Euripides

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Euripides

Euripides (Ancient Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was the last of the three great tragedians

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
of classical Athens

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
(the other two being Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was an Ancient Greece playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedy whose Play survive extant, the others being Sophocles and Euripides....
and Sophocles

Sophocles

Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
). Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias

Critias

Critias , born in Classical Athens, son of Callaeschrus, was an uncle of Plato, and a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and one of the most violent....
.

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Quotations

Twas but my tongue, twas not my soul that swore.

Variant: My tongue swore, but my mind was still unpledged., Hippolytus (428 B.C.)

A bad beginning makes a bad ending.

Variant: A bad ending follows a bad beginning., Melanippe the Wise (fragment)

Chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.

Variant: Fortune truly helps those who are of good judgement., Pirithous

Cowards do not count in battle; they are there, but not in it.

Meleager Fragment 523

Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.

Phoemissoe

I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right.

Suppliants

Encyclopedia

Euripides (Ancient Greek

Greek language

Tragedy

Athens

Aeschylus

Sophocles

Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
). Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias

Critias

Critias , born in Classical Athens, son of Callaeschrus, was an uncle of Plato, and a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and one of the most violent....
. Eighteen of Euripides' plays have survived complete. It is now widely believed that what was thought to be a nineteenth, Rhesus
Rhesus (play)

Rhesus , possibly 350 BC, is transmitted among the plays of Euripides, and was indeed believed to be genuinely Euripidean in the Hellenistic, Imperial, and Byzantine periods....
, was probably not by Euripides. Fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays also survive. More of his plays have survived than those of Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Sophocles

Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
together, because of the unique nature of the Euripidean manuscript tradition (see below).

Euripides is known primarily for having reshaped the formal structure of traditional Attic

Attic (disambiguation)

The word attic has various meanings:*An attic is an area above a house.*Attic is an adjective for something or someone coming from or associated with Attica or Athens, for example:...
tragedy by showing strong female characters and intelligent slave

Slavery in antiquity

Slavery in the ancient world, specifically, in Mediterranean cultures, comprised a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment for crime, and the enslavement of prisoner of war....
s, and by satirizing many hero

Hero

A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, the offspring of a mortal and a deity,their Greek hero cult being one of the most distinctive features of Religion in ancient Greece....
es of Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
. His plays seem modern by comparison with those of his contemporaries, focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown to Greek audiences.

Life

According to legend, Euripides was born in Salamís

Salamis Island

Salamis is the largest Greece island in the Saronic Gulf, about 1 nautical mile off-coast from Piraeus and about 16 km west of Athens. Due to its roughly crescent shape, the island is also locally known as Koulouri, after the koulouri....
on September 23 480 BC, the day of the Persian War

Greco-Persian Wars

For other Persian wars, see Roman-Persian Wars, Islamic conquest of Persia, Iraq war , and Military history of Iran.The Greco-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between several ancient Greece city-states and the Achaemenid Empire that started in 499 BC and lasted until 448 BC....
's greatest naval battle. Other sources estimate that he was born as early as 485 BC.

His father's name was either Mnesarchus or Mnesarchides and his mother's name Cleito. Evidence suggests that the family was wealthy and influential. It is recorded that he served as a cup-bearer for Apollo

Apollo

In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Apollo , is one of the most important and many-sided of the Twelve Olympians. The ideal of the kouros , Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more....
's dancers, but he grew to question the religion he grew up with, exposed as he was to thinkers such as Protagoras

Protagoras

Protagoras was a Pre-Socratic philosophy Ancient Greeks philosopher and is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras , Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue....
, Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a Classical Greece Philosophy. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students....
, and Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic philosophy Greek philosophy famous for introducing the cosmological concept of Nous , the ordering force....
.

