Only read Bacchae

What can I say? All of the well-known Greek playwrights are important reading, both for their historical significance as well as the fact that they're excellent plays. They haven't remained famous for 2,400 years because they're not worthy of it.

This rating is for The Bacchae

Overall: I had a great time reading these and found it worthwhile. All three plays will be on my mind for a while.

Electra 3✨
Phoenician women 4✨
Bacchae 5✨

Electra was cool, The Bacchae was a little ridiculous and maybe a bit too ambiguous.

All these books are the seed for the literature and all the entertaining business we see nowadays. There is nothing new under the sun. Euripides is different from Sophocles and Aeschylus. He has a lot of gods to appear as characters in his plays. To Euripides, gods are vengeful, petty and cruel.

Excellent trilogy, and reads very quickly.

As a Latin Teacher and Latin and Greek Major as an Undergrad, I love re-reading the Classics whenever I can. I love the great lines and classic turns of phrase, and find new ones every time.

"The man whose glibness flows from his conceit of speech declares the thing he is: a worthless and a stupid citizen"

"Briefly, we live. Briefly, then die. Wherefore, I say, He who hunts a glory, he who tracks some boundless, superhuman dream, may lose his harvest here and now and garner death. Such men are mad, their counsels evil."

"Talk sense to a fool, and he calls you foolish."

"Wise men know constraint: our passions are controlled."

"You are clever-very- but not where it counts."

"And if there is god of wine, there is no love, no Aphrodite either, nor other pleasure left to men."

"What is wisdom? What gift of the gods is held in honor like this: to hold you hand victorious over the heads of those you hate? Honor is precious forever."

The Bacchae.

Euripides strikes again! I didn't like Bacchae as much as I thought I would (something I shall blame on the translator, the only male one in this book, not to mention the one with the stuffiest intro). But the other two, Phoenician Women specifically, was particularly vivid. I'm still of the opinion that Heracles and Trojan Women are Euripides' best plays (hot take), but I enjoyed this collection nonetheless.

Required Reading for Lit Hum

bacchae is a masterpiece