A. and P., both scholars of political philosophy, have a clear and worthwhile objective: to offer to students the exact words of Sophocles' plays, with accuracy and consistency valued above and beyond poetic aesthetics or feasibility for the stage. They state their reasons for this approach succinctly and convincingly in their preface:

A. and P. perform quite well in their attempts at accuracy, although their stringency that is evident in some places – like the first line of OT wherein τροϕή (line 1) is translated awkwardly but correctly as ‘nurslings’ – gives way elsewhere to more idiomatic and less direct translations: thus I was a little disappointed not to find Antigone's opening address to the ‘head of Ismene’ (Ἰσμήνης κάρα [line 1]) in evidence (p. 153). Some literalism is a bridge too far, it seems, even for A. and P.

The limits of this approach become evident through such difficult Greek lines as Antigone's strange assertion that οὔτοι συνέχθειν, ἀλλὰ συμϕιλεῖν ἔϕυν (line 523) which they translate as ‘Not to join in hating, but to join in loving is my nature’ (p. 169). This translation is crisp and comprehensible, but obscures the nearly paradoxical awkwardness of Antigone's formulation and clouds over its relationship to other instances where Antigone doggedly expresses herself with verbs prefixed by forms of συν (meaning ‘with’ or ‘together’) such as when she asks Ismene to εἰ ξυμπονήσεις καὶ ξυνεργάσῃ σκόπει (line 41) early in the play. A. and P. render this line as ‘Look to see if you will help in the labor and help in the deed’, again a fair and fluent translation, but not one that allows modern readers without Greek to follow the connections and echoes within Sophocles' language. But perhaps there is no level of meticulous rendering that would wash opacities from translation.

Further, as a text for students, there is a higher calling also to provide literary, historical and textual accuracy in so far as our limited knowledge allows. These areas together are a large weakness of this translation and would likely prevent me from assigning it to students. Though the three Theban plays were composed at vastly different moments of the fifth century and out of narrative order, this edition presents them as a true trilogy. It not only arranges them without regard for their actual chronology but also treats them as a single text, implying for example that the Oedipus of OC is the very same character who appears in OT (p. 6). Further, although A. and P. diligently provide footnotes for names and other terms that are likely to be unfamiliar to students, they offer no hint of the fact that some sections of the text are sung, while some are spoken. No indication of strophic arrangement is given for choral odes and no attempt is made to suggest even the lack of this information. (By contrast, the new edition of The Complete Greek Tragedies series [2013] renders sung portions of the plays in italics.) This is a lost opportunity that cuts off readers from information intrinsic to an understanding of these plays. All told, this translation is a good resource for certain kinds of investigations, but lacks the fulsome awareness of the text that might have made it an invaluable pedagogical tool.