David Kovacs

This volume presents a newly edited text of Euripides' Troades, with a scene-by-scene and line-by-line commentary that brings centuries of classical scholarship to bear on a wide variety of questions. These include the interpretation of the play as part of a trilogy (its companion plays were Alexandros and Palamedes, of which we have only fragments), the contribution of the various scenes, speeches, and choral odes to the play, the style and usage of Euripides, and the stage action of the original performance. Since the play was performed in 415, shortly after the Athenian subjugation of Melos, it has frequently been interpreted as a criticism of Athenian foreign policy. The Introduction provides numerous converging arguments against this view and also shows that those who hold it are forced to ignore a greate deal of the text and cannot account for the Helen episode. The commentary, in addition to discussing the topics named above, interrogates the play's intellectual content, topics such as the nature of human success, vicissitude in mortal life, and the workings of the gods in the world, and re-evaluates the way the play's first audience were meant to react to the worldviews of Hecuba and others. It also examines carefully all the places where the text is insecure, places where there are significant variants or where what is transmitted is open to challenge. The book is written with the needs of both comparative beginners and seasoned classical scholars in mind.

This volume presents a newly edited text of Euripides' Electra with a scene-by-scene and line-by-line commentary that addresses a wide variety of questions, including the nature of Euripidean tragedy. In his Introduction and across several discussions in the commentary, David Kovacs presents an alternative to the current scholarly consensus on Euripides. Scholars following this consensus tell us that Euripides' play is a cynical take on the old story of Orestes' and Electra's revenge on Aegisthus and Clytaemestra. Both of the principal figures, we are told, are morally diminished, Electra inter alia by her excessive hatred of Clytaemestra and Orestes by his cynical reliance on Aegisthus' hospitable nature to get himself invited to the sacrifice at which he will kill his host. It is also alleged that this play virtually excludes the gods, who are part and parcel of the tragic genre. Kovacs shows that these and similar unfavourable judgements fail to take note of the practice of the other tragedians and also overlook evidence from Euripides' text, such as the frequent mention of the gods, that locate the play squarely within the tragic genre. What emerges is a play that is well constructed and thematically integrated; a play whose novelties--and an Athenian audience would not have wanted a play on an oft-treated myth to lack novelty--are all new ways of producing tragic effects found also in Aeschylus and Sophocles; a play that gives greater scope to the tragic view of the universe than even the corresponding plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, thereby confirming Aristotle's judgement that Euripides is 'the most tragic of the poets'; in short, a play that can be called a tragedy without qualification. The gap between Euripides' original manuscript and the earliest complete copy we possess is nearly two millennia. This volume makes a considerable number of suggestions for improving a Greek text that has been badly corrupted over this period of manual copying.

Oedipus the King is the best-known play we have from the pen of Sophocles and was recognized as a masterpiece in Aristotle's Poetics, which cites the play more often than any other as an example of how to write tragedy. The principal character is the king of a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, who consults Apollo at Delphi and is told that the plague will end only when those who killed the previous king, Laius, are found and punished. He launches an investigation, in the course of which he learns not only that he is himself the killer, but that Laius was his father and Laius' widow, whom he married, his own mother. As a result of this revelation Oedipus changes from being a respected king and conscientious investigator into a polluted and self-blinded outcast. This volume presents a highly-polished English verse translation of Sophocles' powerful play which renders both the beauty of his language and the horror of the events being dramatized. A detailed introduction and notes clearly elucidate how the plot is constructed and the meaning this construction implies, as well as how Sophocles ably concealed the fact that his characters act in ways which differ from what we expect in real life. It also addresses influential misinterpretations, thereby offering an accessible and authoritative introduction to the play that will be of benefit to a wide range of readers.

Oedipus the King is the best-known play we have from the pen of Sophocles and was recognized as a masterpiece in Aristotle's Poetics, which cites the play more often than any other as an example of how to write tragedy. The principal character is the king of a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, who consults Apollo at Delphi and is told that the plague will end only when those who killed the previous king, Laius, are found and punished. He launches an investigation, in the course of which he learns not only that he is himself the killer, but that Laius was his father and Laius' widow, whom he married, his own mother. As a result of this revelation Oedipus changes from being a respected king and conscientious investigator into a polluted and self-blinded outcast. This volume presents a highly-polished English verse translation of Sophocles' powerful play which renders both the beauty of his language and the horror of the events being dramatized. A detailed introduction and notes clearly elucidate how the plot is constructed and the meaning this construction implies, as well as how Sophocles ably concealed the fact that his characters act in ways which differ from what we expect in real life. It also addresses influential misinterpretations, thereby offering an accessible and authoritative introduction to the play that will be of benefit to a wide range of readers.