Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Nor pays light tribute to this land and me. Such claims command my reverence, nor to slight His friendship, but receive him for our guest. And if his pleasure be to sojourn here, On thee I charge his safety; if to go With me?choose, Oedipus, of this and that, 64o According to thy will: thy will is mine. Oed. All men of liberal soul may Zeus reward Thes. What is thy pleasure ? Wilt thou go with me ? Oed. So, if I might, I would. But in this place? Tlus. What in this place shall be ? I thwart thee not. Oed. Here they who cast me forth shall feel my might. Thes. So should thy presence prove great boon to us. Oed. Only hold fast thy word, to make it good. TJus. Fear not for me: thou shalt not be betrayed. Oed. I will not bind thine honour with an oath. 650 Thes. It should not serve thee better than my word. Oed. What wilt thou do ? Thes. What fear disquiets thee ? Oed. Men will come hither. . . . Thes. Trust our friends for that. Oed. Beware lest leaving me. . . . Thes. I know my part. Oed. My fears are urgent. . . . Thes. Fear my heart knows none. Oed. Thou know'st not how they threaten. Thes. But I know No man shall drag thee hence in my despite. Oh many threats full many a braggart word Have hotly threatened?but the passion cools, And reason reigns, the bubble threats are gone o And they, however bold to speak great words, Shall find, I know, or ere they steal thee hence, Wide seas and boisterous are first to cross. Enough?if Phoebus sent thee, though my will Were not to help, small need thou hast to fear; But now I know, ev'n though I be not nigh, My name shall guard thee, safe from all misuse. Chor. To the land of the steed, O stranger, (Strophe i. To the goodliest homes upon earth thou c...
Synopsis
With new translations and a new afterword The full texts of the seven extant plays of Sophocles with Paul Roche's revised and updated translations of the Oedipus cycle, and all-new translations of the remaining plays.
Synopsis
With new translations and a new afterword
The full texts of the seven extant plays of Sophocles with Paul Roche's revised and updated translations of the Oedipus cycle, and all-new translations of the remaining plays.
About the Author
Sophocles was born at Colonus, just outside Athens, in 496 BC, and lived ninety years. His long life spanned the rise and decline of the Athenian Empire; he was a friend of Pericles, and though not an active politician he held several public offices, both military and civil. The leader of a literary circle and friend of Herodotus, he was interested in poetic theory as well as practice, and he wrote a prose treatise
On the Chorus. He seems to have been content to spend all his life at Athens, and is said to have refused several invitations to royal courts.
Sophocles first won a prize for tragic drama in 468, defeating the veteran Aeschylus. He wrote over a hundred plays for the Athenian theater, and is said to have come first in twenty-four contests. Only seven of his tragedies are now extant, these being Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, and the posthumous Oedipus at Colonus. A substantial part of The Searches, a satyr play, was recovered from papyri in Egypt in modern times. Fragments of other plays remain, showing that he drew on a wide range of themes; he also introduced the innovation of a third actor in his tragedies. He died in 406 BC.
Paul Roche, a distinguished English poet and translator, is the author of The Bible’s Greatest Stories. His other translations include Euripides: Ten Plays (Signet), Oedipus Plays of Sophocles (Meridian) and The Orestes Plays of Aeschylus (Meridian).