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105-542: At the turn of the twentieth century, a mummy case and its contents were deposited at the Lille University by Pierre Jouguet , the founder of the university's Institute of Egyptology, and Gustave Lefebvre . The papyrus packing material inside the case was covered with ancient Greek script, including fragments of previously unknown poetry, a discovery that was made much later and which was published in 1976 by Ancher and Meillier (see References below). However they assembled

210-519: A "spiritual biography", along these lines: However, about 80% of his plays have been lost, and even the extant plays do not present a fully consistent picture of his 'spiritual' development (for example, Iphigenia in Aulis is dated with the 'despairing' Bacchae , yet it contains elements that became typical of New Comedy). In the Bacchae , he restores the chorus and messenger speech to their traditional role in

315-431: A barbarous act to annihilate a city which produced such men" ( Life of Lysander ). Tragic poets were often mocked by comic poets during the dramatic festivals Dionysia and Lenaia , and Euripides was travestied more than most. Aristophanes scripted him as a character in at least three plays: The Acharnians , Thesmophoriazusae and The Frogs . But Aristophanes also borrowed, rather than merely satirized, some of

420-486: A bewildering variety of labels. He has been described as 'the poet of the Greek enlightenment' and also as 'Euripides the irrationalist'; as a religious sceptic if not an atheist, but on the other hand, as a believer in divine providence and the ultimate justice of divine dispensation. He has been seen as a profound explorer of human psychology and also a rhetorical poet who subordinated consistency of character to verbal effect; as

525-463: A change in speakers was loosely denoted with a variety of signs, such as equivalents of the modern dash, colon, and full-stop. The absence of modern literary conventions (which aid comprehension), was an early and persistent source of errors, affecting transmission. Errors were also introduced when Athens replaced its old Attic alphabet with the Ionian alphabet, a change sanctioned by law in 403–402 BC, adding

630-476: A debate between the shades of Aeschylus and Euripides, the god brings Aeschylus back to life, as more useful to Athens, for his wisdom, rejecting Euripides as merely clever. Such comic 'evidence' suggests that Athenians admired Euripides even while they mistrusted his intellectualism, at least during the long war with Sparta. Aeschylus had written his own epitaph commemorating his life as a warrior fighting for Athens against Persia, without any mention of his success as

735-480: A difference in outlook between the three—a generation gap probably due to the Sophistic enlightenment in the middle decades of the 5th century: Aeschylus still looked back to the archaic period , Sophocles was in transition between periods, and Euripides was fully imbued with the new spirit of the classical age . When Euripides' plays are sequenced in time, they also reveal that his outlook might have changed, providing

840-526: A joint project with Brigham Young University , using multi-spectral imaging technology to retrieve 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. It is from such materials that modern scholars try to piece together copies of

945-505: A leader of a decadent intellectualism . Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes . Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia , but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources. Traditional accounts of the author's life are found in many commentaries, and include details such as these: He

1050-524: A loosely structured, simple, and jovial form of entertainment. But in Cyclops (the only complete satyr-play that survives), Euripides structured the entertainment more like a tragedy and introduced a note of critical irony typical of his other work. His genre-bending inventiveness is shown above all in Alcestis , a blend of tragic and satyric elements. This fourth play in his tetralogy for 438 BC (i.e., it occupied

1155-433: A misogynist and a feminist; as a realist who brought tragic action down to the level of everyday life and as a romantic poet who chose unusual myths and exotic settings. He wrote plays which have been widely understood as patriotic pieces supporting Athens' war against Sparta and others which many have taken as the work of the anti-war dramatist par excellence, even as attacks on Athenian imperialism. He has been recognized as

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1260-506: A new complication to the task of copying. Many more errors came from the tendency of actors to interpolate words and sentences, producing so many corruptions and variations that a law was proposed by Lycurgus of Athens in 330 BC "that the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides should be written down and preserved in a public office; and that the town clerk should read the text over with the actors; and that all performances which did not comply with this regulation should be illegal." The law

1365-461: A playwright; and Sophocles was celebrated by his contemporaries for his social gifts, and contributions to public life as a state official; but there are no records of Euripides' public life except as a dramatist—he could well have been "a brooding and bookish recluse". He is presented as such in The Acharnians , where Aristophanes shows him to be living morosely in a precarious house, surrounded by

1470-415: A portion of a much larger poem (calculated to have been about seven hundred lines). The verses were structured in triadic stanzas (strophe, antistrophe, epode), typical of choral lyric. Triads are found for example in plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides , in odes by Pindar and Bacchylides , and they are known also to have been characteristic of the poetry of Stesichorus. The handwriting indicated that

1575-522: A position in the "ever-changing genre" where he could easily move between tragic, comic, romantic, and political effects. This versatility appears in individual plays and also over the course of his career. Potential for comedy lay in his use of 'contemporary' characters, in his sophisticated tone, his relatively informal Greek (see In Greek below), and in his ingenious use of plots centred on motifs that later became standard in Menander's New Comedy (for example

