Typical early 20th century college level text book in plain green cloth with gilt titles and gilt top edge which dulled over time.  Both books originally used by students at Westover School, a HS level boarding school for girls still in operation a century later. The books are tight, clean, flat, square, and sharp with lightly rubbed tips and some aging. Owner's names neatly inked to the FFEP along with lightly penciled marks which are probably used book store prices from some time in the past. 

Gilbert Murray (1866-1957) became a professor of Greek at Glasgow University in1889, becoming Oxford'leading professor of Greek by 1908. By 1904 his translations were performed at Oxford, many of them under his direction. Still in print.

These copies bear no additional printings, which indicates they are First Printings, thus because they were first published by Oxford University Press in the UK.

The influence of Euripides on the development of the dramatic genre cannot be overstated. Along with Sophocles and Aeschylus he is regarded as one of the three great Greek tragedians from classical antiquity. One of the most important of Euripides’ surviving dramas is “Medea”, the story of its title character, the wife of Jason of the Argonauts, who seeks revenge upon her unfaithful husband when he abandons her for a another bride. Set in Corinth sometime after Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, the play begins with Medea raging against her husband’s plans to marry Glauce, daughter of Creon, King of Corinth. Jason tries to explain his intent to marry Glauce as an effort to improve his status and that afterwards he intends to unify the two families taking Medea as his mistress. Medea however is unconvinced and pursues a path of murderous revenge. The play is controversial for its depiction of Medea murdering her own children as part of her revenge. This depiction was unconventional and not well received with the contemporary Athenian audience who expected the more traditional depiction of Medea’s children being killed by the Corinthians after her escape. Regardless of this unfavorable initial reaction, “Medea” has come to be regarded as one of the most important tragedies of classical antiquity.

Iphigenia in Tauris is in English rhyming verse with explanatory notes. The play is not in the modern sense a tragedy, it is a romantic drama, beginning in a tragic atmosphere and moving through perils and escapes to a happy end. The story tells of Iphigenia who is sacrificed by her father to the goddess Artemis. At the last moment she is saved from death by Artemis, but is then set down in the land of Tauri to be her priestess, where all strangers cast on their shores are sacrificed in a savage ritual. Iphigenia, obedient to her goddess, and held by the spell of the altar, had to consecrate the victims, all of whom were Barbarians, as they went to be slaughtered. She waited in half in horror and half in revenge to sacrifice a Greek. When one arrives, it turns out to be her brother Orestes, although she doesn't know this at first. The recognition scene between Iphigenia and Orestes became a model to Aristotle. While not of the same order as Euripides' The Trojan Women, Iphigenia is a delightful play.