罗念生是我国著名的古希腊文学翻译家。本书是罗念生全集第二卷，收集的是罗念生先生翻译的埃斯库罗斯和索福克勒斯的悲剧。埃斯库罗斯是古希腊三大悲剧家中的第一位，因其对古希腊悲剧艺术发展作出的开创性贡献，被誉为“悲剧之父”。在埃斯库罗斯的七部传世剧本中，本卷收集了罗念生先生翻译的三部。索福克勒斯是古希腊三大悲剧家中的第二位，以完美的戏剧技巧享誉后世。索福克勒斯有七部剧本传世，这里收集了罗念生先生翻译的四部，按古代演出年代的先后排列。全集是迄今为止收集罗老一生著译最齐全、最完整、也最精当的版本，也是文学爱好者、古希腊罗马文学研究者的最佳读本和资料库。

收有埃斯库罗斯的悲剧《被缚的普罗米修斯》，索福克勒斯的悲剧《奥狄浦斯王》，欧里庇得斯的悲剧《美狄亚》，阿里斯托芬的喜剧《鸟》，米南德的喜剧《古怪人》。

"These authoritative translations consign all other complete collections to the wastebasket."--Robert Brustein, "The New Republic" "This is it. No qualifications. Go out and buy it everybody."--Kenneth Rexroth, "The Nation" "The translations deliberately avoid the highly wrought and affectedly poetic; their idiom is contemporary....They have life and speed and suppleness of phrase."--"Times Education Supplement" "These translations belong to our time. A keen poetic sensibility repeatedly quickens them; and without this inner fire the most academically flawless rendering is dead."--Warren D. Anderson, "American Oxonian" "The critical commentaries and the versions themselves...are fresh, unpretentious, above all, functional."--"Commonweal" "Grene is one of the great translators."--Conor Cruise O'Brien, "London Sunday Times" "Richmond Lattimore is that rara avis in our age, the classical scholar who is at the same time an accomplished poet."--Dudley Fitts, "New York Times Book Review"

In the "Oresteia" - the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity - Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. Moving from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, its spirit of struggle and regeneration is eternal.