Chamberlain Peirce | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

To the ancient Greeks Agamemnon was a compelling historical figure: the leader of the Greek army that won the Trojan war, the brother of the wronged Menelaus, the comrade in arms of perhaps the two greatest figures in the quasi mythical realm of Greek history, Odysseus and Achilles, and, above all, the man who had sacrificed his own young daughter in order to supplicate the gods to grant his army victory. Unfortunately, in the one ancient Greek play that has come down to us that bears his name (the first segment of the Oresteia) he is killed off rather early. Presumably there would have existed at one time an ancient Greek play depicting him in his glory as the triumphant general of the Greeks such as would have endowed him with that stature which should characterise him when returns to his palace at Argos as he does in the Oresteia. This play is, in part, an attempt to rectify that lack.