Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work,and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle,he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly,characters interacted only with the chorus.
Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles,he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him,but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these,eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete. There are many fragments of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together,partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became,in the Hellenistic Age,a cornerstone of ancient literary education,along with Homer,Demosthenes,and Menander.
Sophocles was an ancient Greek tragedian,known as one of three from whom at least one play has survived in full. His first plays were written later than,or contemporary with,those of Aeschylus;and earlier than,or contemporary with,those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote over 120 plays,but only seven have survived in a complete form:Ajax,Antigone,Women of Trachis,Oedipus Rex,Electra,Philoctetes,and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost fifty years,Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in thirty competitions,won twenty-four,and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won thirteen competitions,and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles;Euripides won four.
Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb was a British classical scholar and MP for Cambridge.
The Persians is an ancient Greek tragedy written during the Classical period of Ancient Greece by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus. It is the second and only surviving part of a now otherwise lost trilogy that won the first prize at the dramatic competitions in Athens' City Dionysia festival in 472 BC,with Pericles serving as choregos.
The Achilleis is a lost trilogy by the Athenian dramatist Aeschylus. The three plays that make up the Achilleis exist today only in fragments,but aspects of their overall content can be reconstructed with reasonable certainty. Like the Oresteia which forms "a narratively connected unit with a continuous plot," the trilogy had a unified focus,presumably treating the story of Achilles at Troy in a version comparable to the plot of the latter two-thirds of the Iliad. In the Myrmidons,Achilles' refusal to fight after his quarrel with Agamemnon led to the death of Patroclus. The title of the play traditionally placed second in the trilogy is the Nereids. The chorus was thus a group of Nereids,and the subject of the play involved Achilles and his Nereid mother Thetis,probably her mourning his imminent death and the acquisition of his new arms. In the Phrygians or Ransom of Hector,Priam and a chorus of Phrygians sought to retrieve Hector's body from the still wroth Achilles.
Electra,also Elektra or The Electra,is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known,but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career. Jebb dates it between 420 BC and 414 BC.
Francis Macdonald Cornford was an English classical scholar and translator known for work on ancient philosophy,notably Plato,Parmenides,Thucydides,and ancient Greek religion. Frances Cornford,his wife,was a noted poet. Due to the similarity in their names,he was known in the family as "FMC" and his wife as "FCC".
Philip Humphrey Vellacott was an English classical scholar,known for his numerous translations of Greek tragedy.
Rhesus is an Athenian tragedy that belongs to the transmitted plays of Euripides. Its authorship has been disputed since antiquity,and the issue has invested modern scholarship since the 17th century when the play's authenticity was challenged,first by Joseph Scaliger and subsequently by others,partly on aesthetic grounds and partly on account of peculiarities in the play's vocabulary,style and technique. The conventional attribution to Euripides remains controversial.
The Suppliants,also called The Suppliant Maidens,The Suppliant Women,or Supplices is a play by Aeschylus. It was probably first performed "only a few years previous to the Oresteia,which was brought out 458 BC." It seems to be the first play in a tetralogy,sometimes referred to as the Danaid Tetralogy,which probably included the lost plays The Egyptians,and The Daughters of Danaus,and the satyr play Amymone. It was long thought to be the earliest surviving play by Aeschylus due to the relatively anachronistic function of the chorus as the protagonist of the drama. However,evidence discovered in the mid-twentieth century shows it one of Aeschylus' last plays,definitely written after The Persians and possibly after Seven Against Thebes. One reason The Suppliants was thought to be an early play was "its preponderance of choral lyric,. .. a succession of choral odes that are among the densest,most opulent,most purely lovely things in all Greek poetry."
Eric Robertson Dodds was an Irish classical scholar. He was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford from 1936 to 1960.
Rush Rehm is professor of drama and classics at Stanford University in California,in the United States. He also works professionally as an actor and director. He has published many works on classical theatre. Rehm is the artistic director of Stanford Repertory Theater (SRT),a professional theater company that presents a dramatic festival based on a major playwright each summer. SRT's 2016 summer festival,Theater Takes a Stand,celebrates the struggle for workers' rights. A political activist,Rehm has been involved in Central American and Cuban solidarity,supporting East Timorese resistance to the Indonesian invasion and occupation,the ongoing struggle for Palestinian rights,and the fight against US militarism. In 2014,he was awarded Stanford's Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Service to Undergraduate Education.
Patricia Elizabeth Easterling,FBA is an English classical scholar,recognised as a particular expert on the work of Sophocles. She was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 2001. She was the 36th person and the first —and,so far,only —woman to hold the post.
Sir Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones was a British classical scholar and Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford. Educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church,Oxford,he served as a linguist and intelligence officer during the Second World War,including a stint at the code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park. After a brief fellowship at Jesus College,Cambridge,he moved to Corpus Christi College,Oxford,where he remained for the rest of his academic career. In 1961,he was made Regius Professor of Greek.
Sir Denys Lionel Page was a British classicist and textual critic who served as the 34th Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and the 35th Master of Jesus College,Cambridge. He is best known for his critical editions of the Ancient Greek lyric poets and tragedians.
Alfred Chilton Pearson FBA was an English classical scholar,noted for his work on Greek tragedy. Born and schooled in London,Pearson graduated with distinction from Christ's College,Cambridge,before pursuing a career in law,business and teaching. In 1919,having published several books on ancient Greek philosophy and tragedy,he was elected as the Gladstone Professor of Greek at the University of Liverpool,and he subsequently became Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge in 1921.
Thomas George Tucker was an Anglo-Australian academic,classicist,professor at the University of Melbourne and author.
The School of History,Classics and Archaeology (HCA) at the University of Edinburgh is a school within the College of Arts,Humanities &Social Sciences.
Douglas Laidlaw Cairns is a British classicist,Professor of Classics at the University of Edinburgh,former Chair of the Classical Association,and Chair of Edinburgh University Press. He specialises in the study of Greek society,ethics,literature,emotional life,and the ways in which these are reflected in Greek epic,tragedy,and lyric poetry.
