Greek Tragedies 1: Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound; Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Antigone; Euripides

Hippolytus

Mark Griffith, Glenn W. Most, David Grene, Richmond Lattimore, Mark Griffith, Glenn W. Most, David Grene, Richmond Lattimore

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780226035284, 9780226035147
• eBook ISBN: 9780226035314
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Drama
• Index: Literature

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; and Euripides's "Hippolytus," translated by David Grene.

 

Many 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. The updated third editions of these classic works were designed to ensure that our Greek tragedies remain the leading English-language versions throughout the twenty-first century.

 

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 for which our English versions are famous. This edition also includes brand-new translations of Euripides' Medea, The Children of Heracles, Andromache, and Iphigenia among the Taurians, fragments of lost plays by Aeschylus, and the surviving portion of Sophocles's satyr-drama The Trackers. New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond. In addition, 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 set of handsome paperbacks destined to introduce new generations of readers to these foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.

OEDIPUS THE KING

SOPHOCLES

Translated by David Grene

INTRODUCTION TO SOPHOCLES’ OEDIPUS THE KING

The date is unknown. Many scholars are inclined to place it about 427 BCE, shortly after the great plague at Athens, which they think may have suggested the plague at Thebes in the play. But there is no reliable evidence. We happen to be told that this play, on its first presentation, gained Sophocles only the second prize.

Aeschylus had already composed a Theban trilogy, of which an Oedipus (lost) was the second play, and we may assume that the largest outlines of the story were familiar to all. Or at least so much: that it was predicted that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother; that, unwittingly, he did both; and that these offenses were discovered and made public. Concerning details, there were certainly variations. There were different stories about how, when, and where Oedipus died; Euripides in his lost Oedipus had the hero blinded by the henchmen of Laius; the traditions a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Contents
• Aeschylus: Agamemnon
• Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound
• Sophocles: Oedipus the King
• Sophocles: Antigone
• Euripides: Hippolytus
• Textual Notes