He was married twice, to Choerile and Melito

Melito

Melito is of Italian language derivation and could refer to one of four things:* Saint Melito of Sardis, a second century Christian bishop; or...
, though sources disagree as to which woman he married first. He had three sons, and it is rumored that he also had a daughter who was killed after a rabid

Rabies

Rabies is a virus zoonotic neurotropic virus disease that causes acute encephalitis in mammals. It is most commonly caused by a bite from an infected animal, but occasionally by other forms of contact....
dog attacked her (some say this was merely a joke made by Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comedy playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays have come down to us virtually complete....
, who often poked fun at Euripides). The record of Euripides' public life, other than his involvement in dramatic competitions, is almost non-existent. The only reliable story of note is one by Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
about Euripides being involved in a dispute over a liturgy - a story which offers strong proof to Euripides being a wealthy man. It has been said that he travelled to Syracuse

Syracuse, Italy

Syracuse is a historic city in southern Italy, the Capital of the province of Syracuse. The city is noted for its rich Greek history, culture, amphitheatres, architecture and association to Archimedes, playing an important role in ancient times as one of the top powers of the Mediterranean world; it is over 2,700 years old....
, Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
; that he engaged in various public or political activities during his lifetime; that he wrote his tragedies in a sanctuary, The Cave of Euripides

The Cave of Euripides

The Cave of Euripides is a ten-chamber cave in Peristeria on Salamis Island, Greece, and the subject of archaeology investigation. Its name comes from its long reputation as the place where the playwright Euripides came for sanctuary to write his tragedy....
on Salamis Island

Salamis Island

Athens

Archelaus I of Macedon

Archelaus I was king of Macedon from 413 to 399 BC, following the death of Perdiccas II of Macedon. The son of Perdiccas by a slave woman, Archelaus obtained the throne by murdering his uncle, his cousin, and his half-brother, the legitimate heir, but proved a capable and beneficent ruler, known for the sweeping changes he made in state adm...
and stayed with him in Macedon

Macedon

Macedon or Macedonia was the name of a monarchy centred in the northernmost part of ancient Greece. The homeland of the ancient Macedonians, it was bordered by the kingdom of Epirus to the west and the region of Thrace to the east....
ia after 408 BC. According to Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Roman Greece traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius....
, Euripides was buried in Macedonia.

Plays

Euripides first competed in the Dionysia

Dionysia

The Dionysia was a large religious festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedy and, since 487 BC, Greek comedy....
, the famous Athenian dramatic festival, in 455 BC, one year after the death of Aeschylus. He came in third, reportedly because he refused to cater to the fancies of the judges. It was not until 441 BC that he won first prize, and over the course of his lifetime, Euripides claimed a mere four victories. He also won one posthumous victory.

He was a frequent target of Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comedy playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays have come down to us virtually complete....
' humour. He appears as a character in The Acharnians
The Acharnians

The Acharnians is the third play - and the earliest of the eleven surviving plays - by the great Athenian playwright Aristophanes. It was produced in 425 BCE on behalf of the young dramatist by an associate, Callistratus, and it won first place at the Lenaia festival....
, Thesmophoriazusae
Thesmophoriazusae

Thesmophoriazusae or "Women Celebrating the Festival of the Thesmophoria" - sometimes also called "The Poet and the Women" - is one of eleven surviving plays by the master of Aristophanes#Aristophanes and Old Comedy, the Athenian playwright Aristophanes....
, and most memorably in The Frogs
The Frogs

Frogs is a Greek comedy written by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed at the Lenaia, one of the Festivals of Dionysus, in 405 BC, and received first place....
, where Dionysus

Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
travels to Hades

Hades

Hades refers both to the ancient Greek underworld, the abode of Hades, and to the god of the underworld. Hades in Homer referred just to the god; the genitive case , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades"....
to bring Euripides back from the dead. After a competition of poetry, the god opts to bring Aeschylus instead.

