With this book, I complete the remaining extant works of Sophocles. Two I'd already read in a different translation, two were new.

Ajax is tells the tale of the death of Trojan War hero Ajax, and the fallout that follows. This is, I think, the third of Sophocle's plays that deals with the honourable burial (or lack thereof) for a polarising figure. Once again, respect for the gods wins out over the commands of kings. I don't really know what to think of Ajax. If he really was going to murder a bunch of people in the night over an inheritance dispute, maybe he was really as pathetic as he claimed once he came back to his senses. An interesting aspect of this play was that it featured Ajax's "captive wife" as a major character. I find the ancient Greek attitude to such slaves quite contradictory. Like Briseis in The Iliad, she is allowed to speak, express her feelings, grieve for the life she has lost and fear for her uncertain future. She is given human agency. Yet, while the objective misery of such a situation is recognised, the acts of attacking a woman's home, killing her family, and making her a sex slave never seem to be recognised as morally wrong. The gods only object to such actions if the woman in question is a priestess of theirs, or otherwise special to them.

Electra is one I've read previously. This time Electra's descent into vengeful madness over the course of the play seemed much more apparent. I don't know if this is a result of the translation, or that I wasn't stopping the action to read the notes all the time.

Women of Trachis was new. It tells of the great hero Heracles's death by poison shirt. When I first read this myth in Robert Graves' book of Greek myths I frankly found the whole idea of a man running about madly while being murdered by his shirt hard to take seriously. Sophocles at least makes it feel dramatic. I found it hard to identify any central theme or message in this one. I suppose it could be "think before acting", or, if we consider the parallels between this story and the Adam and Eve narrative - a woman being tricked into handing her man something that would doom them both - the moral might be "don't trust women". But I didn't really get that vibe. Maybe it's just a story. Maybe it was part of a series that would have clarified the message.

Philoctetes I'd already read too. It's still probably one of my favourites, perhaps because the moral problem it confronts is still relatable today. Also, I'm starting to think Agamemnon was seriously bad at managing people. How does he manage to piss off so many of his friends and allies? Clytaemnestra, Achilles (in the Iliad), Ajax (above) and now Philoctetes. I'm surprised he lasted so long before someone murdered him!

The plays are excellent, based on myths containing sensationalist material such as matricide, fratricide, revenge killings, suicide, adultery and deception. Sophocles definitely deserves his legendary status. The ability of these ancient dramatists to portray these stories with the limited resources and technology available at the time is ingenious.

This edition contains good prefaces to the plays which includes an explanation of how the plays might have been staged. However, there is a good general explanation of the set up the Greek theatre in the appendix at the back of the book, which would have been better put at the front. The endnotes to the plays are copious and I found them a bit excessive. I prefer it if the notes are limited to an explanation of references that might be unknown to the general reader but the notes in this edition give quite extensive commentary on each scene. However, anyone who wished to stage the play might find these helpful.

Electra: E's brother Orestes returns home and kills their mum & her lover in revenge for killing their dad.

Ajax: A goes mad when dead Achilles' armour is given to Odysseus and kills some cows thinking he is killing the Greek generals. A kills himself. O makes sure his body is buried with honour.

Women of Trachis: Heracles' wife Deianira gives H a poisoned robe after learning that H plans to take a mistress.

Philoctetes: P has been stranded on a island with his magic bow for years because of a poisoned foot. Neoptolemus and Odysseus try to steal the magic bow by trickery.

نمایشنامه الکترا را از ترجمه انگلیسی ماینک خوندم. ترجمه های ماینک، نه ترجمه های ادبی قوی بلکه ترجمه هایی هستند که برای اجرای روی صحنه پرداخته شده اند. زبان ساده و بی تکلفی دارند، بازی های ادبی را در حدی که به روانی اجرا لطمه نخورد در متن باقی گذاشته اند و در یادداشت ها هم بیشتر به نکاتی اشاره کرده اند که به دقت اجرای روی صحنه کمک کنند.
به هر حال، با وجود تمام این مشکلات ترجمه ای ساده و روان برای خواننده بی سواد غیر انگلیسی زبان (مثل من) به حساب می آیند. هر چند به منظور درک و فهم بهتر جزییات نمایشنامه سوفوکلس و مقا��سه روایت های سوفوکس، آیسخولوس و اوریپیدس از داستان الکترا، میتوان به مقدمه رابرت شاو روی ترجمه آن کارسون و یادداشت های پایانی کارسون مراجعه کرد.

