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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Stories from the Greek Tragedians," Alfred John Church adeptly distills the essence of ancient Greek tragedy, offering readers a collection of narratives that highlight the emotional depth and psychological complexity of pivotal characters from the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Church's literary style marries a scholarly approach with accessible prose, making the ancient tales resonate with contemporary audiences. The book is situated within the broader context of classical literature, illustrating the enduring themes of fate, honor, and human suffering that have captivated readers for centuries. Alfred John Church, an esteemed classical scholar and translator, brought his expertise and passion for Greek literature to this compilation. His background in the classics, coupled with a deep understanding of the cultural and historical milieu of ancient Greece, enabled him to present these stories with authenticity and depth. Church's work stems from a desire to make the rich legacy of Greek tragedy accessible to a modern readership, illuminating the timelessness of these narratives. "Stories from the Greek Tragedians" is highly recommended for students of literature, educators, and anyone intrigued by the complexities of human experience as depicted in classical narratives. Church's retellings serve not only as an introduction to Greek tragedy but also invite readers to reflect on the universality of the themes, making it a valuable addition to any literary collection. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Stories from the Greek Tragedians
Table of Contents
Introduction
Alfred John Church’s Stories from the Greek Tragedians brings together his prose renderings of landmark dramas from classical Athens into a single, coherent collection. It is not a complete corpus of Greek drama nor a set of translations; rather, it retells the narratives in clear English, preserving the gravity of the myths while easing the path for modern readers. The book gathers stories from the cycles of Thebes and the House of Atreus, alongside tales of Heracles, Ajax, and other figures, to give a broad view of tragic imagination. Its purpose is introductory and synthetic, inviting entry without scholarly barriers.
The contents are short prose narratives—adaptations shaped from dramatic sources—rather than original plays, poems, essays, letters, or diaries. Each piece stands alone as a story fashioned from a Greek tragedy, such as the accounts of Alcestis, Medea, Philoctetes, and the Persian defeat at Salamis. Some items form connected arcs within a shared mythic thread, as with the sequence surrounding Agamemnon and Orestes, or the Ajax Series, which treats episodes in the hero’s life. The emphasis throughout falls on narrative retelling: Church keeps the essential action and tone in view without reproducing staging, meter, or choral odes.
Viewed as a whole, the collection highlights enduring tragic concerns: the pressure of fate on choice, the claims of divine law against civic decree, the price of loyalty within the family, and the uneasy border between justice and vengeance. Church’s signature is lucid, measured prose that honors the originals’ dignity while clarifying motives and cause-and-effect. He converts choral meditation into flowing narration and lets decisive crises emerge with sober force. The result remains significant as an approachable gateway to Greek tragedy, offering readers a sustained encounter with the themes and moral questions that have shaped dramatic art for centuries.
The stories are derived from the canonical tragedians—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—and retain the contours that made those plays central to ancient and later audiences. Aeschylus underlies the Persians, Seven Chiefs Against Thebes, the Death of Agamemnon, and the Furies; Sophocles informs Antigone, Philoctetes, and episodes concerning Ajax; Euripides contributes Medea, Alcestis, Ion, and the paired Iphigenia tales set at Aulis and among the Taurians. Where traditions overlap, Church follows recognized dramatic versions and presents them as continuous prose, shaping transitions and contexts so that readers can trace causes and consequences without stage directions or metrical form.
A classical scholar and teacher, Church writes with an avowedly educational purpose while avoiding pedantry. His scenes are paced for those approaching these materials for the first time, with clear entrances, decisive turns, and concise reminders of kinship, cult, or custom when needed. The approach suits students and general readers alike: each narrative stands on its own and also invites a return to the original plays. By mediating between literal translation and bare synopsis, the collection preserves complexity without obscurity, encouraging attentive reading that joins literary pleasure with informed understanding of the ancient world’s dramatic imagination.
