Euripides, Volume IV. Trojan Women. Iphigenia among the Taurians. Ion (Loeb Classical Library No. 10)

EXTREMELY HELPFUL IN TEACHING THE PLAYS

I'm writing some translations of Greek plays, and so I wanted this. It came quickly and it was in great shape.

This volume from the Loeb Classical Libary offers up parallel English translations and original Greek texts for three classic Greek tragedies by Euripides: "Trojan Women," "Iphigenia Among the Taurians," and "Ion."As preparations were made for the ruinous expedition against Syracuse, Euripides wrote "The Trojan Women," as a plea for peace. In this play the Greeks do more than enslave women: they have already slain a young girl as a sacrifice to the ghost of Achilles and they take Astyanax, the son of Hector, out of the arms of his mother so that he can be thrown from the walls of Troy. Even the herald of the Greeks, Talthybius, cannot stomach the policies of his people, but is powerless to do anything other than offer hollow words of sympathy. The play also has a strong literary consideration in that the four Trojan Women--Hecuba, Queen of Troy; Cassandra, daughter of Hecuba and Priestess of Apollo; Andromache, widow of Hector; and Helen--all appear in the final chapter of Homer's epic poem the "Iliad," mourning over the corpse of Hector. Of all the Achean leaders we hear about in Homer, only Menelaus, husband of Helen, appears. He appears, ready to slay Helen for having abandoned him to run off to Troy with Paris, but we see his anger melt before her beauty and soothing tones. "The Trojan Women" also reminds us that while we think of Helen as "the face that launched a thousand ships," she was a despised figure amongst the ancient Greeks and there is no satisfaction in her saving her life. The idea that all of these men died just so that she could be returned to the side of her husband is an utter mockery of the dead.Agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to appease the goddess Artemis, but at the last minute the sacrifice was replaced with a stage. In "Iphigenia Among the Taurians" the dramatist explains the young girl was taken to a temple of Artemis in Tauris. The play takes place many years later as Iphigenia's brother Orestes, trying to appease the Furies for his crime of matricide, is ordered by the god Apollo to bring the statue of Artemis from Tauris to Athens, who have a tradition of sacrificing strangers. This play is really more of a tragicomedy than a traditional Greek tragedy consisting of a key scene of recognition ("anagnorisis") and a clever escape by the main characters. The recognition scene between Orestes and Iphigenia is well done, and atypical since there is joy in the "anagnorisis" rather than pain or death. "Iphigenia Among the Taurians" takes place after the Orestia trilogy by Aeschylus and one of the more interesting elements of this play is the idea that Orestes had been hallucinating when he was seeing the Furies pursuing him. This is a rather rational explanation for his behavior following the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegithus. The key thing here is that you simply have to understand the entire background of the characters, both in terms of "Iphigenia at Aulis" and "The Orestia," to really understand this play.In "Ion" Apollo, the god of truth, brutally rapes a helpless young girl, Creusa, and then abandons her. Creusa has a son, whom she abandons in a cave; when she goes back to find the child, he is gone. Years later she marries Xuthus, a solider of fortune who becomes king of Athens. At the start of the play Xuthus and Creusa are childless and go to Delphi for aid. There they are told that Ion, a young temple servant who has been raised from infancy, is the son of Xuthus. Creusa, outraged that Apollo let their own son die but preserved the life of a child begotten by Xuthus on some Delphian woman, tries to have Ion killed. Of course, in reality, Ion is her own child, abandoned in that cave. Condemned to death by the Delphians, Creusa escapes Ion's vengeance by taking refuge at Apollo's altar. There the priestess presents the tokens that allow Creusa to recognize Ion as her own son. Telling him the truth about his father, Ion tries to enter the temple to demand of Apollo the truth.The common denominator for these plays is that they represent the last period of the career of Euripides, when his lyrics became much more emotional, which become quite powerful in plays like "Trojan Women" and "The Bacchae." The other key theme is the cynicism of Euripides towards the gods in general, and Apollo in particular; in addition to apparently wanting Orestes to die in Taurus, the God of Truth lies about being the father of Ion.

I purchased 3 copies of this volume of Euripides as gift presentation books for 3 of my graduating acting students, who had all performed major roles in our own production of THE TROJAN WOMEN earlier this year. I was EXTREMELY annoyed to find, upon receiving the books, that a large, non-removable adhesive paper label (reading "NEW TRANSLATION") had been plastered across the paper cover of each book. Each label was dirty, smeared and misaligned--one was half torn off the cover; all were impossible to remove with damaging the book cover. An extremely disappointing situation--these books are now completely inappropriate to give as graduation awards.

Solid, reliable parallel text versions of three plays by Euripides. The translator presents a highly questionable view of The Trojan Women in his Introduction to the play. He claims the drama has no connection with "current events" in the Peloponnesian War, while it's next to incredible that a Greek play has no political subtext. Readers should seek out alternative readings of The Trojan Women.

