Preface and Acknowledgments

Over the centuries, ancient Greek tragedy has exerted a formative influence on western literature and thinking. Two and a half millennia after they were written, many of the fifth-century Greek tragedies whose texts have survived are still performed today, whether as translations or as adaptations for stage and screen, and even sometimes in the original Greek. Some of the tragic heroes, most notably but not only Oedipus and Electra, have entered the vocabulary we use to describe human conduct and feelings. Over the last few decades the tragedies’ reach has extended to much of the world, with translations and adaptations staged across Europe and North America, as well as in Australia, Asia, Africa, and South America. The survival and dissemination of the tragedies, both as texts and as a living dramatic art form, and the inspiration they continue to provide attest to their continued power and relevance. Yet many aspects of ancient Greek tragedy are difficult for us to fully grasp today. We have lost much of the knowledge of the myths that the plays dramatize and to which they refer, knowledge which ancient audiences possessed. Most of us are unfamiliar with the basic elements of the tragedies — their structure and metrical conventions, elevated language and formal rhetoric, choral conventions, and the theater in which they were mounted, to name only a few. Few of us have much knowledge of the political and cultural contexts in which the tragedies were written or of the religious concepts that infuse them. Moreover, many of the norms, ideas, and values that underpin the tragedies are distant from our own, if not alien to us. For these and many other reasons, readers who want to understand the ancient tragedies on their own terms, and not from a modern perspective alone, need a good deal of knowledge. While there are a number of excellent companions to and essay collections on Greek tragedy, there is no comprehensive and reliable reference that provides in readily accessible form the full range of information that is required to fully understand and appreciate the tragedies. Nor is there any that addresses the needs of lay readers, students, and researchers alike, of those who come