Customer Reviews

Euripides: Medea (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics)

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This book contains the Greek text of Euripides' Medea with a comprehensive commentary by Donald Mastronarde. The commentary is very thorough and helpful, geared not only to the undergraduate with grammar references (to Smyth), explanatory notes, unusual vocabulary, and hapaxes, but also includes scholarly references in places. I found the commentary less frustrating than many - it offered clear notes on nearly all of the questions I had as I read, and was good at explaining vernacular expressions. There were also good explanations on how each stasimon and episode related to the work as a whole.

But in particular, the introductory sections - the first 108 pages of 425 pages - are really comprehensive. There are chapters on Euripides the playwright, the structure and themes of the work, the Medea myth and the work's contribution to it, problems, other versions of the Medea myth and its life after Euripides' version, the text, and a really good clear section on the structural elements of Greek tragedy (which I have bookmarked for future reference). Then there are sections on language and style, and meter.

I have come to expect excellence from the Cambridge series and I must say that I haven't been disappointed by this edition.

I completely agree with Artemesia's review. I read this in my fourth semester of studying Greek, never having read the play in translation, and wow, it's absolutely incredible! If you want a scholarly text of a powerful play, sure to entrance students with its horror and beauty, then this is it.