Readers and theater enthusiasts interested in ancient Greek tragedy usually know Sophocles’s famous Theban plays Oedipus the King, Antigone, and even Oedipus at Colonus. However, fewer people, even among Classicists and theater historians, know the four other extant Sophoclean tragedies Ajax The Women of Trachis Electra and Philoctetes or the extensive fragments of his satyr play The Trackers. These are brilliant plays that deal with topics such as the suicide of a veteran, adultery, revenge, chronic illness, betrayal of a comrade in wartime, and more, all set in the rich framework of Greek mythology. This class will explore these plays as literature, as scripts for theater, and as documents that inform us about Greek civilization and mythology.
Read: Ajax The Women of Trachis Electra Philoctetes The Trackers. These translations from the ancient Greek are all available in a one-volume paperback edition, Sophocles II, 3rd edition, published by the University of Chicago Press, (2013).