The Oresteia
Aeschylus · -458
The only surviving complete trilogy from ancient Greece. Aeschylus traces the curse on the House of Atreus from Agamemnon's murder through Orestes' revenge to the founding of Athenian justice. It's the Western world's first argument that law should replace blood vengeance.
The case against
Static by any modern standard: messengers report the action, the chorus chews over it at length, and the dense choral odes defeat translators. Worse, the trilogy resolves on Apollo's argument that a mother is no true parent, so the founding of Western justice rests on an embryology argument that reads today as special pleading.
Drama · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
