Aeschylus' Supplices Play and Trilogy (second edition)

by Garvie, A. F.

• ISBN13: 9781904675365
• ISBN10: 1904675360
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-05
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Summary

This remains "the major book on Aeschylus' "Supplices, its dating and the trilogy to which it belonged. Its first appearance. (1969) was a full response to the publication of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus which indicated a late production date (in the 460s BC) for the play, thus upsetting the previous consensus that it was an early work -- indeed the earliest Greek tragedy to survive. There was, the book argues, no longer good reason to suppose that the play belonged to an early stage in its author's development. The final chapter also examines the evidence for reconstruction of the other, lost plays of the trilogy. The present (and first paperback) edition remains essentially unchanged, thorugh a new preface and bibliography have been added to take account of scholarship since 1969. Garvie remains convinced that, even without the additional testimony of the papyrus, all the internal evidence from the text of the play points to the 460s, though some have tried to pull it back into the 470s because it "feels like an early play. Some of the salutary lessons to be drawn from the discovery of the papyrus have still to be learnt and it is timely for this reissue to be presented to a new generation of Aeschylean students and scholars.

Author Biography

A.F. Garvie is Professor Emeritus of Greek in the University of Glasgow. He has written widely on Greek tragedy and edited Aeschylus: Choephori (Oxford, 1986), Homer: Odyssey VI-VIII (Cambridge, 1994) and Sophocles: Ajax (Warminster, 1998).

Table of Contents

PREFACE	vi
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION	ix
Chapter I THE PAPYRUS	1	(28)
Chapter II STYLE	29	(59)
Chapter III STRUCTURE	88	(53)
Chapter IV BACKGROUND	141	(22)
Chapter V THE TRILOGY	163	(71)
Appendix: THE PUNISHMENT OF THE DANAIDS IN THE UNDERWORLD	234	(2)
BIBLIOGRAPHY	236	(17)
INDEX OF PASSAGES CITED	253	(18)
SUBJECT INDEX	271