Euripides III: Heracles, The Trojan Women, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Ion (The Complete Greek Tragedies) Paperback – April 19, 2013

This book arrived quickly, nicely packed and in better-than-advertised condition. A couple of tiny magic-marker lines on the top edge of the book, no shelf wear, excellent. Might as well be new. Thanks.

I'm now retired (though not old enough to have met the playwright!) and have some more time for "remedial humanities."After taking a course in ancient Greek theater, I wanted to read these.It's a very good, readable translation that conveys the spirit of the original.If you're a Euripides fan (and I'm talking to both of you!), you'll enjoy it.

This whole collection is great, glad I purchased them all. I didn’t buy the first one through Amazon though as I got it through Online Great Books.

There is a lot to be said for Attic tragedy as an art form. Every year the citizens of Athens would gather to hear retellings of the founding myths of the city with import to the political and philosophical topics of the day. A vote would be held as to the most successful trilogy of plays from three different playwrights.While obviously irretrievable in modern times, the notion of shared arena where artists could retell the founding of the country, Biblical legends or the stories of American heroes and heroines could cement the nation’s fabric as it must have done some twenty five hundred years ago in Athens.While we have networks like PBS and HBO we really don’t have an analogue to the shared social space of Athens. Thus, we come to passionate disagreement over their meanings. The reality of public art seems like a lesson these earliest of Democrats could teach the proudest of modern democracies.As for the particular tragedies in this volume...even Euripides could write something mediocre. Or maybe the virgin mysteriously lifted to another land, more weeping of the Trojans and the Shakespearean coincidences of Ion just didn’t suit my taste. But the power of these myths as expressions of the continual enigmas of the human heart still shone through. Recommended to all who seek insight into the perpetual problems of humankind.

Find this translation flows well and gives a sense of what the plays might have been like had you the opportunity to see them performed at Epidarus Greece.

Item as decribed

I read this series of tragedies in following my daughter’s reading assignments from Boston University. Such sad and tragic events have been with human civilization from very early times.

Great read

excellent translation - I always go with this series for Euripides