Delphi Complete Works of Euripides

by Euripides

During the Hellenistic Age, the great tragedian Euripides became a cornerstone of ancient literary education, his plays exhibiting an iconoclastic, rationalising attitude toward both religious belief and the ancient myths that formed the traditional subject matter of Greek drama.. The Ancient Classics series provides Kindles with the wisdom of the Classical world, with both English translations and the original Latin and Greek texts. This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works of the Athenian playwright Euripides, with beautiful illustrations, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)

* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Euripides’ life and works
* Features the complete extant plays of Euripides, in both English translation and the original Greek
* Concise introductions to the tragedies and other works
* Images of contemporary Greek art and famous classical paintings that have been inspired by Euripides’ works
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* Easily locate the plays or works you want to read with individual contents tables
* Includes Euripides’ rare dramas RHESUS and CYCLOPS
* Features two bonus biographies - discover Euripides’ ancient world
* Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres

Please note: some Kindle software programs cannot display Greek characters correctly, however they do display correctly on Kindle devices.

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CONTENTS:

The Translations
ALCESTIS
MEDEA
HERACLEIDAE
HIPPOLYTUS
ANDROMACHE
HECUBA
THE SUPPLIANTS
ELECTRA
HERACLES
THE TROJAN WOMEN
IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS
ION
HELEN
PHOENICIAN WOMEN
ORESTES
BACCHAE
IPHIGENIA AT AULIS
RHESUS
CYCLOPS

The Greek Texts
LIST OF GREEK TEXTS

The Biographies
INTRODUCTION TO EURIPIDES by Arthur S. Way
EURIPIDES by T. W. Lumb

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Genres: Classics, Plays, Poetry, Fiction, Mythology, Drama, Tragedy

Kindle Edition

Published November 30, 2015

About the author

Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of William Shakespeare's Othello, Jean Racine's Phèdre, of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

Reviews

[Marquise · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Delphi edition of Euripides' works has all the 19 surviving works in English, and also a separate section dedicated to the same plays in the original Greek, for those who'd be interested in checking the sources in that language, though they should be warned that the transcription needs improving.

The top ten plays I've rated and reviewed separately under the Paul Roche edition I read alongside Delphi's, so for here I'll go for the remaining nine, which I'd rate like this:

Heracleidae = 3 stars.
Andromache = 4 stars.
Hecuba = 4 stars.
The Suppliants = 3 stars.
Heracles = 3 stars.
Helen = 1 star.
Phoenician Women = 4.5 stars
Rhesus = 3 stars.
Cyclops = 3.5 stars.

To my taste, more than half of the plays were unremarkable, and not of much interest beyond the cultural value and the historical insight they provided. From the average-starred plays, the comedy Cyclops stood out because it was quite unique, the only surviving comedy by a tragedian of the Big Tree. Its plotline, a retelling of the episode from The Odyssey where Odysseus reaches the island of the cyclops Polyphemus and finds out he's not alone but has a gaggle of stranded satyrs with him, wasn't side-splittingly hilarious, but it did have some good banter lines and it gave a good sample of Euripides' sense of humour.

This edition also contained the only play I'm giving one star to. Whilst I can clearly see what Euripides was intending to do (redeem Helen from her culpable responsibility in the outbreak of the Trojan War by writing an allegorical plot on perception vs reality), I find he was neither convincing nor logical in his rationale. Helen went willingly with Paris, abandoning not only her husband but her daughter, and ditching her royal responsibilities. She was the Queen of Sparta, and had duties in that position, so she'd not be as stupid as to not imagine what would happen if she ran off with a lover. Even if her elopement was just an excuse for war, a much needed excuse for the Achaeans itching for a war with Troy, it's still on her head to have handed them that desired excuse on a gold platter. And it wasn't like Helen was a stranger to kidnapping, she had been abducted as a child (that time she was definitely innocent), and had to know what dire consequences there'd be if she was taken away another time and this time with her complicity. So, it's accountability what we're dealing with here, something I've already seen Euripides doesn't do well in other plays also. Here, he tries to exonerate Helen from responsibility by making it the gods' fault, and it's even more ridiculous when it's the gods who abduct her and leave her to pass the entire war in Egypt whilst the same gods create a "fake Helen" made of ghostly matter and place her in Troy so she won't be "defiled" by Paris.

