Duckworth Companions to Greek & Roman Tragedy – serie

"Hippolytus" is generally acknowledged to be one of Euripides' finest tragedies, for the construction of its plot, its use of language and its memorable characterisations of Phaedra and Hippolytus. Furthermore, it asks serious and disturbing questions about the influence of divinity on human lives. Sophie Mills considers these and many other themes in detail, setting the play in its mythological, cultural and historical contexts. She also includes discussions of major trends in interpretations of the play and of subsequent adaptations of the Hippolytus story, from Seneca to Mary Renault and beyond.

"Iphigenia at Aulis" dramatises the myth of Iphigenia, the young virgin sacrificed by her father Agamemnon at the start of the expedition against Troy. The ongoing debates around Iphigenia's voluntary sacrifice, the corruption of the play's moral universe, and the corruption of its text make "Iphigenia at Aulis" one of Euripides' most intriguing and challenging plays. This Companion provides a summary of the plot, discusses the characters and main themes of the play, examines its mythological background, and explores the cultural, political, institutional, and theatrical contexts within which it was originally composed and performed. It also maps the changing fortunes and meanings of the play and outlines the history of its interpretations on page, stage, and screen.

Sophocles' "Ajax" is one of the most disturbing and powerful surviving ancient tragedies. But it is also difficult to understand and interpret. What are we to make of its protagonist's extremism? Does Ajax deserve the isolation and divine punishment he experiences? Why is his state of mind so difficult to determine? Dr Hesk offers answers to these and many other questions by drawing together the very latest critical work on the play and introducing the reader to key frames for its interpretation, including Sophoclean heroism, language and form; Homeric intertextuality and Athens' 'masculinist' culture, and the twentieth-century reception of Ajax.

In Euripides' play we see a very different figure from the Herakles of popular imagination. In his account of Herakles' maddened killing of his children, Euripides emphasises the human to the hero's character, presenting him as a loving father. Herakles is an ideal text for those new to ancient drama, raising many central issues of Greek tragedy. Emma Griffiths analyses the key themes and characters while situating the drama in the wider context of Greek tragedy and mythology. Euripides' approach to drama is illustrated through consideration of the hero's self-awareness, and the reception of the play in later art and literature is discussed as part of an exploration of the 'universality' of tragedy.

Euripides' "Medea" is one of the greatest and most influential Greek tragedies. This book outlines the development of the Medea myth before Euripides and explores his uniquely powerful version from various angles. There are chapters on the play's relationship to the gender politics of fifth-century Athens, Medea's status as a barbarian, and the complex moral and emotional impact of her revenge. Particular attention is paid to the tragic effect of Medea's great monologue and the significance of her role as a divine avenger. The book ends by considering the varied and fascinating reception of Euripides' play from antiquity to the present day.

Written in Nero's Rome in about AD62, Seneca's "Thyestes" is one of the ggreatest and most influential of classical tragedies. As the bloodiest work in the Greco-Roman canon, "Thyestes" was long reviled for its depiction of savage violence and for its representation of human bestiality. Peter Davis argues that the play needs to be understood as the response of a major politician, philosopher and tragic poet to the increasingly tyrannical rule of the emperor. In this companion he explores key aspects of the play, including the circumstances of its composition, its performance history and its impact on subsequent dramatists, including Shakespeare and Jonson.

Sophocles' Electra deals with the famous story of Orestes' vengeance on his mother Clytemnestra for her murder of his father Agamemnon. This book discusses whether the matricide is a just and final act of violence, or whether Sophocles ironically implies that it is more problematic than it seems. Electra is notable among Sophocles' plays for the prominent part played in it by female characters, and especially the heroic resistance and suffering of Orestes' sister Electra. The book pays particular attention to the portrayal of Electra herself, but also discusses wider issues of dramatic characterisation and Greek ethics. Sophocles is one of the greatest masters of the medium in the history of theatre, and the book explains the formal conventions of Greek tragedy and examines various aspects of his skill as a dramatist. The book concludes with an examination of later adaptations of the play, of which the most important is that by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1903), a study in extreme psychology which he adapted to form the libretto for Richard Strauss's opera Elektra.