This text is an exploration of women and their roles in the work of Euripides. The translations contained within the book are designed to help readers locate the plays within their original social, cultural and performance context and mediate between ancient and modern ideologies. The four of Euripides' plays covered are: Medea, Alcestis, Helen, Iphigenia at Aulis.

Ancient Greek culture is pervaded by a profound ambivalence regarding female beauty. It is an awe-inspiring, supremely desirable gift from the gods, essential to the perpetuation of a man's name through reproduction; yet it also grants women terrifying power over men, posing a threat inseparable from its allure. The myth of Helen is the central site in which the ancient Greeks expressed and reworked their culture's anxieties about erotic desire. Despite the passage of three millennia, contemporary culture remains almost obsessively preoccupied with all the power and danger of female beauty...