EURIPIDES

(484 BC - 406BC)

BACKGROUND

• dies same year as 90-yr.-old Sophocles
• last great writer of Greek tragedy
• ?? Born on the day of Greece's victory at the Battle of Salamis
  • naval battle
  • Greece vs. Persia
  • if true, would link him to Aeschylus (fought at victory) & Sophocles (wrote the victory ode)
• Mnesarchides & Cleito
  • father = merchant
  • mother = from a reputable family
    • (no, she wasn’t a “vegetable seller” as Aristophanes mocks in Frogs)
• from a Good Family, of influence, on island of Salamis
  • --> education, exposure to new thought
  • possible tutors = Anaxagoras, Protagoras
  • (not certain) (probably read in library)
• Loner:
  • reclusive
  • lived most of his life on the island of Salamis, in a cave, alone (private library)
  • more of an individualist (than predecessors)

  
   

BACKGROUND

• Politics:
  • New Thought, science, curiosity, truth/wisdom
  • free-thinker/questioned old ways/religion/superstitions (? gods)
  • pacifist, against war
• Public Life:
  • wife cuckolded him
  • easy target for mockery
    • wife, politics, loner
    • (*ARISTOPHANES)
  • friends = banished, murdered by the State for ideas
  • he =
    • saved for a while b/c it was his characters said those things
    • eventually tried for heresy/impiety
    • left Athens in disgrace c.404
    • refuge in Macedonia (King Archelaus)
• Death:
  • attacked (accidentally) by king’s hunting hounds

PLAYS

• wrote approximately 92 plays
• *18 extant
  • http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Euripides.html
• Medea, Hippolytus
• Cyclops =
  • only complete “satyr play” in existence
• less popular than predecessors
  • only 5 prizes
  • 1st in 442BC
  • 5th after his death

INNOVATIONS

• Prologue

  • in modern sense

  • to summarize the situation at the opening of the play

• emotions of individuals

  • not great public events debated in earlier tragedies

• accelerated the demise of the Chorus

• common, everyday characters & women

• genre-bending (tragi-comedy)

 STYLE

• “anti-traditionalist”
• skeptical, modern outlook, outspoken
• unusually realistic
• abnormal states of mind
• interest in problems of female psychology
• not pure tragedy, but tragi-comedy, melodrama
• blends styles, genres
  • tragedy mixed with comedy
• NEW THOUGHT:
  • late 5th Cent. Athens
  • intellectual, philosophical, scientific developments
  • “wisdom” = highest mortal achievement
  • knowledge, truth, questioning spirit
    • (vs. superstitions of the past)
• “new tragedy” =
  • NOT @ mythic heroes of the past (superstitions)
  • BUT @ ordinary people of the day (& women!)
  • characters, vernacular, themes
  • characters face, not issues re: State, but re: Themselves (psychological)
  • (still some social issues, too – WAR)