Can't believe I've never read the Phoinissai - in my head I've always been mixing it up with the Suppliant Women and assuming I've read it. Phenomenal. Orestes is as weird as always, Helen is decidedly second to the Taurians to me.

The Phoenician Women is not, to my mind, one of Euripides' towering masterpieces and doesn't stand comparison with the Medea or Trojan Women, but it is a great exploration of fraternal rivalry and ambition and of transgenerational consequences. I'm going to use this as part of the A-level course on Oedipus and Antigens as a way of exploring the immense flexibility Attic playwrights had in crafting plays based in known myths through contrast with the Sophoclean narratives of the same cycle, which have different characters alive or dead, present or exiled.

Orestes was my definite favourite of the three.

This volume contains the last three surviving plays of Euripides that were published before his death. If you're new to this playwrights work, this might be a good starting point. Much of what is interesting about Euripides work is contained in these three plays: The Helen gives an insight into Euripides philosophical interest and his tendency to reinvent traditional myths. The Phoenician women is not only of the most famous and influential plays but also provides a thorough introduction to Theban mythology. Finally, Orestes might be the most entertaining and modern of Euripides plays and will satisfy any reader that comes to Euripides for the gore.

'Helen' is Euripides retelling of the story of the famous woman who is said to have caused the devastating Trojan war. In this version, Helen never went to Troy. Instead, Paris abducted an image of her, that Hera fashioned out of air, enraged that Paris did not choose her as the most beautiful goddess. At the beginning of this play, the 'real' Helen tells the audience that she is in Egypt, where she was kept safe by the land's king Proteus during the war. Now, however, she has to take refuge at the altar, as Proteus has died and his son tries to force her into marriage. Her misfortune is met with that of some Greek sailors who have been washed up to Egypts shore and now face death. Helen does not know yet that one of these sailors is Menelaos, her husband, who is barely recognizable due to his shabby clothes and unkempt appearance. What follows is a long and complicated recognition of the spouses, their happy reunion and the execution of their plan to escape Egypt. While the story sounds like a bit like a shallow romantic comedy, Euripides touches on a deep philosophical issue that is discussed in detail a bit later by Plato, namely how we can distinguish between appearance and being. The play tells us that the Helen we know from myth, with whom we are familiar through Homers epic, is not real. It does not, however, deny that the Trojan war is fought over 'Helen' and that thus, an image can cause action and is not just nothing. This leaves us with the understanding that the Greeks and Menelaos were at least partly deceived about what they fought for and (in Menelaos case) who they loved. Maybe the message of the play is that in war and love the object of our passions are never really what we think they are. If this is the case, the play asks us for temperance, for a critical examination of the facts and our reaction to them. At least this seems in line with what one servant in the play calls the "man's most valuable trait" - a sense for what not to believe. Many more aspects are worth considering, such as the role of name, heart and body for personal identity or the political reflections about how to face a tyrant we find in this play. Ultimately, however, I think the message of the play is an invocation to be reasonable, especially when it comes to human life and to not counterpose real, tangible suffering with something whose ontological status is questionable.

