This review is of the translation by Emily Townsend Vermeule (Elektra), Elizabeth Wyckoff (Phoenician Women), and William Arrowsmith (Bakkhai).Well, to be entirely honest, the only redeeming factor about this collection of William Arrowsmith's translation of ΒΆΚΧΑΙ, which is surprisingly excellent. It's not my favourite version (for better or for worse, that honour goes to Anne Carson's version), but it's far from the worst I've read.

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.

"Electra": Very good, though not as good as Sophocles' work. I thought Electra was a self-pitying, hypocritical whiner, and apparently that's just what Euripides wanted me to think. Orestes wasn't so bright either. The intro really clued me in to Electra's sexual frustrations, envy of Clytemnestra and jealousy/hatred of her mother's lover Aegisthus. Electra & Orestes' shock at everything still being bad, even after killing their mother, was well done --- it brought the point home dramatically: N...

Electra: 4/5The Phoenician Women: 3/5The Bacchae: 5/5.

I don't really like doing brief blurbs to clarify my ratings since I don't take ratings that seriously, but these three plays are so different that it's almost a mistake to not rate them separately.Electra is good if somewhat flawed. It downplays the scope of the tragedy which makes it stand in stark contrast to Aeschylus, but it also neuters it in a way that hurts the play a little. Again, characteristic of Euripides, it emphasizes its gray morality which also works against it a little bit in t...

All 3 great tragedians are amazing, but I especially like Europedes.The Bacchae: Brutal, oh my! Moral is: Do not cross Dionysis.More Euripides not in this volume (WARNING: SPOILERS TO STORIES THAT ARE 2500 YEAR OLD BELOW...)Hippolytus: He's an odd boy. Mums is an Amazon; pops is Theseus. Step-mums Phaedra. Tragedy ensues.Heracles: Heracles goes NUTS & kills the kids.Hecuba: Sweet revenge! This is a good one! End of the Trojan War.The Trojan Women: Same story as Hecuba, but not as good for me. Le...

Reading the Bacchae. Recently read an article in the New York Review of Books positing that, unlike most comedies that have their genesis as a response to a tragedy, this tragedy actually has its genesis in response to a comedy, The Thesmophoriasuzae by Aristophanes. Interesting.....++++++++++++++++++++++++What I wouldn't give to see a production of this play, a GOOD production of this play. It could be the most harrowing theatrical experience.

4/5 stars I read this for school but nonetheless it is still really good. It was really good but I liked Antigone more. Antigone was the comparative text for this Greek Tragedy. Greek tragedies are nonetheless amazing. Electra was a bit of a weirdo...no offence but I love loved loved the character dynamics of Orestes. The exploration of guilt and responsibility is explored throughout...I might post my essay later because I expressed it better but more on that later lol

The Bacchae was very good. It is so far my favorite Euripidean play. Not so Phoenician Women or Electra, though the foreword to Electra was wonderful. Hmm. Four for Bacchae, three for Electra and Phoenician. (Phoenician was almost two, but for Menoeceus.)

The BacchaeDionysus, 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 jealo...

The Bacchae By:Euripides The action of the play begins with Dionysus's return to Thebes years later. He arrives in town disguised as the stranger, accompanied by a band of bacchants, to punish the family for their treatment of his mother and their refusal to offer him sacrifices. During Dionysus's absence, Semele's father, Cadmus, had handed the kingdom over to his proud grandson Pentheus. It was Pentheus's decision to not allow the worship of Dionysus in Thebes. Dionysus tells the audience that...

HOLY SHIT THE BACCHAE. Pentheus: "I shall give your got the sacrifice / that he deserves. His victim will be his women. / I shall make a great slaughter in the woods of Cithaeon." Chorus: "As a running fawn....she sprints...to dance for joy in the forest / to dance where the darkness is deepest/where no man is." Cadamus: "We have learned. But your sentence is too harsh."

The action of the play begins with Dionysus's return to Thebes years later. He arrives in town disguised as the stranger, accompanied by a band of bacchants, to punish the family for their treatment of his mother and their refusal to offer him sacrifices.

See Aristotle’s Poetics for why this book sucks.

5 stars primarily for William Arrowsmith’s transcendent translation of The Bacchae. Simply solendid.

Electra: 3.5Phoenician Women: 4Bacchae: 5

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✨

You know, this Dionysus, god of getting drunk in the woods, seems like my kind of deity.

