The Oedipus Cycle: A New Translation

The most celebrated plays of ancient Athens in vibrant new translations by award-winning poet Robert Bagg

Sophocles' three great masterpieces, gathered here in one volume, dramatize the inexplicable animosity directed at three generations of Thebes' royal family by Apollo, the inscrutable god who terrifies and deceives his victims into acts of incest, betrayal, and kin murder. These fifth-century BCE family dramas-Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Kolonos, and Antigone-are fraught with horrific crises, confrontations, and excruciating choices, all of which still rivet theatergoers and readers in the twenty-first century.

Bagg's translations are modern in idiom while faithful to the Greek. They preserve the complexity of Sophocles' characters and their dialogue (whether searingly raw, subtly inflected, or infused with humor) and render Sophocles' choral odes in resonant poetry. The three plays of The Oedipus Cycle, already proven stageworthy, refresh and clarify Sophocles' narratives for a new generation about to discover timeless sources of pleasure and illumination in classical Greek drama.