'The Phoenician Women' is a tour de force through Theban mythology and includes almost all its famous characters: Oedipus, Iocaste, Antigone, Polyneices, Eteocles and Teiresias. With the density of characters comes a density of themes. The audience is reminded of the incestious relationship between Oedipus and Iocaste, anticipates Antigone's burial of Polyneices and Oedipus' travel to Colonos. Yet, the focus of this play is the quarell between Polyneices and Eteocles about who should govern Thebes.
This conflict is presented by Euripides through the lense of many characters. Iocasta, Antigone, Creon, Teiresias and Oedipus all enter the stage to explain how it effects them and what they think about it. A special emphasis should be put on the perspective of the choir of Phoenician women, since Euripides makes them the plays namesake. They are a group of female slaves on their way from Phoenicia to Delphi. Their journey is interrupted because of the war between these brothers and thus they are commenting on what is happening from the perspective not only of foreigners but from the perspective of political non-entities. Their stance on the conflict is opposes the one we find in Sophocles: they see Polyneices' in the right and see Eteocles as a power-hungry, illegitimate sovereign. With this chorus, Euripides emphasises the core tragic message, that all humans are subject to the will of the gods. In this case, these humans are not only volnurable because they are mortal but because within the political human hierarchy, they are of the lowest rank - foreign female slaves. What is emphasised by their presence - the fact that they are literally 'stuck' - is the neccesity of good leaders, leaders that put the good of all before their own, for all people to move in the direction they are supposed to go.
While the previous plays of Ion and Helen present how prudence and good character can save people, this play returns to the grim prospect of Euripides that humans merely do harm. The emotional intensity of the play reaches its height close to the end, when a messanger report that Iocastes, Polyneices' and Eteocles' corpses lie next to each other. There is at least a bit of peace Euripides picture of the mother embracing them in her final act: "In death her arms are cast about them both".
Because this play is so dense and covers so much mythological ground, the characters seem a bit dull and two-dimensional. It is woth reading for its influence and popularity in earlier times alone, yet I have to say I prefer Euripides' plays that focus more on psychological studies of individual characters, such as Hecuba.

The third play of this edition, 'Orestes' takes us away from Thebes and back to Mycene and the house of Atreus. If 'Iphigenia among the Taurians' is Euripides clean and optimistic version of what happens to Agamemnons children, 'Orestes' is the X-rated, gory one.
The plot sets in the day the assembly of Mycene decides how Orestes and Electra ought to be punished for the murder of their mother Clytaimestra. While Electra, who is accused as an accomplice, is fully aware of the gravity of the situation, Orestes is presented as suffering from a severe mental illness that leads him to experience seizures ever since he killed his mother. In a lucid moment, he diagnoses himself: the sickness is "conscience" (395), "the certainty to have committed an evil". Yet, although Orestes admits that the murder was pointless, as it could not bring back his father, he is not willing to accept the death-sentence pronounced by the assembly. Instead, he and his buddy Pylades make a plan that they hope will make Orestes a free man: Kill Helena, the hatred wife of Orestes' uncle Menelaos who would not help him in the assembly, kidnap his cousin Hermoine and thus force Menelaos to let him go. Once Orestes belives he has killed Helen and is about to murder Hermoine, in the same moment that Menelaos decides to attack Orestes and a tragedy is bound to happen, Apollo appears and sets everything straight: Helen is not really dead and Orestes not really guilty of murdering Clytaimestra, because he, Apollo, ordered him to do so. The god states that Orestes will be king and will marry Hermoine and everyone, even Menelaos accept this proclamation.
This play is without doubt the most action-packed and entertaining play Euripides wrote. It is probably also the most readable one, as it implicitly entails many stage directions within the dialogue. I would recommend this play as an introduction to Euripides. A modern audience, I assume, would enjoy its fast pace and would encounter some of the dramatic elements Euripides is so famous for (deus ex machina, the message that chaos ensues among humans when gods don't intervene and his tendency to present bloody and gruesome acts). The Arrowsmith translation is fantastic!

Started reading volume IV (of 5) first simply because it arrived first in the mail. It pains me too. This was my first foray into Greek tragedy since high school (so, a while) and it was a fun ride.

First, Helen— love that the tragedy is really more a love story, with the most reviled Helen presented sympathetically for one.

The Phoenician Women: The events preceding Sophocles’ Antigone, anchored by dual matriarch Jocasta. Fairly standard, interesting in the varying perspectives of the assault on Thebes to come.

Orestes: The best of the bunch, by far. This story was (nearly) new to me; having read only recently the Natalie Haynes novel A Thousand Ships, which offered a chapter of Clytemnestra’s plot against Agamemnon. What a ride! Several times I guffawed at the plight of the characters as well as some of the dialogue, that while surely valuable on the stage would be hilarious in reality. Great deus ex machina in this play—otherwise there is no way for it to resolve. A rare treat of a “happy” ending.