1680-420: A preoccupation with individual psychology and its irrational aspects is evident....In his hands tragedy for the first time probed the inner recesses of the human soul and let passions spin the plot ." The tension between reason and passion is symbolized by his characters' relationship with the gods: For example, Hecuba's prayer is answered not by Zeus, nor by the law of reason, but by Menelaus, as if speaking for

1785-611: A professor at Fouad I University in Cairo . During his earlier years spent in Egypt (1896–97, 1900), he translated numerous Greek papyri and participated at the excavatory site at Ghorân. In 1901–02 at Fayoum , he discovered a small Hellenistic necropolis . In 1904, at Lille, he founded the Institut de Papyrologie. He was also founder of the Société royale égyptienne de Papyrologie and co-founder of

1890-410: A radical change of direction". Euripides is also known for his use of irony. Many Greek tragedians make use of dramatic irony to bring out the emotion and realism of their characters or plays, but Euripides uses irony to foreshadow events and occasionally amuse his audience. For example, in his play Heracles , Heracles comments that all men love their children and wish to see them grow. The irony here

1995-533: A rationalized cosmos, but the speech is ill-suited to her audience, the unsophisticated listener Menelaus, and is found to not suit the cosmos either (her grandson is murdered by the Greeks). In Hippolytus , speeches appear verbose and ungainly, as if to underscore the limitations of language. Like Euripides, both Aeschylus and Sophocles created comic effects, contrasting the heroic with the mundane, but they employed minor supporting characters for that purpose. Euripides

2100-478: A scribe had written it as early as 250 BC but the poetic style indicated that the original composition must have been much earlier . There was no record of title or author but the Doric dialect, the meter and overall style suggested that it was probably a work of Stesichorus, sometime in the first half of the 6th century BC. His authorship however was promptly questioned by Bollack et al. (see References ) and Parsons also

2205-451: A select edition, possibly for use in schools, with some commentaries or scholia recorded in the margins. Similar editions had appeared for Aeschylus and Sophocles—the only plays of theirs that survive today. Euripides, however, was more fortunate than the other tragedians, with a second edition of his work surviving, compiled in alphabetical order as if from a set of his collect works; but without scholia attached. This "Alphabetical" edition

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2310-405: A short time as both dancer and torch-bearer at the rites of Apollo Zosterius. His education was not confined to athletics, studying also painting and philosophy under the masters Prodicus and Anaxagoras . He had two disastrous marriages, and both his wives—Melite and Choerine (the latter bearing him three sons)—were unfaithful. He became a recluse, making a home for himself in a cave on Salamis (

2415-443: A skill worth prizes, requiring a long apprenticeship in the chorus. Euripides and other playwrights accordingly composed more and more arias for accomplished actors to sing, and this tendency became more marked in his later plays: tragedy was a "living and ever-changing genre" (cf. previous section, and Chronology ; a list of his plays is below ). The comic poet Aristophanes is the earliest known critic to characterize Euripides as

2520-415: A speech that he seems to have written in defence of himself as an intellectual ahead of his time (spoken by Medea): σκαιοῖσι μὲν γὰρ καινὰ προσφέρων σοφὰ δόξεις ἀχρεῖος κοὐ σοφὸς πεφυκέναι· τῶν δ᾿ αὖ δοκούντων εἰδέναι τι ποικίλον κρείσσων νομισθεὶς ἐν πόλει λυπρὸς φανῇ. ἐγὼ δὲ καὐτὴ τῆσδε κοινωνῶ τύχης [298–302]. If you bring novel wisdom to fools, you will be regarded as useless, not wise; and if

2625-454: A spokesman for destructive, new ideas associated with declining standards in both society and tragedy (see Reception for more). But fifth-century tragedy was a social gathering for "carrying out quite publicly the maintenance and development of mental infrastructure", and it offered spectators a "platform for an utterly unique form of institutionalized discussion". The dramatist's role was not only to entertain but also educate fellow citizens—he

2730-424: A strong woman who seeks practical solutions to the plight of her sons even while feeling distress and anxiety for them: "Taken as a whole the passage is remarkable for its combination of great emotional power and the dignity of traditional epic diction. There is an emotional vibrancy that goes beyond epic forms...this text reveals Stesichorus' full mastery of his technique, handling epic situations and characters with

2835-492: A true indication of worth. For example, in Hippolytus , a love-sick queen rationalizes her position and, reflecting on adultery, arrives at this comment on intrinsic merit: ἐκ δὲ γενναίων δόμων τόδ᾿ ἦρξε θηλείαισι γίγνεσθαι κακόν· ὅταν γὰρ αἰσχρὰ τοῖσιν ἐσθλοῖσιν δοκῇ, ἦ κάρτα δόξει τοῖς κακοῖς γ᾿ εἶναι καλά. [...] μόνον δὲ τοῦτό φασ᾿ ἁμιλλᾶσθαι βίῳ, γνώμην δικαίαν κἀγαθὴν ὅτῳ παρῇ [409–427]. This contagion began for

2940-520: A war theme, so that his plays are an extraordinary mix of elements. The Trojan Women , for example, is a powerfully disturbing play on the theme of war's horrors, apparently critical of Athenian imperialism (it was composed in the aftermath of the Melian massacre and during the preparations for the Sicilian Expedition ), yet it features the comic exchange between Menelaus and Hecuba quoted above, and

