Herakles

In Herakles Euripides reveals with great subtlety and complexity the often brutal underpinnings of our social arrangements. The play enacts a thoroughly contemporary dilemma about the relationship between personal and state violence to civic order . Of all of Euripides'' plays this is his most skeptically subversive examination of myth morality and power. The play depicts Herakles being driven mad by Hera the wife of Zeus. Hera hates Herakles because he is one of Zeus'' children born of adultery. In his madness Herakles is driven to murder his own wife and children and he eventually exiles himself to Athens. The volume includes a new translation an introduction notes on the text and a glossary.