TRAGEDY'S WORKSHOP
The Bookstore

"P"

Padel, Ruth, In and Out of the Mind, Greek Images of the Tragic Self. "A rich and brilliant study of the fifth-century Athenian understanding of 'the phenomena of consciousness' seen from interlocking biological and 'daemonological' perspectives.... [Ruth Padel] helps us to see not just that Greek ways of thinking are so profoundly alien, but also how they make sense and could be coherently lived. Her skill as a writer and [her] gift for illuminating analogy make those foreign patterns of thought compellingly vivid." --Malcolm Heath, The Times Literary Supplement

Padel, Ruth, Whom Gods Destroy, Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness. "Every sentence [is] is a delight. A stunning scholarly book. ... Simply and brilliantly, Padel lays bare insights more fashionable theorists strive after but obscure with abstraction. Padel shows us our contemporary grammar of madness has its long and gnarled roots in Greek tragedy. Like a conjurer in slow motion, letting us in on his secrets, she reveals that ... conceptualizations of madness are radically different at different times and in different cultures. ... A subtle, wide-eyed assault on naive notions of truth and reality. ... Perhaps the most ... important gift of Whom Gods Destroy is a dawning realization that within each man-made universe ... self-understanding is always equally coherent." --Udi Eisler, Hampstead and highgate Express

Pausanias, Guide to Greece. Two volume set, translated by Peter Levi. Pausanias was a doctor from Greek Asia Minor who devoted twenty years to traveling Greece during and after the reign of Hadrian (2nd century AD). He wrote a detailed account of every Greek city and sanctuary with historical introductions and a record of local customs and beliefs. Archaeologists and historians have found his work an indispensable source of reliable information. Mythographers have relied on him for both early and late versions of local myths. One of the more remarkable is the description of Helen's death on the island of Rhodes, where the wife of the king of Rhodes who died at Troy hanged Helen from a tree.

Phillimore, John Swinnerton, Sophocles. From the author's preface: "... I hold that the rhymed and not the blank verse is nearer to Sophoclean pitch of language. Sophocles moves, by predilection, in the middle diction, which is common ground to the poetical and the prose style; his dialogue is colloquially plain and direct; in King Oedipus especially his vocabulary resembles that which Antiphon employed in prose to plead his cases, real or imaginary. Now English blank verse must (to my thinking) be always in full dress if it is to succeed--perpetually sonorous, balanced, aloof from the ordinary.

Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy. Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge was one of the major scholars of the 1920s and 30s concerned with the origins of Greek drama, and focused in particular on the evidence derived from archaeological finds and papyri. He describes this history of the earliest stages of Greek drama as 'a dispassionate attempt to ascertain historical truth or probability by methods as logical as the subject permits'. The study begins by bringing together what was known of the dithyramb, and argues against Aristotle's statement that tragedy originated from the leaders of the dithyramb, and against the theory put forward by Sir William Ridgeway that it originated in performances at the tombs of dead heroes.
Pindar, The Odes of Pindar, tr. by Sir John Sandys. Pindar, (522 or 518-442 BC) most famous of Greek lyric poets, was a member of a renowned Boeotian Family. His precocity, diligence, and musical training procured for him in 502 a commission from the ruling princes of Pharsalus in Thessaly to compose an ode (Pythian X). These were followed by poems for merchant novles of Aegina; for great families of Athens, Corinth, Rhodes, Tenedos, the Kings of Macedonia and Cyrene. He was honored at Athens and Delphi and kept his home at Thebes. One of the great values of reading Pindar is that his work contains an astonishing mixture of myths, relgion, political and moral opinions, wrestling and racing incidents, and fine deeds in fact and fancy.
Plato, Plato: The Collected Dialogues, ed. by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. All the writings of Plato generally considered to be authentic are here presented in a single volume--the only complete one-volume Plato available in English. A comprehensive index is included. The volume also contains editorial notes prefacing each dialogue, by Edith Hamilton, and an introductory essay on Plato's philosophy and writings, by Huntington Cairns. In the index, ample cross references are provided to assist the reader with the philosophical vocabulary of the different translators.