3045-592: A weakness can have a dramatic effect, revealing for example the intensity of Jocasta's grief and her deep concern for her children. The fragment aids not just our understanding of Stesichorus but also our understanding of other authors who treated the same myth, such as Aeschylus in Seven Against Thebes , Sophocles in Oedipus Rex and Euripides in The Phoenician Women , and this in turn reflects back on

3150-414: Is dactylo-epitrite , a lyrical variation on the dactylic hexameter used by Homer (some of the lines are in fact quasi dactylic hexameter). The Greek text is Haslam's (see References), reproduced by Segal and Campbell. The square brackets indicate gaps in the papyrus and enclose conjectured words, while brackets < > enclose letters omitted by the scribe. The translation mimics the quantitative verse of

3255-493: Is an issue for many critics, such as Aristotle, who cited Iphigenia in Aulis as an example ( Poetics 1454a32). For others, psychological inconsistency is not a stumbling block to good drama: "Euripides is in pursuit of a larger insight: he aims to set forth the two modes, emotional and rational, with which human beings confront their own mortality." Some think unpredictable behaviour realistic in tragedy: "everywhere in Euripides

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3360-410: Is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy , some of which are characteristic of romance . He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on

3465-410: Is not entirely clear. For example, the fate of Oedipus is unknown, though her arrangements for his property imply that he is dead. Her mention of a family curse suggests that her two sons are born from an incestuous marriage and that she therefore is Jocasta/Epicaste. She speaks in response to a prophecy that her sons are to kill each other in a feud and her attempts to resolve the issue point forward to

3570-436: Is not to sit beside Socrates and chatter, casting the arts aside and ignoring the best of the tragedian’s craft. To hang around killing time in pretentious conversation and hairsplitting twaddle is the mark of a man who's lost his mind In The Frogs , written when Euripides and Aeschylus were dead, Aristophanes has the god Dionysus venturing down to Hades in search of a good poet to bring back to Athens. After

3675-409: Is shown to be flawed, as if Euripides were exploring the problematical nature of language and communication: "For speech points in three different directions at once, to the speaker, to the person addressed, to the features in the world it describes, and each of these directions can be felt as skewed". For example, in the quotation above, Hecuba presents herself as a sophisticated intellectual describing

3780-468: Is that Heracles will be driven into madness by Hera and will kill his children. Similarly, in Helen , Theoclymenus remarks how happy he is that his sister has the gift of prophecy and will warn him of any plots or tricks against him (the audience already knows that she has betrayed him). In this instance, Euripides uses irony not only for foreshadowing but also for comic effect—which few tragedians did. Likewise, in

3885-607: Is the man <who> is roasting a new play for Euripides, and Socrates is laying down the kindling. [...] Euripides bolted together with Socrates Aristophanes alleged that the co-author was a celebrated actor, Cephisophon, who also shared the tragedian's house and his wife, while Socrates taught an entire school of quibblers like Euripides: χαρίεν οὖν μὴ Σωκράτει παρακαθήμενον λαλεῖν ἀποβαλόντα μουσικὴν τά τε μέγιστα παραλιπόντα τῆς τραγῳδικῆς τέχνης. τὸ δ᾿ ἐπὶ σεμνοῖσιν λόγοισι καὶ σκαριφησμοῖσι λήρων διατριβὴν ἀργὸν ποιεῖσθαι, παραφρονοῦντος ἀνδρός So what's stylish

3990-552: Is to his efforts for example that we owe the manuscript tradition for Pindar . It has been assumed that he was an innovator in this practice of colometry but the Lille Stesichorus is the work of an earlier scribe and the lyrics are written in lines according to cola, not in the manner of prose (See Turner 1987 in the References). The best preserved part of the fragment mainly comprises the queen's speech (lines 204–31). The context

4095-600: The Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete ( Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined —he became, in the Hellenistic Age , a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer , Demosthenes , and Menander . Euripides

4200-620: The Bacchae , Pentheus's first threat to the god Dionysus is that if Pentheus catches him in his city, he will 'chop off his head', whereas it is Pentheus who is beheaded at the end of the play. The spoken language of the Euripidean plays is not fundamentally different in style from that of Aeschylus or Sophocles—it employs poetic meters , a rarefied vocabulary, fullness of expression, complex syntax, and ornamental figures, all aimed at representing an elevated style. But its rhythms are somewhat freer, and more natural, than that of his predecessors, and

4305-511: The City Dionysia , the famous Athenian dramatic festival, in 455 BC, one year after the death of Aeschylus ; and did not win first prize until 441 BC. His final competition in Athens was in 408 BC. The Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis were performed in 405 BC, and first prize was awarded posthumously. He won first prize only five times. His plays, and those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, indicate

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4410-466: The Sicilian expedition led Athenians to trade renditions of Euripides' lyrics to their enemies in return for food and drink ( Life of Nicias 29). Plutarch also provides the story that the victorious Spartan generals, having planned the demolition of Athens and the enslavement of its people, grew merciful after being entertained at a banquet by lyrics from Euripides' play Electra : "they felt that it would be

