Hippolytos (Clarendon Paperbacks)

Euripides' Hippolytos tells of an honourable youth's tragic death, contrived by his father in the false belief that his son had seduced his new wife. This edition of the play is intended for students and scholars alike. The text is based upon new collations of the medieval manuscripts (two of them hitherto uncollated) and on all known papyri. The introduction contains a significant reappraisal, in light of the evidences of papyri, of the history of the text in antiquity, and advances a new account of the relationship between the medieval manuscripts. There is also a full discussion of the earlier history of the legend and of two of the lost tragedies on the same theme. Euripides wrote two plays called Hippolytus. In this, the second, he dramatized the tragic failure of perfection. This translation comes in two forms; the first presents a simulacrum of the text as it might have appeared in unprocessed form to a reader sometime shortly after Euripides? death. The second processes the drama into the reduced but much more distinct form of modern print translations. This translation of the play includes a commentary which deals with textual problems, and wherever possible the editor has sought to explain the text adopted before discussing the reasons for its adoption. There is also an analysis of the lyric metres, and a discussion of the play's subject matter.