125 The course: the Greek says ‘the plain of Crisa’ (see above, note to p. 108).

  And as he drove . . . The stone: These lines have been transposed, following many editors, from after line 719.

  126 so tall a man: ancient heroes were thought to have been far greater than later people in size and strength (Homer, Iliad 5. 303, Herodotus 1. 68—specifically on Orestes’ extraordinary stature).

  126 he threatened me: this implies that Orestes had outgrown infancy when Electra had him sent away. See above, note to p. 103.

  127 Nemesis: the goddess Nemesis’ special responsibility was to oversee the rights of the dead, and avenge any wrong done to them.

  129 Amphiareus: an Argive hero. He married Eriphyle, sister of Adrastus, king of Argos. When Amphiareus refused to help Polyneices (Antigone’s brother) in the campaign against Thebes, Polyneices bribed Eriphyle with a golden necklace. She then cajoled her husband into joining the expedition, which resulted in his death.

  a champion: Alcmaeon. Amphiareus’ death was eventually avenged by his son Alcmaeon, who killed his mother Eriphyle. Sophocles composed plays bearing the names of all three mythical figures.

  I beg you: the translation omits here an interjection by the chorus, ‘What are you saying?’

  130 In exile: the translation omits another choral interjection, ‘Alas!’

  Our father’s memory: the Greek says literally ‘our father’s hearth’. See above, note to p. 111.

  136 The anger of the gods . . . Enthroned in Heaven: this is a periphrasis diverging greatly from the Greek, which names the lightning-bolt of Zeus (with which he punishes miscreants), and Themis, a female divinity responsible for the safeguarding of law and order, often conceptualized as enthroned beside Zeus and sometimes described as a wife of his.

  137 Never has she ceased to mourn: the Greek once again likens Electra to a nightingale, engaged in incessant lamentation (see above, note to p. 106).

  those two Furies: Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. The Greek language could transfer the name of the Furies or ‘Erinyes’, the spirits who oversee acts of blood-vengeance, to both the victims of a crime and to those who had perpetrated it.

  a foul pollution: the translation omits a hypothetical question delivered by the chorus here, ‘Who else would be so noble?’ (i.e. as Electra).

  Laws of the gods: once again Sophocles refers to the supreme ’unwritten laws’, as at Antigone 454—5 (see also above, note to p. 5) and Oedipus the King 865–7.

  in piety: the Greek adds ‘towards Zeus’, the supreme overseer of the ‘unwritten laws’.

  138 nearest to them: i.e. she is their nearest relation by blood.

  Strophius: Pylades’ father, the old friend of Agamemnon to whom the exiled Orestes had been entrusted, named only here in this play. See above, note to p. 104.

  in my arms: the translation omits two lines here. Electra continues, ‘so that I may weep and wail, not only for these ashes but along with them for myself and for my entire family.’

  139 sorrow: in the Greek the metre changes for this line, probably indicating that in the emotion of the moment Electra briefly begins to chant rather than speak.

  142 friend: the Greek word should be translated ‘child’ or ‘son’, which is more appropriate to the pathos of this recognition scene.

  Our father’s ring: the Greek makes it explicit that it is a signet ring with a recognizable seal-mark.

  143 but wait: the translation here omits a lyrical interjection by Electra, ‘What is the matter?’

  women . . . To strike a blow: the Greek actually says ‘Ares dwells in women too.’

  and yet: the translation omits another lyrical interjection by Electra, ‘What shall I do?’

  then I made no more delay: these words have been supplied by the translator to fill in a line missing from the Greek.

  144 their end: the translation here omits an interjection by Orestes, ‘What are you asking of me?’

  be prudent: the translation here omits two lines. Electra asks, ‘Do you grant what I ask?’, and Orestes responds, ‘Why not?’

  146 those faithful hands: the translation, perhaps prudently, omits here a remark by Electra referring to the tutor’s feet as ‘kindly messengers’.

  147 the gods that stand before the house: images of gods placed at the front of the palace. They included Apollo (addressed by Clytemnestra at line 637) and Hermes, the god who always presided over entrances.

  147 the god of death: the Greek names rather Ares, the god of war and violence.

  148 The minister of the gods: i.e. Orestes.

  With Hermes to guide him: the chorus prays that Hermes will assist Orestes in his capacity as Hermes dolios (the god of trickery).

  To stand on guard: Sophocles finds a reason to have Electra on stage during the murder of Clytemnestra, so that her bloodthirsty reactions can be fully appreciated.

  149 cruelty: at least three lines are probably missing from the Greek between here and Orestes’ question at line 1430, ‘Are you sure you see him?’ The translation has been designed to offer a performable text.

  150 you should know: the translation here omits a harsh phrase addressing Electra as ‘you who were formerly so bold’.

