Euripides – författare

De måste dö, och eftersom de måste dö

ska jag som fött dem döda dem.

Av de sjutton pjäser som finns bevarade av Euripides hand är Medea den mest spelade och älskade. Dramat hade premiär i Athen våren 431 f Kr och kretsar kring klassiska teman som svek, hämnd, utanförskap och vansinne. Flyktingens tvetydiga situation inför makten ges i Medeas gestalt en psykologisk och politisk tolkning som bevarat sin laddning genom århundradena. Men framför allt är det kanske som kvinno­porträtt Medea är oslagbar – hennes vrede och hämndbegär upphör aldrig att fascinera.

Denna nyutgåva av det klassiska dramat är översatt för scenen av Jan Stolpe och Agneta Pleijel, med förord och förklarande noter av Jan Stolpe.

Grekerna har erövrat Troja och staden har bränts till aska; nu återstår att fördela bytet. I Trojanskorna är det kvinnorna som får röst, bland dem Hektors mor Hekabe, hans hustru Andromache, sierskan Kassandra och Helena. Euripides starka antikrigspjäs visar krigets grymma logik där alla blir förbrytare. Nyöversättning av Agneta Pleijel och Jan Stolpe, med förord och förklarande noter av Jan Stolpe.

Euripides är den yngste av de tre stora grekiska tragöderna, och Backanterna och Ifigenia i Aulis blev hans sista tragedier. De uppfördes först efter författarens död år 406 f.Kr. och bildar en magnifik slutpunkt på den klassiska grekiska dramatiken. I Backanterna kommer guden Dionysos till Thebe i Grekland och kräver att bli erkänd. Kung Pentheus möter honom med arrogans och misstro, och gudens hämnd blir grym – han är »oändligt fruktansvärd, och med oändlig mildhet«. I dramat ställs den övermodiga rationalismen mot den mogna livsvisdomen. I Ifigenia i Aulis drabbas den grekiska hären av stiltje på sin väg till Troja. För att ge grekerna förlig vind kräver gudinnan Artemis att deras ledare Agamemnon ska offra sin dotter Ifigenia. Agamemnon hamnar i en till synes olöslig konflikt, där kärleken till dottern ställs mot pliktkänslan och omgivningens tryck. Dramerna är översatta av Göran O. Eriksson och Jan Stolpe. Den senare har även skrivit förord och kommentarer.

Alcestis/Medea/The Children of Heracles/Hippolytus'One of the best prose translations of Euripides I have seen' Robert FaglesThis selection of plays shows Euripides transforming the titanic figures of Greek myths into recognizable, fallible human beings. Medea, in which a spurned woman takes revenge upon her lover by killing her children, is one of the most shocking of all the Greek tragedies. Medea is a towering figure who demonstrates Euripides' unusual willingness to give voice to a woman's case. Alcestis is based on a magical myth in which Death is overcome, and The Children of Heracles examines conflict between might and right, while Hippolytus deals with self-destructive integrity. Translated by JOHN DAVIE

THE ACCLAIMED TRANSLATION BY ROBIN ROBERTSON (FORWARD PRIZE, MAN BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLIST 2018)Euripides' Medea, the brutally powerful ancient Greek tragedy that reverberates down the centuries, has been brought to fresh and urgent life by one of our best modern poets.Medea has been betrayed. Her husband Jason has left her for a younger woman. He has forgotten all the promises he made and is even prepared to abandon their two sons. But Medea is not a woman to accept such disrespect passively. Strong-willed and fiercely intelligent, she turns her formidable energies to working out the greatest, and most horrifying, revenge possible...Suitable for the general reader as well as for students and performers.'In Robertson's lucid, free-running verse, Medea's power is released into the world, fresh and appalling, in words that seem spoken for the first time' Anne Enright'This version of Medea is vivid, strong, readable and brings triumphantly into modern focus the tragic sensibility of the ancient Greeks' John Banville'Robertson's achievement is to make the dialogue flow without losing the unsettling poetry of the original' Financial Times

Heracles/ Iphigenia Among the Taurians/ Helen/ Ion/ Cyclops: Of these plays, only 'Heracles' truly belongs in the tragic sphere with its presentation of underserved suffering and divine malignity. The other plays flirt with comedy and comic themes. Their plots are ironic and complex with deception and elusion eventually leading to reconciliation between mother and son in 'Ion', brother and sister in 'Iphigenia', and husband and wife in 'Helen'. The comic vein is even stronger in the satyric'Cyclops' in which the giant's inebriation and subsequent violence are treated as humorous. Together, these plays demonstrate Euripides' challenge to the generic boundaries of Athenian drama.