4515-422: The Société française d’Égyptologie and the Institut international de Recherches hellénistiques. Euripides Euripides ( c.  480  – c.  406 BC ) was a Greek tragedian of classical Athens . Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles , he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but

4620-420: The chorus could dance, a space for actors (three speaking actors in Euripides' time), a backdrop or skene , and some special effects: an ekkyklema (used to bring the skene's "indoors" outdoors) and a mechane (used to lift actors in the air, as in deus ex machina ). With the introduction of the third actor (attributed to Aeschylus by Themistius; to Sophocles by Aristotle), acting also began to be regarded as

4725-544: The 'recognition scene'). Other tragedians also used recognition scenes, but they were heroic in emphasis, as in Aeschylus's The Libation Bearers , which Euripides parodied in Electra (Euripides was unique among the tragedians in incorporating theatrical criticism in his plays). Traditional myth with its exotic settings, heroic adventures, and epic battles offered potential for romantic melodrama as well as for political comments on

4830-514: The Byzantine period, following a change in script (from uncial to minuscule ), and many were "homophonic" errors—equivalent, in English, to substituting "right" for "write"; except that there were more opportunities for Byzantine scribes to make these errors, because η, ι, οι and ει, were pronounced similarly in the Byzantine period. Around 200 AD, ten of the plays of Euripides began to be circulated in

4935-778: The Cave of Euripides , where a cult of the playwright developed after his death). "There he built an impressive library and pursued daily communion with the sea and sky". The details of his death are uncertain. It was traditionally held that he retired to the "rustic court" of King Archelaus in Macedonia , where he died in 406 BC. Some modern scholars however claim that in reality Euripides may have never visited Macedonia at all, or if he did, he might have been drawn there by King Archelaus with incentives that were also offered to other artists. Such biographical details derive almost entirely from three unreliable sources: The next three sections expand on

5040-706: The Faculty of Arts in Lille . On 8 June 1911 he received his doctorate of letters at the Sorbonne , subsequently serving as a professor of ancient history and papyrology in Lille (1911–1914 and 1918–1920). From 1920 to 1933, he was a professor of papyrology at the Sorbonne, meanwhile serving as director of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale (1928-1940). From 1937 to 1949, he was

5145-522: The Hellenistic period (as mentioned in the introduction) and, due to Seneca's adaptation of his work for Roman audiences, "it was Euripides, not Aeschylus or Sophocles, whose tragic muse presided over the rebirth of tragedy in Renaissance Europe." In the seventeenth century, Racine expressed admiration for Sophocles, but was more influenced by Euripides ( Iphigenia in Aulis and Hippolytus were

5250-578: The Stesichorean Jocasta might speak her lines in response to a prophetic dream, like Clytemnestra in another one of Stesichorus's poems. The dream motif was borrowed by Aeschylus for his own version of the Clytemnestra character in Libation Bearers . The fragment also has implications for our understanding of ancient scholarship, especially the manner in which poetic texts were transmitted. It

5355-426: The chorus considers Athens, the "blessed land of Theus", to be a desirable refuge—such complexity and ambiguity are typical both of his "patriotic" and "anti-war" plays. Tragic poets in the fifth century competed against one another at the City Dionysia , each with a tetralogy of three tragedies and a satyr play . The few extant fragments of satyr plays attributed to Aeschylus and Sophocles indicate that these were

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5460-402: The city regards you as greater than those with a reputation for cleverness, you will be thought vexatious. I myself am a sharer in this lot. Athenian tragedy in performance during Euripides' lifetime was a public contest between playwrights. The state funded it and awarded prizes. The language was metrical, spoken and sung. The performance area included a circular floor (called orchestra ) where

5565-500: The claims of each of these sources, respectively. Euripides was the youngest in a group of three great tragedians, who were almost contemporaries: his first play was staged thirteen years after Sophocles' debut, and three years after Aeschylus's Oresteia . The identity of the trio is neatly underscored by a patriotic account of their roles during Greece's great victory over Persia at the Battle of Salamis —Aeschylus fought there, Sophocles

5670-608: The democratic order. Thus, for example, Odysseus is represented in Hecuba (lines 131–32) as "agile-minded, sweet-talking, demos-pleasing", i.e. similar to the war-time demagogues that were active in Athens during the Peloponnesian War . Speakers in the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles sometimes distinguish between slaves who are servile by nature and those servile by circumstance, but Euripides' speakers go further, positing an individual's mental, rather than social or physical, state as

5775-674: The extent that after the failure of the Sicilian Expedition , many Athenian captives were released, simply for being able to teach their captors whatever fragments they could remember of his work. Less than a hundred years later, Aristotle developed an almost "biological' theory of the development of tragedy in Athens: the art form grew under the influence of Aeschylus, matured in the hands of Sophocles, then began its precipitous decline with Euripides. However, "his plays continued to be applauded even after those of Aeschylus and Sophocles had come to seem remote and irrelevant"; they became school classics in

5880-551: The external order of tragedy but missed its entire meaning". This view influenced Friedrich Nietzsche , who seems, however, not to have known the Euripidean plays well. But literary figures, such as the poet Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning , could study and admire the Schlegels, while still appreciating Euripides as "our Euripides the human" ( Wine of Cyprus stanza 12). Classicists such as Arthur Verrall and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff reacted against

