The Electra Plays: Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles (review)

This is a useful selection of works that should be considered seriously by any instructor who wishes to engage with the Electra plays. It presents a good teaching text—one that provides the students with a solid foundation to get them started and then allows the plays to speak for themselves.

The introduction by Justina Gregory is quite good. In 27 pages, she presents a rationale for the study of this particular selection of texts, an account of the context in which the plays were originally produced, an overview of the Electra myth prior to Aeschylus, and a detailed assessment of the principal themes and features of the three plays. Readers who have no background in Greek myth are likely to wish for a bit more information regarding, for example, the basic tale of Troy, but Gregory does an excellent job of providing her audience with a sophisticated set of vantage points from which to explore the various ways in which these works might be evaluated. There is relatively little attention, however, to staging, meter, or formal elements: this tends to privilege a literary as opposed to a dramatic reading, and, given the lack of a glossary, is likely to cause a certain amount of confusion when the reader confronts terms such as stasimon, strophe, etc. Other aids are provided, however: a very useful map to help sort out the relevant geography, a genealogical chart for the house of Pelops, and a modest bibliography.

The translations themselves are good, but have not been subjected to a consistent set of editorial conventions and standards. Thus, although all three texts provide a generally clear indication of metrical responsion in the lyric passages, only Luschnig offers headings to indicate the standard Aristotelian division into prologue, parodos, episode, stasimon (Woodruff limits himself to labeling the parodos and stasima), while only Meineck highlights non-iambic passages (through the use of italics). The reader might guess at a change of meter at, e.g., Eur. El. 1292,¹ but there is no clear indication in the text, while none of the translators provides specific information about the metrical texture of the plays. Notes are generally kept to a minimum: Meineck takes this desideratum to an extreme; Luschnig provides a better balance. The lack of a glossary leads to a certain amount of repetition in the notes, nor are there cross-references (between, e.g., the comments ad Cho. [486] and Eur. El. [22–24]). On the other hand, the information provided in the notes is generally useful and interesting (Luschnig’s are particularly good).²

To anyone familiar with his work, it will come as no surprise that Peter Meineck’s Choephori (reprinted, with slight modifications in the notes, from his 1998 translation of the Oresteia) offers a lively and quite satisfying text suitable for dramatic production. The use of alliteration and insistent, broken rhythms passim (with occasional rhyming effects) successfully captures the mood of much of this play, fraught as it is with anxiety and uncertain foreboding. A useful instance is provided by the opening of the parodos [22–31]:

Sent from the House to bear libations,heavy hands, beating hard.Cheeks marked with crimson, gashed,nails plough furrows, fresh and deep.For all this life my heart has fedon tortured cries of grief,sorrow sounds the tearingof threadbare fabrics,sullen folds clothe the breastthat nurture our despair.

The translation can be somewhat loose in its rendering, however. Aeschylus’ Greek is dense with metaphor and ambiguous associations, but is more vivid and precise than is sometimes suggested here. The essential meaning of the lines is conveyed in a form that clearly has been crafted to engage the emotions of a modern audience, but at the expense of a certain specificity. Thus, for example, references to the role of chthonic powers at times are obscured or underplayed (Cho. 40–41, 127...