Introduction

Hello, everyone. My name is Oliver Thomas.

I'm a lecturer in the department of classics at the University of Nottingham,

and I'm very pleased to be presenting this series of short talks on East.

Let's play Agamemnon.

This was a play which so obsessed me when I first read it as a student. That

ended up making it the topic of my first book, and I'm hoping to be able to

communicate some of that enthusiasm to you today.

The structure of the course will be roughly as follows. After this introductory

segment,

there will be

discussion, a couple of discussions,

which are about the ideas of the play First Justice

and, secondly, ideas about human motivation

and responsibility.

After that, we'll move on to issues that are more to do with character.

Look at how you can assess character in East Dallas,

and particularly the character of Clytemnestra

and then a couple of segments which are more on the use of language in the play.

Firstly, a technique the disclose has about ominous language

and secondly,

a little insight into what it's like to re discuss Greek,

which you might not get if you're looking at, is close in translation

for the rest of this introductory segment. However, I just want to

set Agamemnon in the context of the production,

which is surplus did for a competition

in Athens in 4 58 BC spring of 4 58 BC

and you may know that Greek tragedies were produced not as single plays,

but in groups of four

three tragedies and then a satyr play, which is a slightly different kettle of fish.

In the case of the Agamemnon,

we're very lucky because we actually have the

two other tragedies which it goes with,

And it's the only case where we can see how

the three plays in a trilogy might fit together.

We don't have the Satyr play, unfortunately, and that's a great shame.

But it does mean simplify things for us.

We can pretend that we don't know anything about it and just move on.

Now

the three plays together from what we call the Oresteia, the story of arrests.

There's the Agamemnon,

and I'm just going to assume during this course that you've read the play

and know who the characters are and roughly what the plot is like.

After that

comes the play called libation bearers where arrestees returns

to Argos

and takes vengeance on his mother and done it justice for having killed Agamemnon

and then in the final play, which called humanities

the Furies, who, as it were, embody

the horrendous bloodshed that arrests has committed

by killing his mother.

They pursue him first to Delphi and then to Athens,

and finally he

is acquitted of murder and allowed to go and live in peace

by a jury

of Athenian citizens.

So

if we think about the play

Agamemnon as the first part of such a trilogy,

I just want you to think about a couple of

things which make it significance that it is part of

a trilogy and not just a self standing play.

And of course,

I thoroughly recommend that you go away and read libation barriers

and humanities so that you can appreciate that for yourself.

So the first thing that you might think about is the overall trajectory

into which Agamemnon fits its.

Its plot has a direction of its own, but it's also part of this broader

direction across the three plays,

and that trajectory very roughly

is from a system where

one act of bloodshed has to be avenged by another act of bloodshed

in a cycle

retributive justice.

That's the situation in Agamemnon and also in libation bearers

and then a different form of justice being instituted

in the humanities,

where there's a courtroom scene

and arrests is acquitted.

So

this focus on justice is why in the next segment I'm going to be starting now.

And the other thing that I wanted to draw your

attention to in terms of Agamemnon is part of a trilogy

is something to do with the pacing of the play.

People sometimes make criticism of Greek drama

that not a lot happens.

There are lots of words and verbiage and people chatting about this like any other,

but not much action on stage.

And if you think about the Agamemnon, the first half very little really happens

of any particular importance.

But that criticism, I think you can usefully

raised the objection to well,

East Close was setting up in the Agamemnon sort of front,

loading all the themes and ideas

and complexity that allow you to make sense of all three players taken together.

And I will be talking more about that in the

first couple of segments where we move on to ideas.

So I hope that allowed you to situate the play a little bit

in terms of

its position as the first play of this trilogy, the Oresteia.

And in the next segment, I'll move on to that idea of justice,

which have already raised.