Tragedy of War: Ancient Athenian drama and military conflict

Catalog description

In this graduate seminar, we will read several Athenian tragedies set in wartime or its immediate aftermath, including Aeschylus’ Persians, Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes, and Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, Hecuba, and Trojan Women. We will discuss how these plays use or contrast with other Greek representations of military conflict (especially the Iliad), and we will trace the relationship between tragic representations of war and contemporary fifth-century warfare.