Ajax. Electra. Oedipus Tyrannus [Greek, Ancient (To 1453)]

By Sophocles

Book Overview

Ancient Athens' most successful tragedian.

Sophocles (497/6-406 BC), with Aeschylus and Euripides, was one of the three great tragic poets of Athens, and is considered one of the world's greatest poets. The subjects of his plays were drawn from mythology and legend. Each play contains at least one heroic figure, a character whose strength, courage, or intelligence exceeds the human norm--but who also has more than ordinary pride and self-assurance. These qualities combine to lead to a tragic end.

Hugh Lloyd-Jones gives us, in two volumes, a new translation of the seven surviving plays. Volume I contains Oedipus Tyrannus (which tells the famous Oedipus story), Ajax (a heroic tragedy of wounded self-esteem), and Electra (the story of siblings who seek revenge on their mother and her lover for killing their father). Volume II contains Oedipus at Colonus (the climax of the fallen hero's life), Antigone (a conflict between public authority and an individual woman's conscience), The Women of Trachis (a fatal attempt by Heracles' wife to regain her husband's love), and Philoctetes (Odysseus' intrigue to bring an unwilling hero to the Trojan War).

Of his other plays, only fragments remain; but from these much can be learned about Sophocles' language and dramatic art. The major fragments--ranging in length from two lines to a very substantial portion of the satyr play The Searchers--are collected in Volume III of this edition. In prefatory notes Lloyd-Jones provides frameworks for the fragments of known plays.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: Greek, Ancient (To 1453)
• ISBN: 0674995570
• ISBN13: 9780674995574
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.6" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

Worth the investment.

If you haven't read anything by Sophocles and want to read him for fun, I'd suggest getting the Fagles translations of the Theban plays, followed by the Sophocles II volume published by University of Chicago. That will get you every complete play we have by him and is a good way to start. However, if you've read one (or even all) of the plays in this volume, know some Greek, and want to go a bit deeper, this is the book you're looking for. The translations in this volume are extremely, almost unusually, literal. While the two most prominent translations (Fagles and Greene) waver from the text at times for poetic value, Lloyd-Jones does nothing of the sort. For the most part, what you see on the left side is as close as it gets in English to the Greek on the right side. This is really helpful for those who know enough Greek to be curious about what Sophocles is up to but not enough to actually read the text in the Greek without a lexicon. I generally see Loeb books as investments, due to their high costs. This is one investment that has paid off for me. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Oedipus the King, Ajax, or Electra (although let's be honest: you probably want this more for Oedipus the King than for the other two plays).

oedipus tyrannus

This play is a fantastic view at what some ancient people in Athens thought about their leader Pericles. I love this play, and can only justify Loeb Classics as the best text. I challenge anyone to read this play and not feel a strange need to wickedly laugh out loud as the story unfolds.

Reading for Enjoyment

I honestly enjoyed reading these plays. Especially the first and third. The translation is easy to read and flows really well. I picked these up to supplement some lines of study that I'm pursuing but ended up enjoying them in their own right and for the purposes natural to them. These are not dusty old dry plays - exactly the opposite - these are vibrant introductions to the ancient greek world. I highly recommend you read these - and I recommend this edition and most especially the wonderful translation.