(Port) Coquitlam Odysseus

[UPDATE]: I am updating this post as I add new entries. I will likely change the time stamp several times. – Note: I have edited this post to remove a few grammatical infelicities. – Over the last three years or so, and on as many blogs, I have read and commented on virtually every book [...]

I have now finished reading all the plays of Euripides (see the forthcoming post), and remain very much impressed with him. Some have said that Sophocles remains the most modern of the Tragedians, but I disagree. It is Euripides who makes foreigners, women, children, and even babies speak in the world of drama. It is [...]

The extant Rhesus, long thought to be a production of Euripides, is now considered spurious by most scholars. I sped-read the play and agree. I also found it rather uninteresting. It is not the authorship issue that was responsible for this (one of my two favourite ancient Greek plays is Prometheus Bound, now widely regarded [...]

The story of the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia is an old one to which Euripides turned in the two surviving Iphigenia-plays. The first features an unambiguously-happy ending, with long-lost brother and sister, Orestes and Iphigenia–who had been divinely rescued by Artemis–reuniting; Orestes was also redeemed for his matricide. The second play, Iphigenia at Aulis [...]

Euripides’ posthumously-produced Bacchae is generally considered his greatest play, but there is disagreement over the interpretation of the play, with some seeing in Euripides a more orthodox theology than I would see in the great playwright. It is this issue, together with other religious ones, that will be the primary subject of this post. In [...]

“A novel tale and here we have fresh novelties.” The chorus in Orestes In the late play Orestes, Euripides’ “innovative tendencies reach their zenith.” Thus the introduction to the play in the volume I am using. Certainly, there are many innovative surprises–in fact, the entire play is one dramatic surprise after another. Euripides not only [...]

Euripides’ play Phoenician Women, which was much admired in antiquity, deserves continued praise. Although quirky in places, the play is valuable for two reasons. First, it is a testament to the greatness of Athens that it produced a popular playwright who was able to make a compelling case for rethinking the great war with Sparta, [...]

Next to Hecabe, Euripides’ play Trojan Woman is the saddest and darkest of all the plays I have read so far. For this play, even more so than the one described in the previous post, it is imperative to keep in mind the historical context of the play, which we know was produced for the [...]

In the previous post, I recorded my disappointment with Euripides’ play Andromache. In this one, I shall celebrate the greatness of one of the great playwright’s greatest plays, the Suppliant Women. This play is far more than a simple “encomium of Athens” or even a meditation on the causes and effects of war: in fact, [...]

Euripides’ play Andromache dramatizes the plight of Hector’s wife years after the sack of Troy. Written in the middle of the Archidamian War (the first of the Peloponnesian wars between Athens and Sparta), the play is chiefly noteworthy for the harsh characterization of the Spartan king, Menelaus, and his family; as an admirer of the [...]