Of all the ancient Greek tragedians, Euripides was the most sensitive to the lives of women and other outcasts in Athenian society, and Electra and Other Plays collects five plays demonstrating his talent for bringing to life their plight. This Penguin Classics edition is translated by John Davie with an introduction and notes by Richard Rutherford.Written during a period overshadowed by the fierce struggle for supremacy between Sparta and Euripides' native Athens, these five plays are haunted by the shadow of war - and in particular its impact on women. In Electra the children of Agamemnon take bloody revenge on their mother for murdering their father after his return from Troy, and Suppliant Women depicts the grieving mothers of those killed in battle. The other plays deal with the aftermath of the Trojan War for the defeated survivors, as Andromache shows Hector's widow as a trophy of war in the house of her Greek captor, and Hecabe portrays a defeated queen avenging the murder of her last-remaining son, while Trojan Women tells of the plight of the city's women in the hands of their victors.John Davie's compelling translations are accompanied by an introduction by Richard Rutherford describing the tragic genre and Euripides innovations, along with a chronology, prefaces to each play, notes, a bibliography and a glossary of names.Euripides (c.485-07 BC) was an Athenian born into a family of considerable rank. Disdaining the public duties expected of him, Euripides spent a life of quiet introspection, spending much of his life in a cave on Salamis. Late in life he voluntarily exiled himself to the court of Archelaus, King of Macedon, where he wrote The Bacchae, regarded by many as his greatest work. Euripides is thought to have written 92 plays, only 18 of which survive.If you enjoyed Electra and Other Plays, you might like Euripides' Medea and Other Plays, also available in Penguin Classics.'The most intensely tragic of all the poets'Aristotle

Through their sheer range, daring innovation, flawed but eloquent characters and intriguing plots, the plays of Euripides have shocked and stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. Phoenician Women portrays the rival sons of King Oedipus and their mother's doomed attempts at reconciliation, while Orestes shows a son ravaged with guilt after the vengeful murder of his mother. In the Bacchae, a king mistreats a newcomer to his land, little knowing that he is the god Dionysus disguised as a mortal, while in Iphigenia at Aulis, the Greek leaders take the horrific decision to sacrifice a princess to gain favour from the gods in their mission to Troy. Finally, the Rhesus depicts a world of espionage between the warring Greek and Trojan camps.

This stunning translation, by the acclaimed poet Robin Robertson (Forward Prize, Man Booker shortlist 2018), has reinvigorated Euripides' devastating take of a god's revenge for contemporary readers, bringing the ancient verse to fervid, brutal life.Dionysus, god of wine and ecstasy, has come to Thebes, and the women are streaming out of the city to worship him on the mountain, drinking and dancing in wild frenzy. The king, Pentheus, denouces this so-called 'god' as a charlatan. But no mortal can deny a god and no man can ever stand against Dionysus.'The dialogue is taut, volcanic and often exquisitely beautiful... Euripides deserves to have his exquisite verse transformed into modern speech, and in Robertson I believe he has found a poet who can do that.' Edith Hall, Literary Review

The plays of Euripides have stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. This volume, containing Phoenician Women, Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Orestes, and Rhesuscompletes the new editions of Euripides in Penguin Classics.

