The Three Theban Plays
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Three Theban Plays
| Full title | The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus |
|---|---|
| Author | Sophocles |
| Pages | 430 |
| Recommended | 2 times |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Sophocles’s Antigone, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus in Robert Fagles’s translation. Oedipus is the tragedy of an investigator who is the criminal; Antigone is the canonical Western text on the collision between conscience and the law, and it refuses to hand either side a clean win. |
The Three Theban Plays
Where I heard about it
- Dissident Teacher — on A Library to Build Great Americans, a 468-title curriculum published on Substack in December 2025, listed under Drama in the Ages 13-99+ band (Lexile 1100).
- @athenaeumbc — in a stack of ~35 old books photographed by Athenaeum Book Club (October 2026) under the line “One of the hidden benefits of reading old books is that they rescue you from the arrogance of the present.” The full stack is listed on One of the hidden benefits… (tweet).
About this edition
The plays are printed in the order of the story rather than the order they were written (late, earlier, latest). Two of them also appear, in other translations, in the Chicago Greek Tragedies volumes the same list includes.
Connections
- A Library to Build Great Americans — the list this came from.
- Sophocles — the playwright.
- Greek Tragedies, Volume 1 — carries Oedipus the King and Antigone in the Grene translations.
- Greek Tragedies, Volume 3 — carries Oedipus at Colonus in Fitzgerald’s.
- Democracy — Antigone’s standing quarrel with the law it breaks.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.