A New Companion to Greek Tragedy by Andrew Brown (review)

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES REND US 175 ~~~b~;~a ,B ~~:%. H~m~e198~~mr~;~~~, tN.~~~e~a~~:;e~Xd N~~~~~n19a8~~ Pp. 209. Cloth, £14.95. ISBN 0-7099-0660-9. (Also available in paperback. ) This expensive little volume is primarily a dictionary of geographical and personal names occurring in fifteen selected Greek tragedies, five each from Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. It also contains 118 entries (listed on pp.20-21) for IItechnical terms" (e.g. agon, koros, thyrsus, prologue, hamartia), lI authorsll (e.g. Agathon, Freud, Seneca), IIGreek life and religion ll (e.g. house, women, persuas ion) , II Greek theatre and drama II (e. g . chorus, originality, unity) and "miscellaneous topics ll (e.g. Beacon Speech, lotus, Peloponnesian War). In addition we are offered four pages by Mrs. Easterling on IIGreek Tragedy and Literary Tradition ll and about three pages on IICareers of the Tragediansll • There is also an eleven page bibliography of translations and secondary works with brief evaluative comments. Even if the Greekless reader for whom the work is intended confined himself to the fifteen plays selected for coverage (and this means foregoing the Persians, Ajax and both Iphigenia plays, not to mention lon, Helen arlCJATCeStisT:"lie would be better advised, where possible ,to arrnnimselrwTIfl an annotated translation such as H. Lloyd-Jones' version of the Oresteia. But, faute de mieux, he will find in Brown the minimurn