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Sophocles: Fragments (Loeb Classical Library No. 483)

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Only seven of the tragedies of Sophocles survive intact out of a list of 90 plays for which we have titles. All seven of the plays are from the later part of his career, which means that if we had as little of Shakespeare as we had of Sophocles all we would know of the Bard's work would be "Hamlet," "Othello," "King Lear," and "The Winter's Tale." That would still be enough to impress us today, but all we would have of the rest of his work would be titles like "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Julius Caesar" to go with fragments from plays like "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Romeo and Juliet," and "The Tempest." But if you have read "Bartlett's Quotations" rather than "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare" then you already know that "fragments" of Shakespeare can still be pretty impressive. It is in anticipation of finding similar gems that we approach this volume of the Loeb Classical Library containing "Fragments" of the work of Sophocles.

Edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, "Sophocles: Fragments" is a collection of all of the "major fragments," which range in length from two lines to a substantial part of "The Searchers," a satyr play in which Hermes plays a joke on Apollo. There are also substantial pieces of "Inachas," in which Zeus comes to Argos to seduce the king's daughter Io, and "Niobe," which is the story of Apollo and Artemis slaying the daughters of Niobe for daring to insult their mother. Lloyd-Jones provides what we know about these lost plays to give readers a sense of the possible context for these lines (including other ancient plays and works that touch on the same characters and stories). Most of these fragments come from other ancient authors who were quoting these plays of Sophocles before they were lost, while others have been discovered on papyri in the past century. Most of these fragments are assigned to known plays (10-343), followed by those fragments that have not been assigned to any specific play (344-417), and a doubtful fragment that may or may not be from "Oeneus" (418-22).

Lloyd-Jones also did the translations for the first two Sophocles volumes in the Loeb Classical Library and as is the case with this entire library you have the original Greek text on the left-page and the translation on the right. Certainly it is frustrating to read bits and pieces, trying to connect the dots and imagine what these plays would have been like, and if I had the talent and the time I would love to be able to try and reconstruct some of these tragedies. Once you see how Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides deal with the same story, the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes because of the happenstance that all three of their plays on that subject have been preserved, it is difficult not to wonder what Sophocles would have done with the story of Prometheus or Iphigenia. Obviously this last Sophocles volume is going to be of interest to only the hard core scholar of Greek tragedy, but given how little there is of the tragic playwrights in the first place, these fragments can be quite interesting.

How rare and wonderful it is to come across a collection of fragments by a great ancient Master!

This Loeb edition (from 2003) is essential for anyone who wishes to increase their understanding and love of ancient drama.

Presented and translated by the famous classical poet/scholar Hugh Lloyd-Jones, the edition uses up-to-date research and information on Sophocles. It is the only source to go to when it comes to all the unknown material Sophocles produced!

The Table of Contents is as follows:

- Preface
- Introduction
- FRAGMENTS OF KNOWN PLAYS (123 in Total)
- Fragments Not Assignable to Any Play
- Doubtful Fragment: Oeneus
- Index

The volume was first published in 1996, and then reprinted with corrections and additions in 2003.

I urge everyone to pick up this wonderfully translated volume along with the other Loeb fragment volumes of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes!

Enjoy.