Medea/Hecabe/Electra/HeraclesFour devastating Greek tragedies showing the powerful brought down by betrayal, jealousy, guilt and hatredThe first playwright to depict suffering without reference to the gods, Euripides made his characters speak in human terms and face the consequences of their actions. In Medea, a woman rejected by her lover takes hideous revenge by murdering the children they both love, and Hecabe depicts the former queen of Troy, driven mad by the prospect of her daughter's sacrifice to Achilles. Electra portrays a young woman planning to avenge the brutal death of her father at the hands of her mother, while in Heracles the hero seeks vengeance against the evil king who has caused bloodshed in his family.Translated with an Introduction by PHILIP VELLACOTT

Written during the long battles with Sparta that were to ultimately destroy ancient Athens, these six plays by Euripides brilliantly utilize traditional legends to illustrate the futility of war. The Children of Heracles holds a mirror up to contemporary Athens, while Andromache considers the position of women in Greek wartime society. In The Suppliant Women, the difference between just and unjust battle is explored, while Phoenician Women describes the brutal rivalry of the sons of King Oedipus, and the compelling Orestes depicts guilt caused by vengeful murder. Finally, Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides' last play, contemplates religious sacrifice and the insanity of war. Together, the plays offer a moral and political statement that is at once unique to the ancient world, and prophetically relevant to our own.

Agememnon is the first part of the Aeschylus's Orestian trilogy in which the leader of the Greek army returns from the Trojan war to be murdered by his treacherous wife Clytemnestra. In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex the king sets out to uncover the cause of the plague that has struck his city, only to disover the devastating truth about his relationship with his mother and his father.Medea is the terrible story of a woman's bloody revenge on her adulterous husband through the murder of her own children.

Already tested in performance on the stage, this translation shows for the first time in English the striking interplay of voices in Euripides' Suppliant Women. Torn between the mothers' lament over the dead and proud civic eulogy, between calls for a just war and grief for the fallen, the play captures with unremitting force the competing poles of the human psyche. The translators, Rosanna Warren and Stephen Scully, extenuate the contrasting tonalities in counterpoint of female lament and male reasoned discourse in this play where the silent dead hold, finally, centre stage.

At once a vigorous translation of one of Euripides' most subtle and witty plays, and a wholly fresh interpretation, this version reveals for the first time the extraordinary formal beauty and thematic concentration of the Alcestis.The late William Arrowsmith, who was an eminent classical scholar, translator, and General Editor of this highly praised series, rejects the standard view of the Alcestis as a psychological study of the egotist Admetos and his naive but devoted wife. His translation, instead, presents the play as a drama of human existence--in keeping with the tradition of Greek tragedy--with recognizably human characters who also represent masked embodiments of human conditions. The Alcestis thus becomes a metaphysical tragicomedy in which Admetos, who has heretofore led a life without limitations, learns to "think mortal thoughts." He acquires the knowledge of limits--the acceptance of death as well as the duty to live--which, according to Euripides, makes people meaningfully human and capable of both courage and compassion. This new interpretation compellingly argues that, for Euripides, suffering humanizes, that exemption makes a man selfish and childish, and that only the courage to accept both life and death leads to the realization of one's humanity, and, in the case of Alcestis, to heroism.

One of the shortest plays in Greek drama, The Children of Herakles offers enough action for two or three plays of normal length. But this very richness and complexity have made the play elusive, subject to dismissive readings, and extraordinarily difficult to translate; in consequence, it has suffered from neglect over the ages. This vibrant new translation makes clear that The Children of Herakles is actually a wonderfully well-crafted work of art, a play offering a wealth of rewards to the modern reader.It is a play about war and the effects of war within the state. Herakles, the legendary hero cursed from birth, was never permitted a triumphant homecoming. Here, his descendants continue the effort to return home, seeking asylum from the persecution of the king who had imposed on Herakles the famous twelve labors. While it pursues concepts of deep moral grandeur, it ends with a denouement of astonishing physical and ethical brutality, and affords Euripides a severe comment on what he believed was the decline of the Athenian character.

The story of a futile quest for knowledge, this ancient anti-war drama is one of the neglected plays within the corpus of Greek tragedy. Euripides' shortest tragic work, Rhesos is unique in lacking a prologue, provoking some scholars to the conclusion that the beginning of the play has been lost.In this exciting translation, Rhesos is no longer treated as a derivative Euripidean work, but rather as the tightly-knit tragedy of knowledge it really is. A drama in which profound problems of fate and free will come alive, Rhesos is also an exploration of the perversion of values that come as the result of war. Charged with a striking immediacy, this play is contemporary in the questions it raises, and eternal in its quest for truth.

