3 Plays: Helen / Orestes / Phoenician Women

These updates by translator David Kovacs to the Loeb Classical Library renditions of Euripides' Helen, The Phoenician Women and Orestes read very well. I haven't read the versions they replaced, but somewhere on the 'Tubes I recall reading something to the effect that the A. S. Way Euripides translations were fairly dire, and something the Loebs needed to supplant ASAP.

Apologies to Mr. Way if that's an overstatement. Anyhoo, the LCL has done a good job here. I had no particular reason for starting with Volume 5, apart from the fact that I'd heard ages ago that Orestes was a pretty messed-up play, and 'messed-up' is a surefire descriptor to pique ol' Peerts's interest.

I did not find Orestes to be _particularly_ aberrant -- though it was show more intriguing that other characters in this play treat Orestes' visions of the Erinyes/Eumenides as just that -- visions, rather than actual entities. Apparently the play constructs its own vivid and peculiar version of the events succeeding Orestes' slaying of his mother and Aegisthus -- perhaps this is what puts it in the 'messed up' slot.

Greek tragedy is not an area where I claim any expertise. I've read a number of the familiar plays: Oedipus, the Oresteia, etc., The Bacchae. The three plays in this volume are interesting for the myths they relate or just kind of make up. I found The Phoenician Women particularly enjoyable, since it filled in some of the holes in my knowledge of the story of Antigone. Good notes and introductions. show less