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Aeschylus | Sophocles | Euripides | Aristophanes
* Aeschylus
The Suppliant Maidens
The Persians
Seven Against Thebes
Prometheus Bound
Agamemnon
Choephoroe
The Eumenides
* Sophocles
Oedipus the King
Oedipus at Colonus
Antigone
Ajax
Electra
The Trachiniae
Philoctetes
* Euripides
Rhesus
Medea
Hippolytus
Alcestis
Heracleidae
The Suppliants
Trojan Women
Ion
Helen
Andromache
Electra
Bacchantes
Hecuba
Heracles Mad
Phoenician Women
Orestes
Iphigeneia in Tauris
Iphigeneia at Aulis
Cyclops
* Aristophanes
The Acharnians
The Knights
The Clouds
The Wasps
Peace
The Birds
The Frogs
Lysistrata
Thesmophoriazusae
Ecclesiazousae
Plutus
The Suppliant Maidens
The Persians
Seven Against Thebes
Prometheus Bound
Agamemnon
Choephoroe
The Eumenides
* Sophocles
Oedipus the King
Oedipus at Colonus
Antigone
Ajax
Electra
The Trachiniae
Philoctetes
* Euripides
Rhesus
Medea
Hippolytus
Alcestis
Heracleidae
The Suppliants
Trojan Women
Ion
Helen
Andromache
Electra
Bacchantes
Hecuba
Heracles Mad
Phoenician Women
Orestes
Iphigeneia in Tauris
Iphigeneia at Aulis
Cyclops
* Aristophanes
The Acharnians
The Knights
The Clouds
The Wasps
Peace
The Birds
The Frogs
Lysistrata
Thesmophoriazusae
Ecclesiazousae
Plutus
649 pages
First published January 1, 412
16 people are currently reading
212 people want to read
About the author
Aeschylus
1,844 books1,104 followersGreek
Αισχύλος
, Esquilo in Spanish, Eschyle in French, Eschilo in Italian, Эсхил in Russian.
Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC – c. 456 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.
Only seven of Aeschylus's estimated 70 to 90 plays have survived. There is a long-standing debate regarding the authorship of one of them, Prometheus Bound, with some scholars arguing that it may be the work of his son Euphorion. Fragments from other plays have survived in quotations, and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyri. These fragments often give further insights into Aeschylus' work. He was likely the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy. His Oresteia is the only extant ancient example. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is one of very few classical Greek tragedies concerned with contemporary events, and the only one extant. The significance of the war with Persia was so great to Aeschylus and the Greeks that his epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright.
Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC – c. 456 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.
Only seven of Aeschylus's estimated 70 to 90 plays have survived. There is a long-standing debate regarding the authorship of one of them, Prometheus Bound, with some scholars arguing that it may be the work of his son Euphorion. Fragments from other plays have survived in quotations, and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyri. These fragments often give further insights into Aeschylus' work. He was likely the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy. His Oresteia is the only extant ancient example. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is one of very few classical Greek tragedies concerned with contemporary events, and the only one extant. The significance of the war with Persia was so great to Aeschylus and the Greeks that his epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 10, 2013
Here we have a striking instance of the weakness of the star-rating system--a system that I ordinarily have no problems with. For I believe it is entirely possible and reasonable to respond to the question "How much did you enjoy this book" with a star rating. But with this book, more than any other so far, I felt flummoxed.
Did I enjoy reading the book? Yes I did. But that enjoyment was not of a simple or continuous kind--not that I demand simple, continuous enjoyment from things, least of all from books. Reading this book took effort of more than one type. For one thing, as is my policy with both poetry and drama, I read all the plays out loud, even though only the works of Aeschylus and Aristophanes are translated as verse, while those of Sophocles and Euripides are in prose. And gradually, as I overcame my inhibitions (I did my reading at home!) and started to work harder at acting the parts, I came to appreciate the plays much more. By the time I was reading Aristophanes, I was experiencing strong feelings of delight at the material; comedy hasn't changed in 2,000 years--who knew? No doubt he was a lot funnier to the people of his own culture, whose people and institutions he was satirizing, but we get the gist of it and easily recognize the social problems and human failings he holds up to ridicule.
As I try to parse the components of my enjoyment, here's what I'm coming up with:
First, for me, was the fact that this was volume 5 of the Britannica Great Books series and therefore part of my program of reading the whole set, which I own. This in turn is part of my effort to become liberally educated, and so I feel a sense of accomplishment and enrichment with every page I read. Without this program I would never have picked up this book, and now I'm so glad that I did. Occasionally in my other readings people allude to the works of the Greek dramatists, and now I've read them--all of them, in their entirety, beginning to end. I no longer have vague feelings of awe and mystery about these plays, and no longer will feel at a disadvantage to those who have read them and can quote them. I've read them too--and because I've got the book, I can quote them. And there is a great deal in there that is worth quoting.
