Euripides << yoo RIHP uh deez >> (about 480-406 B.C.) was the third of the three great writers of Greek tragedy. He dealt with the same mythological heroes as the other two, Aeschylus and Sophocles. But he showed the heroes as ordinary people and used his plays to criticize political, social, and religious ideas of the time. He used much simpler language than the earlier playwrights, but his plots were more complicated.
Euripides was not popular during his lifetime. His ideas were not always the accepted ones, and he sometimes offended writers and politicians of his day. The Greek playwright Aristophanes satirized Euripides in several comedies (see Aristophanes). But Euripides’s plays have been revived more frequently than those of his rivals.
Euripides wrote about 90 plays. Eighteen tragedies and a satyr play survive. A satyr play is a type of comedy presented at the conclusion of a trilogy. Euripides’s satyr play, called Cyclops, is probably one of his later works. The tragedies are Rhesus, Euripides’s earliest existing play; Alcestis (438 B.C.); Medea (431); The Children of Heracles (about 430); Hippolytus (428); Andromache (about 426); Hecuba (about 424); The Suppliants (about 422); Heracles (about 417); Electra (about 417); The Trojan Women (415); Iphigenia in Tauris (about 412); Helen (412); Ion (about 412); The Phoenician Women (about 410); Orestes (408); and two plays performed after his death, Bacchae (405?); and Iphigenia in Aulis (405?).
Euripides was born on the island of Salamis. He grew up in Athens. As a youth, Euripides was trained to be an athlete. He also studied philosophy and literature. Among his instructors were the philosophers Anaxagoras and Protagoras. Euripides began to write plays before the age of 20 and entered a contest for playwrights when he was 25. From this time on, he wrote plays steadily. Euripides became a close friend of the philosopher Socrates, and some critics believe that Socrates influenced his writing.
Unlike Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides seems to have played no active role in Athenian public life. In about 408, Euripides left Athens. He went to Thessaly, in northern Greece, and then to Macedonia, where he wrote the plays Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis.
See also Drama (Greek drama); Greek literature.
