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The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
A landmark anthology of the masterpieces of Greek drama, featuring all-new, highly accessible translations of some of the world's most beloved plays, including Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound, Bacchae, Electra, Medea, Antigone, and Oedipus the King
The great plays of Ancient Greece are among the most enduring and important legacies of the Western world. Not only is the influence of Greek drama palpable in everything from Shakespeare to modern television, the insights contained in Greek tragedy have shaped our perceptions of the nature of human life. Poets, philosophers, and politicians have long borrowed and adapted the ideas and language of Greek drama to help them make sense of their own times.
This exciting curated anthology features a cross section of the most popular--and most widely taught--plays in the Greek canon. Fresh translations into contemporary English breathe new life into the texts while capturing, as faithfully as possible, their original meaning.
This outstanding collection also offers short biographies of the playwrights, enlightening and clarifying introductions to the plays, and helpful annotations at the bottom of each page. Appendices by prominent classicists on such topics as "Greek Drama and Politics," "The Theater of Dionysus," and "Plato and Aristotle on Tragedy" give the reader a rich contextual background. A detailed time line of the dramas, as well as a list of adaptations of Greek drama to literature, stage, and film from the time of Seneca to the present, helps chart the history of Greek tragedy and illustrate its influence on our culture from the Roman Empire to the present day.
With a veritable who's who of today's most renowned and distinguished classical translators, The Greek Plays is certain to be the definitive text for students, scholars, theatrical professionals, and general readers alike for years to come.
Praise for The Greek Plays
"Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm deftly have gathered strong new translations from Frank Nisetich, Sarah Ruden, Rachel Kitzinger, Emily Wilson, as well as from Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm themselves. There is a freshness and pungency in these new translations that should last a long time.
I admire also the introductions to the plays and the biographies and annotations provided. Closing essays by five distinguished classicists: the brilliant Daniel Mendelsohn and the equally skilled David Rosenbloom, Joshua Billings, Mary-Kay Gamel, and Gregory Hays all enlightened me. This seems to me a helpful light into our gathering darkness."--Harold Bloom
"The reception of Ancient Greek theater is as lively as it's ever been in its 2,500-year history, both on the stage and on the page. Thanks to these sixteen brilliant new renditions by five leading scholar-translators, the three great Athenian masters of tragic drama, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, speak to us once again in powerfully contemporary accents on such fundamental issues as gender, religion, and democratic politics."--Paul Cartledge, author Democracy: A Life
"The Greek Plays is destined to become a perennial collection, essential reading for students, scholars, and lovers of Greek tragedy alike. This engaging compilation imbues all the ancient plays within its pages with new life by offering rich, informative historical, literary, and cultural context and fresh, accessible translations by some of the most talented classicists working in the field today."--Bryan Doerries, author of The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today
The great plays of Ancient Greece are among the most enduring and important legacies of the Western world. Not only is the influence of Greek drama palpable in everything from Shakespeare to modern television, the insights contained in Greek tragedy have shaped our perceptions of the nature of human life. Poets, philosophers, and politicians have long borrowed and adapted the ideas and language of Greek drama to help them make sense of their own times.
This exciting curated anthology features a cross section of the most popular--and most widely taught--plays in the Greek canon. Fresh translations into contemporary English breathe new life into the texts while capturing, as faithfully as possible, their original meaning.
This outstanding collection also offers short biographies of the playwrights, enlightening and clarifying introductions to the plays, and helpful annotations at the bottom of each page. Appendices by prominent classicists on such topics as "Greek Drama and Politics," "The Theater of Dionysus," and "Plato and Aristotle on Tragedy" give the reader a rich contextual background. A detailed time line of the dramas, as well as a list of adaptations of Greek drama to literature, stage, and film from the time of Seneca to the present, helps chart the history of Greek tragedy and illustrate its influence on our culture from the Roman Empire to the present day.
With a veritable who's who of today's most renowned and distinguished classical translators, The Greek Plays is certain to be the definitive text for students, scholars, theatrical professionals, and general readers alike for years to come.
Praise for The Greek Plays
"Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm deftly have gathered strong new translations from Frank Nisetich, Sarah Ruden, Rachel Kitzinger, Emily Wilson, as well as from Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm themselves. There is a freshness and pungency in these new translations that should last a long time.
I admire also the introductions to the plays and the biographies and annotations provided. Closing essays by five distinguished classicists: the brilliant Daniel Mendelsohn and the equally skilled David Rosenbloom, Joshua Billings, Mary-Kay Gamel, and Gregory Hays all enlightened me. This seems to me a helpful light into our gathering darkness."--Harold Bloom
"The reception of Ancient Greek theater is as lively as it's ever been in its 2,500-year history, both on the stage and on the page. Thanks to these sixteen brilliant new renditions by five leading scholar-translators, the three great Athenian masters of tragic drama, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, speak to us once again in powerfully contemporary accents on such fundamental issues as gender, religion, and democratic politics."--Paul Cartledge, author Democracy: A Life
"The Greek Plays is destined to become a perennial collection, essential reading for students, scholars, and lovers of Greek tragedy alike. This engaging compilation imbues all the ancient plays within its pages with new life by offering rich, informative historical, literary, and cultural context and fresh, accessible translations by some of the most talented classicists working in the field today."--Bryan Doerries, author of The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today
826 pages, Paperback
First published April 5, 2016
540 people are currently reading
2954 people want to read
About the author
Mary R. Lefkowitz
22 books23 followersMary R. Lefkowitz (born April 30, 1935), American scholar of Classics. She studied at Wellesley College before obtaining a Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Radcliffe College in 1961. Lefkowitz has published on subjects including mythology, women in antiquity, Pindar, and fiction in ancient biography.
She came to the attention of a wider audience through her criticism of the claims of Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization in her book Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History. In Black Athena Revisited (1996), which she edited with Guy MacLean Rogers, her colleague at Wellesley College, the ideas of Martin Bernal are further scrutinized.
She came to the attention of a wider audience through her criticism of the claims of Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization in her book Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History. In Black Athena Revisited (1996), which she edited with Guy MacLean Rogers, her colleague at Wellesley College, the ideas of Martin Bernal are further scrutinized.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 97 reviews
July 26, 2020
Poor thing! Now sing your reckless mouth to sleep.
Greek tragedy is a genre I did not expect to find so utterly enthralling before now. Yet the complexity, emotion, and gravitas presented within these plays has me enraptured. Here is a very long review.
On the Use of Tragedy
The Greek concept of tragedy is a fascinating one and one easy to misunderstand. I have actually been in a Greek Tragedy class now and read fifteen greek plays (a long review can be found here), so I feel more qualified to talk about this now. As given by Aristotle, the definition of a tragedy is not actually in its sad ending: it is in experiencing human suffering. (Most of the extant plays, not by coincidence but by generations of selection, end negatively.) Catharsis, by his definition, is a type of cleaning: "we experience, then expurgate these emotions". Tragedy can attempt to make the worst experiences consumable. It is not the ending, but the process.
Aristotle said a tragedy should focus on a great man and his fall—not a good or wicked man, but one in between. His wording was 'hamartia', interpreted as flaw. This may have been oversymplified. A separate theorist, Bernard Knox, said something I prefer: that a hero makes a decision rooted in personal nature, and follows it to personal destruction. (This is especially relevant to Sophoclean drama.) Heroes can be everything: admirable in their steadfast natures, flawed in pride and violence. The Greeks did not admire every hero; rather, they thought of heroes as a way to explore both the benefits & the drawbacks of certain traits.
At the heart of every Greek tragedy comes a moment of 'recognition' and 'reversal'. In the best, according to him, these are the same: this is catharsis.
In case you were curious, my favorite plays of the sixteen I've read would be, ranked:
5. Medea, Euripides
4. Libation Bearers, Aeschylus
3. Hippolytus, Euripides
2. Agamemnon, Aeschylus
1. Antigone, Sophocles
These are all contained within this collection.
Reviews of Plays
Notes: As this was my central textbook for a Greek Tragedy course, I’ve mentioned essentially three plays by the Big Three that I actually read via separate volumes.
→Persians ★★★★☆ Aeschylus← (472 BCE)
A play of a great amount of grief. Review to come, TBD.
→Agamemnon ★★★★★ Aeschylus← (458 BCE)
Reviewed here. This is my favorite Aeschylus and one of my favorite Greek plays.
→Libation Bearers ★★★★★ Aeschylus← (458 BCE)
The brilliance of this play is that no character goes to their grave unsympathetic. When we see Clytemnestra speak of the death of her daughter at the hands of her own father, of the relationship with her daughter she has tried to mend, we are entirely on her side. When we hear Electra speak of the murder of her father by a woman who has become a tyrant in her land, we are entirely on her side. When we see Orestes' love for his sister, his doubt at whether he should commit this ultimate crime, we are entirely on his side. The death of Clytemnestra is heartbreaking because we cannot decide whose side we are on; we mourn for her while sympathizing with her killer.
On a side note, Electra's allegiances are fascinating - she has sided with her father, the murderer of her sister, as have the women slaves (the so-called Libation Bearers) who make up the chorus. The women disagree rather than uniting, and their conflict, though partially given to Orestes, makes up the central conflict of the play. (This was a paper topic I had written down and did not write.)
Interestingly, Clissa, Electra's nurse, serves as more of a motherly figure than Clytemnestra. Without her, the plot could hardly function; it is she who tells Aegisthus to come to Orestes, who forms such a central piece. Just as in Oedipus, a barely-named character decides the solution to the tragedy, but here, it is even more significant; a mother kills a mother.
Notable Lines (Sarah Ruden translation):
ORESTES: The male's female inside, or if he's not, he'll prove it soon. (305)
ELECTRA: We are suppliants and refugees alive at your tomb; it must take us in. (337-338)
ELECTRA: A raw-minded wolf is the soul our mother gave him. (421-422)
CHORUS: The house must keep its wounds open. (472)
ELECTRA: Persephone, give me triumph in its beauty. (490)
CHORUS: Nobody honors what the gods revile.
Which of these stories am I wrong to bring together? (638-639)
CLYTEMNESTRA: We'll die the way we killed, by trickery. (889)
→Eumenides ★★★★☆ Aeschylus← (458 BCE)
Eumenides means 'The Kindly Ones', and refers to the fates that prey upon Orestes for the entirety of this play, until he receives an Athena-run trial. Though the trial is for Orestes, murderer of his mother and breaker of laws of the earth, the one truly on trial here may be Apollo. This is a play of the old gods vs. the new; one that begins with horror, and ends with unexpected forgiveness.