Second, the dramas themselves are, in the main, very good. It's not for nothing that these works have been preserved for thousands of years. As a writer of drama myself, I observed closely what stories these authors chose to tell and how they developed their conflicts. The tragedy writers (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) were all excellent at finding the root conflict in situations and depicting this in dialogue (relatively little staged action is mentioned in the surviving texts). (Aristophanes as a comedian is a special case, but he too found provocative comic ideas and developed them cleverly.)
Third, I got to read some very famous plays, scenes, and lines--all in context. One such is Sophocles' Antigone, in which occurs, among other things, this famous line: "Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man. . . ." Now I've read that line in the context of its scene, its play, as well as in the body of its author's work and as part of Greek drama as a whole. Wow!
Fourth, I came to grips with great, important ideas. This volume is part of the Britannica series because these playwrights contributed to what the Britannica editors call the Great Conversation: the dialogue of ideas that has run through the major literary works of Western civilization. For example, in the very first play in the book, the Suppliant Maidens of Aeschylus, the action features a group of Egyptian women of Greek descent arriving at the shore of Argos, fleeing the Egyptian men who want to marry them. They appeal to their Greek kinsmen to protect them, even if it means war with the Egyptians. In this situation Aeschylus creates difficult conflicts of duty and responsibility. And I realized with some awe while reading it that he is probably the first author in the Western tradition to raise seriously and without prejudice the issue of women's rights. And he does all this in 14 pages--and that's just one play. Many of these plays, the majority of them, deal with ideas that are still among the deepest and most difficult that we face as human beings. To enjoy these plays fully, you need to be willing, and preferably eager, to think about serious things.
Fifth, I took positive pleasure in the verse translations of Aeschylus and especially of Aristophanes. I'm not an experienced reader of poetry, but I felt I was getting a great dose of worthwhile verse here. I recognize that poetry cannot be translated, only reinvented, and I don't know the standing of these translators (G. M. Cookson for Aeschylus and Benjamin Bickley Rogers for Aristophanes) in the world of ancient Greek drama, but this reader feels that they did a great job at a task that must have been extraordinarily difficult. When humorous verse works, it really works, and there were many passages in Aristophanes where I thought that, against all odds, the translator came up with the goods.
And sixth, all of the plays were collected together in one volume, with no translators' introductions or explanatory notes beyond a 1-page biography for each playwright. I've long been used to reading such introductions and notes for important literary works, feeling that to be a kind of studently duty. But the editors of the Great Books believe strongly in exposing the reader as directly as possible to the words and thoughts of these writers, encouraging you to go commando with these greatest and most challenging works of literature. I felt timid at first with no Virgil to hold my hand as I entered the strange world of ancient Greek drama, and in fact tried to rely for a little while on a separate guidebook that gave brief synopses of the plays, explaining the situations leading up to their openings, and so on. But soon I dropped that as I realized that the plays really are complete in themselves, and that there is a distinct and enriching pleasure in just diving in to the text--kind of like diving into the open sea without any lifeguard or flotation device. If you can swim you can dive into the sea; and if you can read you can dive into these plays.
In sum: three stars for the difficulties and longueurs that I experienced in reading these plays; four stars for my general feeling of enjoyment and appreciation as I read; and five stars for my sense of accomplishment and my conviction that my afternoon reading period over these past months has probably never been better spent.
Did I enjoy reading the book? Yes I did. But that enjoyment was not of a simple or continuous kind--not that I demand simple, continuous enjoyment from things, least of all from books. Reading this book took effort of more than one type. For one thing, as is my policy with both poetry and drama, I read all the plays out loud, even though only the works of Aeschylus and Aristophanes are translated as verse, while those of Sophocles and Euripides are in prose. And gradually, as I overcame my inhibitions (I did my reading at home!) and started to work harder at acting the parts, I came to appreciate the plays much more. By the time I was reading Aristophanes, I was experiencing strong feelings of delight at the material; comedy hasn't changed in 2,000 years--who knew? No doubt he was a lot funnier to the people of his own culture, whose people and institutions he was satirizing, but we get the gist of it and easily recognize the social problems and human failings he holds up to ridicule.