As with much else these days, most readers of Loeb Classical Library editions can be classified as being on the left or on the right. Those “on the left” have pretty good Greek (or Latin, as the case may be) and use the translation mainly as a "trot" for reference, or to be able to read at the beach or in a café without carrying around a dictionary and a grammar. Those “on the right” rely on the translation, but want to be able to consult the original text at least occasionally.For its recent spate of revised editions, including the present Euripides series being revised by David Kovacs (DK), the LCL has really been letting down readers on the right. It’s been recruiting editors who are experts at textual criticism — even though excellence in that skill is far from a guarantee that the editor can write a translation that will engage a reader. Alan Sommerstein’s rendering of Aeschylus and LCL series editor Jeffrey Henderson’s re-do of the Aristophanes volumes are further examples. The result, especially in DK’s case, is a very dry read.Here are a couple of excerpts from DK's translation of Trojan Women, one of Euripides's most intense plays, compared to the version by Alan Shaprio (Oxford U Press 2009). All of the passages are in verse in the original:[159-160]DK: “My children, already toward the ships of the Achaeansthe oarsmen are moving!”AS: “The oarsmen of the Greeks are movingSee how they’re moving to the ships”[235-238, poetry in original]DK: “Hecuba, you know that I have made frequent journeys to Troy from the Achaean army as a herald: as one previously known to you, I, Talthybius, have come to report news.”AS: “Hecuba, I can call you by your nameBecause I’ve come so often as a heraldFrom the Greek camp. I’m Talthybius.Surely you know me from the times before.I’ve come again with news for all of you.”[686vv., uttered by Hecuba, the central character of the tragedy.]DK: “I myself have never gone on board a ship, but from seeing them in pictures and hearing reports of them I know about them. When sailors encounter a storm that is not too violent to bear, they show an eagerness to win their way out of their troubles to safety, one man standing by the steering oar, another by the sails, while a third keeps the bilge out of the ship ..."AS: “I’ve never in my life set foot on a ship,But I’ve seen paintings, and I’ve heard people talk,So I know when the wind is soft and steadyThe sailors are all eager to embark,One ready at the helm, one at the sails,And one to scoop the seeping bilge …”What DK provides isn’t poetry — it isn’t even interesting (unless you're intrigued by the way DK makes Hecuba sound like Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory"). As a play in English, it’s very, very dead.OK, so how about being optimistic: at least it’s a pretty literal translation, which is helpful to someone reading the LCL “on the left,” focusing on the original Greek. Is that a good enough reason to buy this volume? Maybe, if you're willing to qualify your optimism -- because what we've got here is a literal translation of the text as edited by DK.Editing a text of a classical work is usually like solving a puzzle for which there isn't any unique solution: piecing it together from conflicting medieval manuscripts, maybe also from fragmentary quotes found in MS of other authors, and anticipating what errors might have been made each time the text was copied. The editor’s choices about which version of the Greek to trust, word by word and phrase by phrase, can strongly affect the meaning of the play. But the influence also can work in the opposite direction: the editor may have an overarching opinion about the meaning and context of the play, and will choose readings consistent with that vision.In the present Loeb volume DK offers a contrarian vision compared to most modern views of Euripides: he claims that “The Trojan Women” doesn't relate to then-contemporary Greek politics (see his introduction, at p. 4; see also his 1997 article "Gods and Men in Euripides' Trojan Trilogy”). So it seems reasonable to expect that this affected his version of the Greek text. While I don’t claim to be fluent enough to mark all these interventions — I’m definitely a reader “on the right” when it comes to tragedy — you can find an online scholarly review by Emily Katz Anhalt in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2003) discussing how DK’s contrarianism affected the Greek text of another play in the LCL series, “Iphigenia in Aulis.” In that case, DK promoted the "unsubtle interpretation" that the play didn't criticize the Trojan War.To be fair, making decisions that can affect the meaning of a text is an editor's job. But just be aware that the Greek text you find here might not track with the text used as the basis of a different translation you are reading. Moreover, Peter Burian deftly rebuts DK’s view of this play in his introduction to the OUP Shapiro translation of “Trojan Women” mentioned above.One further point about the Greek text: there is a lot going on in the critical notes under each page, showing whose readings DK adopted. The vast majority of these references are to post-classical and modern editions, identified by editors' names, not to manuscripts. But each play comes only with a "Select Bibliography" that mentions no more than 4 other editions of the text. This is entirely insufficient to help you figure out sources what DK is referring to in his critical apparatus. As a result, even if you wanted to trace all the changes DK made in the text, you’d need to be a professional Hellenist, and maybe even a specialist in drama, who is deeply familiar with all the sources. Some Loeb editors do give more extensive bibliographies, so the ultra-selectiveness appears to have been DK's choice, not the publisher’s.Taking a larger view, this volume makes one question the direction in which the LCL program is headed, at least regarding authors for whom the LCL isn’t the only Greek or Latin text on the market. It looks like the current LCL series editor is concerned that a lot of the Loeb editions and competing texts, like the Oxford Classical Texts, are from the 1930s or even much earlier. Oxford is being painfully slow in updating the OCTs, and other editions, like Teubners and Budé/Les Belles Lettres, are even more behind the times. LCL is certainly contributing a service by pumping out a steadier stream of up-to-date scholarship. But this seems mainly to be a service to experts, whereas I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that the main users of LCLs read “on the right” — we need the trot.So why not serve both audiences by a division of labor: put expert editors in charge of revising the texts, but have them collaborate with more artistically gifted translators? Oxford U Press often does something similar, issuing new paperback translations of classical works in conjunction with a new OCT, but with the translator working in consultation with the textual scholar, instead of being the same person. And in Europe many editions of classical works include a modern translation, often with an extensive commentary, plus a separate editor's facing Greek or Latin text, all at a mass-market paperback price.In sum, I recommend you pick this up ONLY IF either (1) you intend to read “on the left,” using the translation as an aid to reading the Greek, AND you don’t care about DK’s possibly idiosyncratic emendations to the Greek text, or (2) you are a professional who is specifically interested in the highs and lows of DK’s textual editing.

excellent

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