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Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. Under the general editorship of Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, each volume includes a critical introduction, commentary on the text, full stage directions, and a glossary of the mythical and geographical references in the play. En route to fight the Trojan War, the Greek army has abandoned Philoctetes, after the smell of his festering wound, mysteriously received from a snakebite at a shrine on a small island off Lemnos, makes it unbearable to keep him on ship. Ten years later, an oracle makes it clear that the war cannot be won without the assistance of Philoctetes and his famous bow, inherited from Hercules himself. Philoctetes focuses on the attempt of Neoptolemus and the hero Odysseus to persuade the bowman to sail with them to Troy. First, though, they must assuage his bitterness over having been abandoned, and then win his trust. But how should they do this--through trickery, or with the truth? To what extent do the ends justify the means? To what degree should personal integrity be compromised for the sake of public duty? These are among the questions that Sophocles puts forward in this, one of his most morally complex and penetrating plays.

This is a new translation in verse of Medea by a well-regarded poet with an introduction and notes by a scholar of Euripides. The result is a distinguished new edition of a canonical play, one of the most widely read and performed of all the Greek dramas.

Euripides' "Bakkhai" is the staple of the canon of Greek tragedy, as its structure and thematics offer exemplary models of the classic tragic elements. The plot centres around the actions of Pentheus, King of Thebes, who refused to recognize the god Dionysus or permit Thebans to worship him.

Peter Burian and Brian Swann re-create Euripides' controversial play in a new translation accompanied by critical introductions, stage directions, a glossary of mythical Greek terms, and a commentary on difficult passages.

In this sensitive new translation by James Michie and Colin Leach, Euripides' fragile structure of subtlety, in both timing and tone, is beautifully preserved.

In this new translation, Sophocles early masterpiece comes boldly to life. In Greek tradition, Aias is the outmoded warrior whom time passes by. In Sophocles play, he becomes the man who moves resolutely beyond time. Most previous versions and interpretations have equivocated over Sophocles bold vision. This version attempts to translate precisely that transformation of the hero from the bygone figure to the man who stops time. In Homer, Aias is the immovable bulwarkof the Achaians, second only to Achilles in battle prowess and size. But when Achilles dies, his armor is given to the wily Odysseus, not Aias. Shamed, and driven to madness, Aias dies a dishonorable death by suicide. He becomes, in death, the symbol of greatness lost; his death signals the end of aheroic age; in the visual arts, draped hideously over his huge sword, he becomes a momento mori. Sophocles plays upon his audiences expectation of all this. In the first scene Aias appears as the Homeric warrior turned mad butcher. It is harder to imagine a more degraded image of the hero. But with each scene, Aias moves from darkness into greater and greater light, and speaks, contrary to the audiences expectations, more like a Heraclitean philosopher of the worlds flux than the laconic figureknown from Homer. In fact, Sophocles Aias clearly sees his madness and the betrayal by the Greeks as merely symptomatic of a world in which nothing remains constant, not loyalties, not oaths, not friendship, not love. Not content to live in a world where nothing lasts, he resolves to live andtherefore to die in accord with the more absolute law of his own inner nature. He thereby transforms his death into destiny, dying with his grip on the absolute rather than living on in a world of uncertainties. In death, he thus becomes the paradigm of permanence, of the human possibility of snatching the eternal from the desperately fleeting. This version embodies, and the introduction and notes hope to elucidate, how Sophocles brings this tragic vision of human greatness powerfully tolife.

The modern reader may have difficulty conceiving of Iphigeneia in Tauris as tragedy, for the term in our sense is associated with downfall, death, and disaster. But to the ancient Greeks, the use of heroic legend, the tragic diction and meters, and the tragic actors would have defined it as pure tragedy, the happy ending notwithstanding. While not one of his "deep" dramatic works, the play is Euripidean in many respects, above all in its recurrent theme ofescape, symbolized in the rescue of Iphigeneia by Artemis, to whom she was about to be sacrificed. Richmond LattimoreΓÇöwho has been called the dean of American translatorsΓÇöhas translated Iphigeneia in Tauris with skill and subtlety, revealing it as one of the most delicately written and beautifully contrived of the Euripidean "romances."

The story of a futile quest for knowledge, this ancient anti-war drama is one of the neglected plays within the corpus of Greek tragedy. Euripides'' shortest tragic work, Rhesos is unique in lacking a prologue, provoking some scholars to the conclusion that the beginning of the play has been lost. In this exciting translation, Rhesos is no longer treated as a derivative Euripidean work, but rather as the tightly-knit tragedy of knowledge it really is. A drama in which profound problems of fate and free will come alive, Rhesos is also an exploration of the perversion of values that come as the result of war. Charged with a striking immediacy, this play is contemporary in the questions it raises, and eternal in its quest for truth.

