The history of European drama began at the festivals of Dionysus in ancient Athens, where tragedy, satyr-drama and comedy were performed. Understanding this background is vital for students of classical, literary and theatrical subjects, and Alan H. Sommerstein's study should be an ideal introduction. The book begins by looking at the social and theatrical contexts and different characteristics of the three genres of ancient Greek drama. It then examines the five main dramatists whose works survive - Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander - discussing their styles,...

The history of European drama began at the festivals of Dionysus in ancient Athens, where tragedy, satyr-drama and comedy were performed. Understanding this background is vital for students of classical, literary and theatrical subjects, and Alan H. Sommerstein's study should be an ideal introduction. The book begins by looking at the social and theatrical contexts and different characteristics of the three genres of ancient Greek drama. It then examines the five main dramatists whose works survive - Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander - discussing their styles,...

Sommerstein presents a freshly constituted text, with introduction and commentary, of Eumenides, the climactic play of the only surviving complete Greek tragic trilogy, the Oresteia of Aeschylus. Of all Athenian tragic dramas, Eumenides is most consciously designed to be relevant to the situation of the Athenian state at the time of its performance (458 B.C.) and seems to have contained daring innovations both in technique and in ideas. The introduction and commentary to this edition seek to bring out how Aeschylus shaped to his purpose the legends he inherited, and ended the tragic story of...

Wasps was first produced at the Lenaea festival of 422 BC. The play is at once a political satire and also, like Clouds and the lost Banqueters, a comedy on the theme of the conflict of generations. The play follows the efforts of a mischievous and mercurial old man to escape the control of a stern and heavy son.

Of the 1995 full-length edition: Aristophanes addicts unite This book is for us. It has everything that we always wanted to know about Birds and we were unable to find in one place.' Greek Gazette The commentary elucidates with an experts knowledge of syntax, meter, and artifacts.... The volume will remain authoritative for generations.

Lysistrata is the third and last of Aristophanes' peace plays. It is a dream of peace, of how the women could help to achieve an honourable settlement, conceived when Athens was going through its blackest, most desperate crisis since the Persian War.

Aristophanes' Frogs was produced in 405 BC, shortly after the deaths of the two great veteran Athenian tragic dramatists Euripides and Sophocles; it was restaged a year later, a few weeks before starving Athens at last accepted defeat in the long Peloponnesian War.

Ecclesiazusae, probably produced in 391 BC, is at once a typically Aristophanic fantasy of gender inversion, obscenity and farce, the earliest surviving work in the western Utopian tradition, and the source of a blueprint for a communist society on which Plato may well have drawn in his Republic.

In Peace, produced in 421 B.C., Aristophanes celebrates in anticipation the conclusion, after ten years, of the great war with Sparta. Peace, we are made to see, is within the grasp of the Greek peoples; let them make one final effort, and all difficulties and dangers will evaporate in the joys of feasting and rustic leisure.

The importance of oaths to ancient Greek culture can hardly be overstated, especially in the political and judicial fields; but they have never been the object of a comprehensive, systematic study.This volume derives from a research project on the oath in ancient Greece, and comprises seventeen chapters by experts in law, in political and social history, in literary criticism, and in cross-cultural studies, exploring the subject from a broad spectrum of positions. Topics covered include the nature of ancient Greek oaths; the functions they performed within communities and in relations between...