Plumptre, E. H. The Tragedies of Aeschylos. First published in 1897, this work contains a full chapter on the life of Aeschylos, complete with speculations as to his personality. Undoubtedly dated, this work still maintains an interest for a novelist struggling with developing a character. The author writes: "The materials for a life of Aeschylos are life in kind and quantity to those which we possess for a life of Sophocles. A brief anonymous memoir, written probably some four or five hundred years after his death, a few scattered facts in scholia and lexicons, a few anecdotes or allusions in contemporary, or all but contemporary, authors; this is all we have to deal with. My purpose in this essay is to ... put these disjecta membra together in such an order as may best show what the man himself was, to illustrate them from the poet's own works, to throw light on them from the history of the period in which he lived."
Plutarch, Selected Essays and Dialogues, tr by Donald Russell. Plutarch was born ~ 50 AD at Chaeronea in central Greece, and lived there most of his life. This selection of his miscellaneous work--the Moralia--illustrates his thinking on religious, ethical, social, and political issues. Two genres are represented: the dialogue, which Plutarch wrote in a tradition nearer to Cicero than Plato, and the informal treatise or essay, in which is personality is most clearly displayed. His diffuse and individual style conveys a character of great charm and authority. My favorite writing of his is his A Consolation to His Wife, which was written after the death of their three-year-old daughter.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. This two-volume set contains the biographies of twenty-seven Greeks and Romans, starting with Theseus in the 13th century BC. Written at the beginning of the 2nd century AD this book forms a brilliant social history of the ancient world. Plutarch was interested in the personalities of his subjects and on the way their characters molded their actions, leading them to tragedy or victory. Plutarch himself was priest of Apollo at Delphi and an ancient scholar of great wisdom. To read him, and in particular his work called the Moralia, is to love him.
Plutarch, Moralia, Volume IV, tr. by F. C. Babbitt. This Volume IV of the Loeb Classical Library fifteen volume set contains The Roman Questions, The Greek Questions, Greek and Roman Parallel Stories, On the Fortune of the Romans, On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander, and Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom? These essays are of high literary value, besides being of great use to people interested in philosophy, ethics and religion. The Moralia's literary value is greatly enhanced by the large number of citations from lost Greek poems, especially verses of the dramatists, among who Euripides hold by far the first place.
Plutarch, Moralia, Volume VII, tr. by Phillip H. Delacy.

To see all writing by Plutarch go to the Tragedy's Workshop Bookstore and look them up in the Loeb Classical Library. Click here.
Pomeroy, Sarah B., Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, Women in Classical Antiquity. "Pomeroy's pioneering study on the status and activities of women in antiquity was, and has remained, a milestone in classical historiography.... That no one today would dream of writing a major work on ancient social history with no index entry for 'women' is due in no small part to her revolutionary, yet scrupulously scholarly, trail-blazing work." --Peter Green, University of Texas at Austin. "With this book Sarah Pomeroy created a new area of modern classical studies.... The book has itself become a classic." --H. A. Shapiro, University of Canterbury. "An essential text in the process of retrieving women's part in history, it is also an absorbing story, fascinating and dramatic to read." --Marilyn French.
Potter, David, Prophets and Emperors, Human and Divine Authority from Augusstus to Theodosious. To the practical modern mind, the idea of divine prophecy is more ludicrous than sublime. Yet to our cultural forebears in ancient Greece and Rome, prophecy was anything but marginal. This is a fascinating account of prophecy as a social, religious, and political phenomenon. The various systems of prophecy--including sacred books, oracles, astrological reading, interpretation of dreams, the sayings of holy men and women--come into sharp relief. Drawing on diverse evidence--from inscriptions and ancient prophetic books to Greek and Roman historians and the Bible--Potter has produced a study that will engage anyone interested in the religions of the ancient Mediterranean and in the history and politics of the Roman Empire.
Pulleyn, Simon, Prayer in Greek Religion. In this, the first book-length study of Greek prayer to appear in English, Simon Pulleyn presents a comprehensive treatment of an aspect of religion which together with sacrifice was at the centre of Greek cult. Through a full examination of all the relevant literary and epigraphic material available from the archaic and classical periods, Dr. Pulleyn seeks both to describe the ancient practices and to explain their significance. Great stress is laid on the central role of reciprocity in Greek relations with the gods, and the various ways in which they addressed the gods are shown to be related to strategies used in dealing with each other. The book also features an examination of the language used in prayer, eg formulae, and rhetorical structures, and draws on Indo-European comparative material.