euripides1

Euripides

Euripides was born in around 485/484. He be-
longed to a generation that was familiar with the
triumph of the Persian wars from the tales told
by their parents. Playwrights of comedy repre-
sented his father as a grocer and his mother as
a greengrocer. He is not recorded as having
played any part in public life. In 408 he went to

the court of king Arkhelaos at Pella, and died
there in 406. News of his death reached Athens
shortly before the Great Dionysia were due to
begin; and it was said that Sophocles turned up
to the 'preliminary performance' dressed in
mourning, and had the chorus and actors per-
form without their coronets. A cenotaph in hon-
our of Euripides was set up on the Piraeus road.

Nineteen of Euripides' approximately ninety plays have
survived. (One, the Rhesus, is now thought not to be
genuine). In contrast to the other two tragic playwrights,
he won first prize on only four occasions during his lifetime
(and once posthumously). Yet he was the favourite of later
generations, which is why more papyri with texts from Eu-
ripides have survived than from the other two writers of
tragedy

Like other tragic playwrights, Euripides set his own stamp
on his work, introducing personal idioms and innovations.
Typical was the prologue in the form of a monologue,
serving to orient the viewer to the antecedents of the ac-
tion, and to indicate what liberties the playwright was
about to take with the myth. Euripides laid particular em-
phasis on the verbal skirmishing (agon) which enlivened
corresponding scenes in lawcourts. A fundamental innova-
tion was the use of the deus ex machina: the deity who
appears on high and provides the solution to the tragedy.

Euripides was creating his plays amid the chaos brought
on by Athenian policy during the Peloponnesian war. As a
sharp-eyed observer and a citizen with an affection for his
city, he was critical of political action throughout the war.
He found that it would lead to the downfall of the people
responsible for it - Athens, in other words - inasmuch as
the city as an active object went beyond all the ethical
canons. In the last stages of the war, the playwright found
that the whole Athenian system - the polis - was tottering.
Each person was under some compulsion, resulting in a
mode of action that led to greater disorder. Amid the disor-
der of his times, Euripides grasped at the principle of
"Man, the Measure of All Things", in all its manifestations,
giving it shape in his tragedies.

Euripides' extant works are

Alcestis (438)
Medea (431)
Heraclidae (?430)
Hippolytus (428)
Hecuba (?426)
Andromache (?425; not at Athens)
Suppliant Women (?424)
Electra (?417)
Hercules Furens (?416)
Trojan Women (415)
Ion (?414)
Iphigenia among the Taurians (?413)
Helen (412)
Orestes (408)
Iphigenia at Aulis
Bacchae (later than 406 and up to 400)