The Essential Euripides: Dancing in Dark Times

This monograph and selective anthology serve to introduce the most immediately accessible and compelling playwright of the ancient Greek theater. The only volume of its kind available, it provides a rich selection of core plays and a substantial introduction to the full scope of the Euripidean corpus.

In “Mortal Vision” Meagher endeavors to strike the core of what he takes to be Euripides’ abiding concerns: war, the plight of women, and the awful mystery of the gods. The five plays selected for inclusion here embody those concerns as fully and powerfully as any in the Euripidean repertoire. Finally, in “Revel and Revelation,” Meagher looks back at Euripides’ consummate masterwork, the Bakkhai, as a definitive response to the ancient quip that Athenian drama has little or nothing to do with Dionysos. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Special Features

• A monograph on Euripides entitled “Mortal Vision: the Wisdom of Euripides”
• Five plays in translation: Hekabe, Helen, Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia in Tauris, and Bakkhai
• A concluding essay entitled “Revel and Revelation: the Poetics of Euripides”