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Aeschylus: Suppliant Women

A. J. Bowen

Aeschylus starts his tetralogy boldly, making the Danaids themselves prologue, chorus and protagonist. Guided by their father Danaus, these girls have fled from Egypt, where their cousins want to ... More

Aeschylus starts his tetralogy boldly, making the Danaids themselves prologue, chorus and protagonist. Guided by their father Danaus, these girls have fled from Egypt, where their cousins want to marry them, to seek asylum in Argos: they claim descent from Io, who was driven to Egypt five generations earlier when Zeus' love for her was detected by jealous Hera. In the long first movement of the play, the Danaids argue their claim, pressing it with song and dance of pathos and power, upon the reluctant Argive king. He, forced eventually by their threat of suicide, puts the case to his people, who vote to accept the girls, but while they sing blessings on Argos, Danaus spies their cousins' ships arriving. Left on their own when he goes for help, they sing more seriously of suicide, and seek sanctuary upstage when the Egyptians enter. A remarkable tussle of two choruses ensues; in the nick of time the king arrives, sees off the Egyptians (but they promise a return) and offers his hospitality. The girls want their father, however, and go when guided by him and his escort of Argive soldiers. Their final song has elements of wedding song in it; they share it, provocatively, with the Argives. The rest of the tetralogy is lost, but enough is known to indicate that marriage is the theme. Aeschylus probably surprised his first audience in his use of the myth; his command of theatre and poetry is fully mature.Less

Aeschylus' Supplices: Play and Trilogy (second edition)

A. F. Garvie

This book's first appearance (1969) was a full response to the publication (in 1952) of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus which indicated a late production date (in the 460s bc) for Aeschylus' ... More

This book's first appearance (1969) was a full response to the publication (in 1952) of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus which indicated a late production date (in the 460s bc) for Aeschylus' trilogy Supplices, thus upsetting the previous scholarly consensus that it was an early work — indeed the earliest Greek tragedy to survive. There was, the book argued, no longer good reason to suppose that the play belonged to an early stage in its author's development. A final chapter also examines the evidence for reconstruction of the other, lost plays of the trilogy. Few would now argue, as they used to, that Supplices belongs to the 490s but some still have the feeling that it looks like an early play; they attempt to put it back into the 470s. Stylistic and structural evidence, itself often subjective, is not strong enough to place the play in one decade or exclude it from the previous one; but the book remains convinced that, even without the additional testimony of the papyrus, all the internal evidence points to the 460s. While the view that Supplices is very early may now have died, some of the salutary lessons of P.Oxy 2256 fr. 3 have still to be learnt and it is timely for this re-issue to be presented to a new generation of Aeschylean students and scholars.Less

Aristophanes: Ecclesiazusae

Alan H. Sommerstein (ed.)

Ecclesiazusae, probably produced in 391 BC, is at once a typically Aristophanic fantasy of gender inversion, obscenity and farce, the earliest surviving work in the western Utopian tradition, and the ... More

Ecclesiazusae, probably produced in 391 BC, is at once a typically Aristophanic fantasy of gender inversion, obscenity and farce, the earliest surviving work in the western Utopian tradition, and the source of a blueprint for a communist society on which Plato may well have drawn in his Republic. This edition attempts to set the play, more closely than has usually been done, against the political background at the time of its production, when Athens has just spurned what proved to be the last opportunity to escape from a war it did not have the resources to fight, and to define the details of staging as precisely as the text will allow. This edition presents the Greek text with facing-page translation, commentary and notes.Less

Aristophanes: Knights

Alan H. Sommerstein (ed.)

Knights was the first play to be produced by Aristophanes on his own behalf. In it, he launched a violent attack on Cleon, the leading politician of the day, on the whole style of leadership that he ... More

Knights was the first play to be produced by Aristophanes on his own behalf. In it, he launched a violent attack on Cleon, the leading politician of the day, on the whole style of leadership that he represented and on a system which seemed to guarantee that a bad leader could be displaced by a worse. This edition presents the Greek text with facing-page translation, introduction, commentary and notes.Less

Aristophanes: Wasps

Alan H. Sommerstein (ed.)

