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Hello and welcome to the London Review of Books podcast. My name is Thomas Jones. Today I'm speaking with Emily Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania,

translator of the Odyssey and Booker Prize judge, who has a piece

in the current issue of the LRB on the Oristair of Iskoulos. It's a review of three recent

translations of the trilogy by Oliver Taplin, Geoffrey Scott Bernstein and David Marlroy,

but also a consideration or reconsideration of the way Iskoulos's plays are conventionally

thought about, especially in

their representation of women. Hello, Emily, and thank you very much for joining me.

Nice to talk to you. Hello. Perhaps to begin, you could briefly tell the story of the plays

for people who may not be entirely familiar with them, that Agamemnon's return from Troy.

Sure, yes. So the Trojan War happens between the Greeks and the Trojans, or the

allied Greek forces and the Trojans. After 10 years of war, the Greeks win. So the Agamemnon

starts with a, with Clytemnestra learning about the fall of Troy.

Her husband, Agamemnon, is one of the Greek commanders

who's been fighting at Troy for 10 years.

We learn in the first choral ode of the play

...