Euripides Alcestis

Alcestis is one of Euripedes' richest and most brilliant - as well as most controversial - plays. The woman who dies to save her husband has proved to have a hold on the imagination almost as strong as the man who killed his father and married his mother. But, apart from D.J. Conacher's student text, no annotated edition in English has appeared for more than fifty years. The present work is designed to aid close reading and to serve as an introduction to the serious study of the play in its various aspects. The introducgtion covers the background to the story in myth and folktale, its treatment by other writers from antiquity to the present, the critical reception of Euripides' play, and its textual transmission and metres. The notes are designed in particular to help readers who have been learning Greek for a relatively short time. More advanced matter, such as discussion of textual problems, is placed in square brackets at the end of the note.

L. P. E. Parker is Emeritus Fellow, St Hugh's College, Oxford.