Böcker av Euripides

Treating ancient plays as living drama.

This text is the second of three volumes of a prose translation, with introduction and notes, of Euripides' popular plays. The first three tragedies in this volume illustrate Euripides' dramatic range. "Rhesus", probably the work of another playwright, deals with an event in the Trojan war.

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.

Deals with the aftermath of the Trojan War for the defeated survivors, as Andromache shows Hector's widow as a trophy of war in the house of her Greek captor, and Hecabe portrays a defeated queen avenging the murder of her last-remaining son.

The work of these three Athenian playwrights became the touchstone for drama for the next two and a half thousand years. This volume contains the earliest surviving Greek tragedy, an archtype of the human condition, a jealous wife's mistake, a moral debate, an anti-war play and a play of paradoxes.

Text, Notes and Preface in Latin.

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly recreate 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 editorship of Herbert Golder and the late William Arrowsmith, each volume includes a critical introduction, commentary on the text, full stage directions, and a glossary of the mythical and geographical references in the plays. Produced more frequently on the ancient stage than any other tragedy, Orestes retells with striking innovations the story of the young man who kills his mother to avenge her murder of his father. Though eventually exonerated, Orestes becomes a fugitive from the Furies (avenging spirits) of his mother's blood. On the brink of destruction, he is saved in the end by Apollo, who had commanded the matricide. Powerful and gripping, Orestes sweeps us along with a momentum that starting slowly, builds inevitably to one of the most spectacular climaxes in all Greek tragedy.

The NHB Drama Classics series presents the world's greatest plays in affordable, highly readable editions for students, actors and theatregoers. The hallmarks of the series are accessible introductions (focussing on the play's theatrical and historical background, together with an author biography, key dates and suggestions for further reading) and the complete text, uncluttered with footnotes. The translations, by leading experts in the field, are accurate and above all actable. The editions of English-language plays include a glossary of unusual words and phrases to aid understanding. Bacchae was first performed in Athens in 405 BC. At the whim of Dionysos, a son is torn to pieces by his own mother during the famous women-only Bacchanalian ritual. The story of revenge by the half-man half-god on Pentheus, King of Thebes, and all his people.

Written during the long battles with Sparta that were to ultimately destroy ancient Athens, these six plays by Euripides brilliantly utilize traditional legends to illustrate the futility of war. The Children of Heracles holds a mirror up to contemporary Athens, while Andromache considers the position of women in Greek wartime society. In The Suppliant Women, the difference between just and unjust battle is explored, while Phoenician Women describes the brutal rivalry of the sons of King Oedipus, and the compelling Orestes depicts guilt caused by vengeful murder. Finally, Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides' last play, contemplates religious sacrifice and the insanity of war. Together, the plays offer a moral and political statement that is at once unique to the ancient world, and prophetically relevant to our own.

Including a comprehensive discussion of the play's background and an incisive assessment of its dramatic structure, this edition makes an outstanding contribution to Euripides scholarship.

One of the greatest playwrights of Ancient Greece, the works of Euripides (484-406 BC) were revolutionary in their depiction of tragic events caused by flawed humanity, and in their use of the gods as symbols of human nature. The three plays in this collection show his abilities as the sceptical questioner of his age. Alcestis, an early drama, tells the tale of a queen who offers her own life in exchange for that of her husband; cast as a tragedy, it contains passages of satire and comedy. The tragicomedy Iphigenia in Tauris melodramatically reunites the ill-fated children of Agamemnon, while the pure tragedy of Hippolytus shows the fatal impact of Phaedra's unreasoning passion for her chaste stepson. All three plays explore a deep gulf that separates man from woman, and all depict a world dominated by amoral forces beyond human control.

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.

Euripides (c. 485-406 BCE) has been prized in every age for his emotional and intellectual drama. Eighteen of his ninety or so plays survive complete, including Medea, Hippolytus, and Bacchae, one of the great masterpieces of the tragic genre. Fragments of his lost plays also survive.