In most versions of the Hippolytos myth, Phaidra is depicted as an utterly debauched character, a woman reduced to shamelessness by the power of Aphrodite. In Euripides' Hippolytos, however--informed by the playwright's moral and religious fascination--we find a Phaidra resisting the goddess of love with all her strength, though in the end unsuccessfully. Phaidra becomes a tragic foil for Hippolytos, making his superhuman virtue at once believable and understandable.Robert Bagg's profound translation of this Euripidean masterpiece is idiomatic, natural, and intensely lyrical, designed not only to be read but performed. Unlike most versions, Bagg's Hippolytos sustains the dramatic tome and dynamics to the very end--even after Phaidra's death--and the moving scenes between Hippolytos and Theseus, and later Hippolytos' death-scene with Artemis, receive here unprecedented plausibility and power.

The modern reader may have difficulty conceiving of Iphigeneia in Tauris as tragedy, for the term in our sense is associated with downfall, death, and disaster. But to the ancient Greeks, the use of heroic legend, the tragic diction and meters, and the tragic actors would have defined it as pure tragedy, the happy ending notwithstanding. While not one of his "deep" dramatic works, the play is Euripidean in many respects, above all in its recurrent theme of escape, symbolized in the rescue of Iphigeneia by Artemis, to whom she was about to be sacrificed.Richmond Lattimore--who has been called the dean of American translators--has translated Iphigeneia in Tauris with skill and subtlety, revealing it as one of the most delicately written and beautifully contrived of the Euripidean "romances."

Peter Burian and Brian Swann re-create Euripides' The Phoenician Women, a controversial play about the fateful history of the house of Laios following the tragic fall of Oedipus, King of Thebes.Adding to the impressive Greek Tragedy in New Translations series, this translation displays the cohesion and rigid organization of this complex and much debated play. Through use of dramatic, fast-paced poetry, this version captures the original spirit of Euripides' focus on classic repercussions of fate, interspersed with the everpresent power of will. The edition is accompanied by critical introductions, expositions of translators' principles, stage directions, a glossary of mythical Greek terms, and commentary on difficult passages.

In this new translation of Euripides' celebrated Greek tragedy, W.S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. offer a compelling look at the devastating consequence of `man's inhumanity to man'.A stern critique of Greek culture, Iphigeneia at Aulis condemns the Trojan War by depicting the power of political ambition and the ensuing repercussions of thoughtlessly falling to the will of constituency. The translation impressively re-creates the broad array of moral and emotional tones conveyed by Euripides, with a comprehensive introduction, notes on the text, and a glossary of mythical and geographical terms.

Outstepping the literal bounds of genre, Euripides' Helen has been referred to by scholars as both a tragedy and a comedy. In this sensitive new translation by James Michie and Colin Leach, Euripides' fragile structure of subtlety, in both timing and tone, is beautifully preserved.From the myth ascribed to the Sicilian poet Stesichorus, Helen plays on the question of two Helens: one a phantom in Troy, and the other the real Helen who remained in Egypt. A myriad of reversals, thought-provoking examples of differing orders of reality, and juxtapositions of opposites, allow Euripides to comment on the futility of war and the distinction between appearance and reality.

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly recreate the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. Under the general editorship of the late William Arrowsmith and Herbert Golder, each volume includes a critical introduction, commentary on the text, full stage directions, and a glossary of the mythical and geographical references in the plays.This vital translation of Euripides' Electra recreates the prize-winning excitement of the original play. Electra, obsessed by dreams of avenging her father's murder, impatiently awaits the return of her exiled brother Orestes. When he arrives, the play mounts toward its first climax, a tender recognition scene. From that moment on, Electra uses Orestes as her instrument of vengeance. They kill their mother's husband, then their mother herself--and only afterward see the evil inherent in these seemingly just acts. But in his usual fashion, Euripides has imbued myth with the reality of human experience, counterposing suspense and horror with comic realism and down-to-earth comments on life.

