Euripides' Danae and Dictys are two of the most important and influential treatments of a popular tragic myth-cycle, which is unrepresented among extant plays. Moreover, they are early treatments of major Euripidean plot-patterns that anticipate and illuminate more familiar works in the corpus, both extant and fragmentary. This is the first full-scale study of the two plays, which sheds light on plot-patterns, key themes and aspects of Euripidean dramatic technique (e.g. his rhetoric, imagery, stagecraft), as well as matters of reception and transmission of both tragedies, by taking into account newly related evidence. The cautious recovery of the two lost plays based on the available evidence and the detailed commentary on their fragments seek to complement our knowledge of Euripidean drama by contributing to an overview and more comprehensive picture of the dramatist's technique, as the extant corpus represents only a small portion of his oeuvre.

A recently-published second-century papyrus, P.Oxy. 5283, contains prose summaries (hypotheses) of six plays by the Greek dramatist Euripides, including two lost plays depicting the hero Perseus, Dictys and Danaë. This book demonstrates the significance of this discovery for our understanding of Greek tragedy. After setting out the mythological and dramatic context, and offering a new text and translation based on autopsy, the book analyses the light which the papyrus sheds on these plays, whose narratives, centred on female resistance to abusive male tyrants, speak as powerfully to us today as they did to their original audiences. It then investigates Euripides’ tragic trilogy of 431 BC, which ended with Dictys and began with Medea, whose dramatic power now stands in sharper focus given our improved understanding of the production in which it originally appeared. Finally, it ponders the purpose which these hypotheses served, and why readers in the second century AD should have wanted a summary of plays written more than half a millennium before. All Greek (and Latin) is translated, making the book accessible not just to classicists, but to theatre historians and to anyone interested in Greek literature, drama, and mythology.

Euripides (c. 485-406 BCE) has been prized in every age for his emotional and intellectual drama. Eighteen of his ninety or so plays survive complete, including Medea, Hippolytus, and Bacchae, one of the great masterpieces of the tragic genre. Fragments of his lost plays also survive. Eighteen of the ninety or so plays composed by Euripides between 455 and 406 bce survive in a complete form and are included in the preceding six volumes of the Loeb Euripides. A further fifty-two tragedies and eleven satyr plays, including a few of disputed authorship, are known from ancient quotations and references and from numerous papyri discovered since 1880. No more than one-fifth of any play is represented, but many can be reconstructed with some accuracy in outline, and many of the fragments are striking in themselves. The extant plays and the fragments together make Euripides by far the best known of the classic Greek tragedians. This edition, in a projected two volumes, offers the first complete English translation of the fragments together with a selection of testimonia bearing on the content of the plays. The texts are based on the recent comprehensive edition of R. Kannicht. A general Introduction discusses the evidence for the lost plays. Each play is prefaced by a select bibliography and an introductory discussion of its mythical background, plot, and location of the fragments, general character, chronology, and impact on subsequent literary and artistic traditions.

A recently-published second-century papyrus, P.Oxy. 5283, contains prose summaries (hypotheses) of six plays by the Greek dramatist Euripides, including two lost plays depicting the hero Perseus, Dictys and Danaë. This book demonstrates the significance of this discovery for our understanding of Greek tragedy. After setting out the mythological and dramatic context, and offering a new text and translation based on autopsy, the book analyses the light which the papyrus sheds on these plays, whose narratives, centred on female resistance to abusive male tyrants, speak as powerfully to us today as they did to their original audiences. It then investigates Euripides’ tragic trilogy of 431 BC, which ended with Dictys and began with Medea, whose dramatic power now stands in sharper focus given our improved understanding of the production in which it originally appeared. Finally, it ponders the purpose which these hypotheses served, and why readers in the second century AD should have wanted a summary of plays written more than half a millennium before. All Greek (and Latin) is translated, making the book accessible not just to classicists, but to theatre historians and to anyone interested in Greek literature, drama, and mythology.

Terence between Late Antiquity and the Age of Printing investigates the Medieval and Early Renaissance reception of Terence in highly innovative ways, combining the diverse but interrelated strands of textual criticism, illustrative tradition, and performance. The plays of Terence seem to have remained unperformed until the Renaissance, but they were a central text for educators in Western Europe. Manuscripts of the plays contained scholarship and illustrations which were initially inspired by Late Antique models, and which were constantly transformed in response to contemporary thought. The contributions in this work deal with these topics, as well as the earliest printed editions of Terence, theatrical revivals in Northern Italy, and the readership of Terence throughout the Early Middle Ages.

Jenny March’s acclaimed Dictionary of Classical Mythology, first published in 1998 but long out of print, has been extensively revised and expanded including a completely new set of beautiful line-drawing illustrations for this Oxbow edition. It is a comprehensive A – Z guide to Greek and Roman mythology. All major myths, legends and fables are here, including gods and goddesses, heroes and villains, dangerous women, legendary creatures and monsters. Characters such as Achilles and Odysseus have extensive entries, as do epic journeys and heroic quests, like that of Jason and the Argonauts to win the Golden Fleece, all alongside a plethora of information on the creation of the cosmos, the many metamorphoses of gods and humans, and the Trojan War, plus more minor figures – nymphs, seers, kings, rivers, to name but a few. In this superbly authoritative work the myths are brilliantly retold, along with any major variants, and with extensive translations from ancient authors that give life to the narratives and a sense of the vibrant cultures that shaped the development of classical myth. The 172 illustrations give visual immediacy to the words, by showing how ancient artists perceived their gods and heroes. The impact of myths on ancient art is also explored, as is and their influence in the postclassical arts, emphasising the ongoing inspiration afforded by the ancient myths. Also included are two maps of the ancient world, a list of the ancient sources and their chronology, the more important genealogies, and an index of recurrent mythical motifs.