5985-423: The female sex with the nobility. For when those of noble station resolve on base acts, surely the base-born will regard such acts as good. [...] One thing only, they say, competes in value with life, the possession of a heart blameless and good. Euripides' characters resembled contemporary Athenians rather than heroic figures of myth. For achieving his end Euripides' regular strategy is a very simple one: retaining

6090-463: The final defeat of his city. It is said that he died in Macedonia after being attacked by the Molossian hounds of King Archelaus, and that his cenotaph near Piraeus was struck by lightning—signs of his unique powers, whether for good or ill (according to one modern scholar, his death might have been caused instead by the harsh Macedonian winter). In an account by Plutarch , the catastrophic failure of

6195-480: The flexibility and poignancy of lyric." – Charles Segal The fragment indicates that Stesichorus might have been the first author to interpret the fate of the Labdacid clan in a wider political context. It also indicates that he portrayed characters from a psychological perspective, revealing them through their own words, in a manner not achieved in epic. Thus the repetitions that some critics have regarded as

6300-409: The fragment. The Phoenician Women for example includes a scene that bears a strong resemblance to the best preserved part of the fragment, in which Jocasta tries to mediate between her feuding sons, and the dramatist may have modelled it on the poem (Euripides's readiness to model his plays on Stesichorean versions of traditional myth is shown also in his play Helen , adapted from a Stesichorus poem of

6405-411: The fragments for publication in the wrong order, basing it purely on considerations of papyrus texture, alignment of lines and length of columns. The correct order for the text was instead worked out by P. J. Parsons and published the following year (see References ). The assembled fragments comprised one hundred and twenty-five consecutive lines, of which thirty-three were virtually intact, representing

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6510-537: The fulfilment of an abhorrent death be mine this instant Rather than make me endure that terrible, pitiful aggravation of my pain, My sons within the palace dead, or the city in the foe's hands. αἰ δέ με παίδας ἰδέσθαι ὑπ' ἀλλάλοισ<ι> δαμέντας μόρσιμόν ἐστιν, ἐπεκλώσαν δὲ Μοίρα[ι], αὐτίκα μοι θανάτου τέλος στυγερο[ῖο] γέν[οιτο πρίν ποκα ταῦτ' ἐσιδεῖν ἄλγεσ<σ>ι πολύστονα δακρυόεντα [ παίδας ἐνὶ μεγάροις θανόντας ἢ πόλιν ἁλοίσαν. For I can anticipate how all this may end, One of you keeping

6615-478: The inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello , Racine's Phèdre , of Ibsen and Strindberg ," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw . His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as

6720-504: The literary conventions that modern readers expect: there was still no spacing between words; little or no punctuation; and no stage directions; but abbreviated names denoted changes of speaker; lyrics were broken into "cola" and "strophai", or lines and stanzas; and a system of accentuation was introduced. After this creation of a standard edition, the text was fairly safe from errors, besides slight and gradual corruption introduced with tedious copying. Many of these trivial errors occurred in

6825-406: The longest however just twelve lines. Thus the sudden appearance of the Lille Stesichorus in 1976, with over one hundred and twenty consecutive lines, thirty-three virtually intact, was a cause of considerable excitement in scholarly circles. The contents of the fragment seem not to fit any of the titles attested for Stesichorus , though the first book of Eripyle has been suggested. The context of

6930-427: The lyrics often seem dislocated from the action, but the extent and significance of this is "a matter of scholarly debate". See Chronology for details about his style. Euripides has aroused, and continues to arouse, strong opinions for and against his work: He was a problem to his contemporaries and he is one still; over the course of centuries since his plays were first produced he has been hailed or indicted under

7035-559: The main criterion for success (the system of selecting judges appears to have been flawed), and merely being chosen to compete was a mark of distinction. Moreover, to have been singled out by Aristophanes for so much comic attention is proof of popular interest in his work. Sophocles was appreciative enough of the younger poet to be influenced by him, as is evident in his later plays Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus . According to Plutarch, Euripides had been very well received in Sicily, to

7140-514: The models for his plays Iphigénie and Phèdre ). Euripides' reputation was to take a beating in the early 19th century, when Friedrich Schlegel and his brother August Wilhelm Schlegel championed Aristotle's 'biological' model of theatre history, identifying Euripides with the moral, political, and artistic degeneration of Athens. August Wilhelm's Vienna lectures on dramatic art and literature went through four editions between 1809 and 1846; and, in them, he opined that Euripides "not only destroyed

7245-484: The mother and wife of Oedipus and thus the grandmother/mother of Eteocles and Polynices (she is probably not Eurygania who, in some versions of the Oedipus myth, is his second wife and the mother of his children, yet the fragment doesn't allow for certainty on this issue). The artistic merit of the verses has been questioned by Parsons, for example, but it also has admirers. Jocasta may be thought to emerge from her speech as

