Euripides

Plays / Euripides

Euripides, one of the three great Athenian tragedians along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, was an Athenian whose career ran through the second half of the fifth century BC. Ancient sources disagree about the year of his birth: Plutarch and the ancient Life place it in 480 BC, on the day of the battle of Salamis, and the deme of his family is given as Phlya in Attica. According to the ancient Life he first competed at the City Dionysia in 455 BC; the Parian Marble dates his first victory to 441, and the ancient tradition counts four victories in his lifetime and a fifth after his death, for plays produced by a younger Euripides (his son or nephew, as the sources differ). According to the scholia on Aristophanes’ Frogs, the plays of that posthumous production were Iphigenia in Aulis, Alcmaeon and Bacchae. He left Athens for the court of King Archelaus of Macedon late in life; Pausanias says he went to Archelaus and lies buried in Macedonia (Pausanias 1.2.2), and Aristophanes’ Frogs, produced in 405 BC, treats him as already dead (Frogs 52–67). The ancient tradition credits him with about ninety plays, of which eighteen tragedies and one satyr play survive complete under his name. The authorship of one of them, Rhesus, was already doubted in antiquity, and Iphigenia in Aulis was staged only after his death. His first prizes were few compared with those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, but more of his plays survive than of the other two together.

Euripides’ Life and Works

Life

Very little about Euripides’ life is certain. The ancient biographical tradition (the Life preserved with his plays and the Suda) says that he was the son of Mnesarchus (or Mnesarchides) and Cleito. Plutarch repeats the story that he was born on the very day the Greeks fought at Salamis (Plutarch, Table Talk 8.1, 717c), while the Parian Chronicle, a chronological inscription of the third century BC, gives a date a few years earlier. The exact year therefore remains uncertain.

The comic poets attacked Euripides’ origins. In Aristophanes’ Acharnians Dicaeopolis asks the tragedian for a handful of chervil, which he says Euripides inherited from his mother (Acharnians 476–478), and in the Thesmophoriazusae the women of Athens complain that they are slandered by “Euripides the son of the greengrocer” (Thesmophoriazusae 383–388). The joke that his mother sold vegetables was repeated in the ancient biographies, but the joke itself is not evidence, and the same tradition says that he belonged to a family respectable enough to take part in cult, and Aristotle mentions a lawsuit in which a certain Hygiaenon challenged Euripides to an exchange of property over a public service (Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.15, 1416a). A man who could be called on to perform such a service was a person of means.

The biographies add that he was married twice, to Choerile and Melito, and had three sons, of whom one, also named Euripides, was said to have produced his father’s later plays. This too comes from the biographical tradition, not from any source of his own time. The same tradition attributes to him a sullen character and a love of solitude, and the Acharnians shows him composing his tragedies with his feet up, in a house where he is both indoors and not at home (Acharnians 395–401). In the Thesmophoriazusae the women’s complaint is precisely that he writes tragedy and speaks ill of them (Thesmophoriazusae 85, 383–432); later writers took this as evidence that he was a misogynist, though this is a comic reading and not a statement of the poet’s own views. The Frogs gives a different glimpse. There Dionysus says that he was reading Euripides’ Andromeda on board a ship when a sudden longing for the poet struck him, and he goes down to Hades to bring him back (Frogs 52–67). Strabo says that Euripides and the natural philosopher Archelaus were both pupils of Anaxagoras (Strabo 14.1.36).

Late in life Euripides left Athens for the court of Archelaus of Macedon, and died there; the Parian Marble dates his death to 407/406 BC. Pausanias says that there was a cenotaph of Euripides on the road out of Athens, but that Euripides himself went to King Archelaus and lies buried in Macedonia, and as for the manner of his death, which many have described, he leaves it as they say (Pausanias 1.2.2). The ancient Life adds that he wrote a play named Archelaus in honour of his host, and tells the story that Sophocles, when he heard of his death, brought his chorus and actors on stage in mourning dress and without garlands.

Plays

The ancient biographies are an unreliable guide to Euripides’ life, because they draw on the comic poets’ jokes and on later invention. What can be studied directly is his surviving work. The ancient Life and the Suda say he wrote ninety-two plays, some of which were already doubted in antiquity; the counts differ among the ancient sources. Eighteen tragedies and one satyr play survive complete under his name:

Alcestis: Alcestis dies in place of her husband Admetus and is brought back from Death by Heracles
Medea: Medea takes vengeance on Jason when he abandons her for a new bride in Corinth
Children of Heracles: Athens protects the children of Heracles from Eurystheus
Hippolytus: Phaedra’s passion and Aphrodite’s revenge on Hippolytus
Andromache: Andromache, the captive of Neoptolemus, is threatened by Hermione and Menelaus
Hecuba: Hecuba takes revenge on Polymestor for the murder of her son Polydorus
Suppliants: Athens recovers the Argive dead from Thebes
Electra: Euripides’ version of the revenge of Orestes and Electra on Aegisthus and Clytemnestra
Heracles: Heracles returns from Hades and, in a fit of madness, kills his own children
Trojan Women: the captive women of Troy await their fates after the fall of the city
Iphigenia in Tauris: Iphigenia, priestess among the Taurians, is found by Orestes and Pylades
Ion: Ion, son of Apollo and Creusa, serves at Delphi and is recognised by his mother
Helen: Helen has been in Egypt all along, and only a phantom went to Troy
Phoenician Women: the war of Eteocles and Polynices over Thebes
Orestes: Orestes and Electra at Argos after the killing of Clytemnestra
Bacchae: Dionysus punishes Pentheus at Thebes
Iphigenia in Aulis: Agamemnon and the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis
Rhesus: the Thracian king Rhesus arrives at Troy and his horses are stolen by Odysseus and Diomedes
Cyclops: Odysseus and the one-eyed Polyphemus, with a chorus of satyrs; the only satyr play to survive in full

Of these, Rhesus is of doubtful authorship: its ancient hypothesis reports that some already thought it spurious. Iphigenia in Aulis was produced only after his death (scholia on Frogs 67).

