Five Great Greek Tragedies

Features Oedipus Rex and Electra by Sophocles (translated by George Young), Medea and Bacchae by Euripides (translated by Henry Hart Milman), and Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus (translated by George Thomson).

Presents translations of five Greek tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

A landmark anthology of the masterpieces of Greek drama, featuring all-new, highly accessible translations of some of the world’s most beloved plays, including Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound, Bacchae, Electra, Medea, Antigone, and Oedipus the King Featuring translations by Emily Wilson, Frank Nisetich, Sarah Ruden, Rachel Kitzinger, Mary Lefkowitz, and James Romm The great plays of Ancient Greece are among the most enduring and important legacies of the Western world. Not only is the influence of Greek drama palpable in everything from Shakespeare to modern television, the insights contained in Greek tragedy have shaped our perceptions of the nature of human life. Poets, philosophers, and politicians have long borrowed and adapted the ideas and language of Greek drama to help them make sense of their own times. This exciting curated anthology features a cross section of the most popular—and most widely taught—plays in the Greek canon. Fresh translations into contemporary English breathe new life into the texts while capturing, as faithfully as possible, their original meaning. This outstanding collection also offers short biographies of the playwrights, enlightening and clarifying introductions to the plays, and helpful annotations at the bottom of each page. Appendices by prominent classicists on such topics as “Greek Drama and Politics,” “The Theater of Dionysus,” and “Plato and Aristotle on Tragedy” give the reader a rich contextual background. A detailed time line of the dramas, as well as a list of adaptations of Greek drama to literature, stage, and film from the time of Seneca to the present, helps chart the history of Greek tragedy and illustrate its influence on our culture from the Roman Empire to the present day. With a veritable who’s who of today’s most renowned and distinguished classical translators, The Greek Plays is certain to be the definitive text for years to come. Praise for The Greek Plays “Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm deftly have gathered strong new translations from Frank Nisetich, Sarah Ruden, Rachel Kitzinger, Emily Wilson, as well as from Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm themselves. There is a freshness and pungency in these new translations that should last a long time. I admire also the introductions to the plays and the biographies and annotations provided. Closing essays by five distinguished classicists—the brilliant Daniel Mendelsohn and the equally skilled David Rosenbloom, Joshua Billings, Mary-Kay Gamel, and Gregory Hays—all enlightened me. This seems to me a helpful light into our gathering darkness.”—Harold Bloom

Agememnon is the first part of the Aeschylus's Orestian trilogy in which the leader of the Greek army returns from the Trojan war to be murdered by his treacherous wife Clytemnestra. In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex the king sets out to uncover the cause of the plague that has struck his city, only to disover the devastating truth about his relationship with his mother and his father. Medea is the terrible story of a woman's bloody revenge on her adulterous husband through the murder of her own children.

What happened to Greek tragedy after the death of Euripides? This book provides some answers, and a broad historical overview.

Author names not noted above: Euripides and Aristophanes. Translator names not noted above: E.D.A. Morshead, E.H. Plumtre, Gilbert Murray, and B.B. Rogers. Originally published between 1909 and 1917 under the name "Harvard Classics," this stupendous 51-volume set-a collection of the greatest writings from literature, philosophy, history, and mythology-was assembled by American academic CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT (1834-1926), Harvard University's longest-serving president. Also known as "Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf," it represented Eliot's belief that a basic liberal education could be gleaned by reading from an anthology of works that could fit on five feet of bookshelf. Volume VIII features nine plays by the greatest of the Greek dramatists: [ from AESCHYLUS (c. 525 Bic. 456 Be, the father of tragedy: Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers, and The Furies, which constitute his trilogy known as the Oresteia; and Prometheus Bound, about the downfall of the god who gave fire to humanity [ from SOPHOCLES (c. 496 Bi406 Be: the ultimate Greek tragedy, Oedipus the King, as well as Antigone, still regularly performed today [ from EURIPIDES (c. 480 Bi406 Be: Hippolytus, based on the legend of the son of Theseus, the founder of Athens, and The Bacchae, the story of a king who refused to worship the god Dionysus [ from Aristophanes (c. 446 Bic. 386 Be, the father of comedy: The Frogs, a political satire featuring the god Dionysus.

This generous selection of published essays by the distinguished classicist Charles Segal represents over twenty years of critical inquiry into the questions of what Greek tragedy is and what it means for modern-day readers. Taken together, the essays reflect profound changes in the study of Greek tragedy in the United States during this period-in particular, the increasing emphasis on myth, psychoanalytic interpretation, structuralism, and semiotics.

Outstanding translations of five plays, now updated with informative new content for students, teachers, and lovers of the classics. Greek Tragedies, Volume I contains: Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon,” translated by Richmond Lattimore Aeschylus’s “Prometheus Bound,” translated by David Grene Sophocles’s “Oedipus the King,” translated by David Grene Sophocles’s “Antigone,” translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff Euripides’s “Hippolytus,” translated by David Grene. Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classicists David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, those translations combined accuracy, poetic immediacy, and clarity of presentation to render the surviving masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in an English so lively and compelling that they remain the standard translations. In this highly anticipated third edition, Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most have carefully updated the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining the vibrancy they the for which our English versions are famous. New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond. Each volume includes an introduction to the life and work of its tragedian, as well as notes addressing textual uncertainties and a glossary of names and places mentioned in the plays. In addition to the new content, the volumes have been reorganized both within and between volumes to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship on the order in which the plays were originally written. The result is a collection destined to introduce new generations of readers to these foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.