The range is unusually comprehensive for a single volume of retellings. It spans the Theban crisis in Seven Chiefs Against Thebes and its ethical aftermath in Antigone; traces the House of Atreus from the mustering at Aulis through the perilous homecoming of Agamemnon, the dilemmas of Electra and Orestes, and the pursuit addressed in the Furies; follows the pathos surrounding the end of Heracles and the isolation of Philoctetes with the bow of the hero; and includes Medea’s response to betrayal, the devoted love animating Alcestis, the reflection on identity in Ion, and the Persian court’s reckoning after Salamis.
Together these narratives offer a coherent passage through the moral and emotional landscapes of Greek tragedy, balancing public catastrophe with private choice. Readers may proceed in sequence or by theme, discovering how questions of honor, piety, kinship, and leadership recur in fresh guises from city to household and back again. Church’s method constructs a bridge from stage to story, demonstrating why these subjects continue to compel attention. The collection affirms that clarity and depth can coexist, and that a careful retelling can transmit the resonance of the ancient theater to contemporary minds without sacrificing dignity or intellectual weight.
Historical Context
Alfred John Church (1829–1912) was a Victorian classicist whose career bridged schoolroom, lecture hall, and popular press. Educated at Oxford, he taught in London before becoming Professor of Latin at University College London (1880–1888). With W. J. Brodribb he produced standard English versions of Tacitus in the late 1860s and 1870s, then turned to narrative retellings for younger audiences. Stories from the Greek Tragedians, issued in London in the late 1870s, distilled Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides into lucid prose. Church’s aim was pedagogic and moral: to communicate the gravity of fate, law, and civic duty while making complex plots, divine interventions, and ritual settings intelligible to general readers.
The ancient dramas behind Church’s versions arose in fifth-century BCE Athens, at the City Dionysia in the Theatre of Dionysus below the Acropolis. Aeschylus (c. 525–456), Sophocles (c. 497–406), and Euripides (c. 480–406) wrote for a citizen audience formed by war and democracy. The Persian Wars (Marathon 490 and Salamis 480) and the Peloponnesian War (431–404) shape themes of hubris, law, and suffering. Myths of the Houses of Atreus and Labdacids, the Trojan cycle, and sanctuaries at Delphi, Aulis, and Tauris supplied settings recognizable across many plays. Church’s selections thus map the civic, religious, and geopolitical horizons of classical Greek tragedy.
Church’s enterprise belongs to a wider nineteenth-century British philhellenism. Classical training dominated elite curricula at Oxford and Cambridge, where Literae Humaniores organized a moralized reading of Greece. The Public Schools Act (1868) and the Elementary Education Act (1870) expanded literacy and increased demand for accessible classics. Tools like Liddell and Scott’s Greek lexicon (first issued in 1843) and Jowett’s Oxford translations normalized the movement from Greek to English. Meanwhile, R. C. Jebb’s editions of Sophocles (1883–1896) exemplified rigorous philology. Church wrote within this matrix, converting technical scholarship and school exercises into narratives that could circulate from London classrooms to provincial lending libraries.
Victorian debates on translation shaped Church’s methods. Matthew Arnold’s On Translating Homer (1861) argued for dignity and clarity, while Francis Newman favored energetic, vernacular force. Church bypassed strict verse imitation, creating prose that retained ceremonial gravity yet invited readers unused to Greek metres. Performance culture reinforced this accessibility: Mendelssohn’s Antigone music (1841) popularized tragic choruses, and the Cambridge Greek Play, inaugurated in 1882 with Sophocles’ Ajax, made original-language productions a public spectacle. English versions multiplied on the London stage and in print, so that names like Agamemnon, Antigone, Medea, and Philoctetes became part of common educated discourse in Britain.
Stories from the Greek Tragedians also extends a robust tradition of juvenile and family classics. Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare (1807), Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales (1853), and Charles Kingsley’s The Heroes (1856) had proved that myth and drama could be retold without losing ethical weight. Cheap series from London publishers and Sunday reading markets encouraged concise, morally framed narratives. Church’s own companion volumes, Stories from Homer (1877) and Stories from Virgil (late 1870s), positioned tragedy alongside epic and history. In this environment the claims of piety, kinship, and civic law could be taught through familiar stories, not philological apparatus.