As I try to parse the components of my enjoyment, here's what I'm coming up with:
First, for me, was the fact that this was volume 5 of the Britannica Great Books series and therefore part of my program of reading the whole set, which I own. This in turn is part of my effort to become liberally educated, and so I feel a sense of accomplishment and enrichment with every page I read. Without this program I would never have picked up this book, and now I'm so glad that I did. Occasionally in my other readings people allude to the works of the Greek dramatists, and now I've read them--all of them, in their entirety, beginning to end. I no longer have vague feelings of awe and mystery about these plays, and no longer will feel at a disadvantage to those who have read them and can quote them. I've read them too--and because I've got the book, I can quote them. And there is a great deal in there that is worth quoting.
Second, the dramas themselves are, in the main, very good. It's not for nothing that these works have been preserved for thousands of years. As a writer of drama myself, I observed closely what stories these authors chose to tell and how they developed their conflicts. The tragedy writers (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) were all excellent at finding the root conflict in situations and depicting this in dialogue (relatively little staged action is mentioned in the surviving texts). (Aristophanes as a comedian is a special case, but he too found provocative comic ideas and developed them cleverly.)
Third, I got to read some very famous plays, scenes, and lines--all in context. One such is Sophocles' Antigone, in which occurs, among other things, this famous line: "Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man. . . ." Now I've read that line in the context of its scene, its play, as well as in the body of its author's work and as part of Greek drama as a whole. Wow!
Fourth, I came to grips with great, important ideas. This volume is part of the Britannica series because these playwrights contributed to what the Britannica editors call the Great Conversation: the dialogue of ideas that has run through the major literary works of Western civilization. For example, in the very first play in the book, the Suppliant Maidens of Aeschylus, the action features a group of Egyptian women of Greek descent arriving at the shore of Argos, fleeing the Egyptian men who want to marry them. They appeal to their Greek kinsmen to protect them, even if it means war with the Egyptians. In this situation Aeschylus creates difficult conflicts of duty and responsibility. And I realized with some awe while reading it that he is probably the first author in the Western tradition to raise seriously and without prejudice the issue of women's rights. And he does all this in 14 pages--and that's just one play. Many of these plays, the majority of them, deal with ideas that are still among the deepest and most difficult that we face as human beings. To enjoy these plays fully, you need to be willing, and preferably eager, to think about serious things.
Fifth, I took positive pleasure in the verse translations of Aeschylus and especially of Aristophanes. I'm not an experienced reader of poetry, but I felt I was getting a great dose of worthwhile verse here. I recognize that poetry cannot be translated, only reinvented, and I don't know the standing of these translators (G. M. Cookson for Aeschylus and Benjamin Bickley Rogers for Aristophanes) in the world of ancient Greek drama, but this reader feels that they did a great job at a task that must have been extraordinarily difficult. When humorous verse works, it really works, and there were many passages in Aristophanes where I thought that, against all odds, the translator came up with the goods.
And sixth, all of the plays were collected together in one volume, with no translators' introductions or explanatory notes beyond a 1-page biography for each playwright. I've long been used to reading such introductions and notes for important literary works, feeling that to be a kind of studently duty. But the editors of the Great Books believe strongly in exposing the reader as directly as possible to the words and thoughts of these writers, encouraging you to go commando with these greatest and most challenging works of literature. I felt timid at first with no Virgil to hold my hand as I entered the strange world of ancient Greek drama, and in fact tried to rely for a little while on a separate guidebook that gave brief synopses of the plays, explaining the situations leading up to their openings, and so on. But soon I dropped that as I realized that the plays really are complete in themselves, and that there is a distinct and enriching pleasure in just diving in to the text--kind of like diving into the open sea without any lifeguard or flotation device. If you can swim you can dive into the sea; and if you can read you can dive into these plays.
In sum: three stars for the difficulties and longueurs that I experienced in reading these plays; four stars for my general feeling of enjoyment and appreciation as I read; and five stars for my sense of accomplishment and my conviction that my afternoon reading period over these past months has probably never been better spent.
November 27, 2020
Enjoyable reading, once you get past the notion that brilliant men of long ago actually believed (or claimed to believe) in deeply flawed gods like Zeus and Athena. What astonishing spiritual blindness. My favorite was "Peace" by Aristophanes and the realization that there has always been some form of military-industrial complex.
December 21, 2018
Nada no mundo faria eu me separar desse livro. Todas as tragédias gregas dos três maiores dramaturgos.
April 1, 2019
Good stuff.
