Euripides wrote about timeless themes, of friendship and enmity, hope and despair, duty and betrayal. The first three plays in this volume are imbued with an atmosphere of violence, while the fourth, Cyclops , is our only surviving example of a genuine satyr play, with all the crude and slapstick humor that characterized the genre. Alcestis shows various reactions to death with pathos and grim humor while the blood-soaked Heracles portrays deep emotional pain and undeserved suffering. Children of Heracles deals with the effects of war on refugees and the consequences of sheltering them. Robin Waterfield has translated numerous classical texts for OWC, including Plato's Republic , Herodotus' Histories and Plutarch's Greek Lives and Roman Lives Edith Hall is co-director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at the University of Oxford. She has published widely on ancient Greek drama and society, reviews and appears on radio and television. She has written introductions to the other four volumes of Euripides' plays in OWC. James Morwood has translated three volumes of Euripides' plays for OWC and is the author of The Plays of Euripides and A Dictionary of Latin Words and Phrases .