Euripides (484-407 B. C.) is seen in the three plays in this volume as the sceptical questioner of his age Alcestis, an early play in which a queen agrees to die to save her husband’s life, is cast in a tragic vein, although it contains passages of satire and even comedy, whilst Iphigenia in Tauris, with its apparently happy ending, melodramatically reunites the ill-tated children of Agamemnon. Hippolytus, however, is pure tragedy – the fatal impact of phaedra’s unreasoning passion for her chaste stepson Philip vellacott’s’ translations are now all in verse and he has written a fresh introduction.