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"The wavering mind is but a base possession." -- Euripides
Euripides (Ancient Greek: ) (ca. 480 BC — 406 BC) was the lastof the three great tragedians of classical Athens (the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles). Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias. Eighteen or nineteen of Euripides' plays have survived complete. There has been debate about his authorship of Rhesus, largely on stylistic grounds and ignoring classical evidence that the play was his. Fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays also survive. More of his plays have survived than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, because of the unique nature of the Euripidean manuscript tradition.
Euripides is known primarily for having reshaped the formal structure of Athenian tragedy by portraying strong female characters and intelligent slaves and by satirizing many heroes of Greek mythology. 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.
"Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.""Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.""Authority is never without hate.""Better a serpent than a stepmother!""But learn that to die is a debt we must all pay.""Chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.""Cleverness is not wisdom.""Danger gleams like sunshine to a brave man's eyes.""Do not consider painful what is good for you.""Do not plan for ventures before finishing what's at hand.""Down on your knees, and thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love.""Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account.""Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err.""Fortune truly helps those who are of good judgment.""Friends show their love in times of trouble.""God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.""Happiness is brief. It will not stay. God batters at its sails.""He is not a lover who does not love forever.""He was a wise man who originated the idea of God.""Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm.""I would prefer as friend a good man ignorant than one more clever who is evil too.""Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain.""Impudence is the worst of all human diseases.""In misfortune, which friend remains a friend?""It's not beauty but fine qualities, my girl, that keep a husband.""Joint undertakings stand a better chance when they benefit both sides.""Leave no stone unturned.""Life has no blessing like a prudent friend.""Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.""Luckier than one's neighbor, but still not happy.""Much effort, much prosperity.""New faces have more authority than accustomed ones.""No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.""No one is happy all his life long.""No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.""No one who lives in error is free.""Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.""One does nothing who tries to console a despondent person with word. A friend is one who aids with deeds at a critical time when deeds are called for.""One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.""Prosperity is full of friends.""Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.""Silence is true wisdom's best reply.""Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.""Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far.""Some wisdom you must learn from one who's wise.""Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.""Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.""The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.""The best of seers is he who guesses well.""The bold are helpless without cleverness.""The good and the wise lead quiet lives.""The greatest pleasure of life is love.""The lucky person passes for a genius.""There is just one life for each of us: our own.""There is the sky, which is all men's together.""This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.""Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.""To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.""To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man.""'Twas but my tongue, 'twas not my soul that swore.""Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all: only our characters are steadfast, not our gold.""When a man's stomach is full it makes no difference whether he is rich or poor.""Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.""Youth is the best time to be rich, and the best time to be poor."
Little is known about Euripides, and most recorded sources are based on legend and hearsay. According to one legend, Euripides was born in Salamís on 23 September 480 BC, the day of the Persian War'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 was Cleito. Evidence suggests that the family was wealthy and influential. It is recorded that he served as a cup-bearer for Apollo's dancers, but he grew to question the religion he grew up with, exposed as he was to thinkers such as Protagoras, Socrates, and Anaxagoras.
He was married twice, to Choerile and Melito, 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 dog attacked her (some say this was merely a joke made by Aristophanes, 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 about Euripides' involvement in a dispute over a liturgy (an account that offers strong evidence that Euripides was a wealthy man). It has been said that he traveled to Syracuse, Sicily; that he engaged in various public or political activities during his lifetime; that he wrote his tragedies in a sanctuary, The Cave of Euripides on Salamis Island; and that he left Athens at the invitation of King Archelaus I of Macedon and stayed with him in Macedonia and allegedly died there in 406 B.C. after being accidentally attacked by the king's hunting dogs while walking in the woods.
Euripides first competed in the City Dionysia, the famous Athenian dramatic festival, in 455 BC, one year after the death of Aeschylus. He came 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 only four victories. He also won a posthumous victory.
He was a frequent target of Aristophanes' humour. He appears as a character in The Acharnians, Thesmophoriazusae, and most memorably in The Frogs (where Dionysus travels to 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 is that it was probably his first exposure to the harsh Macedonia winter which killed him. The Bacchae was performed after his death in 405 BC and won first prize.
In comparison with Aeschylus (who won thirteen times) and Sophocles (who had eighteen victories) Euripides was the least honoured of the three, at least in his lifetime. Later in the 4th century BC, Euripides' plays became the most popular, largely because of the simplicity of their language. His works influenced New Comedy and Roman drama, and were later idolized by the French classicists; his influence on drama extends to modern times.
Euripides' greatest works include Alcestis, Medea, Trojan Women, and The Bacchae. Also considered notable is Cyclops, the only complete satyr play to have survived.
While the seven plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles that have survived 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 800 years. The manuscript contains those 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 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, using multi-spectral imaging technology to recover previously illegible writing (see References). Some of this work employed infrared technology...previously used for satellite imaging...to detect previously unknown material by Euripides in fragments of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, a collection of ancient manuscripts held by the university.
Commentary
- Alcestis (438 BC, second prize)
- Medea (431 BC, third prize)
- Heracleidae (c. 430 BC)
- Hippolytus (428 BC, first prize)
- Andromache (c. 425 BC)
- Hecuba (c. 424 BC)
- The Suppliants (c. 423 BC)
- Electra (c. 420 BC)
- Heracles (c. 416 BC)
- The Trojan Women (415 BC, second prize)
- Iphigenia in Tauris (c. 414 BC)
- Ion (c. 414 BC)
- Helen (412 BC)
- Phoenician Women (c. 410 BC)
- Orestes (408 BC)
- Bacchae and Iphigenia at Aulis (405 BC, posthumous, first prize)
- Rhesus (uncertain date)
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.
- Telephus (438 BC)
- Cretans (c. 435 BC)
- Stheneboea (before 429 BC)
- Bellerophon (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 (415 BC)
- Captive Melanippe (412 BC)
- Andromeda (412 BC with Euripides' Helen)
- Antiope (c. 410 BC)
- Archelaus (c. 410 BC)
- Hypsipyle (c. 410 BC)
- Philoctetes (c. 410 BC)
Satyr play
- Cyclops (uncertain date)
- Barrett, William Spencer, ed. 1964. Hippolytos. By Euripides. Oxford: Clarendon P. and Toronto: Oxford UP.
- ---. 2007. Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism: Collected Papers. Ed. M. L. West. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0199203571.
- Croally, N. T. 1994. Euripidean Polemic: The Trojan Women and the Function of Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0521041120.
- Ippolito, P. 1999. La vita di Euripide. Napoli: Dipartimento di Filologia Classica dell'Universit'a degli Studi di Napoli Federico II.
- Kovacs, David. 1993 Euripidea. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9004099263.
- Lefkowitz, Mary R.. 1981. The Lives of the Greek Poets. New edition. London: Duckworth, 1998. ISBN 0715617214.
- Rutherford, Richard. 1996. Introduction. Medea and Other Plays. By Euripides. Rev ed. London: Penguin, 2003. ISBN 0140449299.
- Scullion, S. 2003. "Euripides and Macedon, or the silence of the Frogs." The Classical Quarterly 53.2: 389-400.
- Sommerstein, Alan H. 2002. Greek Drama and Dramatists. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415260280.
- Walton, J. Michael. 1997. Introduction. In Plays VI. By Euripides. Methuen Classical Greek Dramatists ser. London: Methuen. vii-xxii. ISBN 0413716503.
- Webster, T. B. L. 1967. The Tragedies of Euripides. London: Methuen.
- Multispectral imaging. Oxyrhynchos online. Retrieved on 28 October 2007.
Total Books: 986