Years (many years) ago when I was an English major at UMass, we were given two translations of Aristophanes "The Birds" to read in order to make a point about reading translations. One was by a translator whose name I forgot (and gladly so). The other was by Mr. Fitts. The first was as boring as the ininitiated would expect a Greek comedy to be. But Fitts version, far truer to the original according to our professor, was totally bizarre and remarkably funny. It is as vibrant and eye-opening as Fagles translations of Homer.

"Whiiiine, I don't want to read old Greek plays...they're so booooring", you say? Well, you might think that is true, especially if one your teachers bludgeoned you with the horrible British translations of Aristophanes that were done in the nineteenth century. The Victorian prudes of the nineteenth century were deeply embarrassed by the content of the Greek comedies. They felt that penis jokes were not the sort of morally uplifting things that the ancients should have talked about. All that changes with the Dudley Fitts translation. Fitts bring life back to old Aristophanes. The pace is quick and the dialogue is hysterically funny. Aristophanes was the leading wit of his time. If you can imagine a mix of P.J. O'Rourke and Jim Carrey, then you'd be close to getting at Aristophanes. The humor is sharp and often over the top, often with very earthy overtones; essentially, Greek. You really haven't read Aristophanes until you've Fitts' "Aristophanes:F! our Comedies." This is a translation to be enjoyed by all and not to dreaded as a crime to assign and punishment to read.

For anybody who wishes to read Sophocles' Oedipus cycle, the best translation available is definitely that of Paul Roche. However, for what they're worth, Fitts and Fitzgerald have given a fairly accurate though often too swiftly-paced version of Sophocles' great plays. At times, the translation sacrifices accuracy for tersity, and rarely does it reach the poetic excellence that Roche's clearly demonstrates. However, Fitzgerald's translations often require an acquired taste. If you enjoyed his odyssey (I do not), then you may enjoy his translations here as well.

This is a very readable rendition of Sophocles' famous tragedies, by two of this century's most distinguished classicists and translators. My only caution: I would not recommend this translation to anyone trying to muddle through the Greek. As Fitzgerald readily admits, he has emphasized general meaning, conciseness and readability over strict adherence to the text, paraphrasing the original where he feels it's appropriate. I'm usually wary of this approach, but in this case I feel it makes the plays more accessible to the general reader, and more performable, than they would otherwise be. The end result is a lively and true homage to a great playwright whose ideas have shaped modern literature, drama, and psycology.

Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald first published their excellent translation of "Antigone" in 1939. Having well stood the test of time, it is reprinted in their paperback, "The Oedipus Cycle." My reasons for liking this version better than recent translations by Don Taylor and Paul Roche appear in my Amazon review of the Taylor translation. Here I want to comment on the moral and human issues raised by the play itself, which make it superbly worth reading. ...