The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I.

Euripides wrote tragedy not for heroes but for the broken. This collection gathers three of his most devastating plays: Medea, a woman betrayed beyond endurance; Hecuba, queen of fallen Troy, reduced to slavery and grief; and Orestes, a son haunted by the crime of avenging his father. These are not tales of noble suffering but of rage, desperation, and the terrible choices left to those with no power. Euripides populates his stage with women, captives, and the mentally undone - the voiceless of ancient Athens given devastating speeches. His gods are indifferent or cruel; his humans are startlingly, uncomfortably modern in their capacity for both cruelty and love. The plays confront you with the wreckage of war, the costs of justice, and the question of whether vengeance can ever be justified. They have survived twenty-five centuries because they still sting. Read them and understand why the Greeks invented tragedy: not to feel better, but to feel more.