Amphiaraos

A play by Dimitri Peretzi.

Contributors

The story of Amphiaraos is central in the myths of the Theban cycle. The hero was the king of Argos who resigned from the throne, to become Apollo's priest and dedicate himself to the art of divination.

The great tragic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, they all wrote plays about him. We only know about these tragedies though, as none of them has been recovered.

For the researcher of ancient mythology it might appear strange that Amphiaraos, who still in our days remains an obscure figure of the ancient world, was the only hero of his time to have been deified after his death. The fact is that his personal drama, his fruitless efforts to halt the expedition of Argos against Thebes, seems to be the axis around which the main events of his period were shaped. Amphiaraos' path in life is so full of stories involving Oedipus, Theseus, Agamemnon, Kreon, Jason, Heracles, Atlanta and all the heroes of the ancient world, that it can be considered to be the centre of all that happened during those times.

Mr. Peretzi's text does not follow the structure of ancient tragedy. It is a theatrical narration that covers the largest part of Amphiaraos' later life. The play has been adapted specifically for RODA, in a grandiose production of twenty-five actors. Amphiaraos, like the other RODA plays of the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh and the Indian Ramayana, attracted the attention of the international CNN channel, which dedicated to them special news reports.