Archaeology powerfully reanimated tragic material in Church’s lifetime. Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations at Hisarlik (Troy) in 1870–1873 and at Mycenae in 1876, with the famous so-called Mask of Agamemnon, lent tangible splendour to cycles involving Argos, Mycenae, and Troy. The Elgin Marbles, housed in the British Museum since 1816, gave London audiences direct contact with fifth-century Athenian art. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, founded in London in 1879, institutionalized new research on Greek history, religion, and performance. Such developments encouraged readers to imagine Aulis, Salamis, Delphi, and Thebes as historical landscapes as well as mythic stages, enriching Church’s narrative settings.
British imperial horizons fed interest in the political thought of tragedy. The Crimean War (1853–1856), the Anglo-Persian War (1856–1857), and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 sharpened debates about sea power, empire, and East–West encounters. The Greek victory at Salamis in 480 BCE offered a celebrated precedent for maritime strategy and civic solidarity, while Marathon in 490 symbolized disciplined citizen warfare. Victorian readers frequently contrasted Greek liberty with Persian despotism, a frame that colored receptions of Athenian drama and history. Without overt allegory, Church’s retellings entered a culture that read ancient conflicts through the lens of contemporary global politics.
Social and intellectual change also framed Church’s work. The Oxford Movement (from 1833) emphasized moral seriousness, while Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) unsettled providential narratives, stimulating renewed interest in tragic causality and human agency. Expansion of women’s education at Girton (1869) and Newnham (1871) brought more female readers to Greek subjects, and tragedies centered on powerful heroines found eager audiences. Church’s Anglican sensibility highlighted conscience, law, and reverence, tempering sensational elements without erasing them. By the time of his death in 1912, his retellings had helped naturalize the Aeschylean, Sophoclean, and Euripidean worlds in English letters, binding scholarship to humane instruction.
Synopsis (Selection)
The Story Of The Love Of Alcestis.
A king gains a reprieve from death if someone will die in his stead, and his devoted wife volunteers, testing the bounds of love, duty, and hospitality.
The Story Of The Vengeance Of Medea.
After her husband abandons her for a political marriage, a foreign sorceress confronts exile and devises a devastating revenge against those who wronged her.
The Story Of The Death Of Hercules.
Amid pursuit of a final triumph, the great hero becomes ensnared in the fatal consequences of past deeds, forcing a reckoning with pain, pride, and mortal limits.
The Story Of The Seven Chiefs Against Thebes.
Seven champions lead an assault on Thebes while a bitter feud between brothers threatens the city's defense and its royal house.
The Story Of Antigone.
Defying a royal edict against burying her brother, a young woman challenges the authority of the state, setting a collision between divine law and civic order.
The Story Of Iphigenia In Aulis.
With the Greek fleet becalmed, its leader is told the war can proceed only at the cost of his daughter's life, drawing family and allies into a fraught choice.
The Story Of Philoctetes, Or The Bow Of Hercules.
A wounded archer abandoned on a lonely island holds a weapon vital to the war, and a prince is pressured to win him over by deceit or compassion.
The Story Of The Death Of Agamemnon.
Returning triumphant from Troy, a king enters a home simmering with resentment and treachery, where private vengeance overtakes public glory.
The Story Of Electra, Or The Return Of Orestes.
Years after their father’s murder, Electra and her exiled brother Orestes plot in secret to confront the usurpers of their house.
The Story Of The Furies, Or The Loosing Of Orestes.
Pursued by the Furies for a blood crime, Orestes seeks sanctuary and trial in Athens, where the ancient cycle of vendetta meets civic judgment.
The Story Of Iphigenia Among The Taurians.
Serving as a foreign priestess bound to sacrifice strangers, Iphigenia encounters unexpected visitors who offer a chance at recognition and escape.
The Story Of The Persians, Or The Battle Of Salamis.