Note: This is a joint review with Jean-Paul Sartre's The Flies (which is in his Two Plays, with In Camera being the second)

Although there are four plays in this book I didn’t get much out of the first one as I began it, so jumped across and just decided to read Electra.

I found this very interesting for the use of deception to give oneself an advantage about the situation one is entering before admitting one’s alliance with another. But this is an example given by the gods in some plays, just as it is with humans in others. Here we have Athena reporting to Odysseus – oops, that’s the Ajax story. Let that one go – it is just that I then went on to reading Sartre’s The Flies, and he uses Zeus with Orestes, Electra and Clytemnestra in his play, whereas Sophocles has Orestes, Electra and her sister Chrysothemus, with a reference to a dead sister who is unnamed but sacrificed by their father for a transgression he made against a god. This seems to be partly why the wife Clytemnestra decides to have an affair with another man who kills him and becomes king beside her. But this new king has also sent her young son off to be killed, but those charged with the task could not bring themselves to kill the boy, and thus Orestes is believed to still be alive by the loyal daughter Electra, wishing for vengeance for her fathers’ demise.

In both plays Electra is portrayed as an outcast of sorts in her own home. Because she is so outspoken about the death of her father she has been imprisoned by her mother in the palace (in Sophocles) or treated as a slave doing menial tasks all year (in Sartre) but allowed to be a show princess for the Day of the Dead (which Zeus rules, and thus his presence).

The ancient play uses a chorus to act as the voice of the common people, and as the voice of conscience which backs up Electra. She trusts them, and they expect that she will eventually see through the plan she has to free them all from the tyrant and the false queen.

Sartre on the other hand, has Electra caught in the same chimera as the townfolk, who are all deceived by the King’s annual pageant of drawing forth the ghosts of the dead to shroud them all in shadows. Although Electra knows of this farce, when her brother turns up and carries out the deed which she has long hoped he would do, she goes into shock over his actions and denies her own complicity in it.

Although she takes 15 years in dreaming of the return of her brother Orestes to take revenge, when he arrives he is not the type of character she has envisioned. Instead he appears as a pacifist from his easy upbringing away from the social milieu of his home town. He tells Electra that there is another way to live, not as a promising fantasy, but as a reality he has already experienced. She uses this image to spur herself on, and claim that she will do the deed if he is not strong enough. But when her passion ignites compassion within him and he transforms into the character she expected him to be, she then pulls back again and doubts that it was indeed justice to follow through.

Thus we have quite different issues arising from the same story. And these issues are about the society within which the plays themselves were written and performed. The one is merely the carrying out of ‘destiny’ or what has been prescribed to be the remedy for a particular transgression against a family and its society. The other is the freeing up from prescription for choice to be made based upon one’s own principles and one’s own interpretation of them. And this is determined to be a higher ideal than living by prescription.
but the real question is: who is writing the script. For Orestes makes much of his own freedom, then sways and responds to the terms his sister seems to place upon him. Yes, he can change his mind. But what is the real basis then for his decisions and actions? Is freedom enough of an ideal that it overrides being influenced by others who do not seem to know of let alone believe in such an ideal? It is an interesting twist in this play. But it is a twist which also demonstrates the power within the individual to work through their own stance on issues. And it is the acceptance within oneself of the consequences of one’s own thinking and choices and actions. Rather than awaiting the judgement of any other, the judgment made of oneself is the force by which all forward movement can occur. And then it becomes an invitation to others to also step clear of their own shadows and doubts and find their own freedom also.

If you thought the ending of the extended version of the Lord of the Rings was protracted, wait until you read the back and forth between Neoptolemus and Philoctetes in Philoctetes, the last of four plays in this collection.

That said, all four plays are marvelous. It is easy to see why they are considered classics. Vivid and evocative verse, powerful characters, discussing important intellectual and moral topics: justice, retribution, duty to one's honor versus duty to one's family, and more. Ajax was my favorite, but again, all four plays are great.

Excellent translations make the reading of the four plays easy. Fascinating to see the concerns of then being paralleled today. Good to read the forgotten Ajax (not a cleaning product!) and Philoctetes as well as the more famous Electra.

Sophocles is a master of plot development and timing, an expert at building and releasing tension – even if the audience knows what is going to happen. That is immensely difficult to do. He is excellent at twisting the expectations of the audience and the characters.

