I enjoyed reading these, I wondered if I'd be able to comprehend them but I believe I did well. The ending on Alcestis seemed abrupt but then I spose there really wasn't much to wrap up. I think it would have been pretty cool to have seen these performances in their day. The plays were Alcestis, Medea and The Bacchae

I read the last play, The Bacchae. Pretty good translation but has no elegance to it. But easy to read.

I prefer the translator such as Gilbert Murray's translation, his is more of that of a poet's translation.

But if you would like to read a great classic in an easy, more modern way than I would suggest you read Roche's.

Oh, the perfidy and hypocrisy of Jason and King Creon!

This is an amazingly good translation.

Alcestis 3.5
Medea 5
The Bacchae 5

Only read Bachae

Actually enjoyed this, I surprise myself sometimes.

I’ve been wanting to read Alcestis since reading a certain book on the NYT bestseller list that purports to kinda/sorta/maybe tie in with the story of Alcestis, but I had trouble seeing how as they don’t exactly align (plus I had other problems with the NYT book, but that’s a different rabbit hole…)

Here, Admetus comes off half a t*rd (the way he treats his father) and half not (resisting Heracles offer); though he never should have accepted Alcestis to stand in his place.

And I’d understood before now that Alcestis never speaks after Heracles brings her back, but in Euripides telling, she is only unable to speak “until three days have passed and she is purged of her consecration to the powers below” as Heracles informs us.

Medea: see other editions

The Bacchae: so Zeus with Semele, Dionysus sewn into his thigh; his birthright not believed; his royal house of Cadmus not respecting him, so revenge. Agàve, his mother, and her sisters in a frenzy do not recognize Pentheus, kill him and tear him apart.

Greek Tragedies: Volume III

A review from my old blog...

This is my first time reading any of the classic Greek plays. I have to say that I was not disappointed. I have read the Iliad and the Odyssey before and appreciated the great writing evident within but the gore really turned me off.

The plays by Euripides are free from gore but not from classical mythology and the great writing. The pathos of the husband in the first play (I forget the names) losing his wife yet still remembering to show hospitality is such a great story. Then in the end when his act of hospitality which everyone else looks down upon turns out to be the thing that brings his wife back to him from the dead I absolutely fell in love with the play. Such good writing!

I recommend these plays to anyone interested in the classics.

Only having read The Bachae, I don't know if I would read the other two. Of course, Euripides is one of the more wild and crazy mythological writers, but I found some of the reading to be more of a chore than an entertaining experience. Perhaps it is the "tragedy" that I was not a fan of; when the main characters wind up exiled and turned to serpents or sacrificed at the hands of their mother for a bitter god who couldn't leave any disbelievers alone (even if they *were* his own family).

read for western civ lit. i love this era

The Bacchae

Dionysus, the god of wine, prophecy, religious ecstasy, and fertility return to his birthplace in Thebes in order to clear his mother's name and to punish the insolent city-state for refusing to allow people to worship him. The background to his return is presented in the prologue, in which Dionysus tells the story of his mother, Semele, once a princess in the royal Theban house of Cadmus. She had an affair with Zeus, the king of the gods, and became pregnant.

As revenge, Zeus's jealous wife Hera tricked Semele into asking Zeus to appear in his divine form. Zeus, too powerful for a mortal to behold, emerged from the sky as a bolt of lightning and burnt Semele to a cinder. He managed, however, to rescue his unborn son Dionysus and stitched the baby into his thigh. Semele's family claimed that she had been struck by lightning for lying about Zeus and that her child, the product of an illicit human affair, had died with her, maligning her name and rejecting the young god Dionysus.