Notable Lines (Sarah Ruden translation):
CHORUS: There is a fitting place for terror:
the overseer of the mind
must sit there constantly. (517-519)
CHORUS: The gods, who win every match, have wrenched me away from my vulnerable post. (838)
ATHENA: Are the goddesses shrewd enough to find the path of merciful words for the people? (989)
→Prometheus Bound ★★★★☆ Aeschylus (?)← (unk)
This is a play of dubious authorship due to its oddness: the language, the lack of choral ode, and the technical elements all seem to place it in a later century. Still, it is not without its merits. Zeus, depicted here as a tyrant, chains Prometheus to a rock until he gives up a prophecy. Indeed, Prometheus holds the secret of Zeus' downfall, if he can only keep it.
There is a strong contrast between Io, doomed into constant movement, and Prometheus, doomed to constant stillness. Prometheus stands on the edge of the world, on the vista of time; he talks only to Io and to the daughters of Oceanus, the oceans circling the world.
This is a strange little play of seeming stagnancy, but in reality, it is dynamic.
Notable Lines (James Romm translation):
PROMETHEUS: All art is weaker than necessity. (514)
IO: One wretch to another. (595)
IO: I'm off the track, beyond what's sane. (884)
PROMETHEUS: You young gods, new in rule—you think you dwell in towers that never topple. Have I not seen tyrants twice already hurled from them? (955)
PROMETHEUS: Perhaps, but I choose punishment like mine over servitude like yours. (968)
PROMETHEUS: Majesty of my mother Earth,
bright sky that lets the common light whirl round,
you see me here, and see my lot: injustice. (1092)
→Antigone ★★★★★ Sophocles← (442 BCE)
Reviewed here. I think this is still my favorite ever Greek Tragedy. Loved this translation; feel like I can say this now as it’s the fourth I’ve read.
→Oedipus the King ★★★★★ Sophocles← (c.430 BCE)
Reviewed here.
→Oedipus at Colonus ★★★★☆ Sophocles← (406 BCE)
Reviewed here. I did not do a detailed reread of this one as it was not on our syllabus.
→Electra ★★★★★ Sophocles← (unk)
Reviewed here.
→Medea ★★★★★ Euripides← (431 BCE)
Technically, this was my first-ever greek tragedy, in eighth grade. Reviewed here.
→Electra ★★★☆☆ Euripides← (420-410 BCE)
Aeschylus' Oresteia was already a classic by the time of both Sophocles and Euripides, so each shifted their focuses. In Libation Bearers, Aeschylus had focused on motherhood; in Sophocles, focus had shifted further to Electra, making Clytemnestra more villainous than anything else. Euripides, a constant bringer of further darkness, leans the opposite direction. In his adaptation, Clytemnestra is sympathetic. In Aeschylus' adaptation, the audience has no problem sympathizing with Electra and Orestes, even with their sympathies sticking by Clytemnestra. In this adaptation, it is harder. Clytemnestra's visceral grief over Orestes, her clear love for even Electra, outweighs even her earlier crime. When Electra herself is vicious and hateful to Clytemnestra, and she joins in on the killing, our sympathy becomes more difficult to place. I actually honestly struggled to sympathize with her at times, which is not a problem I've had with either previous Electra.
The focus here is not on criminal fates, but on the status of outsider. The poor man who treats Electra well is the hero of this play, not royalty.
Interestingly, this play also contains a lot more misogyny? There is a huge negative focus on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus for failing to play into gender roles; Aegisthus is essentially called bad for being too feminine, allowing a woman to dominate him, and Clytemnestra for being the dominant. This is the most prominent theme of the play and I really didn't vibe with this; it's actually somewhat strange given how interesting I generally find Euripides' view of gender. I can't tell to what degree this is Electra's character and to what degree this is Euripides' view, and I'd be interested to know.
Notable Lines (Emily Wilson translation):
ELECTRA: My hands, my tongue, my heavy-hearted mind. (335)
ORESTES: He's now your slave,
the man whom once you had to call your master. (898)
ELECTRA: You thought your wealth and power made you someone.
For me, I'd rather
a man for husband—you looked like a girl. (939)
CHORUS: You've spoken fairly, with an ugly fairness. (1051)
→Trojan Women Euripides← (415 BCE) *TBR
Review to come, TBD.
→Hippolytus ★★★★★ Euripides← (428 BCE)
Reviewed here. This is one of my favorites.
→Alcestis ★★★★☆ Euripides← (438 BCE)
Reviewed here.
→Helen ★★★★☆ Euripides← (412 BCE)
This is an interesting play, written as an exoneration of Helen from the hated version of her in the Trojan war myths (though I always enjoy her). It’s an interesting play in terms of plot, and a bit protofeminist: Helen has more agency within the narrative than any other character, and very literally takes back her agency. A way-less-evil Medea. Though not quite as vicious and memorable.
Notable Lines (Emily Wilson translation):
HELEN: Among barbarians, all are slaves but one. (285)
CHORUS: What mortal can think it all through and explain
what is god, what is not god, and what’s in between? (1140)
→The Bacchae ★★★☆☆ Euripides← (406 BCE)
A tragicomedy of sorts, about disrespect for the gods and the fluid nature of gender. Very harsh and at times, almost cold: it feels torturous, voyeuristic of pain. Definitely interesting to analyze on the topic of Euripides in general.
I did not write down any lines from this.
Not In This Collection
→Ajax ★★★☆☆ Sophocles← (c.445 BCE) (from a diff. volume)
Reviewed here.
→Women of Trachis Sophocles← (unk)
Reviewed here.
→Philoctetes Sophocles← (409 BCE) *TBR
Reviewed here.
→Orestes ★★★★★ Euripides← (408 BCE)
Reviewed here.
→Hecuba ★★★★★ Euripides← (424 BCE)
Reviewed here.
→Heracles ★★★☆☆ Euripides← (421-416 BCE)
Reviewed here.
Not Yet Read
→The Suppliants Aeschylus← (463 BCE)
→Seven Against Thebes Aeschylus← (467 BCE)
→The Suppliants Euripides← (414 BCE) *TBR
→Andromache Euripides← (unk) *TBR
→The Cyclops Euripides← (unk) *Only extant satyr play
→Heracleidae Euripides← (430 BCE)
→Ion Euripides← (unk)
→Iphigenia At Aulis Euripides← (410 BCE)
→Iphigenia in Tauris Euripides← (unk)
→The Phoenissae Euripides← (c.408 BCE)
→Rhesus Euripides← (unk)
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August 31, 2024
I read the sixteen plays in this outstanding collection (roughly half of the extant Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) on-and-off over three years and reviewed them all individually on Goodreads (in a few cases I read a different translation). I wanted to list the volume as a whole just to say the introductions are excellent--to all of the plays, to each playwright individually, and to each play individually. And the translations seem very good to my untutored eye. And the plays themselves are really fascinating, exciting, and at times other worldly to read.
November 29, 2016
The book has decent paper and binding. I am confused by some of the layout choices (what is the system for indentation? is it random?), but there's nothing too crazy or confusing.
Sarah Ruden's Oresteia is great. I'm not sure it would be good for reading the trilogy for the first time. The basic plots might not be clear to someone who hasn't read them before, but her choices are more beautiful and interesting than the standard Lattimore/Grene edition in the UChicago Press tragedies series. The footnote apparatus is more thorough than the typical reader wants or needs, but it doesn't get in the way.
Enjoyed Sophocles' Theban plays. Very happy with all the translations, especially Antigone.
Now onto Euripides... I bought this because it features translations of Euripides by an old professor of mine. Euripides, bless his heart, is just not as good a tragedian as Sophocles and Aeschylus. Reading the Hippolytus after reading Antigone is tough. But the Bacchae is a helluva play, and my old professor did a fine job of it. Reading it brought back memories of a performance we held when her translation was still a manuscript.
If you've always wanted to read the Greek tragedies - and you should, really - buy this book, and you'll be set.
Sarah Ruden's Oresteia is great. I'm not sure it would be good for reading the trilogy for the first time. The basic plots might not be clear to someone who hasn't read them before, but her choices are more beautiful and interesting than the standard Lattimore/Grene edition in the UChicago Press tragedies series. The footnote apparatus is more thorough than the typical reader wants or needs, but it doesn't get in the way.
Enjoyed Sophocles' Theban plays. Very happy with all the translations, especially Antigone.
Now onto Euripides... I bought this because it features translations of Euripides by an old professor of mine. Euripides, bless his heart, is just not as good a tragedian as Sophocles and Aeschylus. Reading the Hippolytus after reading Antigone is tough. But the Bacchae is a helluva play, and my old professor did a fine job of it. Reading it brought back memories of a performance we held when her translation was still a manuscript.
If you've always wanted to read the Greek tragedies - and you should, really - buy this book, and you'll be set.
September 25, 2019
Many people have that thing you studied in high school that just clicked, that opened worlds and brought passion. For me, that was Greek drama. Something about the intensity, the poetry, the surprise that humanity could be so recognisable over millennia - that a poet living so long ago on the other side of the world could see into me. Fast forward a few decades, I finally travel to Athens, and to prep go looking for this love of my youth. I landed on this volume because of the emphasis on accuracy, context and the use of Greek words. I majored in Greek at uni, meaning I had read all of the plays in volume before, in original or translation, sand connecting to the Greek was important. I also re-read Thucydides, an unexpectedly tedious experience - so entered the book with the fear that the magic had gone.
I shouldn't have worried. From the opening lines of Aeschylus' Persians, I was hooked. These plays demand your attention. There is no need to elucidate meanings through stilted prose - characters lay their emotions out in articulate, raw, boastful verse that speaks straight to your own emotions. There is complexity for the reader/viewer aplenty, which comes from trying to sort through what it all means - who is right and who is not, and how can everyone be right when they are trenchantly opposed? The Gods appear onstage at times, but are often most powerful when absent: forces to which humans surrender, fight or adapt to (The Bacchae, in which Dionysus is remarkably human, is an exception not rule). This ensures a delicate balance of agency and inevitability, where serves somehow to place more emphasis, not less, on that agency.
