to illustrate the nature of myth and of suffering in tragedy.
A.D. Trendall and T. B.L. Webster, Illustrations of Greek Drama (London, 1971), has replaced all
earlier works of this kind and presents the evidence of visual art extremely clearly. A. W. Pickard-
Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, (2nd edn., revised by J. Gould and D.M. Lewis, Oxford,
1968) is a reliable guide to its subject.
O. Taplin, in The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977), has opened a new and much clearer way of
reading and understanding Aeschylus; his Greek Tragedy in Action (London, 1978) effectively brings
out the significance of performance and spectacle in Attic tragedy. There are particularly good books on
Sophocles: Karl Reinhardt's Sophocles (English trans., Oxford Black-well, 1978); Sophocles: an
Interpretation by R. P. Winnington-Ingram (Cambridge, 1980) and B. M. W. Knox's The Heroic
Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (California, 1966). These works bring out well the nature of
Sophocles' world and the stature and situation of his central characters. Gilbert Murray's classic
Euripides and his Age (1913, Oxford; paperback 1965) is still worth reading. An excellent book in
French: J. de Romilly, L'evolution du pathetique d'Eschyle a Euripide (Paris, 2nd edn. 1980). There is a
paperback Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy (1983) edited by E. Segal, which reprints many
interesting papers, some of them translated from other languages.
Richmond Lattimore, in The Poetry of Greek Tragedy (Baltimore, 1958) and Story Patterns in Greek
Tragedy (London, 1964), both brief books, does more than many longer ones to make plain the things
we most want to know about the subject.
Hugh Lloyd-Jones in The Justice of Zeus (California, 2nd edn. 1984) and E. R. Dodds, in The Greeks
and the Irrational (California, 1951) constantly discuss tragedy, and their work is an indispensable
introduction to this as to other matters.
T. B.L. Webster's Introduction to Menander (London, 1974) makes many useful observations and is
sound and thorough, though F. H. Sandbach's general book, The Comic Theatre of Greece and Rome
(London, 1977), is more intuitive; sounder still, and easy to read, which Webster is not, K.J. Dover's
reliable Aristophanic Comedy (London, 1972) is an admirably precise, if sometimes laconic, treatment.
Kenneth McLeish's Theatre of Aristophanes (London, 1980), on the other hand, is a very lively book,
brimming over with ideas and full of insights. It is appealingly unsober and romantic.
Hugh Lloyd-Jones's translation of the Oresteia (London, 1979) with new introductions to the three plays
in this edition, is the best English version and literary interpretation that we have for any Greek play.
The most successful versions by poets are the Oedipus plays by W. B. Yeats and the Women of Trachis,
eccentric but brilliant, by Ezra Pound. No wholly satisfactory translations of most tragedies or any
comedies exist in English, though Dudley Fitts has produced actable adaptations of Aristophanes of
great interest, and the Penguin translations of Aristophanes have great merits (by D. Barrett and A. H.
Sommerstein).