One of the shortest plays in Greek drama, The Children of Herakles offers enough action for two or three plays of normal length. But this very richness and complexity have made the play elusive, subject to dismissive readings, and extraordinarily difficult to translate; in consequence, it has suffered from neglect over the ages. This vibrant new translation makes clear that The Children of Herakles is actually a wonderfully well-crafted work ofart, a play offering a wealth of rewards to the modern reader. It is a play about war and the effects of war within the state. Herakles, the legendary hero cursed from birth, was never permitted a triumphant homecoming. Here, his descendants continue the effort to return home, seeking asylum from the persecution of the king who had imposed on Herakles the famous twelve labors. While it pursues concepts of deep moral grandeur, it ends with a denouement of astonishing physical and ethical brutality, and affords Euripides a severe comment on what hebelieved was the decline of the Athenian character.

In "Herakles", Euripides reveals with subtlety and complexity the often brutal underpinnings of our social arrangements. The play depicts Herakles being driven mad by Hera, the wife of Zeus. Hera hates Herakles because he is one of Zeus' children born of adultery.

A reprint of the translation previously published in the "Greek Tragedy in New Translations" series, Sophocles' timeless work is the most famous of all Greek tragedies.

This volume collects for the first time three of Sophocles most moving tragedies, all set in mythical Thebes: Oedipus the King, perhaps the most powerful of all Greek tragedies; Oedipus at Colonus, a story that reveals the reversals and paradoxes that define moral life; and Antigone, a touchstone of thinking about human conflict and human tragedy, the role of the divine in human life, and the degree to which men and women are the creatorsof their own destiny.

This volume collects for the first time four plays of Euripides in the acclaimed Greek Tragedy in New Translations series, each previously published individually: Alcestis, Medea, Helen, and Cyclops.

This volume collects Euripides' Electra, an exciting story of vengeance that counterposes suspense and horror with comic realism; Orestes, the tragedy of a young man who kills his mother to avenge her murder of his father; Iphigenia in Tauris, a delicately written and beautifully contrived Euripidean "romance"; and Iphigeneia at Aulis, a compelling look at the devastating consequence of "man's inhumanity to man." This volume reprints the informativeintroductions and notes of the original editions, and adds a single combined glossary and Greek line numbers.

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. The volume brings together four major works by one of the greatest classical dramatists: Electra, translated by Anne Carson and Michael Shaw, a gripping story of revenge, manipulation, and the often tense conflict of the human spirit; Aias, translated by Herbert Golder and Richard Pevear, an account of the heroic suicide of the Trojan war hero better known as Ajax; Philoctetes, translated by Carl Phillips and Diskin Clay, a morally complex and penetrating play aboutthe conflict between personal integrity and public duty; and The Women of Trachis, translated by C.K. Williams and Gregory W. Dickerson, an urgent tale of mutability in a universe of precipitous change. These four tragedies were originally available as single volumes. This new volume retains the informative introductions andexplanatory notes of the original editions and adds a single combined glossary and Greek line numbers.

In "Andromache", Euripides depicts the aftermath of the Trojan war, when Andromache, the widow of Hector, has a fruitful, but illicit affair with the son of Achilles. The ensuing power-struggle with Hermione, the wronged wife, is re-told in this collaboration between a poet and a classicist.

Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro's masterful translation of The Oresteia, originally published in 2003, is being repackaged for the collected volumes in the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series. Burian will add Greek line numbers and update the introduction and bibliography.

This volume collects Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, a haunting depiction of the most famous of Olympian punishments; The Suppliants, an extraordinary drama of flight and rescue arising from women's resistance to marriage; Persians, a masterful telling of the Persian Wars from the view of the defeated; and Seven Against Thebes, a richly symbolic play about the feuding sons of Oedipus. The volume retains the informative introductions andexplanatory notes of the original editions and adds a single combined glossary and Greek line numbers.

