Bloomsbury (2021) h/b 328pp £75 (9781350103986)
R.’s volume presents a succinct series of case studies from Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides’ tragedies. The eleven heroines, one for each chapter, are itemised at the beginning of the book and key themes such as gender, rhetoric and defiance are set out along with contextual information on male actors and Aristotle’s approach to Greek drama.
Each chapter is prefaced with a box on the heroine in myth more broadly, offering context and orienting the reader to the setting of each play. The volume is clearly written and on occasions when Greek is necessary, the quotes are transliterated into English script, translated and analysed in a way that is clear to a non-linguist.
Each chapter highlights the tragedians’ innovations in adapting this character for the stage, e.g. Clytemnestra as the killer in Aeschylus (p. 33). Points of intertext are also emphasised e.g. Sophocles’ and Euripides’ familiarity with Aeschylus’ version of the Atreid myth (p. 59). Within each chapter, there are thematic subheadings to highlight the idiosyncrasies of the heroine under examination, yet each section also follows the plot structure to orient the reader into sections on different plays. Throughout the volume, grey boxes are used to signpost key themes, concepts and core texts to make the main discussion accessible to readers who may be new to classics. Some are especially useful, such as the box on the textual corruption in Iphigenia in Tauris (p.116).
Within each chapter, R. includes lists of character traits that could be pulled out for study as teaching topics (e.g. p. 62). Similarly, the discussion topics at the end of each chapter promote active reading and make the book useful for students. The volume focuses on the women’s often subversive roles in patriarchal heroic-age settings and compares the same character’s depiction across multiple tragedies. For instance, Hecuba’s roles in Hecuba, Trojan Women and the fragmentary Alexander are compared. R. also highlights instances when such plays were performed in a tetralogy such as the Trojan Women and Alexander. R. highlights scenes between Hecuba and Greek warriors to demonstrate Hecuba’s rhetoric and compares these characters to their Homeric counterparts in the Iliad (p.173). Thus each section presents a rounded discussion of the heroine in different tragedies, whilst referring out to epic to compare Hecuba’s exchanges with Greek heroes.
Where such comparisons are not possible, as in the case of Alcestis, R. provides a more detailed overview of the play to help readers understand the lesser-known myth. That said, R.’s chapter structure avoids narration and sets out a clear analysis of Alcestis’ character (pp.181-3) and compares her rhetoric to that of other heroines (pp.184-6). Despite not strictly being a tragedy, Alcestis is crucial to the volume, as Alcestis displays heroic behaviour in offering to sacrifice herself. R. carefully inducts the reader into this debate about whether Alcestis is a tragedy and provides a grey-box summary on Satyr plays (p.181) to signpost Alcestis position between two genres.
In fact a key strength of the volume is the way it clearly and succinctly indicates such trends in scholarship. For example, R. directs the reader to the research on the carpet scene in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, the dog-imagery surrounding Clytemnestra (pp. 24-6) and the debate on the legalities of burial in Sophocles’ Antigone (p.130). This is deftly done: the research is summarised effectively so as not to interrupt the analysis of the heroines themselves.
The volume is heavily structured but does not fail to provide consistent and helpful cross references for those who read the chapters in isolation, encouraging them to broaden their research. To that end, R. also provides character comparisons within the chapters e.g. of Sophocles’ Electra character with that of his Antigone (p.75) or Euripides’ Medea and Helen in Trojan Women (p.222). These comparisons are drawn together in the conclusion, which again employs clear thematic subtitles to consolidate the core findings of the book.
In sum, this is a well-structured, clear and accessible book for researchers new to classics along with drama or classics students from A-Level beyond.
Maria Haley