Scenes from Greek Drama

Bruno Snell’s Scenes from Greek Drama distills the 1963 Sather Classical Lectures into a searching exploration of lost and fragmentary works by Aeschylus and Euripides. Snell examines papyrus fragments, quotations, and testimonia to reconstruct dramas such as Aeschylus’ Achilleis and Euripides’ first Hippolytos, probing how Greek tragedy generated new concepts of decision, passion, and responsibility. His method—combining philological precision with intellectual history—reveals how shame and guilt, passion and reason, action and contemplation were newly dramatized on the classical stage, transforming myth into reflections on human choice and moral consciousness.

The volume culminates with an analysis of a unique satyr play performed in Alexander the Great’s Indian headquarters, showing how the comic mode refracted the weight of tragic innovations. Both rigorous and imaginative, Scenes from Greek Drama demonstrates how fragmentary texts open onto fundamental shifts in Greek thought, situating tragedy as a crucible for Western ideas of freedom, justice, and personal responsibility. It is essential reading for scholars of classics, comparative literature, and intellectual history, offering a vivid reconstruction of how lost plays continue to illuminate the ancient world’s most vital questions.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1964.