Volume 25, Number 1 · February 9, 1978
A Four Handkerchief Tragedy
By Bernard Knox
Euripides: Iphigeneia at Aulis
translated by W.S. Merwin, translated by George E. Dimock Jr.
Oxford University Press, 128 pp., $8.50 (to be published March 23)
Iphigenia
a film directed by Michael Cacoyannis
In the early spring of 406 BC, as the three Athenian poets selected to compete in the dramatic festival announced the subjects of their plays and presented their actors and choruses to the public at a preliminary ceremony known as the Proagon, the news reached Athens that Euripides had died in Macedonia, far to the north. As a tribute to his fellow-tragedian, who had been his younger rival for nearly half a century, Sophocles, who was not to outlast the year himself, appeared dressed in black and brought his actors and chorus on without the customary festive garlands on their heads. Euripides, according to a later tradition, had been killed by a pack of hunting dogs.
Review, 5421 words
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