February 6, 2015
Thanks to the Sands of Time, we have about 10% of the total output from these 4 Greek playwrights, and while my fellow Classicists tell us we have the best of the best (essentially), some of these plays may make you go "oh ... so?" Admittedly, that's only a few of them . Some of Aeschylus's works seemed unimpressive in that way (like the Suppliant Maidens), but since he is effectively inventing the genre, I don't want to delve into Classicist blasphemy by pursuing an unimpressed reaction. Perhaps we can liken them to some of Avalon Hill's 1st-generation wargame classics: revered more for what they begat than what they were themselves. But the rest of Aeschylus' work is truly stupendous, especially The Oresteia. That was everything they make it out to be. Sophocles likewise has his hits (Ajax) and misses (Trachiniae - but even as a "miss," it's still pretty decent). Philoctetes was better than you probably think it is going to be. Man, these ol' timers really hated Odysseus! He is always portrayed as one of the worst people in their era. Euripides was impressive. Wordy, sure, which was probably part of Aristophanes' beef, but he had some mighty fine works in there. Medea is much better than most people make it out to be - which is probably surprising, since everyone is all about Medea as a SFC and whatnot, but the play is better than just having a strong female character. I doubt anyone, including the great WS, has ever surpassed a stage entrance as she has at the end: "Enter Medea, flying in mid-air astride two dragons." Why did no one ever tell me some of Euripides' plays have happy endings? That seems like something people should mention when discussing classical drama. Aristophanes was, for me, mostly unimpressive. A couple of them were funny, here and there, but the ones that are all the rage because of their insightful criticism and whatnot felt like "critics are calling this penetrating and wonderful and whatever and whatever" mainly because they want to be published and tenured, not because Aristophanes was always firing on as many cylinders than his coterie want us to think he was. Firing on. But some were sort of funny, here and there, as I said.
I think one of my life goals now will be to create a 3- or 4-series television series putting all of these classics together in some meaningful order. We may have to do a Classroom Friendly Version and a More Authentic Version version, but we'll see. Season 1 we'll call Thebes, focusing on the Oedipus generation (and his son-brothers) with the Hercules stories as well. Season 2-3 will be called Troy, focusing on all the Trojan War plays. Naturally, we'll have to film an accurate version of Homer's Iliad, as well. I suppose we'll have to mix some Aeneid in as well. Season 4 we might as well call Nostoi, focusing on the post-war stories, beginning with Trojan Women, going through all the Agamemnon/Orestes stories, Odysseus and the Odyssey, and all that. If those go well, we'll do a prologue series of Hesiod and Ovid. Now that's a show I'd watch.
I think one of my life goals now will be to create a 3- or 4-series television series putting all of these classics together in some meaningful order. We may have to do a Classroom Friendly Version and a More Authentic Version version, but we'll see. Season 1 we'll call Thebes, focusing on the Oedipus generation (and his son-brothers) with the Hercules stories as well. Season 2-3 will be called Troy, focusing on all the Trojan War plays. Naturally, we'll have to film an accurate version of Homer's Iliad, as well. I suppose we'll have to mix some Aeneid in as well. Season 4 we might as well call Nostoi, focusing on the post-war stories, beginning with Trojan Women, going through all the Agamemnon/Orestes stories, Odysseus and the Odyssey, and all that. If those go well, we'll do a prologue series of Hesiod and Ovid. Now that's a show I'd watch.
December 31, 2018
The volume numbers all changed with the 2nd Edition (1990) of the Great Books. This volume, of the 7th Printing of that edition, is Volume #4, whereas formerly the volume was #5. Always make sure you are referring to the correct edition.
These plays, like all plays, were interesting, but afforded more interest, if the reader were a thespian; as a history major, I would have gained more had I known the interplay of the characters with the history, about which I know more now and continue to learn - I will have to return to these plays after I know more than I did at first.
These plays, like all plays, were interesting, but afforded more interest, if the reader were a thespian; as a history major, I would have gained more had I known the interplay of the characters with the history, about which I know more now and continue to learn - I will have to return to these plays after I know more than I did at first.
February 21, 2015
So I read everything but most of the plays by Aristophanes. I found most of the other plays a good learning experience (one or two were awful) but two plays into Aristophanes I just couldn't stomach it any more. Too crude, the humor isn't funny, and I don't know any of the politicians or events being mocked. Life is too short, and I have too many other things I want to study. I'm moving on.
November 16, 2012
Various plays which expand on themes of Iliad and Odyssey. Even if you have haver read any of these plays, many of the stories will be familiar since several modern stories and movies are based on them. I did not much like Aristophanes. Too much satire.
November 4, 2016
Wonderful to realize where our dramatic traditions derive from. They were ahead of their time in many ways. My favorite was Aristophanes, who seems to have invented the comedic constructs still used in sketch and musical comedy today.
February 5, 2015
I liked the stories embodied in the plays of the first three authors. I did not like Aristophanes: he was often condescending, sarcastic and insulting.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews