Aeschylus (525-c.456 bc) set his great trilogy in the immediate aftermath of the Fall of Troy, when King Agamemnon returns to Argos, a victor in war. Agamemnon depicts the hero's discovery that his family has been destroyed by his wife's infidelity and ends with his death at her callous hand. Clytemnestra's crime is repaid in The Choephori when her outraged son Orestes kills both her and her lover. The Eumenides then follows Orestes as he is hounded to Athens by the Furies'...

Sophocles' Ajax is one of the most disturbing and powerful
surviving ancient tragedies. But it is also difficult to understand and
interpret. What are we to make of its protagonist's extremism? Does Ajax
deserve the isolation and divine punishment he experiences? Why is his
state of mind so difficult to determine? Dr Hesk offers answers to these
and many other questions by drawing together the very latest critical
work on the play and introducing the reader to key frames for its
interpretation, including Sophoclean heroism, language and form; Homeric
...

First published in the outstanding and long-running 'red Macmillan' series in 1948 and revised in 1958 and 1962 (with, for example, a new section on Mycenaean Greek in relation to Homer), This second volume on the Odyssey has remained the standard edition used by upper school and university students to guide their early reading of the epic. The introduction covers many of the questions that lie behind the poem, and includes a useful summary of Homeric grammar; the text is elucidated with full annotations, indexes and bibliography.

Also available: Odyssey I-XII