Showing titles in Drama

Anacreon (582 BCE–485 BCE) was a Greek lyric poet born in Teos, an Ionian city on the coast of Asia Minor. He likely moved to Thrace in 545 BCE with others from his city when it was attacked by Persians. He then moved to Samos, to Athens, and possibly again to Thessaly, seeking a safe place to write his poems as his patrons (including Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, and Hipparchus, brother of Athenian tyrant Hippias) kept being murdered. It is unknown where Anacreon died, though he lived to the unusually advanced age of 85.

Produced in 458 BC, Aeschylus' Choephori is the second play in the Oresteian trilogy. The bloodshed begun in the first play with the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra is here continued when Agamemnon's son Orestes avenges his father's death by killing Clytemnestra. It is not until the third and final play, Eumenides, that peace is restored to the family of the Atreidae. The introduction discusses the pre-Aeschylean 'Orestes' tradition in literature and art, as well as the place of Choephori within the Oresteia.

Orestes hat sich, unterstützt von Gott Apollon, in die Hände von Pallas Athene gegeben, damit diese ihn richten möge. Immerhin hat er seine eigene Mutter und deren Liebhaber getötet. Athene aber verweigert den Erinnyen, den Rachegöttinnen, ihre Vergeltung - in einer Art Gerichtsprozess soll Orestens Schuld verhandelt werden. Und das Unglaubliche geschieht: Der vermeintlich ewige Kreislauf von Rache und Blutvergießen wird durchbrochen.