Full Description
Ideas can change the world and Hazel Marshall's new book is about just such an idea. Our hero is bound by honour and family tradition to avenge a past wrong, for this is a tale of vendetta. Long-lasting family feuds are not rare; in his play Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare wrote of such a case and, as so often, things did not work out well. Vendettas can also sour relations between tribes and between nations; we need only recall the long-standing confl icts all over the world: 'past wrongs cannot be forgiven and
must never be forgotten'.
Vendettas are about revenge and retribution — the situation young Orestes found himself in. Family honour obliged him to avenge his father's death but in doing so, he laid himself open to retribution for his action. He was in a desperate situation, one without any prospect of a happy ending — that is, until the gods themselves stepped in. The goddess Pallas Athene had a brilliant idea.
She solved Orestes' diffi culties by fi nding another way for honour to be satisfied; she set up a Court of Justice. Invoking the sense of justice we all carry deep within our hearts, she chose twelve good men and true to hear the evidence presented by
both sides, and to weigh that evidence in their hearts. Which case best appealed to their sense of justice?
Until I read the drafts of Hazel's book, I hadn't realised just how much we owe to those wise, ancient Greeks. You may find similar gems in this fascinating retelling of a little-known Greek Drama.
Contents
Preface
Foreword
Contents
The Characters (Dramatis Personae)
Introduction
PART I: THE WINDS OF WAR
1 Exile in Phocis
2 The House of Atreus
3 Laodameia Remembers
4 Agamemnon
5 Achilles
6 Clytaemnestra
7 Iphigeneia
8 Artemis Exacts her Due
9 The Return of the King
10 Cassandra
PART II: RETRIBUTION
11 Demetrius
12 Electra
13 Deception
14 Revenge
15 Celebration
16 Castor and Pollux
17 In the Stables
18 In the Palace
19 The Family
20 Pylades
21 Hermione and Helen
PART III: ATHENE AND THE FURIES
22 Gods and Ghosts
23 Pallas Athene
24 The Trial
25 The Verdict
PART IV: RESTITUTION
26 A Temple in Tauris
27 Beyond the Clashing Rocks
28 The Image of Artemis
29 Another Plot
30 Release into Freedom
Postscript
Acknowledgements
Credits
Bibliography
Illustrations