The production dates of some plays are recorded in the ancient prefaces (hypotheses) and notes (scholia) that survive with the manuscripts. These give, for example, the second prize of Alcestis in 438 and the third prize of Medea in 431; the writer Aelian records the second prize of Trojan Women in 415 (Aelian, Varia Historia 2.8). For the other surviving plays no ancient date survives. Aristophanes’ comedies provide some firm limits: the Thesmophoriazusae, produced in 411, parodies scenes from Euripides’ Helen and Andromeda, so those plays must be earlier than 411, and the Acharnians of 425 already makes fun of his beggar-heroes such as Telephus, Bellerophon and Philoctetes (Acharnians 410–434).

The Acharnians gives a concrete picture of what the comic stage associated with his work. Dicaeopolis, wanting to look like a beggar, goes to Euripides’ door and is told that the poet is both in and not in: his mind is outside gathering scraps of verse, while he himself is upstairs with his feet up composing a tragedy (Acharnians 395–401). Dicaeopolis then asks for the rags of one of his heroes, naming Oeneus, Phoenix, Philoctetes, Bellerophon and finally Telephus, and receives the rags of Telephus together with the Mysian cap (Acharnians 418–439). The scene shows that by 425 BC Euripides was known for putting ragged, lame and beggarly figures on the tragic stage.

Legacy

Euripides won fewer prizes than Aeschylus or Sophocles, but his plays were widely read and performed after his death. In the Frogs of 405 Dionysus longs for him (Frogs 52–67), and the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides in Hades is the centrepiece of the comedy. Aristotle, in the Poetics, called him “the most tragic of the poets” (Aristotle, Poetics 13, 1453a). Plato, by contrast, mentions him with irony in the Republic, saying that tragedy is held to be wise, and Euripides above the other tragedians, because the poets praise the power of the tyrant as godlike (Plato, Republic 568a–b). His plays are known for taking familiar myths in surprising directions. In Euripides’ Medea the heroine kills her own children, whereas Pausanias records a Corinthian tradition in which Medea’s sons were stoned to death by the Corinthians (Pausanias 2.3.6–7), and another in which she hid each newborn child in the sanctuary of Hera, believing it would become immortal (Pausanias 2.3.11). That is not to say Euripides invented the child-murder, but his Medea is the version that survives in full. He also wrote plays that praise Athens, such as Children of Heracles and Suppliants, so it is hard to describe him simply as a critic of the city. Whether Euripides himself held the views of his characters on religion, war or women cannot be read directly from their words.

Chronology of Euripides’ Life

The dates below come from ancient evidence: the hypotheses (ancient prefaces) and scholia preserved with the plays, the ancient Life, the Parian Marble and Aelian. Surviving plays for which no ancient date is recorded are not listed.

• 480 (Plutarch and the ancient Life; uncertain) – born to Mnesarchus (or Mnesarchides) and Cleito, of the deme of Phlya
• 455 (ancient Life) – first production at the City Dionysia, with a tetralogy that included Peliades; he was placed third
• 441 (Parian Marble) – first victory, with plays that are not known
• 438 (hypothesis to Alcestis) – second place to Sophocles, with Cretan Women, Alcmaeon in Psophis, Telephus and the surviving Alcestis
• 431 (hypothesis to Medea) – third place behind Euphorion and Sophocles, with a tetralogy that included the surviving Medea, Philoctetes, Dictys and Theristai (The Harvesters)
• 428 (hypothesis to Hippolytus) – victory with a tetralogy that included Hippolytus, the surviving second version of a play on that subject
• 425 (hypothesis to Acharnians) – Aristophanes’ Acharnians mocks his beggar heroes
• 415 (Aelian, Varia Historia 2.8) – second place to Xenocles, with Alexandros, Palamedes, the surviving Trojan Women and the satyr play Sisyphus
• 412 (scholia on Aristophanes) – Helen and Andromeda; both were parodied in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae of 411
• 408 (scholia on Orestes) – Orestes
• late in life – departure for the court of King Archelaus of Macedon
• 407/406 (Parian Marble) – death in Macedonia (Pausanias 1.2.2)
• 405 (scholia on Frogs) – posthumous victory, with Iphigenia in Aulis, Alcmaeon and Bacchae; in the same year Aristophanes’ Frogs treats him as dead

Euripides Sources

Aristophanes, Acharnians 395–478, Thesmophoriazusae 85 and 383–432, and Frogs 52–67; Plato, Republic 568a–b; Aristotle, Poetics 13 and Rhetoric 3.15; Plutarch, Table Talk 8.1; Aelian, Varia Historia 2.8; Strabo 14.1.36; Pausanias 1.2.2, 2.3.6–7 and 2.3.11; the hypotheses and scholia preserved with the plays of Euripides and Aristophanes; the ancient Life of Euripides, the Suda and the Parian Marble. The passage in Pausanias can be read at the Perseus Digital Library.