Sophocles' Electra

de Hanna M. Roisman

Sophocles' Electra is a riveting play with a long and varied reception. Its nuanced treatment of matricidal revenge with all the questions it raises; its compelling depictions of the idealistic, long -grieving, rebellious Electra; her compliant sister; her brother; and her mother; and its superb poetry have all contributed to making this one of Sophocles' most admired plays, as have the moral issues it raises and its political reverberations. In recent decades it has been repeatedly translated, adapted, and produced, sometimes on its own, sometimes in combination with selections from Aeschylus' Libation Bearers and (more often) Euripides' Electra. While the play certainly stands on its own in any language, reading it in the original Greek adds immense value. A commentary on the Greek text would enrich its reading by elucidating the words and world of the ancient language for those who are reading it more than twenty- five hundred years after the play was written. Such a commentary would also contribute to our understanding of other ancient Greek texts, not necessarily because they use the same words in the same way, but by providing information for contrast, comparison, and clarification. This commentary includes an introduction, text and notes, an abbreviations list, a stylistic & metrical terminology list, an appendix of recurrent words, and, a list of irregular verbs and their principal parts.