Compared to Aeschylus, Sophocles seems less ornate and more direct. (Although, of course, I’m reading a translation.) He uses few allusions, less imagery and plainer language. Sophocles cannot be accused, as Aeschylus is, of violence to the Greek language.

I find, though, I’m not pulled into the plays intellectually. The plays I’ve read so far don’t address the compelling questions about life that interest me. They are well-plotted stories, but of a very particular character and a unique situation. Well told, well plotted, and even the characters are well formed, but the plays don’t touch on themes of the overall human condition.

Oedipus the King – ***** Is there another play so perfectly plotted? Even though the audience knows the ending, the suspense builds as Oedipus gets a glimpse of the truth, but then it wanes, only to wax and wane several more times as Oedipus nears the catastrophic truth, before, finally, the crushing reality is revealed. It’s full of wonderful ironies. Yes, there are numerous preposterous coincidences, but Sophocles manages them brilliantly to create an incredibly intense, tight, claustrophobic drama. (09/14)

Ajax – *** The speech where Ajax tells the chorus and his wife that he’s going to the shore to “bury his sword” is probably one of best ironic speeches ever written. Has he recovered his wits and is ready to accept his dishonor, or does he plan to do himself harm? It is a great passage and the pathos is palpable. Overall, the play is good, but I wouldn’t call it a “must read.” It covers a man dealing with his dishonor, but Ajax is a flawed character and his death ends his suffering but causes the suffering of many others. (That’s probably true of most suicides.) (09/14)

Electra – *** This is not one of Sophocles’ stronger plays. It is long-winded and full of whining and kvetching. The play consists mostly of Electra complaining endlessly about her situation, broken up by a few mistaken-identify/recognition scenes (which also include Electra complaining). I prefer Aeschylus’ telling of this tale in The Libation Bearers. It is more emotionally and sexually charged, not to mention more ethically complex. Sophocles presents Electra’s and Orestes’ story as a simple revenge play, without much thought of the complexity of the crime nor consideration about the implications of killing your own mother. The end is quite strange with Aegisthus walking freely to his death. (As is Electra’s gleeful anticipation of her mother’s death.) (09/16) (re-read 09/17)

Electra, in Sophocles’ telling of her story, is just as single-minded and uncompromising in her quest for vengeance as she is when fellow Athenian playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides tell the same story. The daughter of Agamemnon, in every version of her story, will not rest until the blood of her murdered father has been repaid with the blood of his killers – his wife Clytemnestra (Electra’s own mother), and Clytemnestra’s lover-turned-husband Aegisthus. But Sophocles incorporates his own unique sensibility and insight into Electra’s story, as he does with of the other mythologically based plays included in this volume.

The title of Women of Trachis refers to the play’s chorus – a group of women of the city-state of Trachis in northern Greece, attending upon (and providing a dramatic counterpoint to) Deianeira, the wife of Heracles. As the play begins, Deianeira’s anxiety at her husband’s long absence is mollified when a messenger provides news that Heracles is on his way home. Yet the herald Lichas brings not only additional news of Heracles’ return, but also some unwelcome additions to the Heraclean household: captives Heracles took while sacking Oechalia, including a beautiful young woman named Iole.

Lichas tries to put a brave face on this uncomfortable situation, claiming that Heracles only attacked Oechalia under compulsion, while held in slavery by the Lydian princess Omphale; but the messenger tells Deianeira the whole truth, declaring that “It was all for that beautiful girl [Iole]/That Heracles sacked Oechalia’s lofty towers/And conquered Eurytus. Love was the only god/To charm him into this warlike expedition,/Nothing to do with penal servitude out/In Lydia, under Omphale” (p. 26). Deianeira, feeling the changes of middle age, now has it confirmed that her husband is bringing a young and beautiful mistress into the family household.

Deianeira, however, has -- or thinks she has -- a secret weapon in her romantic arsenal. When the centaur Nessus, years before, tried to abduct Deianeira, Heracles killed him. The dying centaur bade Deianeira take some of his blood and anoint some of Heracles’ clothing with it as a love charm, should Heracles’ love for Deianeira ever start to fade. Deianeira now anoints a full-length robe with the centaur’s blood, and tells Lichas to present it to Heracles as a gift from Deianeira. Poor Deianeira: she thought the centaur was sorry for abducting her and only wanted to do her a good turn, where in fact it was Nessus’ plan to exact a cruel revenge from beyond the grave. Deianeira soon senses that her plan for securing Heracles’ love may have gone awry, telling the women of Trachis that “My hopes were all for the best,/But I fear I shall soon be shown to have done great harm” (p. 37).

