Sam Terry’s Reviews > Greek Tragedies, Volume 1: Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound; Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Antigone; Euripides: Hippolytus > Status Update

Oedipus Rex ought to end with the theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm

Oedipus the King is the only one of these I’ve actually read before, but that was 10 years ago and it was the Fagles translation. I remember enjoying it and have been meaning to revisit it. I’m a little relieved that Lattimore was only responsible for Agamemnon because so far the Grene translations in this collection are way easier to read.

The David Grene translation of Prometheus Bound is far to read so far than Agamemnon was. The Agamemnon translation was credited to Richmond Lattimore but syntactically it seemed a lot more baroque than his translation of the Iliad so I assume he was credited for making adjustments to an earlier translation.

Agamemnon finished. Really cool but I don’t have time to unpack it right now so I will circle back later with my notes

Ohhhhh so that’s why this one is called Agamemnon

I haven’t picked this up in a week or so but I’ve resolved to finish it this year. Agamemnon is tough so far, but I loved the Iliad so I’ve grown really fond of these characters. I’m pretty sure the translation of Agamemnon used here was done by H. W. Smyth so I wonder if I wouldn’t find a more recent translation easier to follow .

I picked this up because I saw that Richmond Lattimore edited it but so far I’m finding the translation of Agamemnon pretty difficult to parse. I have been too busy too make much progress but hopefully I’ll be able to make more sense of it next week.