Matthew Lloyd’s Reviews > The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides > Status Update

I love Oedipus at Colonus as a conclusion to Oedipus's story. Firstly, his righteous anger that he has been held responsible for divinely prophesised acts he had no control over. Then for the weirdness - that Oedipus's broken, curséd body has become sacred; that his resting place must be unknown, his death mystical. Also, just being set in a grove with a rock. I like simple things sometimes.

I appreciate that we have three versions of the Electra/Libation Bearers myth, and that one of them should seem to simply allow Electra and Orestes to revel in what they do, the vengeance they take. It allows the myth to be complicated - can we really be sympathetic to Clytemnestra's suffering with regard to Iphigenia's murder, when she appears to treat her living children so poorly?

Antigone is excellent; while reading it I was also preparing some Black History Month stuff, which touches on the question of just and unjust laws; but I also read things that asked questions about our moral purity tests leading me to think about how Antigone kills herself after Creon changes his mind, and if expecting people to change their mind is valuable or not... always more to unpack with this one.

Oedipus Tyrannos: still the best play.

I, too, doubt the attribution of Prometheis Bound to Aeschylus because it's awesome and Aeschylus tends not to be so good.

People are always saying that Dionysos is like this subversive rebel, but in The Bacchae he's kind of a religious conservative forcing everyone to worship properly and do what he says.

I used to think Hippolytus was an arsehole, and I do still think that, but I'm open to the interpretation that he's being persecuted for failing to meet the requirements of mainstream religion

Euripides' 'Alcestis' offers the weird situation in which the nicest guy in Greek tragedy is dealing with the consequences of asking his wife to die instead of him. It's a little like an ancient trolley problem, asking whose life is worth more - a parent or an adult child; a husband or a wife? But also, on the virtue of doing something good for powerful friends, if Herakles happens to stop by while you're mourning.