It is a treasure to have so many plays in a single volume, all with decent translations. I took it to Greece with me, read Hippolytus as the plane descended, sat in the Theatre of Dionysus and read Medea's main monologue in the heat, returning to consume Oedipus at Colonus in a cooler early evening. I dipped into Eumenides while watching over Aeropagus Hill, and ran through Antigone tucked up in bed. My beloved Bacchae I left until last when I was home and processing. To adolescent me, the Bacchae was the greatest literary work ever. I read it over and over. I remember trying to explain how real the intensity of emotion, the tragedy, the stupid arrogance felt. As I got older, its glory faded, replaced by an appreciation for the shading of Antigone and the rest of Sophocles' Oresteia, of Prometheus Bound, and in Euripides work, the strong anti-war message of Trojan Women* and the possible feminist readings of Medea and Alcestis. To my pleased surprise, I rediscovered an appreciation for the Bacchae, without the same identification with emotion, but recognising the greatness of the structure, the mingling of ecstasy, despair, grandeur, pettiness, awe and the crash to reality. Sure Euripides is not subtle in his messaging, but he paints in a flurry of colours with detail that can be obscured if you don't take your time with it.
The extra detail here is mostly excellent. The short essays at the end cover key topics succinctly - and if you are thinking of taking this to Greece, the performance details help the imagining-how-theatres-actually-looked thing. But the footnotes - well - many of the footnotes are excellent, especially those relating to translation issues and meter. But many are just irritating, repeating definitions already given or just explaining very basic mythology (which was often clear from context in any case). If these had been distinguished between, it would have solved the problem, but I found myself continuously yanked out of the text uselessly, eventually being forced to choose between losing the interesting textual info or severely disrupted reading.
On the whole, however, I would highly recommend this volume to Greek drama newbies and oldies alike.
*One advantage at least of having just reread Thucydides was that I had the timeline of the Peloponnesian War fresh, and could appreciate the timing of the plays - and their undoubted critique of Athenia war atrocities - better.
I shouldn't have worried. From the opening lines of Aeschylus' Persians, I was hooked. These plays demand your attention. There is no need to elucidate meanings through stilted prose - characters lay their emotions out in articulate, raw, boastful verse that speaks straight to your own emotions. There is complexity for the reader/viewer aplenty, which comes from trying to sort through what it all means - who is right and who is not, and how can everyone be right when they are trenchantly opposed? The Gods appear onstage at times, but are often most powerful when absent: forces to which humans surrender, fight or adapt to (The Bacchae, in which Dionysus is remarkably human, is an exception not rule). This ensures a delicate balance of agency and inevitability, where serves somehow to place more emphasis, not less, on that agency.
It is a treasure to have so many plays in a single volume, all with decent translations. I took it to Greece with me, read Hippolytus as the plane descended, sat in the Theatre of Dionysus and read Medea's main monologue in the heat, returning to consume Oedipus at Colonus in a cooler early evening. I dipped into Eumenides while watching over Aeropagus Hill, and ran through Antigone tucked up in bed. My beloved Bacchae I left until last when I was home and processing. To adolescent me, the Bacchae was the greatest literary work ever. I read it over and over. I remember trying to explain how real the intensity of emotion, the tragedy, the stupid arrogance felt. As I got older, its glory faded, replaced by an appreciation for the shading of Antigone and the rest of Sophocles' Oresteia, of Prometheus Bound, and in Euripides work, the strong anti-war message of Trojan Women* and the possible feminist readings of Medea and Alcestis. To my pleased surprise, I rediscovered an appreciation for the Bacchae, without the same identification with emotion, but recognising the greatness of the structure, the mingling of ecstasy, despair, grandeur, pettiness, awe and the crash to reality. Sure Euripides is not subtle in his messaging, but he paints in a flurry of colours with detail that can be obscured if you don't take your time with it.
The extra detail here is mostly excellent. The short essays at the end cover key topics succinctly - and if you are thinking of taking this to Greece, the performance details help the imagining-how-theatres-actually-looked thing. But the footnotes - well - many of the footnotes are excellent, especially those relating to translation issues and meter. But many are just irritating, repeating definitions already given or just explaining very basic mythology (which was often clear from context in any case). If these had been distinguished between, it would have solved the problem, but I found myself continuously yanked out of the text uselessly, eventually being forced to choose between losing the interesting textual info or severely disrupted reading.
On the whole, however, I would highly recommend this volume to Greek drama newbies and oldies alike.
*One advantage at least of having just reread Thucydides was that I had the timeline of the Peloponnesian War fresh, and could appreciate the timing of the plays - and their undoubted critique of Athenia war atrocities - better.
June 19, 2018
This will always be a treasured collection to me for introducing me to a wide range of Athenian tragedy and drama. I love Greek tragedy, and I am grateful for the great translation work of Frank Nisetich on the Oedipus plays, Sarah Ruden for Aeschylus’ Oresteia, and Emily Wilson’s translations of Trojan Women, Helen, and The Bacchae.
Some of the plays like Sophocles’ and Euripides’ Electra are nice, as is Aeschylus’ Persians for its focus on the defeated Persians’ lamentations
Some of the plays like Sophocles’ and Euripides’ Electra are nice, as is Aeschylus’ Persians for its focus on the defeated Persians’ lamentations
June 12, 2020
I truly enjoyed many of these plays. Aeschylus' Persians is fascinating. Who would have guessed one of the first recorded plays in history would engender sympathy for a mortal enemy and be written from their point of view. While many attributes of the play belie the art form's lack of maturity (essentially one set, few characters, mostly dialog with "the chorus"), the point of view seems like something that would not have been tried for centuries. The Oresteia was interesting when taken as a trilogy. The first two plays--Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers, about the murders of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, respectively--seem rather barbaric, but the way the third, Eumenides, ends in a trial dismissing blind Justice and binding the gods to the city (Athens) is fascinating. The last play from Aeschylus is Prometheus Bound, another discussion on justice and a plea to get mankind out from under whimsical gods (fate). It would be interesting to find the rest of this trilogy.
From Sophocles, we get his entire classic trilogy of Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus, with Electra thrown in to close his take on the story of the house of Atreus. I was surprised how dramatic this felt despite everyone knowing the "twist" in Oedipus' story. Fate is an obvious theme to start, but justice comes up again as Oedipus stands between the struggle of his sons for power in Thebes in the end.
The book ends with quite a few works from Euripides. I have to admit I did not enjoy these nearly as much as those by Sophocles and Aeschylus. They are so odd. Alcestis is about a king, Admetus, who can live only if someone sacrifices their life for him, and it turns out to be his wife, Alcestis. Certainly an indecent bargain. This is followed by the barbaric Medea. I am not saying she was treated fairly, but to fulfill her vengeance on her sons just made me sick (and she seemed to be partly to blame for her situation, too). It was one of those stories that I found gripping but really did not want to see, like a Darren Aronofsky film. Hippolytus was not much better. This man tries so hard to be upright, and instead of being corrected, he is destroyed along with those around him by Aphrodite. This is where the gods seem so capricious. Are life, love, and the world in which we live really so tragic? His Electra isn't so bad, but I just read that one twice before. I am not sure how it is any better. I appreciate that Trojan Women calls out just how much women were pawns in this world of men, and for that, it is admirable, but in terms of dialogue, it seems to be 1300 lines of whining I did not enjoy reading. Helen is an interesting romantic intrigue, where Menelaus runs across Helen in Greece and makes a daring escape with her, but to me, limited in my exposure to ancient literature, it is a bit jarring, rewriting the storyline set out by Homer, claiming that Helen in Troy was nothing but an image made by the gods. Finally, I affirmed my dislike for Bacchae. Yuk. I do not like anything about this one. King Pentheus of Thebes seems to want to keep his city clear-headed. True, he could be said to be defying a god, but he seems less in defiance of the gods and more in doubt of the hype. Once again, as with Hippolytus, he does not learn to balance faith and reason and to respect the new gods but is instead shamed and destroyed, literally ripped apart--by his mother, no less--for his mistake. Is Dionysus in the right? Look as his mother, Agave, in the end, who is so proud of her independent work as a hunter until she realizes she is holding her own son's head. The entire city is brought low. Who is in the right here? What is the lesson? Should Dionysus receive any honor? I am confused.
All in all, though, this is a collection of sixteen works of great importance to the development of drama. Well worth the read. I have no idea how the translations stack up against others, but they generally read well and have copious footnotes. Also included are an introductory essay for each play and, in an appendix, five long essays (which I did not read) on Greek drama in general.
From Sophocles, we get his entire classic trilogy of Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus, with Electra thrown in to close his take on the story of the house of Atreus. I was surprised how dramatic this felt despite everyone knowing the "twist" in Oedipus' story. Fate is an obvious theme to start, but justice comes up again as Oedipus stands between the struggle of his sons for power in Thebes in the end.
The book ends with quite a few works from Euripides. I have to admit I did not enjoy these nearly as much as those by Sophocles and Aeschylus. They are so odd. Alcestis is about a king, Admetus, who can live only if someone sacrifices their life for him, and it turns out to be his wife, Alcestis. Certainly an indecent bargain. This is followed by the barbaric Medea. I am not saying she was treated fairly, but to fulfill her vengeance on her sons just made me sick (and she seemed to be partly to blame for her situation, too). It was one of those stories that I found gripping but really did not want to see, like a Darren Aronofsky film. Hippolytus was not much better. This man tries so hard to be upright, and instead of being corrected, he is destroyed along with those around him by Aphrodite. This is where the gods seem so capricious. Are life, love, and the world in which we live really so tragic? His Electra isn't so bad, but I just read that one twice before. I am not sure how it is any better. I appreciate that Trojan Women calls out just how much women were pawns in this world of men, and for that, it is admirable, but in terms of dialogue, it seems to be 1300 lines of whining I did not enjoy reading. Helen is an interesting romantic intrigue, where Menelaus runs across Helen in Greece and makes a daring escape with her, but to me, limited in my exposure to ancient literature, it is a bit jarring, rewriting the storyline set out by Homer, claiming that Helen in Troy was nothing but an image made by the gods. Finally, I affirmed my dislike for Bacchae. Yuk. I do not like anything about this one. King Pentheus of Thebes seems to want to keep his city clear-headed. True, he could be said to be defying a god, but he seems less in defiance of the gods and more in doubt of the hype. Once again, as with Hippolytus, he does not learn to balance faith and reason and to respect the new gods but is instead shamed and destroyed, literally ripped apart--by his mother, no less--for his mistake. Is Dionysus in the right? Look as his mother, Agave, in the end, who is so proud of her independent work as a hunter until she realizes she is holding her own son's head. The entire city is brought low. Who is in the right here? What is the lesson? Should Dionysus receive any honor? I am confused.
