This trilogy of Greek tragedies follows the cursed family of the House of Atreus. As his wife Penelope bats away 108 suitors, her son Telemachus seeks the advice of the gods.

A decade after the end of the Trojan War, there’s still no sign of Odysseus. According to scholars, Homer himself was influenced by Near Eastern mythology for his tale of war, adventure, love and return to Ithaca. The second major epic poem attributed to Homer, the Odyssey has been a huge influence on the literary canon down through the ages, inspiring works from Joyce’s Ulysses to contemporary poetry such as Caribbean poet Derek Walcott’s Omeros (1991). With question marks over its authorship and date, most scholars attribute the work to Aeschylus. Often cited as the first advocate of social justice, Prometheus was a figure of strength and dignity who defied Zeus for the greater good – to bring advancement to the people. Condemned to being chained to a rock while an eagle pecks out his liver, only for it to regrow so that the ritual can be carried out day after day, the plight of poor Prometheus brings new meaning to the term ad infinitum. The world of Game of Thrones looks peaceful and humane compared to Zeus’s punishment of the Titan Prometheus, who earned the wrath of the god by giving fire to mankind. Antigone is the noble and courageous sister of the brothers, who vows to disobey Creon and bury her brother Polyneices herself. Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, decides that one brother will be honoured and the other publicly shamed, his body left on the battlefield as carrion.

More than likely part of a trilogy with Oedipus Rex, civil disobedience and loyalty to family are major themes explored in Antigone. Picking up where Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes ends, Antigone focuses on the aftermath of a bloody civil war that saw two brothers die as they led their sides into battle. Nostos, the concept of homecoming which was later expanded on by Homer in the Odyssey, and kleos, glory in battle, are central themes examined by the author. Full of poetry, action and memorable characters, the plot gets going when a pair of beautiful maidens, Chryseis and Briseis, are captured by Achaean warriors Agamemnon and Achilles. After an invocation of the Muses, the poem opens “in medias res”, nine years into the Trojan War. Starting a story in the middle of things is a staple of modern literature, crime fiction in particular, that owes plenty to Homer’s epic poem.

Aeschylus tragedies