Euripides (c. 485-406 B.C.)

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LINKS

The Euripides Home Page
http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~shale/humanities/literature/world_literature/euripides.html

This site, hosted by an instructor at DeKalb College, provides biographical information, texts, criticism, and links to other resources on Euripides and his works.

The Internet Classics Archive: Works by Euripides
http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Euripides.html

Maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this site features full e-text versions of nineteen of Euripides' works.

The Perseus Digital Library: Euripides
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0004%3Aid%3Deuripides

The Perseus Digital Library, hosted by Tufts University, is a resource for a wide range of subjects in the humanities. Here you will find biographical information about Euripides, links to texts of his surviving plays (including The Bacchae), and additional primary and secondary sources.

TheatreHistory.com: Euripides
http://www.theatrehistory.com/ancient/euripides001.html

This page explores Euripides’ life, writing, and contribution to drama. Links for further studies offer additional information on his major works and their political and religious contexts.

BIOGRAPHY

Euripides (c. 485-406 B.C.), last of the great Greek tragedians, did not enjoy the personal popularity accorded Aeschylus and Sophocles, possibly because his work criticized Athenian politics and society. Moreover, he was not highly regarded because he broke away from the formality of language and theme of his predecessors.

Euripides is especially noted for shifting the focus of dramatic events from the gods to humans. He values individual human beings and the working of their wills. One aspect of his dramatic critique of Greek culture was an unusual emphasis on women. Medea is the first thoroughly developed female character in Greek drama. She is treated as an independent woman, not as Jason's wife or as someone's mother. Athenians, intolerant of foreigners and women, felt both groups to be inferior to Greek aristocratic men. It is no wonder that of the twenty plays Euripides produced at the feasts of Dionysus only five won prizes.

Of his ninety-two plays, eighteen survive—more than twice as many as survive from any other Greek tragedian: Alcestis (438), Medea (431), The Children of Heracles (c. 430), Hippolytus (428), Andromache (c. 426), Hecuba (c. 424), Cyclops (c. 423), The Suppliants (c. 422), Heracles (c. 417), Electra (c. 417), The Trojan Woman (415), Iphigenia in Taurus (c. 412), Helen (412), Ion (c. 411), The Phoenician Women (c. 412-408), Orestes (408), The Bacchae (405), and Iphigenia in Aulis (405).

Another play, Rhesus, long attributed to Euripides, is now thought to have been written by an anonymous fourth-century B.C. playwright. Ten of Euripides' remaining plays place women at their center.

Euripides continued Aeschylus's innovations in his use of the skene. Instead of representing the front of a palace, the skene in Euripides' plays sometimes represented a peasant's hut, a rural shrine, or other common structure. He was interested in theatrical devices, especially machines that gave him the opportunity to achieve dramatic effects. His choral odes, although beautiful, are sometimes considered detachable from the episodes of dramatic action. Moreover, his dialogue is more colloquial—closer to everyday speech—than is the dialogue found in other Greek tragedies. All these deviations from the dramatic norm emphasize the humanity in his plays and elevate human values over those of the gods.

Eighteen months before his death, Euripides left Athens for the court of King Archelaus in Macedon. His departure may have signaled his dissatisfaction with the politics of Athens, or it may have been prompted by the indifference of Athens to his talents. In any event, his works were performed long after his death, and, ironically, his posthumous popularity dwarfed that of the other tragic playwrights.

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