatrical conventions on two major adaptations of the
Oresteia – Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) and Katharine Noon’s
Home Siege Home (2009). Realist theatrical concerns and Freudian psychology permeate
O’Neill’s work in his representation of family dynamics. Noon’s play, on the other hand, is
characterised by postmodernism and metatheatricality in its evocation of contemporary
politics. Beginning, as it does, with a brief review of the reception of the Oresteia in
antiquity, and spanning the main period of Aeschylean reception history in its central dis-
cussion, Moritz’s chapter makes a singularly appropriate closing piece for the volume.
Overall, this is an exceptionally coherent and well-conceived collection, edited by an
expert hand. The chapters speak both to the central concerns of the volume and to each
other, with authors clearly engaged with and cross-referencing each other’s work. This
book will be indispensable for anyone interested in the reception history of Aeschylus,
and has much of value to say, more generally, about the politics of translation and adap-
tation in the remaking of Greek tragedy.

Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University I S A B E L L E T O R R A N C E

itorrance@aias.au.dk

POLITICAL ASPECTS OF EURIPIDEAN TRAGEDY

W O H L ( V . ) Euripides and the Politics of Form. Pp. xviii + 200.
Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015. Cased, £27.95,
US$39.95. ISBN: 978-0-691-16650-6.
doi:10.1017/S0009840X17001718

At least since Aristophanes’ Frogs, the political character of Greek tragedy has been a sub-
ject of debate: while, according to what Euripides says in this comedy (vv. 1009–10), tra-
gedy has an important ethical and political role, scholars disagree about how the tragic
theatre can achieve this purpose. Some focus on the political content of dramas (e.g.
C. Meier, The Political Art of Greek Tragedy [trans., 1993], J. Gregory, Euripides and
the Instruction of the Athenians [1991]), others prefer to think that the very structure of
Greek tragedy somehow reproduces the functioning and the concerns of the democratic
polis of Athens (e.g. J.-P. Vernant, P. Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient
Greece [trans., 1988], S. Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy [1986]). Coming from a series
of lectures (and particularly from four Martin Classical Lectures delivered in 2011), W.’s
study is situated in this context and aims to provide an original insight into the relationship
between politics and aesthetic form.
In the introduction, ‘The Politics of Form’, W. puts forward her thesis: ‘in Euripidean tra-
gedy, dramatic form is a kind of political content’ (p. 1). She takes her starting point from two
general remarks about Euripidean drama, the formal ‘oddity’ of Euripides’ tragedies and the
relation between the plays and their contemporary world. Combining both the aesthetic and
the political concerns, the study aspires to offer a single answer to these two different ques-
tions. After a short review of ancient theories of mousikê, W. provides an illustration of her
method by an analysis of Alcestis and of the opposition between the ‘democratic equality of

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