Euripides' final competition in Athens was in 408 BC; there is a story that he left Athens embittered over his defeats. He accepted an invitation by the king of Macedon in 408 or 407 BC, and once there he wrote Archelaus in honour of his host. He is believed to have died there in winter 407/6 BC; ancient biographers have told many stories about his death, but the simple truth was that it was probably his first exposure to the harsh Macedonia winter which killed him. (Rutherford 1996). The Bacchae
The Bacchae

The Bacchae is an Classical Greece tragedy by the Classical Athens playwright Euripides. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BCE as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis, and which Euripides' son or nephew probably directed....
was performed after his death in 405 BC and won first prize.

When compared with Aeschylus, who won thirteen times, and Sophocles, with eighteen victories, Euripides was the least honoured of the three—at least in his lifetime. Later in the 4th century BC, the drama

Drama

Drama is the specific Mode of fiction Mimesis in performance. The term comes from a Ancient Greek word meaning "Action " , which is derived from "to do" ....
s of Euripides became the most popular, largely because of the simplicity of the language of his plays. His works influenced New Comedy and Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
drama, and were later idolized by the French classicists; his influence on drama reaches modern times.

Euripides' greatest works include Alcestis
Alcestis (play)

Alcestis is an Classical Athens tragedy by the Classical Greece playwright Euripides. It was first produced at the Dionysia in 438 BCE. Euripides presented it as the final part of a tetralogy of unconnected plays in the competition of tragedies, for which he won second prize; this arrangement was exceptional, as the fourth part was norma...
, Medea
Medea (play)

Medea is an Ancient Greece tragedy play written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The Plot largely centers on the protagonist in her struggle with the world, and the revenge she brings about against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman, the princess Glauce....
, Trojan Women, and The Bacchae
The Bacchae

The Bacchae is an Classical Greece tragedy by the Classical Athens playwright Euripides. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BCE as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis, and which Euripides' son or nephew probably directed....
. Also considered notable is Cyclops
Cyclops (play)

The Cyclops is an Ancient Greek satyr play by Euripides, the only complete satyr play that has survived. It is a comical burlesque-like play on the same story depicted in book nine of The Odyssey by Homer....
, the only complete satyr play

Satyr play

Satyr plays were an Ancient Greece form of tragicomedy, similar to the modern-day burlesque style. They always featured a chorus of satyrs and were based in Greek mythology and contained themes of, among other things, drinking, overt sexuality , pranks and general merriment....
known to survive.

While the 7 plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles selected for preservation in late antiquity were those considered their best, the manuscript containing Euripides' plays was part of a multiple volume, alphabetically-arranged collection of Euripides' works, rediscovered after lying in a monastic collection for approximately eight hundred years. The manuscript contains Euripides' plays whose (Greek) titles begin with the letters E to K. This accounts for the large number of extant plays of Euripides (among ancient dramatists, only Plautus

Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as Plautus, was a Ancient Rome playwright. His comedy are among the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature....
has more surviving plays), the survival of a satyr play, and the absence of a trilogy. It is a testament to the quality of Euripides' plays that, though their survival was dependent on the letter their title began with and not (as with Aeschylus and Sophocles) their quality, they are ranked alongside and often above the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

In June 2005, classicists at Oxford University worked on a joint project with Brigham Young University

Brigham Young University

Brigham Young University , located in Provo, Utah, United States, is a Private education, coeducational research university owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ....
, using multi-spectral imaging technology to recover previously illegible writing (see References). Some of this work employed infrared

Infrared

Infrared radiation is electromagnetic radiation whose wavelength is longer than that of visible light , but shorter than that of terahertz radiation and microwaves ....
technology—previously used for satellite

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an Physical body which has been placed into orbit by human endeavor. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
imaging—to detect previously unknown material by Euripides in fragments of the Oxyrhynchus papyri

Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus is a city in Upper Egypt, located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo, in the governorate of Al Minya Governorate. It is also an archaeological site, considered one of the most important ever discovered....
, a collection of ancient manuscripts held by the university.

