The ancient Greek plays, in chronological order - a readalong for next year - cry, cry in triumph, carry on the dancing on and on!

Let’s read the ancient Greek plays next year.  All of them.  There are not so many, and they are generally short.

I’ll read them all, one per week, and put up some kind of post on Friday, where anyone can join in.  Of course anyone can do whatever they want, on their own blog or on Twitter or in quiet communion with nature.  Below, we can see my schedule, but everyone is welcome to dip in as they like.

I have no Greek and no expertise, except that I read through the plays over twenty years ago, and have read several on occasion since.  They are, overall, fundamental texts in my understanding of literature, not just theater.  They are also full of great characters, exciting stories, extraordinary language (even in translation), and conceptual innovations of the greatest importance.

We are lucky to have seven surviving plays by Aeschylus, seven by Sophocles, nineteen by Euripides (one of which is perhaps by someone else), eleven by Aristophanes, and one by Menander, with one more close enough to complete that I am including it.  Forty-six plays in forty-six weeks.

I have made an educational and perhaps foolish attempt to put the plays in chronological order, relying mostly on the Penguin and University of Chicago editions.  My chronology is likely full of errors – please correct – and anyways should be often taken as guesswork.  But once we get into the 420s the mix gets pretty interesting.  405 is a landmark in literature.  All years are BCE.

A	Aeschylus (524-456)
S	Sophocles (496-405)
E	Euripides (480-406)
Ar	Aristophanes (446-386)
M	Menander (341-290)

 

472	A	The Persians
470			first Sophocles play
467	A	Seven Against Thebes
463	A	The Suppliants
???	A	Prometheus Bound
Early?	S	Ajax
458	A	Agamemnon
	A	The Libation Bearers
	A	Eumenides
441	S	Antigone
Before 440?	"E"	Rhesus
438	E	Alcestis	Death of Pindar
431	E	The Medea
430			Death of Herodotus
c. 429	E	The Heracleidae
428	E	Hippolytus
c. 426	S	Oedipus Rex
c. 425	E	Andromache
425	Ar	The Acharnians
c. 424	E	Hecuba
424	Ar	The Knights
c. 423	E	The Suppliants
423	Ar	The Clouds
c. 420s	S	The Women of Trachis
422	Ar	The Wasps
421	Ar	Peace
Late - 420-414	S	Elektra
c. 416	E	Herakles
c. 415	E	The Trojan Women
c. 414	E	Iphigenia in Tauris
414	Ar	The Birds
c. 413	E	Ion
c. 413	E	Electra
412	E	Helen
411	Ar	Lysistrata
411	Ar	The Poet and the Women
c. 410	E	The Phoenician Women
Late ?	E	The Cyclops
409	S	Philoctetes
408	E	Orestes
405	E	The Bacchae	Death of Sophocles
	E	Iphigenia in Aulis
	Ar	The Frogs
404	S	Oedipus at Colonus
400			Death of Thucydides
399			Death of Socrates
392	Ar	The Assemblywomen
388	Ar	Wealth
347			Death of Plato
323			Death of Alexander
322			Death of Aristotle
316	M	Dyskolos
c. 315	M	The Girl from Samos

 

Just putting the list together got me excited to read the plays along with whoever is interested.  Perhaps half of them are among the greatest works in literature.  But we can chat about that later.

As for translations, I have no advice.  The University of Chicago series has been a standard for a long time.  The Oxford series with the black covers always seemed excellent, and have more notes.  Every Penguin Classics I have tired has been good.  Any of these will have adequate notes for most people.  I am curious about some of the “celebrity” versions – Seamus Heaney’s Antigone, or Wole Soyinka’s Antigone, for example.  H.D.’s Ion is a good one.  But all of that can wait, too.

I plan to start in January, with the first post on The Persians up on January 14.

The title of the post uses the last line of The Eumenides as per Robert Fagles.