All in all, though, this is a collection of sixteen works of great importance to the development of drama. Well worth the read. I have no idea how the translations stack up against others, but they generally read well and have copious footnotes. Also included are an introductory essay for each play and, in an appendix, five long essays (which I did not read) on Greek drama in general.
June 15, 2022
On the whole, an excellent anthology of classic plays by the major Hellenic tragedians. However, I did find the translation of The Oresteia to be so literal as to almost be incoherent. Admittedly, Aeschylus' language is quite knotty, but it seemed like Sarah Ruden just gave up on trying to make it comprehensible to English speakers.
Emily Wilson's translations of some of Euripides' plays went too far in the other direction, substituting simplistic idiomatic English that detracted from the majesty of Euripides' writing. We're told that prisoners could sometimes win their freedom by demonstrating that they'd memorized passages from Euripides, but if Wilson's translations were all we had to go by one might wonder why he was so respected. When Menelaus in Helen complained that his ship had been "smashed to millions of smithereens", or that he's "not a kidnapper. Nor sent by bad guys", or said, "let's shake" on a plan he and Helen were concocting, I just laughed, which I'm sure is not the kind of response Euripides was hoping for.
So I'd still say that the best translations of these tragedians' works are still the ones in the series edited by David Grene and Richard Lattimore and published by the University of Chicago Press, but I must concede that for an affordable single-volume overview of Greek tragedy you can't do better. And the appendices, though brief, are excellent resources on the role of Greek drama in the civic life of Athens and its philosophy.
Emily Wilson's translations of some of Euripides' plays went too far in the other direction, substituting simplistic idiomatic English that detracted from the majesty of Euripides' writing. We're told that prisoners could sometimes win their freedom by demonstrating that they'd memorized passages from Euripides, but if Wilson's translations were all we had to go by one might wonder why he was so respected. When Menelaus in Helen complained that his ship had been "smashed to millions of smithereens", or that he's "not a kidnapper. Nor sent by bad guys", or said, "let's shake" on a plan he and Helen were concocting, I just laughed, which I'm sure is not the kind of response Euripides was hoping for.
So I'd still say that the best translations of these tragedians' works are still the ones in the series edited by David Grene and Richard Lattimore and published by the University of Chicago Press, but I must concede that for an affordable single-volume overview of Greek tragedy you can't do better. And the appendices, though brief, are excellent resources on the role of Greek drama in the civic life of Athens and its philosophy.
February 19, 2017
read so far (and loved):
-Medea
-Medea
July 10, 2025
A fantastic collection of Greek tragedies. All the plays are preceded by introductions from the translators, giving historical context for the work that contemporary audiences would have been aware of, as well as the cultural significance of each play. The accompanying footnotes of each play are at times repetition, but I’d rather have that than nothing at all. The preface and appendices are enlightening and welcoming. My only issue is that some of the translations (mainly Sarah Ruden’s Oresteia trilogy) were inconsistent in quality. The stand out play of the set was Emily Wilson’s translation of Euripides's The Bacchae; I was giggling with delight at the utter ridiculousness, overt sexuality, grotesque revelry, and over the top violence of it all, no shame.
May 31, 2025
Okay new translations; not outstanding as poetry, rather flat footed and overly literal (as footnotes make clear); certainly they do not "breathe new life" into these plays as advertised, but they do the job. This edition is absurdly overannotated, however -- obvious plot points are overexplained, or things already discussed in the preface are re-explained, etc. The word "tyrant" is repeatedly footnoted in OEDIPUS, with each footnote referring back to an earlier footnote -- even though the preface already discussed the tyrant issue anyway. It is quite maddening. And sometimes the footnotes draw out an implication that a more effective translation would convey without need for explanation.
Lacunae and corruptions in the manuscripts, which really SHOULD be footnoted, are distractingly signalled throughout the texts,with angle brackets and such.
Also why is this anthology called "The" Greek "Plays," when only tragedies have been included?
Lacunae and corruptions in the manuscripts, which really SHOULD be footnoted, are distractingly signalled throughout the texts,with angle brackets and such.
Also why is this anthology called "The" Greek "Plays," when only tragedies have been included?
December 18, 2023
Finally finished!! Read some for school but finished the rest on my own.
Aeschylus
Persians ★★★★
Shockingly sympathetic to the Persians for a play written by a Greek, monologues were quite emotional and I could feel the waves of lamentation coming from Atossa mourning a great empire fallen.
Oresteia:
- Agamemnon ★★★
Clytemnestra feels so evil in here and I feel so bad for Cassandra. Not very sympathetic towards Clytemnestra and it's like she and Aegisthus are just power hungry tyrants.
- Libation Bearers ★★★
Recognition scene of Orestes and Electra is so bad it's funny. Even though the focus is on Orestes his character still feels distant (his hesitation to kill doesn't carry as much emotional weight).
- Eumenides ★★
Not that interesting. Apollo's logic that Orestes is innocent because mothers aren't related to their children (and are only vessels for the father's child to develop in) is annoying since it wasn't even common belief for all Greeks. The court scene was not compelling.
Prometheus Bound ★★★
Just Prometheus angry at Zeus (for good reason), and helping Io out (sort of).
Sophocles
Oedipus the King ★★★
Very compelling, but doesn't mean I like how things turned out.
Antigone ★★★
Classic heroine.
Electra ★★★
Electra is sooo annoying and Clytemnestra is made quite sympathetic in this one.
Oedipus at Colonus ★★★
Pretty good plot.
Euripides
Alcestis ★★
It was ok. No eliciting any deep feelings or anything.
Medea ★★★★★
Love everything especially the monologues and back and forth arguments.
Hippolytus ★★★
Sad story, but didn't make me love it as much as it could have.
Electra ★★★
The "peasant" husband is such a treasure, Electra really should've appreciated him more. She is less nasty than Sophocles' version but still eggs on Orestes.
Trojan Women ★★★
Sad lamentation of Troy's end, with all the famous female figures of Troy.
Helen ★★★
Sort of makes you feel sympathy for Helen but whatever.
Bacchae ★★
Too much gore for me haha.
My favorites would probably be Aeschylus Persians and Euripides' Medea, and least favorite is probably Euripides' Bacchae.
Aeschylus
Persians ★★★★
Shockingly sympathetic to the Persians for a play written by a Greek, monologues were quite emotional and I could feel the waves of lamentation coming from Atossa mourning a great empire fallen.
Oresteia:
- Agamemnon ★★★
Clytemnestra feels so evil in here and I feel so bad for Cassandra. Not very sympathetic towards Clytemnestra and it's like she and Aegisthus are just power hungry tyrants.
- Libation Bearers ★★★
Recognition scene of Orestes and Electra is so bad it's funny. Even though the focus is on Orestes his character still feels distant (his hesitation to kill doesn't carry as much emotional weight).
- Eumenides ★★
Not that interesting. Apollo's logic that Orestes is innocent because mothers aren't related to their children (and are only vessels for the father's child to develop in) is annoying since it wasn't even common belief for all Greeks. The court scene was not compelling.
Prometheus Bound ★★★
Just Prometheus angry at Zeus (for good reason), and helping Io out (sort of).
Sophocles
Oedipus the King ★★★
Very compelling, but doesn't mean I like how things turned out.
Antigone ★★★
Classic heroine.
Electra ★★★
Electra is sooo annoying and Clytemnestra is made quite sympathetic in this one.
Oedipus at Colonus ★★★
Pretty good plot.
Euripides
Alcestis ★★
It was ok. No eliciting any deep feelings or anything.
Medea ★★★★★
Love everything especially the monologues and back and forth arguments.
Hippolytus ★★★
Sad story, but didn't make me love it as much as it could have.
Electra ★★★
The "peasant" husband is such a treasure, Electra really should've appreciated him more. She is less nasty than Sophocles' version but still eggs on Orestes.
Trojan Women ★★★
Sad lamentation of Troy's end, with all the famous female figures of Troy.
Helen ★★★
Sort of makes you feel sympathy for Helen but whatever.
Bacchae ★★
Too much gore for me haha.
My favorites would probably be Aeschylus Persians and Euripides' Medea, and least favorite is probably Euripides' Bacchae.
November 3, 2021
It's been a Greek year for me to say the least, I have always wanted to read about one of the greatest civilizations that ever existed, and this book gave me chance to experience that, this book has total 16 plays by three of the most known playwrights in Greek literature, and I enjoyed reading all of them immensely.
The other thing which I did while reading these plays, was go through a course on Greek mythology, because almost all the plays have a Deux ex machina in the form of the Greek gods, who make an appearance on the stage at the start or the end of the play, and understanding these gods and their machinations is a key factor in understanding all of these plays.
All of these plays have basically tragic human condition at the center of it, be it Odepius who transcends from a King to a beggar in few pages, or for that matter Orestes who has commit the horrible crime of matricide. But these plays go beyond that and they try to justify the human tragic condition is due to the cruelty of the gods.
Other important thing in understanding these plays is trying to understand the exact times when they were staged, because if you go into the meaning of each of them they try to depict the futility of war or being too confident about our decisions without understanding all of its repercussions, and they provide a clear cut mirror to human beings regarding their conditions.
Definitely a must read, I give it 4/5 stars.
The other thing which I did while reading these plays, was go through a course on Greek mythology, because almost all the plays have a Deux ex machina in the form of the Greek gods, who make an appearance on the stage at the start or the end of the play, and understanding these gods and their machinations is a key factor in understanding all of these plays.
All of these plays have basically tragic human condition at the center of it, be it Odepius who transcends from a King to a beggar in few pages, or for that matter Orestes who has commit the horrible crime of matricide. But these plays go beyond that and they try to justify the human tragic condition is due to the cruelty of the gods.
Other important thing in understanding these plays is trying to understand the exact times when they were staged, because if you go into the meaning of each of them they try to depict the futility of war or being too confident about our decisions without understanding all of its repercussions, and they provide a clear cut mirror to human beings regarding their conditions.
Definitely a must read, I give it 4/5 stars.
March 29, 2022
I set myself a challenge to read some Greek plays and am glad I began with this fine translation of sixteen tragedies. Some I was vaguely familiar with, others were completely new, all very well presented. The introduction to each of the plays was an added dimension, very informative.
September 21, 2022
There is just no way that I would not give 5 stars to greek tragedies but the cover says that these new translations give new life to these stories and I disagree, the translation is overly literal and overly annotated which doesn’t make for a very fluent read. But still a masterpiece
September 10, 2022
Dr. Wilson’s translation of the Bacchae: Utterly spectacular.