Wasps was first produced at the Lenaea festival of 422 BC. The play is at once a political satire and also, like Clouds and the lost Banqueters, a comedy on the theme of the conflict of generations. ... More

Wasps was first produced at the Lenaea festival of 422 BC. The play is at once a political satire and also, like Clouds and the lost Banqueters, a comedy on the theme of the conflict of generations. The play follows the efforts of a mischievous and mercurial old man to escape the control of a stern and heavy son. In its political aspect it attacks the leading Athenian politician Cleon, as Knights had. But Wasps represents a departure as it concentrates less on Cleon personally, and more on his and his associates' alleged domination of the law-courts and the men who served in them as jurors. First published in 1983, this edition contains addenda and a new bibliography. The edition presents the Greek text with facing-page English translation, commentary and notes.Less

Euripides: Cyclops: & Major Fragments of Greek Satyric Drama

Patrick O'Sullivan and C. Collard (eds)

Satyric is the most thinly attested genre of Greek drama, but it appears to have been the oldest and, according to Aristotle, formative for tragedy. By the 5th century BC at Athens, it shared most of ... More

Satyric is the most thinly attested genre of Greek drama, but it appears to have been the oldest and, according to Aristotle, formative for tragedy. By the 5th century BC at Athens, it shared most of its compositional elements with tragedy, to which it became an adjunct; for at the annual great dramatic festivals, it was performed only together with, and after, the three tragedies which each poet was required to present in competition. It was in contrast with them. Euripides' Cyclops is the only satyr play which survives complete. Its title alone signals its content, Odysseus' escape from the one-eyed, man-eating monster, familiar from Book 9 of Homer's Odyssey. Because of its uniqueness, Cyclops could afford only a limited idea of satyric drama's range, which the many but brief quotations from other authors and plays barely coloured. Our knowledge and appreciation of the genre have been greatly enlarged, however, by recovery since the early 20th century of considerable fragments of Aeschylus, Euripides' predecessor, and of Sophocles, his contemporary — but not, so far, of Euripides himself. This book provides English readers for the first time with all the most important texts of satyric drama, with facing-page translation, substantial introduction and detailed commentary. It includes not only the major papyri, but very many shorter fragments of importance, both on papyrus and in quotation, from the 5th to the 3rd centuries; there are also one or two texts whose interest lies in their problematic ascription to the genre at all. The intention is to illustrate it as fully as practicable.Less

Euripides: Iphigenia in Tauris

M. J. Cropp

Iphigenia in Tauris tells the story of the princess Iphigenia who was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to expedite his campaign against Troy but was rescued by the goddess Artemis and transported ... More

Iphigenia in Tauris tells the story of the princess Iphigenia who was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to expedite his campaign against Troy but was rescued by the goddess Artemis and transported to the land of the Taurians. There she herself must perform human sacrifices as a priestess of Artemis in the local cult. Troy has now been sacked, and Agamemnon murdered by his wife and avenged by his son Orestes. With his mother's blood on his hands, Orestes is guided by Apollo to seek purification through bringing the image of the Tauric Artemis to Greece, and so is reunited with his sister. The drama centers on Orestes' near-sacrifice at Iphigenia's hands, their recognition in the nick of time, and their ingenious and thrilling escape to bring the cult of Artemis to Halae and Brauron near Athens.Less

Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays: Volume I

The fragmentary plays of Euripides are a body of texts still regularly increasing in number and extent. They are of very great interest in themselves, apart from the significant aid they give to the ... More

The fragmentary plays of Euripides are a body of texts still regularly increasing in number and extent. They are of very great interest in themselves, apart from the significant aid they give to the fuller appreciation of the surviving complete plays. This two-volume edition brings together for the first time for English readers the more substantial and important of the plays, about fifteen in all. Each play is introduced by a summary bibliography and an appreciative essay which analyses the mythic background and plot: reconstructs the play as far as the fragmentary text and secondary evidence allow; and discusses themes, characterisation, staging, date, reflections of the story in art and other dramatisations. For each play, the fragmentary texts are presented as conveniently and succinctly as possible, together with a brief critical apparatus of sources and readings. An English translation stands on the facing page. The text and translation of each play are followed by a short, primarily interpretative commentary. Text with facing translation, commentary and notes.Less

Harmful Interaction between the Living and the Dead in Greek Tragedy

Bridget Martin (ed.)

This book examines harmful interaction between the living and the dead in fifth-century BC Greek tragedy, i.e. how the living can harm the dead, and how the dead can harm the living in return. ... More

This book examines harmful interaction between the living and the dead in fifth-century BC Greek tragedy, i.e. how the living can harm the dead, and how the dead can harm the living in return. Tragedy contains some of the most fascinating and important stage-ghosts in Western literature, whether the talkative Persian king Darius, who is evoked from the Underworld in Aeschylus’ Persians, or the murdered Trojan prince Polydorus, who seeks burial for his exposed corpse in Euripides’ Hecuba. These manifest figures can tell us a vast amount about the abilities of the tragic dead, particularly in relation to the nature, extent and limitations of their interaction with the living through, for example, ghost-raising ceremonies and dreams. Beyond these manifest dead, tragedy presents a wealth of invisible dead whose anger and desire for revenge bubble up from the Underworld, and whose honour and dishonour occupy the minds and influence the actions of the living. Combining both these manifest and invisible dead, this book delves into the possibility of harmful interaction between the living and the dead. This includes discussions on the extent to which the dead are aware of and can react to honourable or dishonourable treatment by the living, the social stratification of the Underworld, the consequences of corpse exposure and mutilation for both the living and the dead, and how the dead can use and collaborate with avenging agents, such as the gods, the living and the Erinyes.Less

Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World

Christopher Gill and T.P. Wiseman (eds)

This volume of specially written essays explores the understanding of the boundaries between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood in ancient Greek and Roman culture, and the relationship between ... More

This volume of specially written essays explores the understanding of the boundaries between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood in ancient Greek and Roman culture, and the relationship between ancient and modern thinking on this topic. Essays consider the extent to which the concept of fiction was explicitly defined in ancient critical, rhetorical and philosophical writing or was implicitly recognised even if was not explicitly theorised. A wide range of genres of ancient writing are discussed, ranging from Homeric epic, Hesiod, and archaic Greek poetry to Greek and Roman historiography, philosophy (especially Plato), and the Greek and Roman novels or prose fictions. In ancient historiography, stress is laid on the combination of an explicit aspiration to factuality with a strong implicit element of creativity or inventive elaboration, extending in some cases to sheer lying. Essays discuss also especially the kind of ‘make believe’ or fictive belief invited by the ancient novels and the interplay between the ‘story world’ of the novels and the real world shared by its readers and author. Another area treated is the ethical value (or disvalue) of fiction and the question whether fiction is valued in the same way in antiquity as in the modern world. Although antiquity differs from the modern world in not defining fiction as such or in producing a literary theory of the novel, it is suggested by some essays that ancient and modern attitudes to fiction and its value are not as dissimilar as this difference might lead one to expect.Less

Lost Dramas of Classical Athens: Greek Tragic Fragments

Fiona McHardy, James Robson, and David Harvey (eds)

This is a study of Greek tragedies known to us only from small fragmentary remnants that have survived. The book discusses a variety of Greek tragic fragments from all three of the famous Athenian ... More

This is a study of Greek tragedies known to us only from small fragmentary remnants that have survived. The book discusses a variety of Greek tragic fragments from all three of the famous Athenian tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The recent publication of translations of some of these fragments (Sophocles in the Loeb series, and Euripides in the Aris and Phillips series) means that the fragments are now more readily available than ever for study. The large number of extant fragments of ancient Greek tragedy can tell us enormous amounts about that genre and about the society that produced it. Papyrus finds over the last hundred years have drastically altered and supplemented our knowledge of ancient Greek tragedy; the book is at the cutting-edge of research in this field.Less

Menander: The Shield and The Arbitration

Stanley Ireland

What reason has an educated man for going to the theatre, except to see Menander? Thus the judgement of Aristophanes of Byzantium, and in later antiquity the social comedies of Menander ranked second ... More

What reason has an educated man for going to the theatre, except to see Menander? Thus the judgement of Aristophanes of Byzantium, and in later antiquity the social comedies of Menander ranked second in popularity only to the epics of Homer. Yet for centuries thereafter the plays were thought to be irretrievably lost, failing to become part of the canon of writers that generations of copyists deemed worthy of transmitting to us. It was only in the 20th century that large sections of the plays began to emerge from Egypt, enabling modern readers to gauge for themselves the correctness of earlier verdicts. Following on from the author's edition of Menander's Bad-Tempered Man (dyskolos), the present volume aims to provide readers with ready access to the playwright's consummate sophistication in dramatic technique through two, albeit incomplete, plays, The Shield (aspis) and Arbitration (epitrepontes). The Greek text is accompanied by a translation aimed at providing a version that is readable, while at the same time remaining close enough to the original to make comparison of the two a feasible proposition. The commentary, in turn, concentrates upon dramatic development, providing the reader with pointers to appreciating the playwright's often subtle techniques of both dramatic development and character portrayal.Less

Sophocles: Ajax

A. F. Garvie

Ajax, perhaps the earliest surviving tragedy of Sophocles, presents the downfall and disgrace of a great hero whose suicide leads to his rehabilitation through the enlightened magnanimity of one of ... More