This version of Elektra is really interesting in that Euripedes comments on a number of things that relate to modern day Greek society as he knows it. Elektrais forcibly is married to a farmer with whom she won't sleep because he's too low born for her, even though both she and Orestes agree that the farmer is almost an aristocrat in sentiment even without money. Historically, Euripedes can be commenting on the first democracy in Athens, when kleisthenes abandoned the aristocratic system in favo...

THE PHONECIAN WOMENThis play fills in the back story behind the ‘Seven Against Thebes’ war between the two sons of Oedipus. We learn that one son, Eteocles, is in the wrong because he will not relinquish the throne to his brother (they agreed to take turns ruling every other year). The other son, Polyneices, is also in the wrong because he brought a foreign army to forcibly take Thebes. These two wrongs constitute the downfall and ruin of the family of Oedipus. Which crime is worse: to love powe...

Good--Well here it is, the last of the five-volume collection containing Electra, The Phoenician Women, and The Bacchae, and I am done with Euripides. After reading Aeschylus's Oresteia and Seven Against Thebes, Sophocles' Oedipus trilogy, and Euripides' Orestes, however, I was sort of fed up with the first two plays in this book since Electra is another take on Orestes and Electra's matricide, and The Phoenician Women reiterates much of Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes and takes place between S...

"The Bacchae" won the first prize in the City Dionysia festival in Athens in 405 BC, for good reason I suppose. The structure, plot, and character development are among the best of Euripides. William Arrowsmith, the translator, compared it to "Oedipus the King", "Agamemnon" and "King Lear", as one of the greatest tragedies. Truth be told, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. For example, is there anything more horrific and bizarre than the sight of a mother singing and dancing while holding in...

Can I just say that the picture on the cover of this book is awkward? Because it is. For one thing, whenever you carry it around, people give you funny looks. And the lady on the front doesn't even look proportional. It's just...yeah, I didn't really get over it. Probably should've, but didn't. Anyway.Admittedly, I have only read the Bacchae. But I really liked it. I would actually give it 4.5 stars. For whatever reason, I think people are under the false impression that ancient literature is......

After reading the introduction to this series, I expected something much more fractured than what I encountered on the page; however, I found Euripides' style in this work to be very coherent. After reading Aeschylus, I noticed the aesthetic jump that Euripides had taken via the psychological subtext inherent in his characters. Whereas reading Aeschylus felt flat (although I enjoyed "Agamemnon"); there was too much exposition in Aeschylus; too much that did not expedite the forward motion of his...

The Bacchae is my newest favorite play of all time. Dionysus isn't only the god of wine, but of surrendering control. Penthelus is the know-it-all, 20-something king whose rigidity and Puritanical arrogance are his downfall. Penthalus doesn't recognise that the ability to let go is an amazing gift, personified by Dionysus. Since Penthelus's innocent desires are repressed, they resurface as something much darker: something predatory and voyeuristic. He can't appreciate that the dark side of Diony...

The three plays presented in "Euripides V" are all important works: Electra, The Phoenician Women, and The Bacchae. The editors are David Grene (who translated and provided the Introduction to "The History" by Herodotus) and Richmond Lattimore. Both are well reputed scholars of the classics. Before each play, they provide useful context and critical evaluations of the work. Emily Townsend Vermeule provides a competent translation. The works stand or fall on the basis of the original quality of t...

Just revisited "The Bacchae" with friends and was delighted. The most striking element to me was the complexity of the characterizations. I kept finding myself rooting for the character I thought was supposed to be the protagonist and then they would do something unpleasant and my alliances would shift and then the cycle would repeat itself. Also there is some fantastic language about snakes licking droplets of blood off the women's faces and other far out things. The Greeks clearly inhabited a

"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 i...

This is an excellent collection of tragedies, with wonderful translations and great commentary in the introductions. My favourite has to be The Bacchae - it's unmatched in its raw ferocity, its wildness, its blatant violrnce and horror, and yet it is such a thrill to read. Out of the remaining two, I have a fondness for Electra. She is a tormented soul, thrust into an unhappy situation. I sympathized with both Electra and Clytemnestra, and my heart went out to both of them. Really, these are a d...

And so I finish my goal of reading the complete tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. While certainly uneven (because of incomplete survival of the complete works), they are certainly intriguing works and raise fascinating questions of staging. I would say as a whole that I prefer Euripides who certainly feels most easily adapted to the modern stage, but what a treat to have these earliest examples of the Western theatre.