Commentary

Euripides has been compared to Rousseau in being too modern for his time. Euripides focused on the realism of his characters; for example, Euripides’ Medea is a realistic woman with recognizable emotions, and has a developed personality with many different facets to her character-she is not simply a villain. In Hippolytus

Hippolytus (play)

Hippolytus is an Ancient Greek drama tragedy by Euripides, based on the myth of Hippolytus , son of Theseus. The play was first produced for the City Dionysia of Athens in 428 BC and won first prize as part of a trilogy....
, Euripides writes in a particularly modern style, using the theater to demonstrate how neither language nor sight (the main elements of theater) aids in understanding in a civilization on its last leg. Euripides makes his point about vision both through the plot (Phaedra makes repeated references to her inability to see clearly and her wish to have her eyes covered), and through the sparseness of his staging, which lacked the dazzling elements that other plays often had. The same was true of his commentary on the use of language. The misuse of words played an important role in the storyline (Phaedra's letter, the nurse's betrayal of Phaedra's secret, Hippolytus' refusal to break his oath to save his own life, and his refusal to pay lip-service to Aphrodite), but in addition, the actual language of the play was often purposefully verbose and ungainly, again to show the ineffectual nature of language in comprehension in Euripides' age. According to Aristotle

Aristotle

Sophocles

Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
said that he portrayed men as they ought to be, and Euripides portrayed them as they were.

Euripides' realistic characterisations were sometimes at the expense of a realistic plot; he sometimes relied upon the deus ex machina
Deus ex machina

A deus ex machina is a plot device in which a surprising or unexpected event occurs in a story's plot, often to resolve flaws or tie up loose ends in the narrative....
to resolve his plays, as in Ion and Electra. In the opinion of Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
, writing his Poetics a century later, this is the worst way to end a play. Many classicists cite this as a reason why Euripides was less popular in his own time.

Bibliography

Tragedies

Alcestis
Alcestis (play)

Alcestis is an Classical Athens tragedy by the Classical Greece playwright Euripides. It was first produced at the Dionysia in 438 BCE. Euripides presented it as the final part of a tetralogy of unconnected plays in the competition of tragedies, for which he won second prize; this arrangement was exceptional, as the fourth part was norma...
(438 BC, second prize)
Medea
Medea (play)

Medea is an Ancient Greece tragedy play written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The Plot largely centers on the protagonist in her struggle with the world, and the revenge she brings about against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman, the princess Glauce....
(431 BC, third prize)
Heracleidae
Heracleidae (play)

Heracleidae is a play by Euripides c. 430 BC. It follows the children of Heracles , as they seek protection from Eurystheus. It is the first of two surviving plays by Euripides where the family of Heracles are suppliants ....
(c. 430 BC)
Hippolytus
Hippolytus (play)

Hippolytus is an Ancient Greek drama tragedy by Euripides, based on the myth of Hippolytus , son of Theseus. The play was first produced for the City Dionysia of Athens in 428 BC and won first prize as part of a trilogy....
(428 BC, first prize)
Andromache
Andromache (play)

Andromache is a play by Euripides. It follows Andromache during her life as a slave, years after the events of the Trojan War....
(c. 425 BC)
Hecuba
Hecuba (play)

Hecuba is a tragedy by Euripides written c. 424 BC. It takes place after the Trojan War, but before the Greeks have departed Troy.It depicts Hecuba's grief over the loss of a daughter, and the revenge she takes over the loss of a son....
(c. 424 BC)
The Suppliants
The Suppliants (Euripides)

The Suppliants 423 BC, is an ancient Greek play by Euripides....
(c. 423 BC)
Electra
Electra (Euripides)

Euripides' Electra was probably written in the mid 410s BC, likely after 413 BC. It is unclear whether it was first produced before or after Sophocles' Electra of the Electra story....
(c. 420 BC)
Heracles
Heracles (Euripides)

Heracles or Hercules Furens is a play by Euripides . While Heracles is in the underworld obtaining Cerberus for one of his labors, his father Amphitryon, wife Megara, and children are sentenced to death in Thebes, Greece by Lycus....
(c. 416 BC)
The Trojan Women
The Trojan Women