7350-428: The mouths of characters, such as these words of his heroine Medea : [...] ὡς τρὶς ἂν παρ᾿ ἀσπίδα στῆναι θέλοιμ᾿ ἂν μᾶλλον ἢ τεκεῖν ἅπαξ [250–251]. I would rather stand three times with a shield in battle than give birth once. The textual transmission of the plays, from the 5th century BC, when they were first written, until the era of the printing press, was a largely haphazard process. Much of Euripides' work

7455-483: The mythical and heroic setting that it can seem like Euripides aimed at parody. For example, in The Trojan Women , the heroine's rationalized prayer elicits comment from Menelaus: ΕΚΑΒΗ: [...] Ζεύς, εἴτ᾿ ἀνάγκη φύσεος εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν, προσηυξάμην σε· πάντα γὰρ δι᾿ ἀψόφου βαίνων κελεύθου κατὰ δίκην τὰ θνήτ᾿ ἄγεις. ΜΕΝΕΛΑΟΣ: τί δ᾿ ἔστιν; εὐχὰς ὡς ἐκαίνισας θεῶν [886–889]. Hecuba : [...] Zeus, whether you are

7560-536: The necessity of nature or the mind of mortal men, I address you in prayer! For proceeding on a silent path you direct all mortal affairs toward justice! Menelaus : What does this mean? How strange your prayer to the gods is! Athenian citizens were familiar with rhetoric in the assembly and law courts, and some scholars believe that Euripides was more interested in his characters as speakers with cases to argue than as characters with lifelike personalities. They are self-conscious about speaking formally, and their rhetoric

7665-428: The old gods. And the perhaps most famous example is in Bacchae where the god Dionysus savages his own converts. When the gods do appear (in eight of the extant plays), they appear "lifeless and mechanical". Sometimes condemned by critics as an unimaginative way to end a story, the spectacle of a "god" making a judgement or announcement from a theatrical crane might actually have been intended to provoke scepticism about

7770-421: The old stories and the great names, as his theatre required, he imagines his people as contemporaries subjected to contemporary kinds of pressures, and examines their motivations, conduct and fate in the light of contemporary problems, usages and ideals. As mouthpieces for contemporary issues, they "all seem to have had at least an elementary course in public speaking". The dialogue often contrasts so strongly with

7875-704: The original by retaining a given number of syllables per line rather than just by substituting accentual rhythm for quantitative rhythm. have the deathless gods established on the hallowed earth Unremitting war between men, Nor even unremitting love, but rather thoughts that change day by day: That is the gods' will. Therefore your prophecies (I beseech you, far-reaching Apollo!) Might not all be fulfilled. οὔτε γὰρ αἰέν ὁμῶς θεοὶ θέσαν ἀθάνατοι κατ' αἶαν ἱρὰν νεῖκος ἔμπεδον βροτοῖσιν οὺδέ γα μὰν φιλότατ', ἐπὶ δ' ἀμέραι ἐν νόον ἄλλον θεοὶ τιθεῖσι. μαντοσύνας δέ τεὰς ἄναξ ἑκάεργος Ἀπόλλων μὴ πάσας τέλεσσαι. Is my appointed lot, and their fate has been spun, Let

7980-600: The original plays. Sometimes the picture is almost lost. Thus, for example, two extant plays, The Phoenician Women and Iphigenia in Aulis , are significantly corrupted by interpolations (the latter possibly being completed post mortem by the poet's son); and the very authorship of Rhesus is a matter of dispute. In fact, the very existence of the Alphabet plays, or rather the absence of an equivalent edition for Sophocles and Aeschylus, could distort our notions of distinctive Euripidean qualities—most of his least "tragic" plays are in

8085-497: The original poem is clearly the Theban myth of the ill-fated Labdakid clan. The first one hundred and seventy-five lines are missing but they probably dealt summarily with the demise of Oedipus, the quarrel between his sons Eteocles and Polynices, and the intervention of the seer Tiresias . The best preserved section (lines 201–34) is a speech by the Theban queen, who isn't named but who is probably Jocasta , sometimes known as Epicaste ,

8190-536: The palace, to dwell by the springs of Dirke, The other taking the gold and all your dear father's possessions, to live in exile, Whomever the rolling dice allots first place according to Fate. ἀλλ' ἄγε, παίδες, ἐμοῖς μύθοις, φίλα [τέκνα, πίθεσθε, τᾴιδε γὰρ ὑμὶν ἐγὼν τέλος προφα[ίνω, τὸν μὲν ἔχοντα δόμους ναίειν πα[ρὰ νάμασι Δίρκας, τὸν δ' ἀπίμεν κτεάνη καί χρυσὸν ἔχοντα φίλου σύμπαντα [ πατρός, κλαροπαληδὸν ὅς ἂν πρᾱτος λάχηι ἕκατι Μοιρᾱν. that both of you may gain release from that doom foretold By

8295-464: The position conventionally reserved for satyr plays) is a "tragedy", featuring Heracles as a satyric hero in conventional satyr-play scenes: an arrival, a banquet, a victory over an ogre (in this case, death), a happy ending, a feast, and a departure for new adventures. Most of the big innovations in tragedy were made by Aeschylus and Sophocles, but "Euripides made innovations on a smaller scale that have impressed some critics as cumulatively leading to

