Greek category: 1293 books

The Roman playwright Plautus wrote comedies that are the earliest Latin literary texts to have survived in their entirety. Loosely adapted from lost Greek plays, the works of Plautus helped establish a truly Roman drama in the Latin language for the first time. Delphi’s Ancient Classics series provides...

Aeschylus (525–456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the status of high art. In Prometheus Bound the defiant Titan Prometheus is brutally punished by Zeus for daring to improve the state of wretchedness and servitude in which mankind is kept....

Among the most celebrated plays of ancient Athens, Antigone is one of the seven surviving dramas by the great Greek playwright, Sophocles, now available from Harper Perennial in a vivid and dynamic new translation by award-winning poet Robert Bagg. Powerfully portraying the clash between civic and...

In PROMETHEUS BOUND (doubtfully attributed to Aeschylus), the story of the Titan, Prometheus, and his punishments from Zeus are told. Aeschylus (c. 524 BC – c. 455 BC) was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides,...

One of the supreme comic writers of the Roman world, Plautus (c.254-184 BC), skilfully adapted classic Greek comic models to the manners and customs of his day. This collection features a varied selection of his finest plays, from the light-hearted comedy Pseudolus, in which the lovesick Calidorus...

While Homer's existence as a historical person is still a topic of debate, the writings attributed to the name have made their mark not only on Greek history and literature, but upon western civilization itself. Homer's epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, laid the foundation upon which Ancient...

Oedipus, the former ruler of Thebes, has died. Now, when his young daughter Antigone defies her uncle, Kreon, the new ruler, because he has prohibited the burial of her dead brother, she and he enact a primal conflict between young and old, woman and man, individual and ruler, family and state, courageous...

Gilbert Murray translated and made available to modern readers The Epitrepontes of Menander or The Arbitration for the first time in 1945. The Arbitration is among the most frequently quoted and most famous of Menander’s plays and – being less farcical than others - belongs to his mature style....

Lysistrata (/laɪˈsɪstrətə/ or /ˌlɪsəˈstrɑːtə/; Attic Greek: Λυσιστράτη, "Army Disbander") is a comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata...

Greece in British Women’s Literary Imagination, 1913–2013 offers a comprehensive overview of British female writing on Greece in the twentieth century and beyond. Contributors cover a vast array of authors: Rose Macaulay, Jane Ellen Harrison, Virginia Woolf, Ann Quin, Dorothy Una Ratcliffe, Elizabeth...

One of the lesser known plays of the Greek tragedian Sophocles, "Electra" tells the tale of a young daughter's revenge for her father's death. Electra is one of the daughters of Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks during the Trojan War. He was killed by his wife's lover, and Electra wishes to avenge...

The timeless Theban tragedies of Sophocles—Oedipus the Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone—have fascinated and moved audiences and readers across the ages with their haunting plots and their unforgettable heroes and heroines. Now, following the best texts faithfully, and translating the key...

Athenian comedy is firmly entrenched in the classical canon, but imperial authors debated, dissected and redirected comic texts, plots and language of Aristophanes, Menander, and their rivals in ways that reflect the non-Athenocentric, pan-Mediterranean performance culture of the imperial era. Although...

Among the most influential books in Western civilization, Aristotle's Poetics is really a treatise on fine art. In it are mentioned not only epic and dithyrambic poetry, but tragedy, comedy, and flute and lyre playing. Aristotle's conception of tragedy, i.e. the depiction of a heroic action that arouses...