  152 You could read the future | So well: there appears to have been a tradition that Aegisthus had some special mantic powers.

  This house of Atreus: the Greek names, rather, the house of Pelops, in accordance with the play’s tracing of the sufferings of the family back to the original curse on Pelops’ head (see above, note to p. 118. Aegisthus, as son of Thyestes, Atreus’ brother, was of course also a Pelopid.

  those to come: an implication that the deaths of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra may not put an end to the family’s calamities. See above, note to p. 121.

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  1 See further Stuart Gillespie, The Poets on the Classics: An Anthology (London/New York, 1988), 202–6.

  2 See esp. Michelle Gellrich, Tragedy and Theory: The Problem of Conflict since Aristotle (Princeton, NJ, 1988).

  3 For a critique of Freud’s (ab)use of Sophocles, especially with regard to Oedipus the King, see Jean-Pierre Vernant, ‘Oedipus Without the Complex’, in Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (Eng. trans. New York, 1988), 85–111.

  4 Hellmut Flashar, Inszenierung der Antike: Das griechische Drama auf der Bühne der Neuzeit 1585–1990 (Munich, 1991), 27–9.

  5 See F. Macintosh, ‘Tragedy in Performance’, in P. Easterling, The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1995).

  6 Oedipus the King and Antigone were performed together with Oedipus at Colonus under the title The Thebans. The director was Adrian Noble. Electra was directed by Deborah Warner. (Kitto’s translations were not the versions used for these productions.)

  7 See A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, reissue, with new supplement, of the second edition, revised by J. Gould and D. M. Lewis (Oxford, 1988).

  8 For a discussion of this aspect of Sophoclean drama see the definitive, but controversial, study by B. M. W. Knox, The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1964).

  9 Phrynichus, fr. 32, in R. Kassel and C. Austin (eds.), Poetae Comici Graeci, vol. vii (Berlin, 1989).

  10 All the evidence is compiled in S. Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta iv (Berlin, 1977), 29–95.

  11 The ancient Life of Sophocles is reproduced in English translation and well discussed by Mary R. Lefkowitz in The Lives of the Greek Poets (London, 1981), 74–87 and 160–3. See also J. Fairweather, ‘Fiction in the biographies of ancient writers’, Ancient Society v (1974), 231–75.

  12 An admirably clear account of fifth-century Athenian history is to be found in J.K. Davies, Democracy and Classical Greece (Glasgow, second edition, 1993).

  13 See D. F. Sutton, The Lost Sophocles (Lanham, 1984), and A. Kiso, The Lost Sophocles (New York, 1984).

  14 Recently incorporated by Tony Harrison into his drama The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus (2nd edn., London, 1991). The fragment, which is of considerable length and interest, was edited by Richard Walker (The Ichneutae of Sophocles, London, 1919); a prosaic, but faithful, translation may be found in D. L. Page (ed.), Select Papyri, vol. iii (Cambridge, Mass./London, 1941), 27–53.

  15 Plutarch, Life of Cimon 8. 8.

  16 ‘Hypothesis’ (ancient scholarly note of introduction) to Philoctetes.

  17 Second ‘hypothesis’ to Oedipus at Colonus.

  18 See below and n. 27.

  19 Bernard Knox (‘The date of the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles’, in Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater, Baltimore/London, 1979, 112–24), argues for a production in 425 BC. He compares the plague blighting Thebes in the play with the outbreaks of plague which had beset Athens from 430 to 426 BC. This seems persuasive, until it is remembered that the earliest and greatest work of Greek literature, the Iliad, likewise opens with a plague sent by Apollo.

  20 See e.g. A. M. Dale (ed.), Euripides’ Helen (Oxford, 1967), xxiv–v.

  21 For a succinct and sensibly agnostic discussion of Sophoclean chronology see R. G. A. Buxton, Sophocles (Greece & Rome, New Surveys in the Classics, xvi, Oxford, 1984), 3–5.

  22 Inscriptiones Graecae ii2. 1252.4.

  23 See e.g. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), 193.

  24 On the ‘Unwritten Laws’ see V. Ehrenberg, Sophocles and Pericles (Oxford, 1954), 22–50 and 167–72.

  25 For an attempted reconstruction of Sophocles’ political career see Ehrenberg (n. 24 above).

  26 Inscriptiones Graecae i3. 269.36; first ‘hypothesis’ to Antigone; Androtion 324, fr. 38, in F. Jacoby (ed.), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, vol. IIIb (Leiden, 1950), 69; Aristotle, Rhetoric 1419a25.

  27 Recorded in the first ‘hypothesis’ to Antigone. L. Woodbury argued that the tradition was credible (‘Sophocles among the Generals’, Phoenix xxiv, 1970, 209–24); for a more sceptical view see Karl Reinhardt, Sophocles (Eng. trans. Oxford, 1979), 240.

