Agamemnon for the Ancients

My topic is the reception of Agamemnon in Greek in the long period of continuous theatrical tradition from the time of its first showing at Athens in 458 BC to the end of pagan antiquity. Familiar enough territory, one might think – at least to the extent that everyone recognises the play (along with Libation Bearers and Eumenides ) as seminal for the development of Attic drama; but mysterious in many respects, largely because our evidence is so patchy. For a start, we have no actual record of a specific revival of the play during that long period (c. 800 years?). 1 But it is inconceivable that revivals never happened in some form or another, and this mismatch may be a good starting point for thinking about methodology. Luckily there has been an encouraging shift in recent years towards a fairly catholic view of reception history, and this has made the task less daunting.