The Complete Greek Tragedies

by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides

Volume I - Aeschylus
• The Oresteia (Agamemnon/The Libation Bearers/The Eumenides)
• The Suppliant Maidens
• The Persians
• Seven Against Thebes
• Prometheus Bound

Volume II - Sophocles
• 'The Theban Plays' (Oedipus The King/Oedipus At Colonus/Antigone)
• Ajax
• The Women Of Trachis
• Electra
• Philoctetes

Volume III - Euripides 1
• Alcestis
• The Medea
• The Heracleidae
• Hippolytus
• Cyclops
• Heracles
• Iphigenia In Tauris
• Helen
• Hecuba
• Andromache
• The Trojan Women

Volume IV - Euripides 2
• Ion
• Rhesus
• The Suppliant Women
• Orestes
• Iphigenia In Aulis
• Electra
• The Phoenicians
• The Bacchae

"These authoritative translations consign all other complete collections to the wastebasket."—Robert Brustein, The New Republic

"This is it. No qualifications. Go out and buy it everybody."—Kenneth Rexroth, The Nation

"The translations deliberately avoid the highly wrought and affectedly poetic; their idiom is contemporary....They have life and speed and suppleness of phrase."—Times Education Supplement

"These translations belong to our time. A keen poetic sensibility repeatedly quickens them; and without this inner fire the most academically flawless rendering is dead."—Warren D. Anderson, American Oxonian

"The critical commentaries and the versions themselves...are fresh, unpretentious, above all, functional."—Commonweal

"Grene is one of the great translators."—Conor Cruise O'Brien, London Sunday Times

"Richmond Lattimore is that rara avis in our age, the classical scholar who is at the same time an accomplished poet."—Dudley Fitts, New York Times Book Review

Genres: Plays, Classics, Drama, Fiction, Mythology, Literature

2124 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 485

About the author

Greek Αισχύλος , Esquilo in Spanish, Eschyle in French, Èsquil in Catalan, 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.

Reviews

[Rodolfo Lazo de la Vega · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Oedipus the King, "Prometheus Bound" and "The Bacchae" are among the very highest works of world literature. Except for William Shakespeare, no other playwright, not even Ibsen or Racine, approaches Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus, at their very best, for their wisdom, truth and formalistic mastery. I have been studying these 33 plays for over a dozen years in various translations and I feel that this edition - edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore - is the best complete set of translations currently available. It is marred, however, by its lack of footnotes and supplementary material. Sophocles is clearly the star of this collection. Subtle and profound.

[M.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worthy of the time spent.

[Imlac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oedipus the King (3/15/24)

[Jessica]

Ah, the cruel price of your daring...

[Lulu]

472 - 406 BCE

earliest surviving play that we can date (the persians)


Euripides :

Medea
The bacchae
Trojan women
fragmentary play Bellerophon