The Tangled Ways of Zeus And Other Studies In and Around Greek Tragedy [Hardcover]

The Tangled Ways of Zeusis a collection of studies written over the last twenty years by the distinguished classicist Alan Sommerstein about various aspects of ancient Greek tragedy (and, in some cases, other related genres). It complements his recent collection of studies in Greek comedy,Talking about Laughter(OUP, 2009). Some of the essays have not been published previously, others have appeared in books or journals hard to find outside major academic libraries. Each chapter deals with its own topic, but between them they build up a multifaceted picture of the dramatists (especially Aeschylus and Sophocles), the genre, and its interactions with the society, culture, and religion of classical Athens.

Introduction
1. The titles of Greek dramas
2. Violence in Greek drama
3. Adolescence, ephebeia, and Athenian drama
4. Sherlockismus and the study of fragmentary tragedies
5. The seniority of Polyneikes in Aeschylus' Seven
6. The beginning and the end of Aeschylus' Danaid trilogy
7. The theatre audience, the Demos, and the Suppliants of Aeschylus
8. Sleeping safe in our beds: stasis, assassination, and the Oresteia
9. The tangled ways of Zeus
10. The omen of Aulis or the omen of Argos?
11. Pathos and mathos before Zeus
12. Oresteia Act II: two misconceptions
13. Aeschylus' epitaph
14. Dearest Haimon
15. 'They all knew how it was going to end': tragedy, myth, and the spectator
16. Alternative scenarios in Sophocles' Electra
17. Sophocles' Palamedes and Nauplius plays: no trilogy here
18. 'The rugged Pyrrhus': the son of Achilles in tragedy
19. What ought the Thebans to have done?

Alan H. Sommersteinis Professor of Greek at the University of Nottingham.