August 7, 2024
A wide-ranging selection of different types of tragedies (they don't all end badly). Also a few helpful articles at the end, including one that puts Aristotle's Poetics in context.
May 18, 2024
This is a really great selection of Greek plays. I highly recommend this edition!
June 3, 2022
oedipus at colonus >>>>
February 4, 2024
medea best one in here she’s so real
October 4, 2022
Translated by Frank Nisetch
Every summer, I read the tri-peak pinnacle of Greek Tragedy: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. This collection contains 13 other plays I didn't get to, but I plan on checking the book out again and making my way through them.
This is the longest I've gone between reading, and writing my thoughts. I generally like to wait to write them up until after I've met and discussed it with my friend. Unfortunately, it seems like we're both busier and busier. I'm working about 50 hours a week, and teaching a 3 credit-hour course on the side... and I'm grading way too much. We got the neighborhood association back up and running: president. And I've helped coach Gwen's volleyball team a bit here and there. I now owe something like $35 for this book, because it was so overdue that I'm paying for the thing.
Which is to say, I'm not 100% confident I can separate my thoughts on this translation from what my thoughts are on the book in general.
I'm listening to Ben Fold's "I'm not the man" right now while I write this. It's on repeat:
There could be fewer days ahead than gone / And all I've spent are long since on my way / To learn that nothing comes for free / But I'm not the man. / I'm not the man... I used to be
I keep thinking that about myself. Every summer I've read this, I have approached the text as a significantly different version of myself. This was most noticeable after the trauma of the summer of 2021, but I felt it immeasurably after this past summer as well.
I thought about the song in reference to reading and rereading a book at different stages of life, but as I was listening to it, I thought: how appropriate this is for Oedipus himself as well:
What will they write about me? / What will the version be when all is said and done? / Will they remember all of the places seen, the poems lost / Or am I just wondering on? Yeah, I'm just wondering on
Oedipus at Colonus, I suppose.
It's not just different moments in our own lives that draw our attention to different parts of the book, but different moments in history. So, we're different - but the world's different, too. There's no escaping the campaign season anymore, and everything is seen as political - that's not the way it used to be. Russia invaded Ukraine, and some form of nuclear war seems more and more likely. In the United States, the Supreme Court overturned Roe with the Dobbs decision. All those and more inform our interpretation of whatever we're reading at the time.
I don't like to get too political in my reviews, but some context: I'm very, very, very against abortion. I want to live in a world where there are none. Not one abortion. But I also understand that sometimes they're medically necessary. Sometimes the trauma of forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term is more damaging than ending that pregnancy. And I believe it's the woman (and her medical support, familial support, religious support) who best understands her specific situation. So, even though I'm pro-life, I don't think abortion should be illegal. Which, makes me pro-choice.
At the state level, politicians in red states were working on imposing the bans they had prayed for for decades. In my state, they brought out children who were conceived in rape, and who gave incredibly moving testimonies. "Is my life not worthy?" It's a powerful emotional appeal. It's an unfair argument, though. I don't feel like explaining my thought process at the moment to an endless void of non-readers, but should anybody be so bold, feel free to ask in the comments.
I read this passage around that time:
Perish the man, whoever he was, the shepherd who freed me from the cruel fetters on my feet, rescued me from death and saved me, and did me no favor! For had I died then, I would not have been so great a sorrow to my friends or to myself.
I couldn't help but think about Dobbs during that reading. That scene from American History X: "I'm ashamed that you came out of my body." Or a former student who killed her 11 month old. ...I think she was 18 at the time. Or her baby that was put in a coma and then died at 4. They weren't afforded the opportunity to say how happy and blessed they were for the lives they were given. How much better it was for them to be born, rather than never to have exist.
That Oedipus's existence: who would ask for it?
There are limitless avenues of discussion available here. Morals and themes. Lesson's to be learned, and what ifs. I wonder: if Oedipus stayed back: how does this play out? What if he didn't try to fight the prophecy? What if he was never told? Is the lesson that you can't fight the gods? But that was one of the reasons Oedipus was noble: he wanted to do the just and righteous thing. The fates were obviously in the wrong, here. Who among us is good and noble and says, "Yeah, killing my dad and sleeping with my mom seems inevitable, so let's roll with it?"
But there comes a point in the story where I take the new moral to be, "Leave well enough alone."
Tiresias showed up and outed Oedipus so, so much earlier than I remember. I wondered if that was translation, or memory.
And how many Vice Presidents *ahem* Dick Cheney, *ahem* Jafar ... have said this (Creon is speaking): ...Consider first, whether you think anyone would choose to rule in fear rather than sleep safe in his bed at night, yet have the same power. Just so, I would not prefer to be tyrant myself, but to do what a tyrant does, and so would anyone who had any sense..."
This isn't the best review of Sophocles I've attempted. Heck... this isn't the best review of Sophocles I've attempted this year (I read and reviewed Seamus Heaney's stand-along Antigone this summer as well...) But I'm happy that I'm keeping it up - so that's something.
I'll leave you with this quote from this translation's introduction to Antigone. I'll probably put it on my quote of the day board: "Wealth and power lead men to disaster, but it is the fate of humankind to be deluded, and no one sees what is coming until it is too late." - Frank Nisetch
Seamus Heaney Translation - 2022
Robert Fagles Translation - 2021
Paul Roche Translation - 2020
E. F. Watling Translation - 2019
Theodore Howard Banks Translation - 2018
Francis Storr Translation -2017
Every summer, I read the tri-peak pinnacle of Greek Tragedy: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. This collection contains 13 other plays I didn't get to, but I plan on checking the book out again and making my way through them.
This is the longest I've gone between reading, and writing my thoughts. I generally like to wait to write them up until after I've met and discussed it with my friend. Unfortunately, it seems like we're both busier and busier. I'm working about 50 hours a week, and teaching a 3 credit-hour course on the side... and I'm grading way too much. We got the neighborhood association back up and running: president. And I've helped coach Gwen's volleyball team a bit here and there. I now owe something like $35 for this book, because it was so overdue that I'm paying for the thing.
Which is to say, I'm not 100% confident I can separate my thoughts on this translation from what my thoughts are on the book in general.
I'm listening to Ben Fold's "I'm not the man" right now while I write this. It's on repeat:
There could be fewer days ahead than gone / And all I've spent are long since on my way / To learn that nothing comes for free / But I'm not the man. / I'm not the man... I used to be
I keep thinking that about myself. Every summer I've read this, I have approached the text as a significantly different version of myself. This was most noticeable after the trauma of the summer of 2021, but I felt it immeasurably after this past summer as well.
I thought about the song in reference to reading and rereading a book at different stages of life, but as I was listening to it, I thought: how appropriate this is for Oedipus himself as well:
What will they write about me? / What will the version be when all is said and done? / Will they remember all of the places seen, the poems lost / Or am I just wondering on? Yeah, I'm just wondering on
Oedipus at Colonus, I suppose.
It's not just different moments in our own lives that draw our attention to different parts of the book, but different moments in history. So, we're different - but the world's different, too. There's no escaping the campaign season anymore, and everything is seen as political - that's not the way it used to be. Russia invaded Ukraine, and some form of nuclear war seems more and more likely. In the United States, the Supreme Court overturned Roe with the Dobbs decision. All those and more inform our interpretation of whatever we're reading at the time.
I don't like to get too political in my reviews, but some context: I'm very, very, very against abortion. I want to live in a world where there are none. Not one abortion. But I also understand that sometimes they're medically necessary. Sometimes the trauma of forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term is more damaging than ending that pregnancy. And I believe it's the woman (and her medical support, familial support, religious support) who best understands her specific situation. So, even though I'm pro-life, I don't think abortion should be illegal. Which, makes me pro-choice.
At the state level, politicians in red states were working on imposing the bans they had prayed for for decades. In my state, they brought out children who were conceived in rape, and who gave incredibly moving testimonies. "Is my life not worthy?" It's a powerful emotional appeal. It's an unfair argument, though. I don't feel like explaining my thought process at the moment to an endless void of non-readers, but should anybody be so bold, feel free to ask in the comments.
I read this passage around that time:
Perish the man, whoever he was, the shepherd who freed me from the cruel fetters on my feet, rescued me from death and saved me, and did me no favor! For had I died then, I would not have been so great a sorrow to my friends or to myself.
I couldn't help but think about Dobbs during that reading. That scene from American History X: "I'm ashamed that you came out of my body." Or a former student who killed her 11 month old. ...I think she was 18 at the time. Or her baby that was put in a coma and then died at 4. They weren't afforded the opportunity to say how happy and blessed they were for the lives they were given. How much better it was for them to be born, rather than never to have exist.
That Oedipus's existence: who would ask for it?
There are limitless avenues of discussion available here. Morals and themes. Lesson's to be learned, and what ifs. I wonder: if Oedipus stayed back: how does this play out? What if he didn't try to fight the prophecy? What if he was never told? Is the lesson that you can't fight the gods? But that was one of the reasons Oedipus was noble: he wanted to do the just and righteous thing. The fates were obviously in the wrong, here. Who among us is good and noble and says, "Yeah, killing my dad and sleeping with my mom seems inevitable, so let's roll with it?"
But there comes a point in the story where I take the new moral to be, "Leave well enough alone."
Tiresias showed up and outed Oedipus so, so much earlier than I remember. I wondered if that was translation, or memory.
And how many Vice Presidents *ahem* Dick Cheney, *ahem* Jafar ... have said this (Creon is speaking): ...Consider first, whether you think anyone would choose to rule in fear rather than sleep safe in his bed at night, yet have the same power. Just so, I would not prefer to be tyrant myself, but to do what a tyrant does, and so would anyone who had any sense..."
This isn't the best review of Sophocles I've attempted. Heck... this isn't the best review of Sophocles I've attempted this year (I read and reviewed Seamus Heaney's stand-along Antigone this summer as well...) But I'm happy that I'm keeping it up - so that's something.
I'll leave you with this quote from this translation's introduction to Antigone. I'll probably put it on my quote of the day board: "Wealth and power lead men to disaster, but it is the fate of humankind to be deluded, and no one sees what is coming until it is too late." - Frank Nisetch
Seamus Heaney Translation - 2022
Robert Fagles Translation - 2021
Paul Roche Translation - 2020
E. F. Watling Translation - 2019
Theodore Howard Banks Translation - 2018
Francis Storr Translation -2017
July 4, 2018
“Let no one think me weak, worthless, or docile. Let me be thought the opposite of these: harsh with my enemies, gentle with my friends. Such people live lives of great renown.”