8400-411: The precursor of New Comedy and also what Aristotle called him: 'the most tragic of poets' ( Poetics 1453a30). And not one of these descriptions is entirely false. — Bernard Knox Aeschylus gained thirteen victories as a dramatist; Sophocles at least twenty; Euripides only four in his lifetime; and this has often been taken as indication of the latter's unpopularity. But a first place might not have been

8505-496: The prophet of Apollo, If it is true what men say, that the city of Cadmus and his heirs Are guarded by Zeus, Ever deferring until a distant tomorrow the evils Destined to claim our race. τοῦτο γὰρ ἂν δοκέω λυτήριον ὔμμι κακοῦ γένοιτα πότμο[υ μάντιος φραδαῖσι θείου, ἄι γ' ἐτεὸν Κρονίδας γένος τε καὶ ἄστυ [ φυλάξει Κάδμου ἄνακτος, ἀμβάλλων κακότατα πολὺν χρόνον [ ἃ βασιλείαι πέπρωται γενέ[θ]λαι. Pierre Jouguet Pierre Jouguet (14 May 1869 – 9 July 1949)

8610-457: The religious and heroic dimension of his plays. Similarly, his plays often begin in a banal manner that undermines theatrical illusion. Unlike Sophocles, who established the setting and background of his plays in the introductory dialogue, Euripides used a monologue in which a divinity or human character simply tells the audience all it needs to know to understand what follows. Aeschylus and Sophocles were innovative, but Euripides had arrived at

8715-457: The remainder is derived from elsewhere. P contains all the extant plays of Euripides, L is missing The Trojan Women and latter part of The Bacchae . In addition to L, P, and many other medieval manuscripts, there are fragments of plays on papyrus. These papyrus fragments are often recovered only with modern technology. In June 2005, for example, classicists at the University of Oxford worked on

8820-422: The sake of rhetorical display"; and one spring to the defence: "His plays are remarkable for their range of tones and the gleeful inventiveness, which morose critics call cynical artificiality, of their construction." Unique among writers of ancient Athens, Euripides demonstrated sympathy towards the underrepresented members of society. His male contemporaries were frequently shocked by the heresies he put into

8925-477: The same name) Euripides' Jocasta commits suicide after witnessing the deaths of her sons and maybe Stesichorus' poem ended the same way. There is as well a strong resemblance between the Stesichorean Jocasta and the queen in Oedipus Rex , in her dramatic plight, her rhetoric, her dismissal of oracles and her doomed attempt to subvert Fate, so that her dramatic role might even be regarded as the unique creation of Stesichorus rather than Sophocles. It has been argued that

9030-405: The tattered costumes of his disreputable characters (and yet Agathon , another tragic poet, is discovered in a later play, Thesmophoriazusae , to be living in circumstances almost as bizarre). Euripides' mother was a humble vendor of vegetables, according to the comic tradition, yet his plays indicate that he had a liberal education and hence a privileged background. Euripides first competed in

9135-518: The time of Euripides, traditional assumptions are constantly under challenge, and audiences therefore have a natural affinity with the Euripidean outlook, which seems nearer to ours, for example, than the Elizabethan. As stated above, however, opinions continue to diverge, so that modern readers might actually "seem to feel a special affinity with Sophocles"; one recent critic might dismiss the debates in Euripides' plays as "self-indulgent digression for

9240-487: The tragedian's methods; he was himself ridiculed by Cratinus , another comic poet, as: ὑπολεπτολόγος, γνωμιδιώτης, εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζων a quibbler of words, a maker of maxims, a Euripidaristophaniser According to another comic poet, Teleclides , the plays of Euripides were co-authored by the philosopher Socrates: Μνησίλοχός ἐστ᾿ ἐκεῖνος, <ὃς> φρύγει τι δρᾶμα καινόν Εὐριπίδῃ, καὶ Σωκράτης τὰ φρύγαν᾿ ὑποτίθησιν. [...] Εὐριπίδης σωκρατογόμφους. Mnesilochus

9345-421: The tragic plot, and the play appears to be the culmination of a regressive or archaizing tendency in his later works (for which see Chronology below). Believed to have been composed in the wilds of Macedonia, Bacchae also dramatizes a primitive side to Greek religion, and some modern scholars have interpreted this particular play biographically, therefore, as: One of his earliest extant plays, Medea , includes

9450-510: The views of the Schlegels and Nietzsche, constructing arguments sympathetic to Euripides, which involved Wilamowitz in this restatement of Greek tragedy as a genre: "A [Greek] tragedy does not have to end 'tragically' or be 'tragic'. The only requirement is a serious treatment." In the English-speaking world, the pacifist Gilbert Murray played an important role in popularizing Euripides, influenced perhaps by his anti-war plays. Today, as in

9555-438: The vocabulary has been expanded to allow for intellectual and psychological subtleties. Euripides has been hailed as a great lyric poet. In Medea , for example, he composed for his city, Athens, "the noblest of her songs of praise". His lyrical skills are not just confined to individual poems: "A play of Euripides is a musical whole...one song echoes motifs from the preceding song, while introducing new ones." For some critics,

