Plato's conversations of Socrates are among the most accessible philosophical texts most of us have ever read, yet the more one pursues the art or intelligibility of this writing, the more mysterious and paradoxical the Platonic texts become. What does it mean to study Plato, not philosophically as a maker of arguments, not poetically as a maker of dialogues, but literally as a maker of texts? This is a question that Jacques Derrida has made his own, and in this book Farness creates a dial...

This deluxe edition of the world's most beloved, bestselling classic on Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology is stunningly illustrated with specially commissioned full-color plates and a beautiful gold-bordered pages.Since its original publication in 1942, Edith Hamilton's Mythology has sold millions of copies throughout the world and established itself as a perennial bestseller. For nearly 80 years, readers have chosen Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes...

This file includes 10 tragedies by Euripides, literally translated by Theodore Buckley. The plays are: HECUBA, ORESTES, PHOENISSAE (The Phoenician Virgins), MEDEA, HIPPOLYTUS, ALCESTIS, BACCHAE, HERACLIDAE, IPHIGENIA IN AULIS, and IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS. According to Wikipedia: "Euripides (ca. 480 BCE–406 BCE) was the last of the three great tragedians of classical Athens (the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles). Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, alth...

This anthology collects some of the most important plays by Ancient Greek tragedians, in updated translations with new introductions.Greek Tragedies, Volume III presents some of the finest and most fundamental works of Western dramatic literature. It draws together plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides from Chicago's acclaimed nine-volume series, Complete Greek Tragedies. This third edition updates the translations to bring them even closer ...

Herodotus is not only known as the `father of history', as Cicero called him, but also the father of ethnography; as well as charting the historical background to the Persian Wars, his curiosity also prompts frequent digression on the cultures of the peoples he introduces. While much of the information he gives has proved to be astonishingly accurate, he also entertains us with delightful tales of one-eyed men and gold-digging ants. This readable new translation is supplemented with expans...

Classic Greek tragedy concerns the catastrophe that ensues when the King of Thebes imprisons Dionysus and attempts to suppress his cult. Full of striking scenes, frenzied emotion, and choral songs of great power and beauty, the play is a fine example of Euripides' ability to exploit Greek myth to probe human psychology.

Aristophanes was one of the Ancient Greeks' most famous playwrights, and some of his works survived to the modern day, including this one.

Medusa, the Gorgon, who turns those who gaze upon her to stone, is one of the most popular and enduring figures of Greek mythology. Long after many other figures from Greek myth have been forgotten, she continues to live in popular culture. In this fascinating study of the legend of Medusa, Stephen R. Wilk begins by refamiliarizing readers with the story through ancient authors and classical artwork, then looks at the interpretations that have been given of the meaning of the myth through ...

"The Iphigenia in Tauris is not in the modern sense a tragedy; it is a romantic play, beginning in a tragic atmosphere and moving through perils and escapes to a happy end. To the archaeologist the cause of this lies in the ritual on which the play is based. All Greek tragedies that we know have as their nucleus something which the Greeks called an Aition-a cause or origin. They all explain some ritual or observance or commemorate some great event." So begins the preface to "Iphigenia in T...

No play of Euripides is more admired than Hippolytus. The tale of a married woman stirred to passion for a younger man was traditional, but Euripides modified this story and blended it with one of divine vengeance to create a masterpiece of tension, pathos, and dramatic power. In this play, Phaedra fights nobly but unsuccessfully against her desire for her stepson Hippolytus, while the young man risks his life to keep her passion secret. Both of them, constrained by the overwhelming force ...

In this volume William S. Anderson sets Plautus, who wrote Rome's earliest surviving poetry, in his rightful place among the Greek and Roman writers of what we know as New Comedy (fourth to second centuries).Anderson begins by defining major innovations that Plautus made on inherited Greek New Comedy (Menander, Philemon, and Diphilus), transforming it from romantic domestic drama to a celebration of rollicking family anarchy. He shows how Plautus diminished the traditional importan...

What role did poetry, music, song, and dance play in the social and political life of the ancient Greek city? How did philosophy respond to, position itself against, and articulate its own ambitions in relation to the poetic tradition? How did ancient philosophers theorize and envision alternatives to fourth-century Athenian democracy? The City and the Stage poses such questions in a study of the Laws, Plato's last, longest, and unfinished philosophical dialogue. Reading the Laws ...