I’ve been wanting to read Greek tragedies since reading The Birth of Tragedy and Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. It is known for its depiction of madness and prompting great emotions, Greek mythology emphasises sensuality and bloody crimes in their plays. It is about parricide, incest, suicide... all the most shameful and astonishing sins humanity could commit, the sorrow and woe channeled into rancour and insanity with the intervention of the Gods that somehow represent metaphorically that part in our lives which we cannot control or violate. The plays have been great with this modern translation which seems less distant and easier to understand. But it loses its original grandness and adornment of words in return.
I’ve been wanting to read Greek tragedies since reading The Birth of Tragedy and Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. It is known for its depiction of madness and prompting great emotions, Greek mythology emphasises sensuality and bloody crimes in their plays. It is about parricide, incest, suicide... all the most shameful and astonishing sins humanity could commit, the sorrow and woe channeled into rancour and insanity with the intervention of the Gods that somehow represent metaphorically that part in our lives which we cannot control or violate. The plays have been great with this modern translation which seems less distant and easier to understand. But it loses its original grandness and adornment of words in return.
March 7, 2022
I read the play Prometheus Bound from this book. It slapped! It was a really great translation and a super entertaining play. (Aeschylus)
I also read Medea from this book. It was a really great translation with good footnotes as well. (Euripides)
I also read Antigone from this book. It was not my favorite (Sophocles)
I also read Medea from this book. It was a really great translation with good footnotes as well. (Euripides)
I also read Antigone from this book. It was not my favorite (Sophocles)
Want to read
March 27, 20204 plays are translated by Emily Wilson (The Odyssey)
December 18, 2023
The Greek plays consist of sixteen of the most popular and widely known tragedy plays from classical Greece, as well as introductory biographies and context behind each play.
The sixteen plays come from three different tragedians from the 5th century BC Athens, Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. Their plays represent the interests in Athenian culture and demonstrate how classical Greeks' saw the world and their place in it.
Each play begins with a few pages which go over the origins of the play and the general themes within them. they add important grounding to the story and help in understanding why a particular play was produced at that time. tragedians, much like modern writers or filmmakers, would look at which trends and genres were popular at any given time so they could incorporate them into their plays.
The plays themselves were remarkably similar in their composition and general themes; the vast majority were set in the mythological past, often with a hero as the main protagonist. they also often had a Chorus, which was a staple of 5th-century plays and helped underscore messages in the play and provide moral guidance. hubris is a common theme in many of the plays, with a protagonist often being punished by the gods in some way for a slight they commit against them. Being tragedy plays, they often have a sombre tone and resolve around the fall of the protagonist, either due to an injustice or because of their own actions.
Two of my favourite plays were Persians and Hippolytus. Persians, unlike most tragedies, was set just a few years before the play production in 480 BC after the battle of Salamis. Persians show the aftermath of the battle from the Persian perspective, with Atossa (the mother of Xerxes) lamenting the destruction of the Persian forces and fearing for her son. later on, the ghost of Darius arrives and chastises the Persian leaders for their hubris. Afterwards, Xerxes arrives at the end of the play in a state of panic and despair, having barely escaped. Surprisingly, for an Athenian play on Persia, it does not demonise the Persian people; instead, it humanises them, showing the despair and anguish that would have been felt by the Persian people. the play is composed quite well, with a coherent structure and equal distribution of lines between the main characters. The Chorus, which is often my least favourite aspect of Greek plays, did not interject as often and served more of a logical purpose in the play as representations of Persian elders.
The Chorus is an important aspect of Greek plays, with many of their verses being sung; however, with these plays being in text form and translated from their original Greek, it makes these parts of the plays quite dull and irrelevant.
Hippolytus is more of a traditional play centred around the Myths of Theseus and his son Hippolytus. In this play, Hippolytus is punished by Aphrodite for his chastity and devotion to Artemis. She does this by using a spell on Phaedra (the wife of Theseus), which causes her to have an insatiable lust for Hippolytus. In anguish, Phaedra contemplates suicide until her nurse reassures her, saying that she will speak to Hippolytus. however, things go array when the nurse informs Hippolytus of her stepmother's affection and is disgusted. In shame, Phaedra commits suicide but, worried about her reputation, decides to leave a note accusing Hippolytus of raping her. When Theseus sees this, he asks his father, Poseidon, to destroy his son and banishes him. shortly after Hippolytus suffers an accident and on his deathbed bed, Artemis appears and informs Theseus of Aphrodite's trickery. Theseus forgives his son, and Artemis swears to enact vengeance on Aphrodite for the death of her favourite follower.
I found this play very captivating and thought it had great dialogue between the characters. I felt the complex incentives and morality of each character gave the play an interesting dynamic and allowed for a certain amount of ambiguity as to which character was in the right.
Each tragedian had a series of plays on one particular mythological character. Euripides, for instance, has a series on Oedipus, focusing on a different period in his life, and both of these plays (Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus) are included in the book.
Some plays were a bit less interesting, and many were too farfetched to be taken seriously; most, however, were easy to follow, and I enjoyed reading.
The sixteen plays come from three different tragedians from the 5th century BC Athens, Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. Their plays represent the interests in Athenian culture and demonstrate how classical Greeks' saw the world and their place in it.
Each play begins with a few pages which go over the origins of the play and the general themes within them. they add important grounding to the story and help in understanding why a particular play was produced at that time. tragedians, much like modern writers or filmmakers, would look at which trends and genres were popular at any given time so they could incorporate them into their plays.
The plays themselves were remarkably similar in their composition and general themes; the vast majority were set in the mythological past, often with a hero as the main protagonist. they also often had a Chorus, which was a staple of 5th-century plays and helped underscore messages in the play and provide moral guidance. hubris is a common theme in many of the plays, with a protagonist often being punished by the gods in some way for a slight they commit against them. Being tragedy plays, they often have a sombre tone and resolve around the fall of the protagonist, either due to an injustice or because of their own actions.
Two of my favourite plays were Persians and Hippolytus. Persians, unlike most tragedies, was set just a few years before the play production in 480 BC after the battle of Salamis. Persians show the aftermath of the battle from the Persian perspective, with Atossa (the mother of Xerxes) lamenting the destruction of the Persian forces and fearing for her son. later on, the ghost of Darius arrives and chastises the Persian leaders for their hubris. Afterwards, Xerxes arrives at the end of the play in a state of panic and despair, having barely escaped. Surprisingly, for an Athenian play on Persia, it does not demonise the Persian people; instead, it humanises them, showing the despair and anguish that would have been felt by the Persian people. the play is composed quite well, with a coherent structure and equal distribution of lines between the main characters. The Chorus, which is often my least favourite aspect of Greek plays, did not interject as often and served more of a logical purpose in the play as representations of Persian elders.
The Chorus is an important aspect of Greek plays, with many of their verses being sung; however, with these plays being in text form and translated from their original Greek, it makes these parts of the plays quite dull and irrelevant.
Hippolytus is more of a traditional play centred around the Myths of Theseus and his son Hippolytus. In this play, Hippolytus is punished by Aphrodite for his chastity and devotion to Artemis. She does this by using a spell on Phaedra (the wife of Theseus), which causes her to have an insatiable lust for Hippolytus. In anguish, Phaedra contemplates suicide until her nurse reassures her, saying that she will speak to Hippolytus. however, things go array when the nurse informs Hippolytus of her stepmother's affection and is disgusted. In shame, Phaedra commits suicide but, worried about her reputation, decides to leave a note accusing Hippolytus of raping her. When Theseus sees this, he asks his father, Poseidon, to destroy his son and banishes him. shortly after Hippolytus suffers an accident and on his deathbed bed, Artemis appears and informs Theseus of Aphrodite's trickery. Theseus forgives his son, and Artemis swears to enact vengeance on Aphrodite for the death of her favourite follower.
I found this play very captivating and thought it had great dialogue between the characters. I felt the complex incentives and morality of each character gave the play an interesting dynamic and allowed for a certain amount of ambiguity as to which character was in the right.
Each tragedian had a series of plays on one particular mythological character. Euripides, for instance, has a series on Oedipus, focusing on a different period in his life, and both of these plays (Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus) are included in the book.
Some plays were a bit less interesting, and many were too farfetched to be taken seriously; most, however, were easy to follow, and I enjoyed reading.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 27, 2023
I’ve given this collection 4 stars, but I must add the caveat that this volume is very odd in that its intended audience seems to be somewhere between the general public and a scholarly audience. Most of the translations have some awkwardness about them, and the footnotes are excruciatingly precise when it comes to lacunae in the text, which can often disrupt reading flow. That said, for all these translations spend a significant time dealing with the problems in the manuscripts, the actual information on the manuscripts for each play is sparse. I read this book for leisure, not scholarship, but I found it sort of frustrating for its gestures towards scholarship but decided lack of scholarship in some arenas.
The Greek Plays contains selections from the three great Athenian tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. They plays are ordered by playwright and then rough chronological order, insomuch as chronology is recoverable, beginning with Aeschylus’ Persians and ending with Euripdes’ Bacchae. Each playwright is given a brief introduction, and then each play is, in turn, given a brief introduction. I found these introductions sometimes useful and sometimes not. Oftentimes, I found myself disagreeing with the themes or characterization given in an introduction. I found the introductions to Euripides’ works to be especially dissonant with the text presented, which may well have been a comprehension issue on my part, but is still worth noting.
In terms of the poetry of each piece, I liked Frank Nisetich’s treatment of Sophocles the best. Emily Wilson’s treat of Euripides left me strangely cold, considering I have enjoyed what I’ve read of her Odyssey. I’m not sure if this is a function of Euripides or a function of Wilson’s translation work. I did find Kitzinger’s poetry a little more appealing, even if I found the Alcestis a particularly trying read.
In terms of personal enjoyment, I liked Sophocles the best, and found the Antigone to be the most enjoyable (though also the most familiar, which may have introduced a degree of bias). Euripides was the least compelling tragedian for me, which I found surprising considering he’s often considered the most humanistic of the three, but I found his preoccupation with marriage and family structure the more foreign and least interesting. Of his works, I liked Medea and Electra best (though I do want to read the Bacchae in a different translation). Of Aeschylus, his Agamemnon was my favorite, though I enjoyed Persians as well. Overall it was very worthwhile endeavor. I tried to read each play in one sitting, though I was rather fatigued by the end of the book.