Oh, please. It's not like there have never been any attempts to redeem Helen, in Classical Antiquity or modern times, but this is downright ridiculous. It merely strips her of control over herself, takes away her autonomy, and obliterates her self-determination, because bad as it was, to run off with Paris was still her independent decision as an adult woman. Is it redemption to make her a poor, helpless victim of the gods' connivance and pettiness? And what about how absurd it sounds that the motivation should be to not pollute her virtue? Easier for the gods to simply arrange "a lamentable accident" for Paris before he arrives in Sparta or something as sensible...

On the other corner, amongst the three plays that got the higher ratings from me, my favourite was Phoenician Women, which was Euripides' take on the legend of Oedipus. The plot of this drama mixes the arcs of Sophocles' Antigone with Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes, resulting in a very good story that you might want to read if only to see how Euripides fares at this tale. I did like it a lot, and at the same time I found it amusing that the stories we have versions of by all three great Greek tragedians are Electra and Oedipus, both names immortalised for giving "family intercourse" a meaning the proper Victorians that used the expression wouldn't find funny.

Hecuba was also excellent, and heartbreaking, as it's about the captive former Queen of Troy dealing with the treacherous murder of her last surviving child. Her vengeance is terrible, and some might say that she went overboard, but not even Agamemnon can fault her for this. Andromache was likewise extremely sad, but not so tragic. In this play, Hector's widow is now the concubine of Achilles' son, Neoptolemus, and has born him a son, Molossus (I seem to recall this is how Alexander the Great could claim he was a descendant of Achilles through his Molossian mother, Olympias), but this earns her the hatred of Neoptolemus' barren wife, Hermione, the daughter of Helen. Euripides goes for a like mother, like daughter plot, having Hermione behave so bitchy and murderous towards Andromache and her child, causing an impasse that drags Menelaus and Peleus into the mess, and eventually gets Neoptolemus murdered by Orestes, with whom Hermione elopes much in the fashion Helen did, though at least there were sounder motives here. Tyndareus just has no luck with daughters or granddaughters; first Helen, then Clytemnestra, then Hermione...

To conclude, I'd like to suggest that Delphi make an effort to include modern translations in their anthologies of classics. This one was all old 19th century translations, in old-fashioned language, full of thees and thous. It doesn't make their editions accessible to the general public, which are the ones more in need of them.

[Les Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taken me a long time to read but I cannot rush the classics and this is one of the best.

[Lydia Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

(See review of ‘The Orestia’, and ‘The Complete Plays of Sophocles’). Read for my University Course on Greek Tragedy. An avid fan of the Iliad and the Odyssey, I found these ancient dramatic renditions of much-loved myths thoroughly enjoyable. Re-familiarising myself with the generational curse on the House of Atreus, the text picks up the tragic debris from the siege of Troy. where the siege of Troy. I was thrilled to encounter my childhood favourites from a fresh, un-Homeric perspective, their personalities and motives detailed with remarkable cogency on account of the dramatic form. I usually struggle to immerse myself in plays as I would a novel, yet the comfort of familiar names had me immediately invested. I excitedly await the coming term, enthusiastic to further my classical knowledge, and broaden my awareness of the characteristics of the tragic mode.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-reading these tragedies back-to-back after so many years (Oh Columbia's Humanities requirement!) was stimulating, instructive and rewarding. Most stiriking: through numerous, sharply drawn characters and various choruses, Euripedes constantly celebrates/advances Greek virtues of democracy, diplomacy, temperance, justice, peace and reason, even while the same characters, and action are usually driven by passions and in opposite directions, often thanks to the gods. (One great piece of dialogue: Achilles: "Reason can wrestle and overthrow terror." Clytemnestra: "My hopes are cold on that.")

Then too, and in the background mostly, Euripedes raises the question of: if the gods are to be as fickle ("callous, unjust and immoral") as humans, why do we sacrifce. submit to and worship them? Good question. And timeless too.