From the Persian court, elders and a queen mother await news of the Greek campaign, confronting the consequences of a fateful naval gamble and its toll on imperial pride.
The Story Of Ion.
A temple youth of mysterious birth becomes the focus of an oracle’s promise, as a childless royal couple and hidden parentage intertwine under Apollo’s design.
The Ajax Series
Denied Achilles’ armor, the formidable Ajax struggles with wounded honor and a descent into ruin that forces the army to reckon with heroism and shame.
Stories from the Greek Tragedians
The Story Of The Love Of Alcestis.
Asclepius, the son of Apollo, being a mighty physician, raised men from the dead. But Zeus was wroth that a man should have such power, and so make of no effect the ordinance of the Gods. Wherefore he smote Asclepius with a thunderbolt and slew him. And when Apollo knew this, he slew the Cyclopés that had made the thunderbolts for his father Zeus, for men say that they make them on their forges that are in the mountain of Etna. But Zeus suffered not this deed to go unpunished, but passed this sentence on his son Apollo, that he should serve a mortal man for the space of a whole year. Wherefore, for all that he was a god, he kept the sheep of Admetus, who was the Prince of Pheræ in Thessaly. And Admetus knew not that he was a god; but, nevertheless, being a just man, dealt truly with him. And it came to pass after this that Admetus was sick unto death. But Apollo gained this grace for him of the Fates (which order of life and death for men), that he should live, if only he could find some one who should be willing to die in his stead. And he went to all his kinsmen and friends and asked this thing of them, but found no one that was willing so to die; only Alcestis his wife was willing.
And when the day was come on the which it was appointed for her to die, Death came that he might fetch her. And when he was come, he found Apollo walking to and fro before the palace of King Admetus, having his bow in his hand. And when Death saw him, he said—
"What doest thou here, Apollo? Is it not enough for thee to have kept Admetus from his doom? Dost thou keep watch and ward over this woman with thine arrows and thy bow?"
"Fear not," the god made answer, "I have justice on my side."
"If thou hast justice, what need of thy bow?"
"'Tis my wont to carry it."
"Ay, and it is thy wont to help this house beyond all right and law."
"Nay, but I was troubled at the sorrows of one that I loved, and helped him."
"I know thy cunning speech and fair ways; but this woman thou shalt not take from me."
"But consider; thou canst but have one life. Wilt thou not take another in her stead?"
"Her and no other will I have, for my honour is the greater when I take the young."
"I know thy temper, hated both of Gods and of men. But there cometh a guest to this house, whom Eurystheus sendeth to the snowy plains of Thrace, to fetch the horses of Lycurgus. Haply he shall persuade thee against thy will."
"Say what thou wilt; it shall avail nothing. And now I go to cut off a lock of her hair, for I take these firstfruits of them that die."
In the meantime, within the palace, Alcestis prepared herself for death. And first she washed her body with pure water from the river, and then she took from her coffer of cedar her fairest apparel, and adorned herself therewith. Then, being so arranged, she stood before the hearth and prayed, saying, "O Queen Heré, behold! I depart this day. Do thou therefore keep my children, giving to this one a noble husband and to that a loving wife." And all the altars that were in the house she visited in like manner, crowning them with myrtle leaves and praying at them. Nor did she weep at all, or groan, or grow pale. But at the last, when she came to her chamber, she cast herself upon the bed and kissed it, crying, "I hate thee not, though I die for thee, giving myself for my husband. And thee another wife shall possess, not more true than I am, but, maybe, more fortunate!" And after she had left the chamber, she turned to it again and again with many tears. And all the while her children clung to her garments, and she took them up in her arms, the one first and then the other, and kissed them. And all the servants that were in the house bewailed their mistress, nor did she fail to reach her hand to each of them, greeting him. There was not one of them so vile but she spake to him and was spoken to again.
