Aeschylus' Persae, first produced in 472 BC, is the oldest surviving Greek tragedy. It is also the only extant Greek tragedy that deals, not with a mythological subject, but with an event of recent history, the Greek defeat of the Persians at Salamis in 480 BC. Unlike Aeschylus' other surviving plays, it is apparently not part of a connected trilogy. In this new edition A. F. Garvie encourages the reader to assess the Persae on its own terms as a drama. It is not a patriotic celebration, or a play with a political manifesto, but a genuine tragedy, which, far from presenting a simple moral of hybris punished by the gods, poses questions concerning human suffering to which there are no easy answers. In his Introduction Garvie defends the play's structure against its critics, and considers its style, the possibility of thematic links between it and the other plays presented by Aeschylus on the same occasion, its staging, and the state of the transmitted text. The Commentary develops in greater detail some of the conclusions of the Introduction.

This book's first appearance (1969) was a full response to the publication (in 1952) of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus which indicated a late production date (in the 460s BC) for Aeschylus' Supplices, thus upsetting the previous scholarly consensus that it was an early work - indeed the earliest Greek tragedy to survive. There was, the book argued, no longer good reason to suppose that the play belonged to an early stage in its author's development. A final chapter also examined the evidence for reconstruction of the other, lost plays of the trilogy.The present (and first paperback) edition remains essentially unchanged, though a new preface has been added to take account of scholarship since 1969. Few would now argue, as they used to, that Supplices belongs to the 490s but some still have the feeling that it looks like an early play; they attempt to put it back into the 470s. Stylistic and structural evidence, itself often subjective, is not strong enough to place the play in one decade or exclude it from the previous one; but Garvie remains convinced that, even without the additional testimony of the papyrus, all the internal evidence points to the 460s.While the view that Supplices is very early may now have died, some of the salutary lessons of P.Oxy 2256 fgt. 3 have still to be learnt and it is timely for this re-issue to be presented to a new generation of Aeschylean students and scholars.

This is the first self-contained edition of Odyssey Books VI-VIII which together form a popular introduction to Homer for students of Greek, containing as they do the account of Odysseus' visit to the Phaeacians and including such famous episodes as Odysseus' meeting with Nausicaa, and the singing of the minstrel Demodocus. While not neglecting matters of language and formulaic composition, the Commentary aims especially to provide guidance on questions of literary and narrative technique and poetic artistry. The Introduction deals with the problem of Homeric composition in general, and with the place of the Phaeacian books in the poem as a whole. There are brief section on Homeric metre and the text. The edition is intended for students beginning their study of Homer as well as for more advanced scholars.

Produced in 458 BC, Aeschylus' Choephori stands as the second play in the Oresteian trilogy. The bloodshed begun in the first play with the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra is here continued when Agamemnon's son Orestes avenges his father's death by killing Clytemnestra. It is not until the third and final play, Eumenides, that peace is restored to the family of the Atreiadae. This edition (first published in hardback in 1986) takes into account the large amount of recent research on the play and tackles the problems presented by an unusually corrupt text. The introduction discusses the pre-Aeschylean 'Orestes' tradition in literature (from Homer to Pindar) and art (representations on vases and reliefs), as well as the place of Choephori within the Oresteia, its imagery and dramatic structure, the questions of staging the play, and the manuscript tradition. Much of the commentary looks at problems of style, dramatic technique, and interpretation of the play, and before each scene is discussed an analysis of its contribution to the drama as a whole is supplied. The text and critical apparatus reproduced are those of D. L. Page (Oxford Classical Texts).

This excellent introduction to the six extant plays of Aeschylus is fully revised and updated, with additional further reading, ideal for the student unfamiliar with these earliest of Greek tragedies. Aeschylus is the oldest of the three great Greek tragedians and lived from 525/524 to 465/455. He took part in the battle of Marathon in 490 and probably also in the battle of Salamis in 480, the subject of his Persians. Working in chronological order of their first production, this volume explores Persians, the earliest Greek tragedy that has come down to us; Seven against Thebes; Suppliants; and the three plays of the Oresteia trilogy: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers and Eumenides. The book also contains an essay on Prometheus Bound, now generally thought not to be by Aeschylus, but accepted as his in antiquity. The volume is a companion to The Plays of Euripides (by James Morwood) and The Plays of Sophocles (by Alex Garvie) also available in second editions from Bloomsbury. A further essential guide to the themes and context of ancient Greek tragedy may be found in Laura Swift's new introductory volume, Greek Tragedy.

Ajax, perhaps the earliest surviving tragedy of Sophocles, presents the downfall and disgrace of a great hero whose suicide leads to his rehabilitation through the enlightened magnanimity of one of his enemies. This edition attempts to show that Sophocles offers no easy answer to the question of why Ajax falls, and no simple solution to the problem of how we ought to live so as to avoid tragedy in our own lives. Greek text with facing-page English translation. With introduction and extensive commentary. "266p (Aris & Phillips 1998)" DEGREESG

The emphasis throughout this book, ideal for sixth form and early university students, is on Sophocles' tragic thinking, on the concept of the 'Sophoclean hero', and on the dramatic structure of the plays. The seven extant plays, Ajax, Women of Trachis, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus are assessed and a brief concluding chapter draws together what has been said in the seven studies. This second edition has been revised fully, with an updated further reading list and more detailed information on the chorus and staging of the plays. The aim of the book is to help readers to understand why Sophocles is still worth reading, or going to see in the theatre, in the 21st century, and to show how far Sophoclean scholarship has moved in recent decades from the once prevalent view that he was a pious religious conformist who had nothing very profound or original to say, but who said it very beautifully. The volume is a companion to The Plays of Euripides (by James Morwood) and The Plays of Aeschylus (by Alex Garvie) also available in second editions from Bloomsbury. A further essential guide to the themes and context of ancient Greek tragedy may be found in Laura Swift's new introductory volume, Greek Tragedy.