In this valuable book, Hanna M. Roisman provides a uniquely comprehensive look at Euripides' Hippolytus. Roisman begins with an examination of the ancient preference for the implicit style, and suggests a possible reading of Euripides' first treatment of the myth which would account for the Athenian audience's reservations about his Hippolytus Veiled. She proceeds to analyze significant scenes in the play, including Hippolytus' prayer to Artemis, Phaedra's delirium, Phaedra's "confession" speech, and the interactions between Theseus and Hippolytus. Concluding with a discussion of the meaning of the tragic in Hippolytus, Roisman questions the applicability in this case of the idea of the tragic flaw. Nothing Is as It Seems includes extensive comparisons of Euripides' play with the Phaedra of Seneca. This is a very important book for students and scholars of Greek tragedy, literature, and rhetoric.

"Hippolytus is generally acknowledged to be one of Euripides' finest tragedies, for the construction of its plot, its use of language and its memorable characterisations of Phaedra and Hippolytus. Furthermore, it asks serious and disturbing questions about the influence of divinity on human lives. Sophie Mills considers these and many other themes in detail, setting the play in its mythological, cultural and historical contexts. She also includes discussions of major trends in interpretations of the play and of subsequent adaptations of the Hippolytus story, from Seneca to Mary Renault and beyond."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Where is the pleasure in tragedy? This question, how suffering and sorrow become the stuff of aesthetic delight, is at the center of Charles Segal's new book, which collects and expands his recent explorations of Euripides' art. Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Hecuba, the three early plays interpreted here, are linked by common themes of violence, death, lamentation and mourning, and by their implicit definitions of male and female roles. Segal shows how these plays draw on ancient traditions of poetic and ritual commemoration, particularly epic song, and at the same time refashion these traditions into new forms. In place of the epic muse of martial glory, Euripides, Segal argues, evokes a muse of sorrows who transforms the suffering of individuals into a "common grief for all the citizens," a community of shared feeling in the theater. Like his predecessors in tragedy, Euripides believes death, more than any other event, exposes the deepest truth of human nature. Segal examines the revealing final moments in Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Hecuba, and discusses the playwright's use of these deaths--especially those of women--to question traditional values and the familiar definitions of male heroism. Focusing on gender, the affective dimension of tragedy, and ritual mourning and commemoration, Segal develops and extends his earlier work on Greek drama. The result deepens our understanding of Euripides' art and of tragedy itself.

This volume reflects on liminality as it relates to initiatory themes in Greek literature and on literary works, especially tragedy, that represent heroes and heroines undergoing rites of passage. Featured works include Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, Euripides' Ion and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Sophocles' Antigone and Women of Trachis.

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