Sophocles: Antigone (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics)

An excellent commentary. I read it twice - missing out the sections on versification, which I shall return to at a later date. It begins with an excellent introduction of 68 pages, covering many aspects, including the meaning of the play, its structure and its style and the transmission of the text itself. There follows the Greek text with comments at the end of the book. These comments are extremely comprehensive and explain most of the difficulties a student is likely to encounter. Difficult passages are translated into English. It covers grammar as well as uncertainties over which is the most likely version of a particular piece of text. I have not yet got round to the study of metre and versification but for those who have this commentary is extremely comprehensive. I myself will return to these pages when I study it. I had previously read Oedipus Rex in this Cambridge series and found the commentary abstruse and unhelpful for understanding much of the text. This came as a welcome contrast. A work of great scholarship which will be useful for any student of Greek who wishes to understand this work.

Reviews like mine are for buyers, not literary critics. It’s is a book produced to the highest standards, as you would expect from this publisher. But it is an ancient Greek text of the play, albeit with top notch commentary in English. Buy an English version and cross-reference the notes, and you have something very useful.

This makes the text SO EASY to understand so if you wanna cry in your Ancient Greek seminars because it's literally like an alien language and you don't understand it then this is perfectus.

This is a splendid commentary. It's utterly scholarly, but realistic about students' needs, and not above giving grammatical help in trickier passages, unlike many suck books which find this beneath them. It also challenges too-easy assumptions, e.g. making the valid point that Antigone's insistence on Ismene's broadcasting the illegal burial isn't only a Look at me being a martyr and oh-so-righteous death wish. For a burial to be effective, it had to be publicly acknowledged. I cannot praise this book too highly. I used to loathe this play. This commentary has taught this old teacher a great deal.

I think it would be difficult for any serious student of Sophocles' 'Antigone' to do better than to start with this detailed commentary alongside the translation they are making from the Greek. The insights given into how the Greek grammar 'works' within the text as well as notes on character, theme and other related plays by Sophocles help both to broaden and deepen appreciation of the play. It was worth every penny of the price.

Beautiful edition with a great commentary (and legible Greek type -- rare enought)!

This is the standard and also the best critical edition of Sophocles' tragedy ANTIGONE, written and performed in Athens in 441BC. It includes the full text, philological explanation and commentary, as well as essays by leading scholars of classical literature.For my new translation (into Finnish) of the play, this edition is the best and the most reliable. ANTIGONE is the story of various conflicts between state and individual, between gods and men, between men and women, and it has spoken its clear message to audiences through generations.

Good Commantary

This commentary is endlessly useful. The only bummer is the replacement of the iota subscript with normal iotas, though I do understand the reason for it.