Theban Plays

Definitive new translations convey the emotional power and social complexities of Sophocles’s famous Theban tragedies.

Sophocles was a major figure in ancient Greek drama whose plays have had a lasting impact on modern ideas of the tragic. His dramatic portrayals of the mythical Oedipus and his blighted Theban family respond to the concerns of his own volatile times in the powerful city of Athens, and explore themes of kinship, politics, religion, suffering, power, competing obligations, and the limits of individual agency. The three plays in this collection are:

Antigone, in which an inexperienced ruler and his outspoken niece clash over competing desires for social stability and for family loyalty;
Oedipus Tyrannos, in which secrets of the past are brought to light with devastating results for a ruler, his family, and his city;
Oedipus at Colonus, in which an outcast gains a new home and a peaceful end.


These fresh translations by distinguished classicists Sheila Murnaghan and Emily Wilson bring Sophocles’s masterpieces to vivid life for a new generation.