One of Euripides' late plays, Ion is a complex enactment of the changing relations between the human and divine orders and the way in which our understanding of the gods is mediated and re-visioned by myths. The story begins years before the play begins, with the rape of the mortal Kreousa, queen of Athens, by Apollo. Kreousa bears Apollos' child in secret then abandons it. Unbeknownst to her, Apollo has the child brought to his temple at Delphi to be reared by the priestess as ward of the shrine. Many years later, Kreousa, now married to the foreigner Xouthos but childless, comes to Delphi seeking prophecy about children. Apollo, however, speaking through the oracle, bestows the temple ward, Ion, on Xouthos as his child. Enraged, Kreousa conspires to kill as an interloper the very son she has despaired of finding. After mother and son both try to kill each other, the priestess reveals the birth tokens that permit Kreousa to recognize and embrace the child she thought was dead. Ion discovers the truth of his parentage and departs for Athens, as a mixed blood of humanity and divinity, to participate in the life of the polis.In Ion, disturbing riptides of thought and feeling run just below the often shimmering surfaces of Euripidean melodrama. Although the play contains some of Euripides' most beautiful lyrical writing, it quivers throughout with near disasters, poorly informed actions and misdirected intentions that almost result in catastrophe. Kreousa says at one point that good and evil do not mix, but Euripides' argument, and what the youthful Ion strives to understand, is that human beings are not only compounded of good and evil, but that the two are often the same thing differently experienced, differently understood, just as beauty and violence are mixed both in the gods and in the mortal world.

A translation of Euripides's Orestes by Peck, a poet, and Nisetich, a classicist, with introduction, glossary, and full stage directions.

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. Under the general editorship of Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, each volume includes a critical introduction, commentary on the text, full stage directions, and a glossary of the mythical and geographical references in the play.In Andromache, Euripides challenges our concept of tragic character as he transforms our expectations of tragic structure. Through its subtly varied metrics, the play develops an increasingly complex plot and concludes with a simultaneous realization of realism and supernaturalism.The play takes place in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Andromache has become a concubine to Achilles' son, Neoptolemus, bearing him a child, Molossus. The captive Andromache is haunted by memories of her former life and by her love for Hector and their son Astyanax, both slain by the Greeks who are now her masters. As the play opens, Andromache and Molossus are threatened with death by Neoptolemus' young wife, Hermione, who has been unable to conceive a child and is fiercely jealous. The struggle between the two women is mirrored in the conflict between Peleus, who arrives to defend Andromache, and Menelaus, who arrives to help his daughter Hermione complete her bid for power.

Euripides' Bakkhai is the staple of the canon of Greek tragedy and is required or strongly recommended reading for most undergraduate Classics majors. It also surfaces quite often in non-classics courses focusing on tragedy because its structure and thematics offer exemplary models of the classic tragic elements. The plot of Bakkhai centers around the actions of Pentheus, King of Thebes, who refused to recognise the god Dionysus or permit Thebans to worship him. In revenge, Dionysus drove Pentheus mad, made him cross-dress as a maenad, sent him to worship the god he had spurned, and made his mother, Agave, mistake him for a wild beast and rip him to shreds. Gibbons, a prize-winning poet, and Segal, a renowned classicist, are both leaders in their professions and are well-suited to take on this central text of Greek tragedy. This edition includes an introduction, a new translation, notes on the text, and a glossary.

In Herakles, Euripides reveals with great subtlety and complexity the often brutal underpinnings of our social arrangements. The play enacts a thoroughly contemporary dilemma about the relationship between personal and state violence to civic order . Of all of Euripides' plays, this is his most skeptically subversive examination of myth, morality, and power. The play depicts Herakles being driven mad by Hera, the wife of Zeus. Hera hates Herakles because he is one of Zeus' children born of adultery. In his madness, Herakles is driven to murder his own wife and children, and he eventually exiles himself to Athens. The volume includes a new translation, an introduction, notes on the text, and a glossary.