43 pages • 1 hour read
Euripides, Alan Shapiro, Gilbert MurrayA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“POSEIDON: I am leaving glorious Ilion, leaving my altars. A town that’s been deserted tends to neglect its gods, stint on their honors.”
This is an excerpt from the play’s Prologue, which is delivered by the sea god Poseidon. Poseidon was on Troy’s side in their war with Greece, but now characters wonder to what extent the gods drive the actions of mortals. Though Poseidon doesn’t answer this question, he does indicate to us that the gods involve themselves to some extent in mortal lives.
“POSEIDON: That man’s an idiot who ravages cities, and consigns their holy temples and tombs—the sacred places of the dead—to stark desertion. He will die himself.”
This is the conclusion of Poseidon’s Prologue, once he and Athena have decided to destroy the Greek ships.This statement could be taken as a reflection on the Athenian invasion of Melos the year before this play was produced; the Athenians killed the men and enslaved the women and children. Just as the Greeks’ impious actions anger the gods in this play, perhaps Euripides’ audience would have seen a warning that they have incurred the gods’ wrath, as well.
“HECUBA: Sail with the changes, sail with the current, sail with your fate, not against it.”
These lines, from Hecuba’s opening monologue, show us the importance of the nautical metaphor for Hecuba. The queen compares herself to a ship that is caught in a bad storm, and coaches herself to bear with it and endure what comes. The alternative, resistance, would spell destruction for her, just as it would for a ship in a storm.
By these authors
Alcestis
Euripides, William Arrowsmith
Cyclops
Euripides
Electra
Euripides, George Theodorides, Janet Lempke
Hecuba
Euripides, M. Tierney
Helen
Euripides, Colin Leach, James Michie
Heracles
Euripides
Hippolytus
Euripides
Ion
Ed. John C. Gilbert, Euripides, Peter Burian, W.S. Di Piero
Iphigenia in Aulis (Plays for Performance Series)
Bernard Sahlins, Nicholas Rudall, Euripides
Medea
Euripides, Rex Warner
Orestes
Euripides, John Peck, Frank Nisetich
The Bacchae
Euripides, Kenneth McLeish, Frederic Raphael
The Seven Against Thebes (Dover Thrift Editions)
Aeschylus, Gilbert Murray
The World's Best Poetry, Volume 5 (Part 1): Nature
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Mapes Dodge, George Darley, William Motherwell, George Eliot, John Milton, Clement Scott, George Arnold, Robert Browning, James Thomson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., William Ernest Henley, Denis Florence MacCarthy, William Cullen Bryant, John Sterling, John Clare, Izaak Walton, Matthew Arnold, James Whitcomb Riley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Jenner, William Gilmore Simms, Charles G.D. Roberts, Henry Timrod, William Cox Bennett, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, George MacDonald, William Shakespeare, Matthias Claudius, Alexander Hume, James Beattie, Thomas Gray, Craig Franklin, John Cunningham, Norman Rowland Gale, James Gates Percival, Joel Benton, Thomas Heywood, Richard Hovey, Anna Boynton Averill, Charles Sangster, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dora Hill Read Goodale, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wotton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Howard Bryant, John G.C. Brainard, Thomas Campbell, Eduard Mörike, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, David Gray, William Cowper, W.B. Yeats, William Prescott Foster, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Thomas Carew, William Howitt, John B. Tabb, Jones Very, Henry Fielding, Barry Cornwall, Samuel Daniel, John Keats, Homer, George Francis Savage-Armstrong, John Leyden, Tomas Peter, Thomas Hood, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Richard Watson Gilder, Ethelwyn Wetherald, William Wordsworth, Euripides, Joseph Blanco White, Edmund Clarence Stedman, G.W. Pettee, Robert Tannahill, Ebenezer Jones, John Chalkhill, Abraham Cowley, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lisle Bowles, Leanne Yau, Charles Harpur, Sonia, Edith M. Thomas, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron, Ebenezer Elliott, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, Richard Henry Horne, Jason in Panama, Walter Scott, Hartley Coleridge, Duncan Campbell Scott, Alfred Tennyson, John Davies, Aristophanes, Charles G. Eastman, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, William Browne, Robert Burns, Samuel Rogers, Ludwig H.C. Hölty, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Celia Laighton Thaxter