The Greek Tragedies: Seventeen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides

Chicago’s renowned translations of the greatest surviving plays of ancient Greece, collected into a single volume.

Drawn from the authoritative third editions of David Grene and Richmond Lattimore’s collections of the complete Greek tragedies, expertly updated by Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most, this collection brings together seventeen of the greatest surviving plays of ancient Greece. Combining accuracy, poetic immediacy, and clarity of presentation, the masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides have been rendered so compellingly in English that they remain the definitive translations. Each text has been carefully updated to bring it even closer to the ancient Greek original while retaining the vibrancy for which Chicago’s versions are famous.

Alongside the plays, this edition includes an introduction to the life and work of each tragedian; an introduction to each play offering essential information about its first production, plot, and reception through the centuries; and notes addressing textual uncertainties. Featuring lively translations by eminent classicists and authors including Anne Carson, Robert Fitzgerald, David Grene, Richmond Lattimore, Oliver Taplin, Emily Townsend Vermeule, and Elizabeth Wyckoff, this is an indispensable anthology for any reader of the foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.

David Grene (1913-2002) taught classics for many years at the University of Chicago. He was a founding member of the Committee on Social Thought. Richmond Lattimore (1906-1984) was a poet, translator, and longtime professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr College. Mark Griffith is Klio Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Classical Languages and Literature, and professor of classics and theater, dance, and performance studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Glenn W. Most is a visiting member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and an external scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.