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What Do I Read Next?
(Epics for Students)
- The Odyssey is the other epic poem credited to Homer and was probably written some time after the Iliad. It describes the 10 years of Odysseus’s wandering, trying to get home after the Trojan War has ended, and events in his absence from his home in Ithaca.
- Edith Hamilton’s Mythology (Mentor, 1942) is an excellent (and fun) basic introduction to Greek and Roman mythology, and includes a section on the Trojan War. Her treatment of the Norse myths is a little sketchy, but nevertheless interesting and engaging.
- The Aeneid of Vergil (70-19 BC) is an epic poem in Latin that describes the wanderings of Aeneas and his group of Trojan and allied refugees following the fall of Troy. After many stops along the way (including a visit to the underworld), Aeneas and his people land in Italy and settle not far from the city that will eventually become Rome.
- The Oresteia is a cycle of three tragic plays (Agamemnon, Choephori (The Libation-Bearers,) and Eumenides) by Aeschylus (525-456 BC), produced in Athens in 458 BC. It describes the events surrounding the homecoming of Agamemnon at the end of the Trojan War, and subsequent troubles those events cause his household.
- Both Sophocles (496-406 BC) and Euripides (ca. 480-406 BC) also wrote tragedies that draw from the myths about the Trojan War. Excellent translations can be found in The Complete Greek Tragedies, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore for the University of Chicago Press. Two of Sophocles’ plays are relevant, and both are contained in the second volume of his plays in the Grene/Lattimore series. They are Ajax, whose date is uncertain, and the Philoctetes, produced in 409 BC.
- Euripides wrote at least seven plays that include characters or events from the Trojan War. Volume II of his plays in the Grene/Lattimore series contains both the Helen (412 BC) and the undated Iphigeneia in Tauris. Volume in contains The Trojan Women (415 BC) and two undated plays, Andromache and
(The entire section is 487 words.)