The Oresteia

Rory Mullarkey's adaptation of these three Aeschylus plays . . . is undertaken with a spirit it would be hard to trump. . . . Mullarkey has adapted Aeschylus in a way that never fudges, conceals or distances.
Witty, brash and steeped in blood . . . this is a big and boisterous account packed with sly wit and the sort of brash lines that wouldn't be out of place in a gangster film.
brilliantly evokes the sheer strangeness and horror of the play. Rory Mullarkey's translation follows the Aeschylean original faithfully and his lyrics make some attempts to evoke the percussive muscularity of the choruses. . . . I haven't seen anything quite as sickening or as stately as this version of these plays.
The verse rhythms are fluid and flexible, allowing for passages of lyric song, and the language is pithy and vivid . . . shows how "justice" - the word that resounds through Mullarkey's text like a drumbeat - easily transmutes into blood-soaked revenge.
Rory Mullarkey's new translation can't be accused of lacking scholastic commitment, or ear-enticing poetic carry-on. . . . the phrasing is pungent
Mullarkey's vibrant translation slithers from the poetic to the colloquial
Rory Mullarkey's poetical, darkly funny but never murky adaptation proves stimulating and surprising . . . makes you laugh one moment and shudder the next.

Alan Shapiro is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of a number of prize-winning volumes of poetry and prose, including The Dead Alive and Busy, winner of the 2001 Kingsley Tufts Award. Peter Burian is Professor of Classics at Duke University. Together, they act as the general editors for Oxford's Greek Tragedy in New Translations series.

"By far the best translation. Faithful to the original Greek text and eminently readable. The notes constitute a commentary in their own right."--Albert Henrichs, Harvard University "Hugh Lloyd-Jones's translation stands out very much from any other. The notes are first class and scholarly."--Jeffrey Rusten, Cornell University