There’s a tremendous amount of information in this book, but I found the footnotes to be repetitive and I think a lot of the information might’ve been better conveyed in a brief summary of dramatic meter and different notation. I think a glossary might’ve been useful, and I also think, for all the emphasis placed on Greek meter in the translations, it might’ve been useful to have a foreword specifically addressing metrical conventions.
Of the appendices, some of them are more useful than others. Most of them walk that weird line between general and scholarly audiences, and not always with a lot of grace. I found Hays’ discussion of Aristotle’s Poetics the most interesting, thought Gamel’s discussion of post classical reception is useful for my needs specifically. You don’t really have to read any of the appendices, but they were nice to have.
I was sort of surprised there was not bibliography, either for each playwright or at the end of the book. I think that would’ve been valuable, especially (again) considering the scholarly pretensions of the collection.
I think if you want to read Greek tragedy for leisure, specifically, there might be better translations, especially if you’re after beautiful turns of phrase. This collection worked well for my particular interests and was useful for getting a lot of background quickly and relatively reliable, but I’m not sure how general an application this collection might have.
The Greek Plays contains selections from the three great Athenian tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. They plays are ordered by playwright and then rough chronological order, insomuch as chronology is recoverable, beginning with Aeschylus’ Persians and ending with Euripdes’ Bacchae. Each playwright is given a brief introduction, and then each play is, in turn, given a brief introduction. I found these introductions sometimes useful and sometimes not. Oftentimes, I found myself disagreeing with the themes or characterization given in an introduction. I found the introductions to Euripides’ works to be especially dissonant with the text presented, which may well have been a comprehension issue on my part, but is still worth noting.
In terms of the poetry of each piece, I liked Frank Nisetich’s treatment of Sophocles the best. Emily Wilson’s treat of Euripides left me strangely cold, considering I have enjoyed what I’ve read of her Odyssey. I’m not sure if this is a function of Euripides or a function of Wilson’s translation work. I did find Kitzinger’s poetry a little more appealing, even if I found the Alcestis a particularly trying read.
In terms of personal enjoyment, I liked Sophocles the best, and found the Antigone to be the most enjoyable (though also the most familiar, which may have introduced a degree of bias). Euripides was the least compelling tragedian for me, which I found surprising considering he’s often considered the most humanistic of the three, but I found his preoccupation with marriage and family structure the more foreign and least interesting. Of his works, I liked Medea and Electra best (though I do want to read the Bacchae in a different translation). Of Aeschylus, his Agamemnon was my favorite, though I enjoyed Persians as well. Overall it was very worthwhile endeavor. I tried to read each play in one sitting, though I was rather fatigued by the end of the book.
There’s a tremendous amount of information in this book, but I found the footnotes to be repetitive and I think a lot of the information might’ve been better conveyed in a brief summary of dramatic meter and different notation. I think a glossary might’ve been useful, and I also think, for all the emphasis placed on Greek meter in the translations, it might’ve been useful to have a foreword specifically addressing metrical conventions.
Of the appendices, some of them are more useful than others. Most of them walk that weird line between general and scholarly audiences, and not always with a lot of grace. I found Hays’ discussion of Aristotle’s Poetics the most interesting, thought Gamel’s discussion of post classical reception is useful for my needs specifically. You don’t really have to read any of the appendices, but they were nice to have.
I was sort of surprised there was not bibliography, either for each playwright or at the end of the book. I think that would’ve been valuable, especially (again) considering the scholarly pretensions of the collection.
I think if you want to read Greek tragedy for leisure, specifically, there might be better translations, especially if you’re after beautiful turns of phrase. This collection worked well for my particular interests and was useful for getting a lot of background quickly and relatively reliable, but I’m not sure how general an application this collection might have.
January 22, 2022
This is a superb volume! The plays are well-chosen for its relevance to the modern world and the footnotes are generous, it's guaranteed that you won't get lost with the myriad references to obscure mythological details in the plot. I remember a few years ago trying to read Yeats and Tennyson but couldn't manage because of the obscure references. If only the footnotes are this generous. Highly recommended if you are trying to read classic texts. Despite of its age, the plays are surprisingly fresh and horrific, they age like fine wine. Its the exact same way of how some classical music pieces like Beethoven's Grosse Fuge and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring continue to sound modern and fresh despite being old.
Key takeaways:
1. This volume is mainly about 3 of the greatest writers of Greek tragedy - Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. They live near 5th century BC during the glory days of Athens. Euripides died around the end of the Peloponnesian war. It's the glory days of Greek tragedy too, in which the writing reaches a level of sublimity not surpassed before or since.
2. Aeschylus has a penchant for grandiloquent scenes, setting, and speech. Sophocles is shocking and dramatic in his plot twists and storytelling (my fav!). Maybe he's more like Shakespeare. Euripides is the most creative, genre-bending, and rational/atheistic of the three, but somehow that makes him less interesting to me.
3. The tragedies are mainly family tragedies. These writers are so obsessed about the obscene family drama in the House of Pelops, in all its horrific variations almost Sadean in variety and scope. Husband killed child. Wife killed husband. Child killed mother. Uncle boiled children and served them to father. Mother lusting over child and killed herself after feeling guilty. Elderly mother ripped apart the child-king in a Bacchian frenzy. And so on and so forth. I still can't understand how and why the Greeks love these stories. Probably the idea that the realest hell is in family relations despite of its mundaneness? The idea that hell is at home is also present in Homer's Odyssey where the entire second part of the tale is about the horrors Odyssey face in trying to reclaim his own home, a hell comparable to all the horrors of his 10 year adventure.
What fascinates me about these dramas is its raw brutality despite the sparse detail. It's a kind of Dionysian spirit that the Western consciousness tried to resist for thousands of years with its emphasis on rationality but has resurfaced time and time again.
My favorite picks:
- Aeschylus' Agammemnon. Grand scenes and passion, Agamemnon's arrival with the red carpet, Clytemnestra killing her husband in the bathtub. Cassandra foreseeing her own death and all the horrors of the House of Pelops.
- Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. My top pick. The detective story like discoveries and plot twists. The pure horror climaxing in Jocasta's suicide and Oedipus' blinding of his own eye.
- Sophocles' Antigone. The philosophical issue of an unjust law vs the adherence to family/religious values. Antigone's courageous moral stance. Tragic end.
Highly recommended! I got bored with Euripides, but this has been a largely positive experience. Once you get through this volume, a lot of writings from Nietzsche all the way to Camille Paglia will make more sense, because they cite these dramas a lot!
Key takeaways:
1. This volume is mainly about 3 of the greatest writers of Greek tragedy - Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. They live near 5th century BC during the glory days of Athens. Euripides died around the end of the Peloponnesian war. It's the glory days of Greek tragedy too, in which the writing reaches a level of sublimity not surpassed before or since.
2. Aeschylus has a penchant for grandiloquent scenes, setting, and speech. Sophocles is shocking and dramatic in his plot twists and storytelling (my fav!). Maybe he's more like Shakespeare. Euripides is the most creative, genre-bending, and rational/atheistic of the three, but somehow that makes him less interesting to me.
3. The tragedies are mainly family tragedies. These writers are so obsessed about the obscene family drama in the House of Pelops, in all its horrific variations almost Sadean in variety and scope. Husband killed child. Wife killed husband. Child killed mother. Uncle boiled children and served them to father. Mother lusting over child and killed herself after feeling guilty. Elderly mother ripped apart the child-king in a Bacchian frenzy. And so on and so forth. I still can't understand how and why the Greeks love these stories. Probably the idea that the realest hell is in family relations despite of its mundaneness? The idea that hell is at home is also present in Homer's Odyssey where the entire second part of the tale is about the horrors Odyssey face in trying to reclaim his own home, a hell comparable to all the horrors of his 10 year adventure.
What fascinates me about these dramas is its raw brutality despite the sparse detail. It's a kind of Dionysian spirit that the Western consciousness tried to resist for thousands of years with its emphasis on rationality but has resurfaced time and time again.
My favorite picks:
- Aeschylus' Agammemnon. Grand scenes and passion, Agamemnon's arrival with the red carpet, Clytemnestra killing her husband in the bathtub. Cassandra foreseeing her own death and all the horrors of the House of Pelops.
- Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. My top pick. The detective story like discoveries and plot twists. The pure horror climaxing in Jocasta's suicide and Oedipus' blinding of his own eye.
- Sophocles' Antigone. The philosophical issue of an unjust law vs the adherence to family/religious values. Antigone's courageous moral stance. Tragic end.
Highly recommended! I got bored with Euripides, but this has been a largely positive experience. Once you get through this volume, a lot of writings from Nietzsche all the way to Camille Paglia will make more sense, because they cite these dramas a lot!
August 23, 2025
You'll know the future when it's born;
you might as well rejoice
before its time, as mourn before its time.
Oresteia: Agamemnon - Aeschylus
Not having read other translations of this selection of plays, I can’t speak to the quality of the translations presented in this collection. That said, my experience with other translated texts has taught me that every translation is an interpretation - no translation is going to be a perfect rendering of the original. There’s some very powerful, moving language in this volume, which suggests to me that the translations are largely successful.
It would be easy to criticize the inclusion of certain plays over others (I could have done without Persions, and could list a handful of plays I wish were included instead), but really it’s hard to fault the final selection, and I’m sure the decision-making process was difficult. While I had my favourites, there is something worthwhile to be gleaned from every single one of the included plays - there’s a reason these tragedies are still being read and enjoyed 2000+ years on, and it was very satisfying to immerse myself in the interpersonal/family drama and moral ambiguities inherent in these ancient stories. They contain so much depth, and so many possible interpretations; it was particularly interesting to read the three playwrights’ takes on the stories of the House of Atreus (not least because my reading of Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati overlapped with my reading of the plays, and I got to see how Casati synthesised the different portrayals of those characters in parallel with reading those ancient portrayals).
I appreciated the extra material included in the book; the introductory essays and the appendices provided additional context and food for thought to inform my own reading of the plays themselves.
My only quibble with this volume is that the notes were largely terrible. Many of them can be accurately summarised as “previous translators rendered this line differently than I have”, with no further context. I’m not sure what the point of that commentary was, because of course these translations differ in some way from the work of previous translators? What would be the point of a new translation, if it didn’t actually offer something new? In a volume featuring multiple translators I can see how including translator notes as part of the introduction (as is often done) wouldn’t be feasible, but this was not an acceptable solution to that problem. Many of the notes were also repetitive - I would argue that a note referring you to a previous note is probably redundant, and if you find yourself doing that 3 or 4 times within one 40-50 page play…well, just don’t do that.
