This volume presents a newly edited text of Euripides' Troades, with a scene-by-scene and line-by-line commentary that brings centuries of classical scholarship to bear on a wide variety of questions. These include the interpretation of the play as part of a trilogy (its companion plays were Alexandros and Palamedes, of which we have only fragments), the contribution of the various scenes, speeches, and choral odes to the play, the style and usage of Euripides, and the stage action of the original performance. Since the play was performed in 415, shortly after the Athenian subjugation of Melos, it has frequently been interpreted as a criticism of Athenian foreign policy. The Introduction provides numerous converging arguments against this view and also shows that those who hold it are forced to ignore a greate deal of the text and cannot account for the Helen episode. The commentary, in addition to discussing the topics named above, interrogates the play's intellectual content, topics such as the nature of human success, vicissitude in mortal life, and the workings of the gods in the world, and re-evaluates the way the play's first audience were meant to react to the worldviews of Hecuba and others. It also examines carefully all the places where the text is insecure, places where there are significant variants or where what is transmitted is open to challenge. The book is written with the needs of both comparative beginners and seasoned classical scholars in mind.

About the Author
After receiving his doctorate from Harvard University in 1976, David Kovacs joined the classics faculty at the University of Virginia, where he taught Greek and Latin language and literature for forty years. His principal body of work is the six-volume Loeb edition of Euripides' plays and three companion volumes on the text. In matters of interpretation he claims credit, along with a number of other scholars, for a new view of Euripides, which takes its point of departure not from the biographical tradition, parts of which view him as an advanced thinker who is ill-at-ease with the gods, but from the plays themselves: these show Euripides' first-order engagement with such great tragic themes as the fragility of mortal life in the face of the gods.

Reviews
In its detailed approach to text and theme, Kovacs' commentary is a useful resource for any scholar working onTroades. * Melissa Funke, University of Winnipeg, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
[A] welcome scholarly achievement. . . . The section on the place of Troades within a trilogy . . . is extremely useful for anyone working on Greek tragic drama. Kovacs, deploying the skills and judgment that have made him such a fine textual editor, carefully marshals the arguments for a connected trilogy, laying out in persuasive detail the evidence for the two lost plays and their thematic integrity with Troades. This approach makes his own focus on the major themes of Troades all the more compelling. * The Classical Review *
Since I have held substantially the same opinion for almost four decades, I am not inclined to raise an objection. On the connections between the three tragedies in the production of which Troades was a part, I have for a long time wavered between scepticism and agnosticism: Kovacs has overcome my doubts. * Malcolm Heath, University of Leeds, Greece & Rome *
The Commentary matches the thoroughness of the Introduction and the examination of textual problems; it is followed by three Appendices, a Bibliography of sensible length, and Indices. This is an edition of exceptional quality, almost certain ... to be the subject of, for example, graduate seminars. I cannot recommend it too highly. * Colin Leach, Classics for all *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199296156
Author David Kovacs
Format Hardback
Page Count 386
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 592g
Dimensions(mm) 221mm * 148mm * 27mm