They say context is everything. Well, if you’re going to choose a time to read Greek Tragedies, it might as well be during a global pandemic! In the light of Prometheus Bound or Oedipus the King, our current physical isolation doesn’t look all that bad!

I was unsure about how difficult it would be to read these plays—how archaic the language and foreign the references would be. Thankfully, YouTube has a number of plot summaries which are helpful to watch before reading. When you understand the narrative ark and the key people and events, these books become fascinating.

Most interesting from my perspective was the ancient Greek perspective on prophecy (the subject of my doctoral research). Take Cassandra in Agamemnon, for example. She was both blessed and cursed by Apollo. She had the gift of prophecy, but due to the way she frustrated the deity, she was cursed so that no one would ever believe her. Her speech to the unbelieving chorus on the way to her death (which she saw all too clearly) is intense!

O flame and pain that sweeps me once again! My lord,
Apollo, King of Light, the pain, aye me, the pain!
This is the woman-lioness, who goes to bed
with the wolf, when her proud lion ranges far away,
and she will cut me down; as a wife mixing drugs
she wills to shred the virtue of my punishment
into her bowl of wrath as she makes sharp the blade
against her man, death that he brought a mistress home.
Why do I wear these mockeries upon my body,
this staff of prophecy,these flowers at my throat? (50)

One more thing. I happened upon my copy of Greek Tragedies in a second hand bookstore in Collingwood, Ontario. It was still wrapped in plastic with an order slip from the Franklin Library. This is one of the most well-bound and beautiful books I own, which for a bibliophile, certainly added to the pleasure of reading it.

Now, I wonder what my next pandemic read should be?

Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euipides. The Great Tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Franklin Library, 1982.