9660-514: The well-known scenario covered by Aeschylus in the Seven Against Thebes , where one son returns from exile with an army to claim the throne. Thus, ironically, her dismissal of Fate and her attempts to dodge it only help seal their doom, and there is a suggestion of tragic self-delusion. She begins by addressing Apollo, or possibly his interpreter, Tiresias, in a gnomic style, typically a Homeric approach, and then addresses her sons. The meter

9765-563: Was a French Egyptologist and classical philologist . In 1890 he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, obtaining his agrégation for grammar in 1893. For three years thereafter he was associated with the École française d’Athènes , followed by work at the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo (1896–97). From 1898 to 1910, he was a lecturer of grammar and philology at

9870-417: Was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC, with parents Cleito (mother) and Mnesarchus (father), a retailer from the deme of Phlya . On receiving an oracle that his son was fated to win "crowns of victory", Mnesarchus insisted that the boy should train for a career in athletics. But the boy was destined for a career on the stage (where he was to win only five victories, one of these posthumously). He served for

9975-476: Was careful not to endorse Parson's low opinion of the fragment's artistic quality. The fragment's importance may be understood in terms of the tenuous state of Stesichorean scholarship prior to the discovery. In 1841, the philologist Theodor Bergk could publish only fifty-three small fragments attributed to Stesichorus, the longest only six lines. The situation was hardly different by the time Denys Page published Poetae Melici Graeci in 1962. Five years later it

10080-669: Was combined with the "Select" edition by some unknown Byzantine scholar, bringing together all the nineteen plays that survive today. The "Select" plays are found in many medieval manuscripts, but only two manuscripts preserve the "Alphabetical" plays—often denoted L and P, after the Laurentian Library at Florence, and the Bibliotheca Palatina in the Vatican, where they are stored. It is believed that P derived its Alphabet plays and some Select plays from copies of an ancestor of L, but

10185-469: Was expected to have a message. Traditional myth provided the subject matter, but the dramatist was meant to be innovative, which led to novel characterizations of heroic figures and use of the mythical past as a tool for discussing present issues. The difference between Euripides and his older colleagues was one of degree: his characters talked about the present more controversially and pointedly than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, sometimes even challenging

10290-488: Was just old enough to celebrate the victory in a boys' chorus, and Euripides was born on the very day of the battle. The apocryphal account, that he composed his works in a cave on Salamis island, was a late tradition, probably symbolizing the isolation of an intellectual ahead of his time. Much of his life, and his whole career, coincided with the struggle between Athens and Sparta for hegemony in Greece, but he did not live to see

10395-445: Was lost or corrupted; but the period also included triumphs by scholars and copyists, thanks to whom much was recovered and preserved. Summaries of the transmission are often found in modern editions of the plays, three of which are used as sources for this summary. The plays of Euripides, like those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, circulated in written form. But literary conventions that we take for granted today had not been invented—there

10500-424: Was more insistent, using major characters as well. His comic touches can be thought to intensify the overall tragic effect, and his realism, which often threatens to make his heroes look ridiculous, marks a world of debased heroism: "The loss of intellectual and moral substance becomes a central tragic statement". Psychological reversals are common and sometimes happen so suddenly that inconsistency in characterization

10605-413: Was no spacing between words; no consistency in punctuation, nor elisions; no marks for breathings and accents (guides to pronunciation, and word recognition); no convention to denote change of speaker; no stage directions; and verse was written straight across the page, like prose. Possibly, those who bought texts supplied their own interpretative markings. Papyri discoveries have indicated, for example, that

10710-613: Was sceptical, noting the Homeric cliches and "drab, repetitious flaccidity" of the verse. Martin Litchfield West then presented the case in favour of Stesichorus, even turning Parson's arguments on their head and winning over Parsons himself, since ancient commentators had noted the same characteristics that Parsons had found fault with: Stesichorus could be long-winded and flaccid ( redundat et effunditur , Quintilian 10.1.62) and "most Homeric" ( Όμερικώτατος , Longinus 13.3). However, West

10815-423: Was soon disregarded, and actors continued to make changes until about 200 BC, after which the habit ceased. It was about then that Aristophanes of Byzantium compiled an edition of all the extant plays of Euripides, collated from pre-Alexandrian texts, furnished with introductions and accompanied by a commentary that was "published" separately. This became the "standard edition" for the future, and it featured some of

10920-520: Was still possible to comment: "Time has dealt more harshly with Stesichorus than with any other major lyric poet ... no passage longer than six lines is quoted from him, and papyrus finds have been meagre. For an estimate of his poetry we depend almost wholly on hearsay [from ancient commentators]." That same year, 1967, Edgar Lobel published the papyrus remnants of another three poems, which were later included in Page's Supplementum Lyricis Graecis in 1974,

11025-408: Was usual in ancient times for uniform verses to be written out in lines, as for example lines of dactylic hexameter in epic verse and iambic trimeter in drama, but lyric verses, which feature varying metrical units or cola , were written out like prose. Aristophanes of Byzantium is known to have converted such lyrical "prose" into lines of verse, varying in length and meter according to cola, and it

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