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.

"Classical scholar James C. Hogan provides a general introduction to Aeschylean theater and drama, followed by a line-by-line commentary on each of the seven plays. He draws on a vast range of scholarship and criticism to give modern readers the most accurate picture possible of what ancient audiences saw and understood in the spectacle of Greek tragedy. Hogan places Aeschylus in the historical, cultural, and religious context of fifth-century Athens, showing how the action and metaphor of Aeschylean theater can be illuminated by information on Athenian law, athletic contests, relations with neighboring states, beliefs about the underworld, demons, omens, and divination, and countless other details of Hellenic life. He clarifies terms that might puzzle modern readers, such as place names and mythological references, and gives special attention to textual and linguistic issues: controversial questions of interpretation; difficult or significant Greek words; use of style, rhetoric, and commonplaces in Greek poetry; and Aeschylus's place in the poetic tradition of Homer, Hesiod, and the elegiac poets. Practical information on staging and production is also included, as the author has kept in mind the need of modern readers to visualize the drama in order to understand the text. Though little is known about Greek choreography and music, Hogan stresses their central role and provides notes on entrances and exits, the use of extras, costuming, tableaux, masks, the use of a stage, the interaction of chorus and actors, tone, gesture, style of acting, and spectacle."--Back cover

This book argues that the voice is a crucial link between bodies, thought, and mortal identity in the tragedies of Aeschylus. It first presents conceptions of the voice in Greek poetry and philosophy and then shows how Aeschylus' tragedies gain meaning from the rubric and performance of voice.

This anthology collects some of the most important plays by Ancient Greek tragedians, in updated translations with new introductions. Greek Tragedies, Volume III presents some of the finest and most fundamental works of Western dramatic literature. It draws together plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides from Chicago’s acclaimed nine-volume series, Complete Greek Tragedies. This third edition updates the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining the vibrancy for which they are famous. New introductions for each play provide essential information about the production histories and the stories themselves. This volume contains Aeschylus’s “The Eumenides,” translated by Richmond Lattimore; Sophocles’s “Philoctetes,” translated by David Grene; Sophocles’s “Oedipus at Colonus,” translated by Robert Fitzgerald; Euripides’s “The Bacchae,” translated by William Arrowsmith; and Euripides’s “Alecestis,” translated by Richmond Lattimore.

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).

The "Eumenides", the concluding drama in Aeschylus' sole surviving trilogy, the "Oresteia", is not only one of the most admired Greek tragedies, but also one of the most controversial and contested, both to specialist scholars and public intellectuals. It stands at the crux of the controversies over the relationship between the fledgling democracy of Athens and the dramas it produced during the City Dionysia, and over the representation of women in the theatre and their implied status in Athenian society. The "Eumenides" enacts the trial of Agamemnon's son Orestes, who had been ordered under the threat of punishment by the god Apollo to murder his mother Clytemnestra, who had earlier killed Agamemnon.In the "Eumenides", Orestes, hounded by the Eumenides (Furies), travels first to Delphi to obtain ritual purgation of his mother's blood, and then, at Apollo's urging, to Athens to seek the help of Athena, who then decides herself that an impartial jury of Athenians should decide the matter. Aeschylus thus presents a drama that shows a growing awareness of the importance of free will in Athenian thought through the mythologized institution of the first jury trial.

This book further develops Professor Seaford's innovative work on the study of ritual and money in the developing Greek polis. It employs the concept of the chronotope, which refers to the phenomenon whereby the spatial and temporal frameworks explicit or implicit in a text have the same structure, and uncovers various such chronotopes in Homer, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Presocratic philosophy and in particular the tragedies of Aeschylus. Mikhail Bakhtin's pioneering use of the chronotope was in literary analysis. This study by contrast derives the variety of chronotopes manifest in Greek texts from the variety of socially integrative practices in the developing polis - notably reciprocity, collective ritual and monetised exchange. In particular, the Oresteia of Aeschylus embodies the reassuring absorption of the new and threatening monetised chronotope into the traditional chronotope that arises from collective ritual with its aetiological myth. This argument includes the first ever demonstration of the profound affinities between Aeschylus and the (Presocratic) philosophy of his time.

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