The Greek tragedy in new translations

The third play in an Oedipus-themed trilogy produced by Aeschylus in 467 BC. The trilogy is sometimes referred to as the Oedipodea. It concerns the battle between an Argive army led by Polynices and the army of Thebes led by Eteocles and his supporters.

This is the translation of the Euripides play about the princess Iphigeneia who narrowly avoided death by sacrifice at the hands of her father, Agamemnon. She was saved by the goddess Artemis, to whom the sacrifice was to be made, and swept off to Tauris. As a priestess at the goddess' temple, she has the gruesome task of ritually sacrificing foreigners who land on King Thoas's shores. It has much in common with another of the Greek playwright's work, Helen, as well as the lost play Andromeda, and is often described as a romance, a melodrama, a tragi-comedy or an escape play.

Centering on the right of proper burial for those fallen in battle, Suppliant Women reflects on war and on the rule of law. In Electra Euripides gives us his version of the famous legend of the murder of Clytaemestra by her children in revenge for her killing their father, a portrayal interestingly different from that in Sophocles' Electra. Narrating sudden reversals in the hero's fortunes, Heracles testifies to the fragility of human happiness.