Sophocles

“At Troy, the great warrior Ajax, denied the armour of Achilles, sets out at night to kill the Greek commanders — and the goddess Athena drives him mad, so that he slaughters the army's cattle instead. When he wakes to his disgrace, the proudest hero of the Greeks must decide how to live, or die, with honour.”

“After a civil war in which both of Oedipus's sons have died, King Creon of Thebes forbids anyone to bury the brother who attacked the city. Their sister Antigone buries him anyway, for the unwritten laws of the gods — and the clash between her conscience and his law destroys them both.”

“Deianeira, wife of the hero Heracles, waits anxiously at Trachis for her wandering husband. When he sends home a beautiful captive girl he means to make his mistress, Deianeira tries to win back his love with a charm given her long ago by a dying centaur — and destroys him, and herself.”

“A plague is destroying Thebes, and the oracle says it will end only when the murderer of the old king is found. King Oedipus, the clever outsider who once saved the city by solving the riddle of the Sphinx, swears to find him — and step by step uncovers the truth about himself.”

“Years after her father Agamemnon was murdered by her mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, Electra lives in the palace of Mycenae like a servant, mourning and raging, waiting for her brother Orestes to come home and take revenge. Then a messenger brings news that Orestes is dead.”

“Blind, old and exiled, Oedipus wanders with his daughter Antigone to Colonus, near Athens, where an oracle has told him he will die. Thebes and his own sons now want his body, which will bring blessing to the land that holds it; but Oedipus has chosen Athens, and King Theseus — and the gods call him at last to a mysterious end.”