Suppliant Women. Electra. Heracles

One of antiquity’s greatest poets, Euripides (ca. 485-406 BCE) has been prized in every age for the pathos, terror, surprising plot twists, and intellectual probing of his dramatic creations. Here, in the third volume of a new edition that is receiving much praise, are four of his plays.

Suppliant Women reflects on war and on the rule of law. Euripides’s Electra–presenting the famous legend of a brother and sister who seek revenge on their mother for killing their father–is a portrayal interestingly different from that of Aeschylus or Sophocles. Heracles shows the malice of the gods–and mutual loyalty as the human response to divinely sent disaster.

David Kovacs gives us a freshly edited Greek text and a new translation that, in the words of Greece and Rome, is close to the Greek and reads fluently and well.