I just finished reading Agamemnon by Aeschylus, the first part of a trilogy of plays written in the 5th century BC known as the Oresteia. The beauty and intensity of Aeschylus’ poetry really stands out in this translation by Robert Fagles.

The Oresteia is so named because the trilogy revolves around the person of Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. In Agamemnon, the titular character has just come home after ten long years of bloody war on “the ringing plains of windy Troy.” After the war, the Greek heroes suffer different fates…Odysseus wanders for another ten years before finally arriving home to his beloved Penelope at Ithaca; Menelaus takes eight years to get back to Sparta, where he and Helen continue their married life; while Agamemnon is able to make the return voyage home to Mycenae quickly, but encounters a much different homecoming.

The inescapability of fate is an underlying theme throughout Agamemnon. The sins of Agamemnon’s ancestors and his own past decisions lead inexorably to tragedy, as the curse on the house of Atreus spreads through yet another generation.

And now it goes as it goes
and where it ends is fate.
And neither by singeing flesh
nor tipping cups of wine
nor shedding burning tears can you
enchant away the rigid Fury.