Here, Peter Burian and Brian Swann recreate Euripides' The Phoenician Women, a play about the fateful history of the House of Laios following the tragic fall of Oedipus, King of Thebes. Their lively translation of this controversial play reveals the cohesion and taut organization of a complexdramatic work. Through the use of dramatic, fast-paced poetry--almost cinematic it its rapidity of tempo and metaphorical vividness--Burian and Swann capture the original spirit of Euripides' drama about the deeply and disturbingly ironic convergence of free will and fate. Presented with acritical introduction, stage directions, a glossary of mythical Greek names and terms, and a commentary on difficult passages, this edition of The Phoenician Women makes a controversial tragedy accessible to the modern reader.

This volume provides a thorough philological and dramatic commentary on Euripides' Phoenissae, the first detailed commentary in English since 1911. An introduction surveys the play, its possible date, features of the original production, the background of Theban myth, the general problem of interpolation, and the textual tradition. The commentary treats the constitution of the text, noteworthy features of diction and style, dramatic technique and structure, and the controversies over possible later additions to the text.

Phoenissae (Phoenician women) is a fabula crepidata (Roman tragedy with Greek subject) written by Lucius Annaeus Seneca; with c. 664 lines of verse it is his shortest play. It's situated in Thebes in Boeotia, the city founded by Cadmus, who came from Sidon, in Phoenicia.Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC - AD 65), fully Lucius Annaeus Seneca and also known simply as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and--in one work--humorist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. As a tragedian, he is best-known for his Medea and Thyestes.He was a tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. He was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero. However, some sources state that he may have been innocent. His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan.Seneca was born in Cordoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. Miriam Griffin says in her biography of Seneca that "the evidence for Seneca's life before his exile in 41 is so slight, and the potential interest of these years, for social history as well as for biography, is so great that few writers on Seneca have resisted the temptation to eke out knowledge with imagination." Griffin also infers from the ancient sources that Seneca was born in either 8, 4, or 1 BC. She thinks he was born between 4 and 1 BC and was a resident in Rome by AD 5. Seneca says that he was carried to Rome in the arms of his mother's stepsister. Griffin says that, allowing for rhetorical exaggeration, means "it is fair to conclude that Seneca was in Rome as a very small boy." Be that as it may, it is clear that he was in Rome at a relatively early stage in his life.