  28 On the ‘afterlife’ of Antigone see the illuminating discussion by George Steiner in Antigones (Oxford, 1984).

  29 See Froma Zeitlin, ‘Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama’, in J. Peter Euben (ed.), Greek Tragedy and Political Theory (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1986), 101–41.

  30 See e.g. W. M. Calder, ‘Sophocles’ political tragedy, Antigone’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies ix (1968), 389–407.

  31 See G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge, 1981), 149–50.

  32 For a discussion of this and other film versions of Sophoclean tragedy see Kenneth MacKinnon, Greek Tragedy into Film (London/Sydney, 1986), esp. 126–46.

  33 See Pierre Vidal-Naquet, ‘Oedipus in Vicenza and in Paris: Two Turning Points in the History of Oedipus’, in Vernant and Vidal-Naquet (n. 3 above), 361–80.

  34 e.g. John Jones, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London, 1962); P. E. Easterling, ‘Character in Sophocles’, Greece & Rome xxiv (1977), 121–9; J. Gould, ‘Dramatic character and “human intelligibility” in Greek tragedy’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society cciv (1978), 43–67.

  35 See P. E. Easterling, ‘Electra’s Story’, in Derrick Puffett (ed.), Richard Strauss: Elektra (Cambridge, 1989), 10–16.

  36 Quoted in Richard Reid (ed.), Elektra: A Play by Ezra Pound and Rudd Fleming (Princeton, NJ, 1989), p. xiii.

  37 Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Tragic Subject: Historicity and Transhistoricity’, in Vernant and Vidal-Naquet (n. 3 above), 237–47.

  38 An approach exemplified by the essays in John J. Winkler and Froma Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Princeton, NJ, 1990).

  39 Albert Camus, Selected Essays and Notebooks, trans. P. Thody (Harmondsworth, 1970), 199.

  40 See Jean-Pierre Vernant, ‘The Historical Moment of Tragedy in Greece’, in Vernant and Vidal-Naquet (n. 3 above), 23–8.

  41 See in general R. Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life (London, 1989).

  42 Sophoclean women are discussed by R. P. Winnington-Ingram, ‘Sophocles and women’, in Sofocle, Entretiens sur Vantiquité classique, vol. xix (Fondation Hardt, Geneva, 1983), 233–49, and S. Wiersma, ‘Women in Sophocles’, Mnemosyne xxxvii (1984) 25–55. On the relation between the portrayal of women in tragedy and the realities of life for women in classical Athens see John Gould, ‘Law, Custom and Myth: Aspects of the Social Position of Women in Classical Athens’, Journal of Hellenic Studies c (1980), 39–59, and H. P. Foley, ‘The Conception of Women in Athenian Drama’, in H. P. Foley (ed.), Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York, 1981), 127–68.

  43 See Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical (Oxford, 1985), especially ch. 3, and Jon D. Mikalson, Honor thy Gods: Popular Religion in Greek Tragedy (North Carolina, 1992).

  44 For detailed studies of Sophocles’ use of the chorus see R. W. B. Burton, The Chorus in Sophocles’ Tragedies (Oxford, 1980), and C. P. Gardiner, The Sophoclean Chorus: A Study of Character and Function (Iowa City, 1987).

  45 On Sophoclean stagecraft see O. Taplin, ‘Sophocles in his Theatre’, in Sofocle (n. 42 above), 155–74.

  46 Pickard-Cambridge (n. 7 above), 190–204.

  47 See Pickard-Cambridge (n. 7 above), 257–62; M. L. West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford, 1992), especially 350–5.

  48 D. Seale, Vision and Stagecraft in Sophocles (London, 1982), discusses the visual dimension of Sophoclean tragedy.

  49 For an appreciation of Kitto’s life and work see N. G. L. Hammond’s memoir in Proceedings of the British Academy, lxi (1982), 585–90.

  50 See A. M. Dale, The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama2 (Cambridge, 1968).

  51 Sophocles: Three Tragedies (Oxford, 1962), 154.

  1 See L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (Oxford, 1968), 129–32.

  2 For a discussion see Alexander Turyn, Studies in the Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Sophocles (Urbana, Ill., 1952).

  1 Verse lines are numbered according to the Greek text (see Introduction, p. xxxv).

  1 Verse lines are numbered according to the Greek text (see Introduction, p. xxxv).

  1 Verse lines are numbered according to the Greek text (see Introduction, p. xxxv).

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Note on the Texts

  Select Bibliography

  Chronology

  ANTIGONE

  OEDIPUS THE KING

  ELECTRA

  Explanatory Notes