On Fates, Furies, Gods, and Ancient Plays

Medea has been released in a new translation by Robin Robertson which updates the language while at the same time trying to stay true to the ancient text.  Many translators have tried the same thing.  Hearing an interview with Robertson on WNYC I was inspired to put together a quick recommendation list of ancient dramatists and their plays that are worth reading.

I love the ancient tragedies and comedies.  In college there were two classes that a classics professor offered.  One in Ancient drama and one in Ancient Comedy.  The concept for the class was simple.  The first two weeks of the class was about finding a play that we would discuss for the semester.  Along with discussing and exploring this play the class would also produce this play and perform it for one performance at the end of the semester.  I participated in both.  The first one in my Junior year was ancient comedy.  We studied and performed Plautus’s Truculentus (yes, not a Greek play but an ancient one nonetheless. Set in the American West in the 1870s.)  My senior year was ancient drama and we did Euripides’s Medea (set in ancient Greece, though a few of us championed setting it in a Mafia family in the 1920s).

Those two classes gave me a greater appreciation for the classics and I still wonder if Professor Calhoon still does these two classes.

More than likely most of us have read a few Greek plays in high school.  I would guess Oedipus the King.  Well that is about all I read in high school.  In college I had taken a few classics courses.  One on The Iliad and Odyssey, one on Plato’s Republic and the Great State. And a few others including the two I mentioned above.  I loved those classes and I suspect it was because of the professor.  They left me with a great appreciation for the ancient plays.

I have three favorite playwrights.  Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles.

Medea, written by Euripides with a new translation by Robin Robertson, is by far one of the greatest plays ever written.  And I am excited to read this new translation.

Aeschylus, of course, wrote The Oresteia. One of the greatest trilogies ever written (are you beginning to see a trend here?).  Consisting of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides, we are treated to the death of Agamemnon at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra, vengeance for his killing by Electra and Orestes, and finally the consequences of Orestes murder of his mother.

Which brings us back to Euripides.  So why did Clytemnestra kill her husband? Well to revenge the sacrificing of her daughter Iphigeneia. In Iphigeneia at Aulis, we see how cowardly the men are and how brave one girl is.  I guess since we tend to view the Spartan men on their way to war with the Trojans as these great courageous men, that reading this play tends to shock us when Iphigeneia decides that in order for Sparta to win she must sacrifice herself for her country.

Finally we come to Sophocles who has written what probably is the most popular ancient trilogy ever. The Theban Plays, Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus, are usually the first ones we come in contact with during high school. Specifically, Oedipus the King.  We all know that story.  Hell Freud made an entire career on that story.  What I would encourage you to do is to grab a copy now and reread them.  You probably will have more appreciation for them now since you aren’t forced to read them and come up with three themes in the plays and what Oedipus’s tragic flaw is.

I haven’t really included any links to Amazon since here are multiple translations over multiple editions.  I would suggest sticking to translations by Lattimore or Fagels.  But really any will suffice as long as you take the time to read them.  You probably already have read all of them so why don’t you take the time now to break out your worn copy with notes in the margins and read them again, right now.