'The Trojan Women' is a tragedy by the Ancient Greece playwright Euripides. Produced during the Peloponnesian War, it is often considered a commentary on the capture of the Aegean Sea island of Melos and the subsequent slaughter and subjugation of its populace by the Athens earlier in 415 BC , the same year the play premiered....
(415 BC, second prize)
Iphigenia in Tauris (c. 414 BC)
Ion
Ion (play)

Ion is an ancient Greek play by Euripides, thought to be written between 414 and 412 BC. It follows the orphan Ionas in the discovery of his origins....
(c. 414 BC)
Helen
Helen (play)

Helen is a drama by Euripides, probably first produced in 412 BC for the Dionysia. The play shares much in common with another of Euripides' works, Iphigeneia in Tauris....
(412 BC)
Phoenician Women
Phoenician Women

The Phoenician Women is a tragedy by Euripides based on the same story as Aeschylus' play Seven Against Thebes. The title refers to the Greek chorus, which is composed of Phoenician women on their way to Delphi who are trapped in Thebes, Greece by the war....
(c. 410 BC)
Orestes
Orestes (play)

Orestes is an Ancient Greek play by Euripides that follows the events of Orestes after he had murdered his mother....
(408 BC)
Bacchae
The Bacchae

The Bacchae is an Classical Greece tragedy by the Classical Athens playwright Euripides. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BCE as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis, and which Euripides' son or nephew probably directed....
and Iphigenia at Aulis (405 BC, posthumous, first prize)

Fragmentary tragedies

The following plays have come down to us today only in fragmentary form; some consist of only a handful of lines, but with some the fragments are extensive enough to allow tentative reconstruction: see Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays (Aris and Phillips 1995) ed. C. Collard, M.J. Cropp and K.H. Lee.

Telephus
Telephus

A Greek mythology, Telephus or Telephos was one of the Heraclidae, the sons of Heracles, who were venerated as founders of cities. Telephos was by far the most famous of these heroes, and the various sites at which libations were offered to placate his spirit occasioned etiology of travels around the Greek mainland, in Magna Graecia a...
(438 BC)
Cretans (c. 435 BC)
Stheneboea (before 429 BC)
Bellerophon
Bellérophon

Bell?rophon is an opera with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and a libretto by Thomas Corneille and Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle first performed at the Palais Royal, Paris on 31 January 1679....
(c. 430 BC)
Cresphontes (ca. 425 BC)
Erechtheus (422 BC)
Phaethon (c. 420 BC)
Wise Melanippe (c. 420 BC)
Alexandros (415 BC)
Palamedes (415 BC)
Sisyphus
Sisyphus fragment

The Sisyphus fragment is an 42-line excerpt in iambic trimeter from an ancient Greek satyr play written either by Euripides or Critias. The words are spoken by Sisyphus, a character in the play....
(415 BC)
Captive Melanippe (412 BC)
Andromeda
Andromeda (play)

Andromeda is a lost tragedy written by Euripides, based on the myth of Andromeda and first produced in 412 BC....
(412 BC with Euripides' Helen)
Antiope (c. 410 BC)
Archelaus (c. 410 BC)
Hypsipyle (c. 410 BC)
Philoctetes (c. 410 BC)

Satyr play

Cyclops
Cyclops (play)

The Cyclops is an Ancient Greek satyr play by Euripides, the only complete satyr play that has survived. It is a comical burlesque-like play on the same story depicted in book nine of The Odyssey by Homer....
(uncertain date)

Spurious plays

Rhesus
Rhesus (play)

Rhesus , possibly 350 BC, is transmitted among the plays of Euripides, and was indeed believed to be genuinely Euripidean in the Hellenistic, Imperial, and Byzantine periods....
(most modern scholars maintain that the play was probably not by Euripides, shows many indications of mid 4th century BC contamination)

External links

------

Euripides

Life

Plays

Commentary

Bibliography

Tragedies

Fragmentary tragedies

Satyr play

Spurious plays

Further reading

External links