Electra and Other Plays

Sophocles

Apr 2008 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

Sophocles’ innovative plays transformed Greek myths into dramas featuring complex human characters, through which he explored profound moral issues. Electra portrays the grief of a young woman for her father Agamemnon, who has been killed by her mother’s lover. Aeschylus and Euripides also dramatized this story, but the objectivity and humanity of Sophocles’ version provides a new perspective. Depicting the fall of a great hero, Ajax examines the enigma of power and weakness combined in one being, while the Women of Trachis portrays the tragic love and error of Heracles’ deserted wife Deianeira, and Philoctetes deals with the conflict between physical force and moral strength.

About the author

Sophocles was born just outside Athens, in 496 BC, and lived ninety years. His long life spanned the rise and decline of the Athenian Empire; he was a friend of Pericles, and though not an active politician he held several public offices, both military and civil. Sophocles wrote over a hundred plays for the Athenian theater, and is said to have come first in twenty-four contests. Only seven of his tragedies are now extant, these being Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, and the posthumous Oedipus at Colonus. He died in 406 BC.


Pat Easterling was Regius Professor of Greek in Cambridge from 1994 until her retirement in 2001; before that she taught in Manchester, Cambridge and London (UCL). Her main field of research is Greek literature, particularly tragedy; she also has a special interest in the survival of ancient texts and the history of performance; her most recent book is Greek and Roman Actors: aspects of an ancient profession (Cambridge 2002), which she co-edited with Edith Hall. She is currently writing a commentary on Sophocles' for the series Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics, of which she is a general editor.