Ajax, perhaps the earliest surviving tragedy of Sophocles, presents the downfall and disgrace of a great hero whose suicide leads to his rehabilitation through the enlightened magnanimity of one of his enemies. This edition attempts to show that Sophocles offers no easy answer to the question of why Ajax falls, and no simple solution to the problem of how we ought to live so as to avoid tragedy in our own lives. The introductory chapter focuses on Ajax, as one of the major characters in Homer's Iliadand the only hero in the story that never received direct help from a god. It looks into the Odyssey, which provides the earliest reference of Sophocles being concerned with Ajax. The next chapter provides the original text of Sophocles's play about Ajax. It talks about how the play began with the death of Achilles and Ajax's desire to be rewarded with his armor. It also mentions Ajax's shame and intention of suicide after killing Agamemnon and Menelaus when they gave Achilles's armor to Oddyseus. The chapter discusses the ending of the play in which Odysseus insisted that Ajax should be buried properly. The final chapter gives the commentary for the play. It talks about how Sophocles began his plays with dialogue in order to provide the audience with information about the story. It also mentions the introduction of Odysseus and reveal of Athena as the goddess in the beginning of the play. This chapter analyses the relationships among Ajax, Odysseus, and Athena. The book presents Greek text with facing-page English translation, introduction and extensive commentary.Less

Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus

Jennifer R. March

Oedipus Tyrannus by the great tragedian Sophocles is one of the most famous works of ancient Greek literature. The play has always been admired for the unity of its plot; every bit of every scene ... More

Oedipus Tyrannus by the great tragedian Sophocles is one of the most famous works of ancient Greek literature. The play has always been admired for the unity of its plot; every bit of every scene counts towards the dramatic effect. The action is concentrated into a single day in Oedipus’ life; his heinous crimes of unwittingly committing patricide and incest by marrying his mother all lie long ago in the past, and now, in the action of this one day, there awaits for him only the discovery of the truth. Oedipus is portrayed as a noble king, deeply devoted to his people and they to him. Proud of his earlier defeat of the Sphinx, he is determined to save his city once again, and he unflinchingly pursues the truth of who he is and what he has done, unaware that it will bring him to disaster. The spectators, familiar with Oedipus’ story, wait in horrified suspense for that terrible moment of realisation to arrive. And when it does, Oedipus survives it: he takes full responsibility for what he has done, accepts the grief and the pain, and carries on, remaining indomitable to the end. Sophocles gives no answer as to why Oedipus is made to suffer his tragic fate. Jenny March’s new facing-page translation brings alive the power and complexities of Sophocles’ writing, with a substantial introduction and a detailed commentary which is keyed to important words in the translation and aims to be accessible to readers with little or no Greek.Less

Sophocles: Selected Fragmentary Plays: Volume I

The Athenian tragic dramatist Sophocles wrote over 120 plays in his sixty-year career, of which only seven have survived complete. This volume presents what is known, or can be inferred or ... More

The Athenian tragic dramatist Sophocles wrote over 120 plays in his sixty-year career, of which only seven have survived complete. This volume presents what is known, or can be inferred or conjectured, about half a dozen plays known to us only from quotations, indirect references, and occasionally a papyrus. The selection includes four plays about the Trojan War and its aftermath, all concerned with Achilles or his son Neoptolemus (The Diners, Troilus, Polyxene, and Hermione), and two presenting episodes from Athenian legend (Tereus and Phaedra). The editors have taken a special interest in the history of the myths that Sophocles dramatised and the often startling modifications he made to them; several of the plays also throw important light on parallel dramas of Euripides such as Hippolytus, Andromache, and Hecuba. The book presents Greek text with facing-page translation.Less

Terence: Phormio

Robert Maltby (ed.)

Terence's Phormio, based on a Greek original by Apollodorus of Carystus, was produced towards the end of his short dramatic career in 161 BC. With its lively action, based on the traditional elements ... More

Terence's Phormio, based on a Greek original by Apollodorus of Carystus, was produced towards the end of his short dramatic career in 161 BC. With its lively action, based on the traditional elements of love, deception and mistaken identity, the play provides an ideal introduction to the genre of New Comedy. What makes the Phormio unique amongst Terence's works is the central importance of the witty and scheming parasite who gives his name to the play and directs and controls its action throughout, even when absent from the stage. The use of the 'double' plot with its two young men in love and two contrasting fathers provides ample scope for depth and variety of characterisation. The aim of the present edition is to bring out to the full Terence's skill in plot development and character portrayal which was to make the Phormio one of his most entertaining plays. Latin text with facing-page translation, introduction and commentary.Less

The Tragedies of Sophocles

James Morwood

This book provides separate discussions of each of Sophocles' seven plays: Ajax, Women of Trachis, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. It sets these between an ... More

This book provides separate discussions of each of Sophocles' seven plays: Ajax, Women of Trachis, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. It sets these between an chapter that outlines modern approaches to Greek tragedy and a final chapter that spotlights a key moment in the reception of each work. Focusing on the tragedies' dramatic power and the challenges with which they confront an audience, the book refuses to confine them within a supposedly Sophoclean template. They are seven unique works, only alike in the fact that they are all major masterpieces.Less