Deianeira’s worst fears are soon confirmed. Heracles’ son Hyllus arrives to report that the poisoned robe has eaten into Heracles’ skin and vitals, causing the hero endless, agonizing pain. The unlucky herald Lichas, who brought the robe, has been killed by Heracles, flung out against a rock that protrudes from the sea. Deianeira, overcome with grief and remorse, kills herself with a sword; and Heracles, brought in on a litter, expresses the mortification he feels at being seen in this weakened state: “Here I am, sobbing/And crying away like a girl. No one could ever say/He saw great Heracles weeping before” (p. 51).

While Heracles initially believes that Deianeira deliberately caused him this agony, exclaiming upon the news of Deianeira’s suicide that “I should have killed that woman!” (p. 53), his loyal son Hyllus quickly acquaints him with the facts of the case. Heracles accepts his fate, telling Hyllus first to burn Heracles in a funeral pyre, and then to wed Iole. Hyllus questions the ways of the gods as the play draws to a conclusion, telling the bearers of Heracles’ litter that “the hearts of the callous gods/Feel nothing in all these sorry events./They beget their sons and are called our fathers,/Yet look down calmly on our great pain. No man has a vision of what is to come” (p. 59).

Ajax of Salamis, that larger-than-life warrior who is one of the pre-eminent heroes of the Iliad, is vouchsafed a heroic death in Wolfgang Petersen’s film Troy (2004), dying after a long and heroic battle with Hector. That’s fine for the movies, but the actual circumstances of Ajax’s death, according to the original myths, were much less heroic, as Sophocles chronicles in his play Ajax.

As the play begins, Ajax has already carried out the act that will forever cloud his post-Trojan War glory. Incensed that, in a contest held to determine who would inherit the armour of the dead Achilles, he lost to Odysseus, Ajax planned to take his revenge by murdering the Greek leaders Agamemnon and Menelaus, and torturing his rival Odysseus for good measure. But the goddess Athena misled Ajax, causing him to direct his wrath against sheep and cattle captured in the war, slaughtering them instead.

Sitting among the bodies of the animals he has killed, Ajax is immobilized by his sense of his own disgrace: “Here’s Ajax the brave, the bold-hearted man,/Who never blenched in fight against furious foes,/And now he flaunts his power on poor harmless beasts!/Oh, how they’ll laugh! How I’ve been brought to shame!” (p. 87) The once-admired hero comes to conclude that he must take his own life in order to restore his tarnished honour; in one moving interlude, he holds up his young son Eurysaces and says, “My son, I pray/That you’ll be luckier than your father was” (p. 93).

One of the most famous passages in Sophocles’ Ajax involves the title character meditating on the power of time and fortune. Beginning with a reflection on how “Time, in its long uncounted course, brings forth/The hidden truth, then hides it all from the light” (p. 96), the Salaminian warrior who once considered himself all-powerful proceeds to a serene acceptance of divine will: “In future, then, we’ll know to yield to the gods” (p. 97). Such words are worlds away from the arrogance with which Ajax once spoke, as described by a messenger who is Ajax’s half-brother:

“If you’re born human, you must not entertain
Thoughts higher than a human being should.
Ajax displayed his folly the very moment
That he set out from home. His father’s parting
Words were: ‘Son, let your ambition be
To fight to win, but always with god’s help.’
He boastfully and thoughtlessly replied,
‘Father, with god’s help even a nobody
Can win a victory. I don’t need god’s help.
I trust I’ll land the fish of fame without it!’
Those were his boastful words. Another time,
When the goddess Athena was urging him on and said,
‘Ajax, now use that hand of yours and kill!
He made her this unspeakably rude retort:
‘You can assist the other Greeks, my lady!
The battle line won’t break where I’m on hand.’
That speech incurred Athena’s pitiless wrath.
His mind had flown beyond his human limits.” (pp. 100-01)

Ajax’s earlier words, here cited by his half-brother, seem a textbook example of hubris, ὕβρις, the fatal pride that, in the Olympian belief system, invites divine punishment against the human imprudent enough not to acknowledge the power and authority of the gods.

