Suppliant Women

by Euripides

Book Overview

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly recreate the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. Under the editorship of Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, each volume includes a critical introduction, commentary on...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019504553X
• ISBN13: 9780195045536
• Release Date: February 1995
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Compassion for the dead and the folly of war.

The suppliants in this play by Euripides are seven women and their king (Adrastus, King of Argos) who have come to Athens and its leader, Theseus, to ask for aid in their quest. The women's seven sons had been killed in battle against Thebes in the attempt by Polyneices to regain his inheritance from his brother Eteocles (both sons of Oedipus). Argos lost the battle and both of the sons of Oedipus were killed. The new ruler of Thebes, Creon (the brothers' uncle), refused the mothers the right to recover their sons' bodies for burial. Theseus, at first, refuses to help them since it was Adrastus's folly to get involved in that war; however, Theseus is persuaded by his own mother. This is another of Euripides's "irony" plays in which he points out the folly of war, particularly wars whose origins are long in the past (such as the war Athens was currently involved with Sparta).