In the "Oresteia" - the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity - Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. Moving from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, its spirit of struggle and regeneration is eternal.

"These authoritative translations consign all other complete collections to the wastebasket."--Robert Brustein, "The New Republic" "This is it. No qualifications. Go out and buy it everybody."--Kenneth Rexroth, "The Nation" "The translations deliberately avoid the highly wrought and affectedly poetic; their idiom is contemporary....They have life and speed and suppleness of phrase."--"Times Education Supplement" "These translations belong to our time. A keen poetic sensibility repeatedly quickens them; and without this inner fire the most academically flawless rendering is dead."--Warren D. Anderson, "American Oxonian" "The critical commentaries and the versions themselves...are fresh, unpretentious, above all, functional."--"Commonweal" "Grene is one of the great translators."--Conor Cruise O'Brien, "London Sunday Times" "Richmond Lattimore is that rara avis in our age, the classical scholar who is at the same time an accomplished poet."--Dudley Fitts, "New York Times Book Review"