The chorus leader for Ajax (one of a group of Greek sailors) no doubt reflects the sensibilities of the play’s original audience when he tells Ajax’s half-brother Teucer that “You’d better be thinking how/You’ll bury Ajax” (p. 110); but then Ajax’s erstwhile enemy, the Greek commander Menelaus of Sparta, insists that “No one can have the power to lay his body/To rest in a grave. No, he must be thrown out/On the yellow sand to feed the hungry seabirds” (p. 111). As with Creon’s decision in Sophocles’ Antigone to leave unburied the body of Polyneices, the slain rebel commander from the Theban civil war, Menelaus’ order is a terrible profanation against the gods, as it was said that the stench of the unburied dead would rise to Olympus itself. Surprisingly, it is Odysseus, Ajax’s former enemy and rival, who successfully persuades Menelaus and Agamemnon to permit the honourable burial of Ajax, and it is left to Trucer to remark the irony of it all: “You were the Greek my brother hated most,/But you alone have offered him active help” (p. 122).

Electra is Sophocles’ take on a story that so fascinated the people of ancient Greece that both Aeschylus and Euripides also dramatized it. In Sophocles’ version of how Electra and Orestes avenged the murder of their father by killing their mother, Orestes arrives before the royal palace of Mycenae and describes how he will spread an untrue story of his own accidental death, in order to lull Clytemnestra and Aegisthus into a false sense of security: “Our crafty tale will bring them the glad tidings/That my body has been cremated and now consists/Of nothing but charred remains” (p. 137). Electra, unlike her go-along-to-get-along sister Chrysothemis, openly hopes that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus will be punished for their crimes, and therefore she is treated cruelly by the usurping royal couple. Adding to Electra’s pain is her belief that Orestes is indeed dead, and all hope of vengeance therefore gone: “My hope is gone, all that I had/Swept right away, vanished!” (p. 163).

All three of the great Athenian dramatists make a point of focusing upon the irony of the living Orestes speaking to a sister who thinks he is dead, as Sophocles does when his Orestes says to the grieving Electra that “Only I can share the pain of your suffering” (p. 176). Once Orestes has revealed himself, Electra rejoices, her devotion to vengeance renewed: “I swear, yes I swear, Artemis be my strength,/I’ll never stoop to fear my old foes again” (p. 178). Orestes urges caution, and brother and sister move carefully to the successful accomplishment of their revenge.

Yet as in Shakespeare’s revenge tragedies centuries later, Sophocles suggests that in gaining revenge against one’s enemy, one can become one’s enemy. This theme comes through with special force when Electra, hearing Aegisthus’ pleas for mercy after the killing of Clytemnestra, scornfully replies, “No, Orestes, for god’s sake….Kill him at once; kill him, and then/Throw out his corpse for the dogs and birds to bury/Out of our sight. No other payment/For all I’ve suffered could be enough for me” (pp. 188-89). As in Ajax, and in Antigone from Sophocles’ Theban trilogy, the impious act of leaving a corpse unburied shows the extent to which a character has lost all sense of ethical boundaries. And the play’s chorus of Mycenaean women sound downright existential when they conclude, addressing Electra directly, “O seed of Atreus, how much you have suffered!/But now this attack has forced you out/Into freedom. You’ve come to the ending” (p. 190). Electra is indeed forced out into freedom – compelled to live as the person she has become because of her choices and their attendant consequences.

Philoctetes is a story of war and pain – so much so that readings and stagings of this particular play have been used as a way to help modern combat veterans deal with their own wartime trauma. The background story would have been quite familiar to Athenian audiences of Sophocles’ time: Philoctetes, a great archer, was en route to Troy with the rest of the Greek expeditionary force when he was bitten by a snake on the island of Lemnos and was left behind by the Greeks, his wound stinking and festering and causing him endless pain. Nine years later, as the action of Sophocles’ Philoctetes begins, the Greeks have received a prophecy that Troy will never fall until Philoctetes rejoins the Greek army; and Odysseus has come to Lemnos with Achilles’ son Neoptolemus to get Philoctetes away from Lemnos and over to Troy.

