A study in the dramatic methods of Sophocles, especially in the revelation of character, as the primary essence of Sophocles' art.

Though at first it may seem to deal with rather specific questions concerning rhetoric, Plato’s Gorgias turns out to be about human life, and what is at stake in it. This apparent “change of subject” – or rather this ambiguity in the dialogue’s subjectmatter – has to do with the fact that the Gorgias is very much like a labyrinth: puzzling, intricate, made of multiple meandering paths in which one can easily get lost, and full of deviations which turn this way and that, of entrances that seem to be dead ends, and of dizzying turns that distort all sense of direction.

Demanding Witness argues that we need to reconsider the stories we tell about war's aftermath and its traumatic effects on soldiers and civilians. Many homecoming stories from antiquity to today focus on a "trauma hero" who returns home and overcomes pain and injury. Yet this story excludes many others harmed by war, including noncombatants, and fails to question why soldiers are going to war in the first place. Several Greek tragedies explore the traumatic effects of war on the home. This book shifts the focus to the representation and reception of women's expressions of trauma in these plays to expose the ripple effects of war, even on individuals and communities distant from the fighting.

This innovative study of Sophocles' Trachiniae deepens our appreciation of the enigmatic nature of Sophoclean tragedy and its place in the Athens of the Sophists. By carefully examining the play's narrative and rhetorical strategies, Bruce Heiden shows that the plot of Trachiniae must be constructed by the creative interpretation of the spectator or reader, and he demonstrates that Sophocles' extensive use of speeches reporting offstage events dramatizes the very problems that arise when rhetorical claims of knowledge conceal acts of interpretation. Tragic Rhetoric will interest both classicists and students of literary theory.