Choice-Rezension

A longtime Aeschylean critic and commentator on Greek drama, Conacher has produced a study that focuses on Persians, Seven against Thebes, and Suppliant Maidens. Part 1 examines these dramas in individual chapters that assume a general knowledge of the play's development. Taking a conventional approach to verbal imagery and poetic devices, Conacher examines Aeschylus' presentation of the drama or the dramatic expression of the play's basic themes. Although there is little originality here, the book's strength lies in these three chapters, where Conacher lays out the dominant themes(s) of the plays and demonstrates how the tragic artist uses a series of images, expressed through leading and subordinate characters and the chorus, to reflect these themes. Part 2, shorter and more general, is an overview of Aeschylean imagery and chorus that surveys all the surviving plays and is directed more to the first-time reader of Aeschylus. Conacher concludes that these plays differ from the Oresteia inasmuch as their imagistic sequences are not as fully developed as those in the later Oresteia. Recommended for undergraduate and graduate students. C. S. Broeniman; University of Massachusetts at Amherst