Greek category: 1293 books

Along with Sophocles and Euripides, Aristophanes is considered one of the three great Greek playwrights. Only eleven of his nearly forty plays survive in their entirety to this day. "The Frogs" was produced the year after the death of Euripides, and laments the decay of Greek tragedy which Aristophanes...

Greek playwright, Aristophanes, lived during the 5th and 4th century BC and is considered one of the principal authors of the Greek classical period. Of the nearly thirty plays he wrote during his career, eleven are extant. Amongst the most famous of these is “Lysistrata,” a comedy which focuses...

Peace (Greek: Εἰρήνη Eirēnē) is an Athenian Old Comedy written and produced by the Greek playwright Aristophanes. It won second prize at the City Dionysia where it was staged just a few days before the Peace of Nicias was validified (421 BC), which promised to end the ten year old Peloponnesian...

Greek playwright, Aristophanes, lived during the 5th and 4th century BC and is considered one of the principal authors of the Greek classical period. Of the nearly thirty plays he wrote during his career, eleven are extant. Amongst the most famous of these is “Lysistrata,” a comedy which focuses...

Prometheus Bound is the starkest and strangest of the classic Greek tragedies, a play in which god and man are presented as radically, irreconcilably at odds. It begins with the shock of hammer blows as the Titan Prometheus is shackled to a rock in the Caucasus. This is his punishment for giving the...

The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus concerning the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and the pacification of the Erinyes. The name derives from the character Orestes, who sets out to avenge his father's murder. The only extant example of an ancient Greek theater...

From The Persians "Defeat is impossible Defeat is unthinkable We have always been the favorites of fate. Fortune has cupped us In her golden palms. It has only been a matter Of choosing our desire. Which fruit To pick from the nodding tree." This chilling passage is from Ellen McLaughlin’s...

Regarded by many as Euripides' masterpiece, Bakkhai is a powerful examination of religious ecstasy and the resistance to it. A call for moderation, it rejects the temptation of pure reason as well as pure sensuality, and is a staple of Greek tragedy, representing in structure and thematics an exemplary...

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4 BCE 65 AD), known commonly as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He is most noted for developing a new type of drama, the Senecan tragedy, which differed greatly from Greek tragedy. While the Greek tragedies...

Actor, a young man of Ancient Greece looking to make a name for himself, ends up on a trail of side-kicking for some of the greatest heroes ever. However, each one seems to be a little off from their legend. Jason is a jerk. Perseus is an old fart. Theseus is a liar. And so on and so on. Only by the...

Bacchae is one of the most troubling yet intriguing of Greek tragedies. Written during Euripides' self-imposed exile in Macedonia, it tells of the brutal murder and dismemberment of Pentheus by his mother and aunts who, driven temporarily insane, have joined the Bacchae (devotees of the god Dionysus,...

THE SEVEN PLAYS OF AESCHYLUS contains the seven surviving works of the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus, who wrote perhaps eighty works during his lifetime.  Includes an active table of contents for easy navigation. • The Persians • Seven Against Thebes • The Suppliants • Agamemnon...

In this book, Wm. Blake Tyrrell and Larry J. Bennett examine Sophocles' Antigone in the context of its setting in fifth-century Athens. The authors attempt to create an interpretive environment that is true to the issues and interests of fifth-century Athenians, as opposed to those of modern scholars...

Asserts a novel and controversial theory on the origins of rhetoric that differs radically from the standard view Argues that it was the theatre of Ancient Greece, first appearing around 500 BC, that prompted the development of formalized rhetoric, which evolved soon thereafter Provides a cogent reworking of existing evidence Reveals the bias and inconsistency of Aristotle