After this, when the hour was now come when she must die, she cried to her husband (for he held her in his arms, as if he would have stayed her that she should not depart), "I see the boat of the dead, and Charon standing with his hand upon the pole, who calleth me, saying, 'Hasten; thou delayest us;' and then again, 'A winged messenger of the dead looketh at me from under his dark eyebrows, and would lead me away. Dost thou not see him?'" Then after this she seemed now ready to die, yet again she gathered strength, and said to the King, "Listen, and I will tell thee before I die what I would have thee do. Thou knowest how I have given my life for thy life. For when I might have lived, and had for my husband any prince of Thessaly that I would—and dwelt here in wealth and royal state, yet could I not endure to be widowed of thee and that thy children should be fatherless. There, fore I spared not myself, though thy father and she that bare thee betrayed thee. But the Gods have ordered all this after their own pleasure. So be it. Do thou therefore make this recompense, which indeed thou owest to me, for what will not a man give for his life? Thou lovest these children even as I love them. Suffer them then to be rulers in this house, and bring not a step-mother over them who shall hate them and deal with them unkindly. A son, indeed, hath a tower of strength in his father. But, O my daughter, how shall it fare with thee, for thy mother will not give thee in marriage, nor be with thee, comforting thee in thy travail of children, when a mother most showeth kindness and love. And now farewell, for I die this day. And thou, too, farewell, my husband. Thou losest a true wife, and ye, too, my children, a true mother."
Then Admetus made answer, "Fear not, it shall be as thou wilt.[1q] I could not find other wife fair and well born and true as thou. Never more shall I gather revellers in my palace, or crown my head with garlands, or hearken to the voice of music. Never shall I touch the harp or sing to the Libyan flute. And some cunning craftsman shall make an image fashioned like unto thee, and this I will hold in my arms and think of thee. Cold comfort indeed, yet that shall ease somewhat of the burden of my soul. But oh! that I had the voice and melody of Orpheus, for then had I gone down to Hell and persuaded the Queen thereof or her husband with my song to let thee go; nor would the watch-dog of Pluto, nor Charon that ferrieth the dead, have hindered me but that I had brought thee to the light. But do thou wait for me there, for there will I dwell with thee; and when I die they shall lay me by thy side, for never was wife so true as thou."
Then said Alcestis, "Take these children as a gift from me, and be as a mother to them."
"O me!" he cried, "what shall I do, being bereaved of thee?"
And she said, "Time will comfort thee; the dead are as nothing.[2q]"
But he said, "Nay, but let me depart with thee."
But the Queen made answer, "'Tis enough that I die in thy stead."
And when she had thus spoken she gave up the ghost.
Then the King said to the old men that were gathered together to comfort him, "I will see to this burial. And do ye sing a hymn as is meet to the god of the dead. And to all my people I make this decree: that they mourn for this woman, and clothe themselves in black, and shave their heads, and that such as have horses cut off their manes, and that there be not heard in the city the voice of the flute or the sound of the harp for the space of twelve months."
Then the old men sang the hymn as they had been bidden. And when they had finished, it befell that Hercules, who was on a journey, came to the palace and asked whether King Admetus was sojourning there.
And the old men answered, "'Tis even so, Hercules. But what, I pray thee, bringeth thee to this land?"
"I am bound on an errand for King Eurystheus; even to bring back to him horses of King Diomed."
"How wilt thou do this? Dost thou not know this Diomed?"
"I know nought of him, nor of his land."
"Thou wilt not master him or his horses without blows."
"Even so, yet I may not refuse the tasks that are set to me."
"Thou art resolved then to do this thing or to die?"
"Ay; and this is not the first race that I have run."
"Thou wilt not easily bridle these horses."
"Why not? They breathe not fire from their nostrils."
"No, but they devour the flesh of men."
"What sayest thou? This is the food of wild beasts, not of horses."
"Yet 'tis true. Thou wilt see their mangers foul with blood."
"And the master of these steeds, whose son is he?"
"He is son of Ares, lord of the land of Thrace."
"Now this is a strange fate and a hard that maketh me fight ever with the sons of Ares, with Lycaon first, and with Cycnus next, and now with this King Diomed. But none shall ever see the son of Alcmena trembling before an enemy."