Odysseus, depicted less sympathetically by Sophocles here than in Ajax, plans to use deceit to get Philoctetes onto the boat to Troy, telling Neoptolemus that Philoctetes “mustn’t/Realize I am here. It would wreck the ingenious/Plan I think would ensure his speedy capture” (p. 203). Odysseus knows that the ever-suffering Philoctetes is bitter at having been left behind by the Greeks, and will not want to rejoin the Greek forces; therefore, Odysseus plans to use subterfuge to seize Philoctetes’ sacred bow (a gift from the dying Heracles), and, by that means, to force Philoctetes to accompany them. Philoctetes knows only too well Odysseus’ gift for stratagems; he tells the play’s chorus, a group of Greek sailors, that Odysseus would “use his tongue to forward any/Evil scheme or villainous action, if that/Was likely to serve his wicked ends” (p. 216).

Odysseus’ plan, in brief, is for Neoptolemus to feign sympathy for Philoctetes, and by that means to get his hand on the bow. Neoptolemus goes along at first, but then becomes conscience-stricken, moved by the intensity of the stricken archer’s suffering: “Poor man, I can see you’ve been through hell” (p. 229).

Neoptolemus gets the bow for a time, and it looks as though the bow will end up in the hands of Odysseus – Philoctetes laments that his old adversary now “fondles/My whole means of life in his hands,/Wields what no man wielded before./Trusty bow, so dear to my heart” (p. 242). Yet Neoptolemus has never actually handed over the bow, and soon the all-too-clever Odysseus is shocked to discover that Neoptolemus plans “To undo the wrongs that I did before”, on grounds that “It was shameful and wrong to take [the bow]” (p. 246). The foiled Odysseus retreats from the scene. Philoctetes and Neoptolemus form a friendship and alliance based on trust, and the deified Heracles appears to inform Philoctetes that it is the gods’ will that Philoctetes join the Greek forces outside Troy: “I shall send/Asclepius to heal your wounds in Troy./The citadel must be captured by my bow/A second time” (p. 255). The play ends on a note of hope, with Philoctetes bidding farewell to the island where he lived nine years in torment; and the Athenian audience would know that Philoctetes’ unfinished business at Troy would include the killing of Paris, the man whose abduction of Helen had started the whole war.

This translation by David Raeburn of Oxford University, with introduction and notes by Pat Easterling of Cambridge University, is an excellent way to get to know the four surviving plays of Sophocles other than the better-known Oedipus trilogy.

Translations that have stood the test of time, though I've always found them more staid than necessary.

نمایشنامه اسطوره‌ای اونم از نوع یونانیش مختصات خاص خودش را داره. با یکسری معیارها میشه سنجید که چقدرش اصیله و چقدر دست خورده. حقیر هم با توجه به مطالعات اندکم به نظرم میاد که به یکسری از نمایشنامه‌های کتاب خطشه وارده. البته هنوز شرح‌ها رو نخوندم و اگه متوجه بشم که اشتباه میکنم، این یادداشت رو اصلاح خواهم کردم.
یکی از نشانه‌های نمایشنامه‌های یونانی حضور خدایان تو نمایشنامه‌ست. البته این حضور معمولا به نحو تجلیه*. به این صورت که مثلا وقتی جنگجویی خوب میجنگه میگن آرس درش متجلی شده. یا در وقت عشق آفرودیته متجلی میشه و قس علی هذا. اما ما تو نمایشنامه فیلوکتتس و آژاکس میبینم که هرکول و آتنا خودشون ظاهر میشن! مخصوصا تو پرده اول آژاکس این برام خیلی عجیب بود.
در کل فیلوکتتس و زنان تراخیس کمتر بوی یونان میداد و آژاکس و مخصوصا الکترا بیشتر.
.
خیلی برام جالبه که بدونم چرا یکی از پروژه‌های انتشارات فرانکلین، آثار اسطوره‌ای یونان بوده. جالب‌تر از اون اینه که مترجم این کتاب، محمد سعیدی، نخست‌وزیر زاهدی و از سناتورهای زمان پهلویه!
علی ای حال ترجمه‌ش خیلی خوب نیست و مشخصه که سنت ترجمه هنوز خیلی شکل نگرفته. با توجه به سیاق جملات، احتمال میدم که مترجم جرح و تعدیل‌هایی هم اعمال کرده که از اصالت نمایشنامه کم کرده.


* میدونم این کلمه در سنت ما بار معنایی خاصی داره. با تساهل و تسامح بپذیرید.

فقظ به خاطر ترجمه یه ستاره کم کردم
در ادامه بیشتر ازش مینویسم

The value in this book is war. According to the Greeks of the time, war is good and you have to create it in order to win it and therefore win glory.