No qualifications. Go out and buy it everybody."Kenneth Rexroth, The Nation"The translations deliberately avoid the highly wrought and affectedly poetic; their idiom is contemporary....They have life and speed and suppleness of phrase."Times Education Supplement"These translations belong to our time. A keen poetic sensibility repeatedly quickens them; and without this inner fire the most academically flawless rendering is dead."Warren D. Anderson, American Oxonian"The critical commentaries and the versions themselves...are fresh, unpretentious, above all, functional."Commonweal"Grene is one of the great translators."Conor Cruise O'Brien, London Sunday Times"Richmond Lattimore is that rara avis in our age, the classical scholar who is at the same time an accomplished poet."Dudley Fitts, New York Times Book Review

    Alternate cover edition can be found here, here, here, hereIn the Oresteia—the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity—Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos.Moving from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, their spirit of struggle and regeneration becomes an everlasting song of celebration.

    The first playwright to depict suffering without reference to the gods, Euripides made his characters speak in human terms and face the consequences of their actions. In Medea, a woman rejected by her lover takes hideous revenge by murdering the children they both love, and Hecabe depicts the former queen of Troy, driven mad by the prospect of her daughter’s sacrifice to Achilles. Electra portrays a young woman planning to avenge the brutal death of her father at the hands of her mother, while in Heracles the hero seeks vengeance against the evil king who has caused bloodshed in his family. Philip Vellacott’s lucid translation is accompanied by an introduction, which discusses the literary background of Classical Athens and examines the distinction between instinctive and civilized behaviour.

    The Achanians is a plea for peace set against the background of the long war with Sparta. In Lysistrata a band of women tap into the awesome power of sex in order to end a war. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged.For this edition Alan Sommerstein has completely revised his translation of these three plays, bringing out the full nuances of Aristophanes’ ribald humour and intricate word play, with a new introduction explaining the historical and cultural background to the plays.

    Over the years these authoritative, critically acclaimed editions have been the preferred choice of more than three million readers for personal libraries and individual study as well as for classroom use.

    Horace Gregory, in this modern translation, turns his poetic gifts toward a deft reconstruction of Ovid's ancient themes, using contemporary idiom to bring today's reader all the ageless drama and psychological truths vividly intact. --From the book jacket

    Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, The Poetics introduces into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis (‘imitation’), hamartia (‘error’), and katharsis (‘purification’). Aristotle explains how the most effective tragedies rely on complication and resolution, recognition and reversals, centring on characters of heroic stature, idealized yet true to life. One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history, the Poetics has informed serious thinking about drama ever since.Malcolm Heath’s lucid English translation makes the Poetics fully accessible to the modern reader. It is accompanied by an extended introduction, which discusses the key concepts in detail and includes suggestions for further reading.

    As Aeneas journeys closer to his goal, he must first prove his worth and attain the maturity necessary for such an illustrious task. He battles raging storms in the Mediterranean, encounters the fearsome Cyclopes, falls in love with Dido, Queen of Carthage, travels into the Underworld and wages war in Italy.

    The Theogony contains a systematic genealogy of the gods from the beginning of the world and an account of their violent struggles before the present order was established. The Works and Days, a compendium of moral and practical advice for a life of honest husbandry, throws a unique and fascinating light on archaic Greek society, ethics, and superstition. Hesiod's poetry is the oldest source for the myths of Prometheus, Pandora, and the Golden Age.Unlike Homer, Hesiod tells us about himself and his family (he lived in central Greece in the late eighth century BC). This new translation by a leading expert combines accuracy with readability.

    They recount the key episodes in the lives of the gods, and dramatise the moments when they first appear before mortals. Together they offer the most vivid picture we have of the Greek view of the relationship between the divine and human worlds.

    After the murder of her daughter Iphegenia by her husband Agamemnon, Klytaimestra exacts a mother’s revenge, murdering Agamemnon and his mistress, Kassandra. Displeased with Klytaimestra’s actions, Apollo calls on her son, Orestes, to avenge his father’s death with the help of his sister Elektra. In the end, Orestes, driven mad by the Furies for his bloody betrayal of family, and Elektra are condemned to death by the people of Argos, and must justify their actions—signaling a call to change in society, a shift from the capricious governing of the gods to the rule of manmade law.Carson’s accomplished rendering combines elements of contemporary vernacular with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy, opening up the plays to a modern audience. In addition to its accessibility, the wit and dazzling morbidity of her prose sheds new light on the saga for scholars. Anne Carson’s Oresteia is a watershed translation, a death-dance of vengeance and passion not to be missed.

    During the War of the Seven Against Thebes, Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, learns that her brothers have killed each other, having been forced onto opposing sides of the battle. When Creon, king of Thebes, grants burial of one but not the "treacherous" other, Antigone defies his order, believing it her duty to bury all of her close kin. Enraged, Creon condemns her to death, and his soldiers wall her up in a tomb. While Creon eventually agrees to Antigone's release, it is too late: She takes her own life, initiating a tragic repetition of events in her family's history.In this outstanding new translation, commissioned by Ireland's renowned Abbey Theatre to commemorate its centenary, Seamus Heaney exposes the darkness and the humanity in Sophocles' masterpiece, and inks it with his own modern and masterly touch.

    Taken in by a goatherd and a shepherd respectively, and raised near the town of Mytilene, they grow to maturity unaware of one another's existence - until the mischievous god of love, Eros, creates in them a sudden overpowering desire for one another. A masterpiece among early Greek romances, attracting both high praise and moral disapproval, this work has proved an enduringly fertile source of inspiration for musicians, writers and artists from Henry Fielding to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Maurice Ravel. Longus transforms familiar themes from the romance genre - including pirates, dreams, and the supernatural - into a virtuoso love story that is rich in insight, humorous and ironical in its treatment of human sexual experience.

    With stage performance specifically in mind, Ahl renders Seneca's dramatic force in a modern idiom and style that move easily between formality and colloquialism as the text demands, and he strives to reproduce the richness of the original Latin, to retain the poetic form, images, wordplays, enigmas, paradoxes, and dark humor of Seneca's tragedies.In this powerful and imaginative translation of Medea, Frederick Ahl retains the compelling effects of the monologues, as well as the special feeling and pacing of Seneca's choruses.

    . . . The translation is faithful in the very best sense: it reflects both the meaning and the beauty of the Greek text. . . . The footnotes are always helpful, never obtrusive. A one-page outline is useful since there are no editorial additions to mark major divisions in the dialogue. An appendix containing fragments of early Greek love poetry helps the reader appreciate the rich, and perhaps elusive, meaning of eros. . . . The entire Introduction is crisply written, and the authors' erudition shines throughout, without a trace of pedantry. . . . this is an excellent book that deservedly should find wide circulation for many years to come." --Tim Mahoney, University of Texas at Arlington