Among surviving Greek tragedies only Euripides' Trojan Women shows us the extinction of a whole city, an entire people. Despite its grim theme, or more likely because of the centrality of that theme to the deepest fears of our own age, this is one of the relatively few Greek tragedies that regularly finds its way to the stage. Here the power of Euripides' theatrical and moral imagination speaks clearly across the twenty-five centuries that separate our worldfrom his. The theme is really a double one: the suffering of the victims of war, exemplified by the woman who survive the fall of Troy, and the degradation of the victors, shown by the Greeks' reckless and ultimately self-destructive behavior. It offers an enduring picture of human fortitude in the midst ofdespair. Trojan Women gains special relevance, of course, in times of war. It presents a particularly intense account of human suffering and uncertainty, but one that is also rooted in considerations of power and policy, morality and expedience. Furthermore, the seductions of power and the dangers both of its exercise and of resistance to it as portrayed in Trojan Women are not simply philosophical or rhetorical gambits but part of the lived experience of Euripides' day. Andtheir analogues in our own day lie all too close at hand. This new powerful translation of Trojan Women includes an illuminating introduction, explanatory notes, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading.

This volume collects for the first time three of Sophocles most moving tragedies, all set in mythical Thebes: Oedipus the King, perhaps the most powerful of all Greek tragedies; Oedipus at Colonus, a story that reveals the reversals and paradoxes that define moral life; and Antigone, a touchstone of thinking about human conflict and human tragedy, the role of the divine in human life, and the degree to which men and women are the creatorsof their own destiny.

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. Collected here for the first time in the series are four major works by Euripides all set in Athens: Hippoltos, translated by Robert Bagg, a dramatic interpretation of the tragedy of Phaidra; Suppliant Women, translated by Rosanna Warren and Steven Scully, a powerful examination of the human psyche; Ion, translated by W. S. Di Piero and Peter Burian, a complex enactment of the changing relations between the human and divine orders; and The Children ofHerakles, translated by Henry Taylor and Robert A. Brooks, a descriptive tale of the descendants of Herakles and their journey home. These four tragedies were originally avialble as single volumes. This volume retains the informative introductions and explanatory notes of the original editions and adds a single combines glossary and Greekline numbers.

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. Collected here for the first time in the series are four major works by Euripides all set in Athens: Hippoltos, translated by Robert Bagg, a dramatic interpretation of the tragedy of Phaidra; Suppliant Women, translated by Rosanna Warren and Steven Scully, a powerful examination of the human psyche; Ion, translated by W. S. Di Piero and Peter Burian, a complex enactment of the changing relations between the human and divine orders; and The Children ofHerakles, translated by Henry Taylor and Robert A. Brooks, a descriptive tale of the descendants of Herakles and their journey home. These four tragedies were originally avialble as single volumes. This volume retains the informative introductions and explanatory notes of the original editions and adds a single combines glossary and Greekline numbers.

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. The volume brings together four major works by one of the greatest classical dramatists: Electra, translated by Anne Carson and Michael Shaw, a gripping story of revenge, manipulation, and the often tense conflict of the human spirit; Aias, translated by Herbert Golder and Richard Pevear, an account of the heroic suicide of the Trojan war hero better known as Ajax; Philoctetes, translated by Carl Phillips and Diskin Clay, a morally complex and penetrating play aboutthe conflict between personal integrity and public duty; and The Women of Trachis, translated by C.K. Williams and Gregory W. Dickerson, an urgent tale of mutability in a universe of precipitous change. These four tragedies were originally available as single volumes. This new volume retains the informative introductions andexplanatory notes of the original editions and adds a single combined glossary and Greek line numbers.

Merwin and Dimock have provided a new translation for this celebrated tragedy, with a comprehensive introduction, notes on the text, and a glossary of mythical and geographical terms.

The formidable talents of Anthony Hecht, one of the most gifted of contemporary American poets, and Helen Bacon, a classical scholar, are here brought to bear on this vibrant translation of Aeschylus'' much underrated tragedy The Seven Against Thebes. The third and only remaining play in a trilogy dealing with related events, The Seven Against Thebes tells the story of the Argive attempt to claim the Kingdom of Thebes, and of the deaths of thebrothers Eteocles and Polyneices, each by the others hand. Long dismissed by critics as ritualistic and lacking in dramatic tension, Seven Against Thebes is revealed by Hecht and Bacon as a work of great unity and drama, one exceptionally rich in symbolism and imagery.

A translation of Euripides's Orestes by Peck, a poet, and Nisetich, a classicist, with introduction, glossary, and full stage directions.

One of Euripides' late plays, Ion is a complex enactment of mortals' attempts to understand the actions of the gods and their own conflicted natures. The play's beauty and violence, its lyrical delicacy and nearly tragic action, offer a compelling view of the human condition.