The Tangled Ways of Zeus: And Other Studies In and Around Greek Tragedy

by Alan H. Sommerstein

Overview

The Tangled Ways of Zeus is a collection of studies written over the last twenty years by the distinguished classicist Alan Sommerstein about various aspects of ancient Greek tragedy (and, in some cases, other related genres). It complements his recent collection of studies in Greek comedy, Talking about Laughter (OUP, 2009). Some of the essays have not been published previously, others have appeared in books or journals hard to find outside major academic libraries. Each chapter deals with its own topic, but between them they build up a multifaceted picture of the dramatists (especially Aeschylus and Sophocles), the genre, and its interactions with the society, culture, and religion of classical Athens.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199568314
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2010
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Alan H. Sommerstein is Professor of Greek at the University of Nottingham.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations ix

Introduction 1

1 The titles of Greek dramas 11

2 Violence in Greek drama 30

3 Adolescence, ephebeia, and Athenian drama 47

4 Sherlockismus and the study of fragmentary tragedies 61

5 The seniority of Polyneikes in Aeschylus' Seven 82

6 The beginning and the end of Aeschylus' Danaid trilogy 89

7 The theatre audience, the Demos, and the Suppliants of Aeschylus 118

8 Sleeping safe in our beds: stasis, assassination, and the Oresteia 143

9 The tangled ways of Zeus 164

10 The omen of Aulis or the omen of Argos? 171

11 Pathos and mathos before Zeus 178

12 Oresteia Act II: two misconceptions 189

13 Aeschylus' epitaph 195

14 Dearest Haimon 202

15 'They all knew how it was going to end': tragedy, myth, and the spectator 209

16 Alternative scenarios in Sophocles' Electra 224

17 Sophocles' Palamedes and Nauplius plays: no trilogy here 250

18 'The rugged Pyrrhus': the son of Achilles in tragedy 259

19 What ought the Thebans to have done? 277

References 288

Index locorum 307

General index 331