Minor quibbles aside, this is an excellent collection with thoughtful commentary, and I’m happy to give it a place on my bookshelf. I’m sure I’ll revisit it at some point.
Many are the wonders, the terrors, and none is more wonderful, more terrible than man
Antigone - Sophocles
you might as well rejoice
before its time, as mourn before its time.
Oresteia: Agamemnon - Aeschylus
Not having read other translations of this selection of plays, I can’t speak to the quality of the translations presented in this collection. That said, my experience with other translated texts has taught me that every translation is an interpretation - no translation is going to be a perfect rendering of the original. There’s some very powerful, moving language in this volume, which suggests to me that the translations are largely successful.
It would be easy to criticize the inclusion of certain plays over others (I could have done without Persions, and could list a handful of plays I wish were included instead), but really it’s hard to fault the final selection, and I’m sure the decision-making process was difficult. While I had my favourites, there is something worthwhile to be gleaned from every single one of the included plays - there’s a reason these tragedies are still being read and enjoyed 2000+ years on, and it was very satisfying to immerse myself in the interpersonal/family drama and moral ambiguities inherent in these ancient stories. They contain so much depth, and so many possible interpretations; it was particularly interesting to read the three playwrights’ takes on the stories of the House of Atreus (not least because my reading of Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati overlapped with my reading of the plays, and I got to see how Casati synthesised the different portrayals of those characters in parallel with reading those ancient portrayals).
I appreciated the extra material included in the book; the introductory essays and the appendices provided additional context and food for thought to inform my own reading of the plays themselves.
My only quibble with this volume is that the notes were largely terrible. Many of them can be accurately summarised as “previous translators rendered this line differently than I have”, with no further context. I’m not sure what the point of that commentary was, because of course these translations differ in some way from the work of previous translators? What would be the point of a new translation, if it didn’t actually offer something new? In a volume featuring multiple translators I can see how including translator notes as part of the introduction (as is often done) wouldn’t be feasible, but this was not an acceptable solution to that problem. Many of the notes were also repetitive - I would argue that a note referring you to a previous note is probably redundant, and if you find yourself doing that 3 or 4 times within one 40-50 page play…well, just don’t do that.
Minor quibbles aside, this is an excellent collection with thoughtful commentary, and I’m happy to give it a place on my bookshelf. I’m sure I’ll revisit it at some point.
Many are the wonders, the terrors, and none is more wonderful, more terrible than man
Antigone - Sophocles
October 26, 2020
The Greek plays are a window into the culture of Athens in the fifth century BC. Two-thousand five hundred years separate us, but in reading these plays, I feel connected in a way that makes the time feel insignificant. These Greeks were undeniably human, and they clearly felt all the complex emotion we are capable of today. Though the technology, culture, and language are vastly different, there is so much of myself that I see in every single one of these plays.
Aeschylus wrote plays in a bold fashion and commented on society at large. His plays are grand and show what Athenians thought of themselves. His unique use of the gods in 'The Eumenides' gave a divine blessing to some of the democratic institutions that still live on to this day, such as a jury trial. It is fitting that the jury trial seems to have all the immortality the gods themselves once had.
Sophocles, through Oedipus Rex, devised a plot and a character so complex, it is seldom matched in our current day. In Antigone, Sophocles managed to balance the paradoxical aspect of Athenian life, the idea that we are individuals and citizens. The laws and needs of the city, of the collective, still clash with the principles and desires of the individual. Whether we take a side, this paradox is still apart of all of us in the modern world. No other culture believed in the divinity of the individual quite like the Greeks did, even going as far as to allow some of their heroes to become gods. The gods themselves were modeled after these ancient Greeks. It is peculiar then that they too are the first to put the needs of the many above the needs of the few in their creation of the democracy. This is a worthwhile contradiction to consider.
Euripides wrote the most imaginative plays, creating such visceral deaths in Bacchae and Hippolytus, and the sharpest dialogue as heard from Medea, Helen, or the Trojan widows. He didn't care much for the gods, often depicting their meddling as selfish and borderline evil. The worst of humanity manifested. The Greeks didn't see their gods as above human baseness, but Euripides' slandering of them carried a deeper message: Morality, justice, and fairness are human conceptions, and foreign to the gods.
Of these plays, I recommend reading: 'The Oresteia' - 'Antigone' - 'Trojan Women' - 'Bacchae'
Aeschylus wrote plays in a bold fashion and commented on society at large. His plays are grand and show what Athenians thought of themselves. His unique use of the gods in 'The Eumenides' gave a divine blessing to some of the democratic institutions that still live on to this day, such as a jury trial. It is fitting that the jury trial seems to have all the immortality the gods themselves once had.
Sophocles, through Oedipus Rex, devised a plot and a character so complex, it is seldom matched in our current day. In Antigone, Sophocles managed to balance the paradoxical aspect of Athenian life, the idea that we are individuals and citizens. The laws and needs of the city, of the collective, still clash with the principles and desires of the individual. Whether we take a side, this paradox is still apart of all of us in the modern world. No other culture believed in the divinity of the individual quite like the Greeks did, even going as far as to allow some of their heroes to become gods. The gods themselves were modeled after these ancient Greeks. It is peculiar then that they too are the first to put the needs of the many above the needs of the few in their creation of the democracy. This is a worthwhile contradiction to consider.
Euripides wrote the most imaginative plays, creating such visceral deaths in Bacchae and Hippolytus, and the sharpest dialogue as heard from Medea, Helen, or the Trojan widows. He didn't care much for the gods, often depicting their meddling as selfish and borderline evil. The worst of humanity manifested. The Greeks didn't see their gods as above human baseness, but Euripides' slandering of them carried a deeper message: Morality, justice, and fairness are human conceptions, and foreign to the gods.
Of these plays, I recommend reading: 'The Oresteia' - 'Antigone' - 'Trojan Women' - 'Bacchae'
June 8, 2022
These 16 plays constitute half of the surviving dram manuscripts from ancient Greece. All were from the 5th century BCE. No other complete plays are in existence beyond these 32, while the Iliad and Odyssey are much earlier, although perhaps not in original form, and later Greek literature did not survive except as fragmentary texts. Much is known, still, from reference in later texts, mostly Roman. Anyway, this was an excellent selection that included introductory material regarding the author and each play. Three authors are represented here and the plays of Aeschylus include a complete trilogy which is how the tragedies were performed in the Athens theater in an annual competition, at least at that time, the competition also included a short comedy from each author, as a kind of interlude between competitors. The book has extensive notes on translations, missing and replacement text, and background details, as well as six appendixes to help a modern reader understand the plays in the way ancient Athenians did.
I should point out that I have read Homer's works many times, and a few of the plays years ago, and various literary an video adaptions over the years and recently read a very contemporary novel "Elektra". In comparison, each of the playwrights had a play called Elektra or, for Aeschylus, a trilogy about the same subject, although the three plays were all based on Orestes, Elektra's younger brother. The novel probably had a similar scope to Aeschylus' trilogy, while the detail on Elektra corresponded more closely with Euripides' version. An interesting aspect, for me, was how there were variations in detail among the Greeks. Another example of variation was Euripides' "Helen" which presents an alternative history of Hellen's adventure. Finally, in "Bacchae", Euripides seems to have had a premonition of the 1960's "tune in, turn on and drop out" cultural phenomena.
It is well worth the effort to read and understand these important examples of ancient literature.
I should point out that I have read Homer's works many times, and a few of the plays years ago, and various literary an video adaptions over the years and recently read a very contemporary novel "Elektra". In comparison, each of the playwrights had a play called Elektra or, for Aeschylus, a trilogy about the same subject, although the three plays were all based on Orestes, Elektra's younger brother. The novel probably had a similar scope to Aeschylus' trilogy, while the detail on Elektra corresponded more closely with Euripides' version. An interesting aspect, for me, was how there were variations in detail among the Greeks. Another example of variation was Euripides' "Helen" which presents an alternative history of Hellen's adventure. Finally, in "Bacchae", Euripides seems to have had a premonition of the 1960's "tune in, turn on and drop out" cultural phenomena.
It is well worth the effort to read and understand these important examples of ancient literature.
March 20, 2020
An excellent introduction to the three great Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. There are 32 surviving plays (7 or 8 each for Aeschylus and Sophocles, the remaining attributed to Euripides) with about half them collected here. I finished all but three (a few Euripidean ones that I was already familiar with) and have separately reviewed them. The editors' choice of plays was spot on for someone like me venturing into Greek plays for the first time: from the famous, such as Aeschylus's Oresteia Trilogy, Sophocles's Theban Cycle, and Euripides's Medea to the less-well known such as the Persians and Alcestis. One play not included that is worth checking out is Euripides's Ion (I didn't read it, but the summary provided by Dr. Vandiver was intriguing especially as a contrast to Sophocles's famous Oedipus the King).
All the plays have excellent footnotes and introductions giving a helpful summary and analysis. By chance, I read Ovid's Metamorphoses before turning to Greek tragedy and almost all of the tales which are the basis for each play or referenced within the plays were very familiar. In hindsight, I'm very glad I read Metamorphoses first as trying to grasp some of the background mythology would be confusing while going through each play.
In addition to the plays, there are several excellent essays at the end of the book which touch on different topics such as the production of the plays to Greek audiences. Notable among these were two essays discussing Plato and Aristotle's views on theatre and tragedy, which were a great segue for me as I'm turning to Greek philosophers next, and an essay on post-classical reception of the Greek tragedies, which give a very thoroughly researched account of all film, plays, literature, and musical works over the last several centuries which have either adapted or been inspired by Greek plays.
All the plays have excellent footnotes and introductions giving a helpful summary and analysis. By chance, I read Ovid's Metamorphoses before turning to Greek tragedy and almost all of the tales which are the basis for each play or referenced within the plays were very familiar. In hindsight, I'm very glad I read Metamorphoses first as trying to grasp some of the background mythology would be confusing while going through each play.
In addition to the plays, there are several excellent essays at the end of the book which touch on different topics such as the production of the plays to Greek audiences. Notable among these were two essays discussing Plato and Aristotle's views on theatre and tragedy, which were a great segue for me as I'm turning to Greek philosophers next, and an essay on post-classical reception of the Greek tragedies, which give a very thoroughly researched account of all film, plays, literature, and musical works over the last several centuries which have either adapted or been inspired by Greek plays.
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