Nine Greek Dramas

by Aeschylus, Charles William Eliot (Editor)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Genres: Classics, Drama, Plays, Nonfiction

472 pages, cloth

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Greek Αισχύλος , Esquilo in Spanish, Eschyle in French, Èsquil in Catalan, Eschilo in Italian, Эсхил in Russian.

Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC – c. 456 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.
Only seven of Aeschylus's estimated 70 to 90 plays have survived. There is a long-standing debate regarding the authorship of one of them, Prometheus Bound, with some scholars arguing that it may be the work of his son Euphorion. Fragments from other plays have survived in quotations, and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyri. These fragments often give further insights into Aeschylus' work. He was likely the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy. His Oresteia is the only extant ancient example. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is one of very few classical Greek tragedies concerned with contemporary events, and the only one extant. The significance of the war with Persia was so great to Aeschylus and the Greeks that his epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright.

Reviews

[Nullifidian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent selection of classic Greek dramas. The translations might strike the average reader as a trifle antiquated since the Harvard Classics itself was printed in the first decade of the 20th century, but in my opinion they were still all perfectly readable and enjoyable.

The nine plays in this volume are as follows:

The House of Atreus (a.k.a., The Oresteia) by Aeschylus, consisting of:

Agamemnon
The Libation Bearers
The Furies

Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus

Oedipus the King by Sophocles

Antigone by Sophocles

Hippolytus by Euripides

The Bacchae by Euripides

The Frogs by Aristophanes

For anyone who would like a more modern look at Greek drama, though it omits Aristophanes' "Old Comedy" and strictly looks at the Greek tragedians, I can recommend The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides by Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm. I wasn't always on board with every choice of the translators, but it's still the best single-volume introduction to classical Hellenic drama in print.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read "Nine Greek Dramas". This book is a collection of Greek Epics. It was written by Charles William Eliot. In this review I will go over my favorite Epic in this book, "The Furies".

The main characters in this story are Apollo, the Pythian Priestess, Aeschylus,and the Furies. In this Epic Apollo is sitting in up in Olympus with the rest of the Gods, Then he sees a beautiful girl and falls immediately in love. He tries to talk with the girl but she doesn't like him back. This girl is a Priestess for Pythia. Pythia is the god of strategy and wisdom, but she also believes that women don't need to live under men. So she bans her Priest to get maried or love a man. After constant denial Apollo disguises himself as a man that the Priestess once loved With a spell he got from Calypso, the god of magic. She falls for the facade and loves Apollo, But once Pythia finds out She gets really mad at Apollo. She ask Hades and Zeus to help her get revenge. So Hades creates her three hideous and evil monster he named the Furies. Zeus gave Pythia permission to lock Apollo with the monsters for a century. Pythia also killed the Priestess.

I enjoyed this book very much. I usually like books that involve greek mythology they are always interesting and fun. I did get kind of confused with the poems because of all the weird phrases and rhymes, but it was still a nice book.

[Abby Wang · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was great. I loved the diffrent stories.

But most of all, the book smelled amazing.

...

Thats not weird right?

byeeeee

(:(:(:

[Melissa Diaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profoundly engaging, compelling themes, great characters. The language of the HC (Harvard Classics) may be a slog, but I find that part of the appeal of wading through these volumes. The turn of the century language takes some getting used to, but while you're reading some great work of literature, you're also making connections about language and how it's evolved over time that will make you a better reader overall, of both contemporary and classical works. For these reasons, and maybe more I don't feel like taking the time to dive into or think up right now, reading the HC is like taking your brain to the gym to get swoll, bruh. It's reps (as in, I had to read the same line over and over again for an embarrasing length of time) and weights (meaning I had to go load up on several mental pounds of dictionary definitions, etymologies and wikipedia summaries before I knew what the hell I was looking at sometimes) for your thinkie parts.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably due to the age of these stories, and the style of the times, these dramas are a hard read. However, once you make the effort, you will be rewarded with so many ideas that are present in modern thought that you wonder how much progress we have actually made over two and a half millennia. One thing that struck me was that I had read Antigone in high school, and some later drama, but that we were told that comedy in olden times was not like modern comedy. The play "The Frogs" by Aristophanes was an excellent comedy in the modern sense, even humorous throughout. Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax (frog sounds in Greek, I suppose), was most hilarious, and the whole idea of going to Hades to talk with ancient playwrights in order to compare the change in style over time and to determine who was the best, the plot of the story, is itself quite amusing. The other eight plays were all older and all tragedies, but each helped one's understanding of the ideas presented and the historical perspective. I enjoyed all nine dramas.

[David Redden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know I'm a better person for having read these, but it was a slog.