Peradotto's Aeschylus Article Among Best in Past 50 Years

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- "The Omen of the Eagles and the Ethos of Agamemnon," an article by John Peradotto, Ph.D., of Amherst, emeritus SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor and former faculty member in the Department of Classics at the University at Buffalo, has been included an anthology of 13 of the most important articles on the Greek playwright Aeschylus published in the past 50 years.

The 1969 article by Peradotto, also an internationally recognized Homeric scholar, is an analysis of Aeschylus's trilogy, the Oresteia, a principal subject of Peradotto's writing for more than 30 years. In its original form, it was published in the journal Phoenix.

It has been included in "Aeschylus" (Oxford University Press), a 422-page anthology edited by Michael Lloyd that will be published next month as part of the series "Oxford Readings in Classical Studies."

The plays of Aeschylus have a strong moral and religious emphasis, and concentrate on man's position in the cosmos in relation to the gods, divine law and divine punishment. The Oresteia trilogy consists of the plays Agamamnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides.

"Aeschylus" gives roughly equal coverage to the playwright's seven surviving plays and places them in the context of his work as a whole. It includes three articles translated into English for the first time, and other articles have a fresh foreword or postscript by the author. Greek quotations have been translated for the benefit of those reading the plays in English.