Euripides

Eurīpĭdes, is, m., = Εὐριπίδης,

• a celebrated Athenian tragic poet, Quint. 10, 1, 67 sq.; Gell. 15, 20; dat. Euripidae, id. 7, 3 med.; Cic. Tusc. 1, 26 fin.; 1, 48; 3, 14 et saep.—Hence,
• II Eurīpĭdēus, a, um, adj., of Euripides: carmen, Cic. Tusc. 3, 25.

Eurīpidēs, is u. ī, Akk. em u. ēn, m. (Εὐριπίδης), der berühmte griechische Tragiker zu Athen, geb. 480 v. Chr., Plaut. rud. 86 (Genet. -i). Cic. Tusc. 1, 65. Quint. 10, 1, 67. Gell. 15, 20, 1 (Genet. -i). – Dav. Euripidēus, a, um (Εὐριπίδειος), euripidëisch, carmen, Cic. Tusc. 3, 59.

Eurīpĭdēs, (13) is et ī, m. (Εὐριπίδης), Euripide [célèbre poète tragique grec] : Pl. Rud. 86 ; Cic. Tusc. 1, 65 || -eus, a, um, dʼEuripide : Cic. Tusc. 3, 59.

Euri'pides

(Εὐριπίδης).

1. A tragic poet of Athens, is mentioned by Suidas as having flourished earlier than his more celebrated namesake. He was the author of twelve plays, two of which gained the prize. (Suid. s. v. Εὐριπίδης.)

Euri'pides

2. The distinguished tragic writer, of the Athenian demus of Phlya in the Cecropid tribe, or, as others state it, of Phyle in the tribe Oeneis, was the son of Mnesarchus and Cleito, and was born in B. C. 485, according to the date of the Arundel marble, for the adoption of which Hartung contends. (Eur. Restitutus, p. 5, &c.) This testimony, however, is outweighed by the other statements on the subject, from which it appears that his parents were among those who, on the invasion of Xerxes, had fled from Athens to Salamis (IIerod. 7.41), and that the poet was born in that island in B. C. 480. (See Clinton, sub anno.) Nor need we with Miller (Greek Literature, p. 358) set it down at once as a mere legend that his birth took place on the very day of the battle of Salamis (Sept. 23), though we may look with suspicion on the way in which it was contrived to bring the three great tragic poets of Athens into connexion with the most glorious day in her annals. (Hartung, p. 10.) Thus it has been said that, while Euripides then first saw the light, Aeschylus in the maturity of manhood fought in the battle, and Sophocles, a beautiful boy of 15, took part in the chorus at the festival which celebrated the victory. If again we follow the exact date of Eratosthenes, who represents Euripides as 75 at his death in B. C. 406, his birth must be assigned to B. C. 481, as Miller places it. It has also been said that he received his name in commemoration of the battle of Artemisium, which took place near the Euripus not long before he was born, and in the same year; but Euripides was not a new name, and belonged, as we have seen, to an earlier tragic writer. (See, too, Thuc. 2.70, 79.) With respect to the station in life of his parents, we may safely reject the account given in Stobaeus (see Barnes, Eur. Vit. § 5), that his father was a Boeotian, banished from his country for bankruptcy. His mother, it is well known, is represented by Aristophanes as a herb-seller, and not a very honest one either (Ach. 454, Thesam. 387, 456, 910, Eq. 19, Ran. 839; Plin. Nat. 22.22 ; Said. s. vv. Σκάνδιξ, διασκανδικίσῃς; Hesych. s. v. Σκάνδιξ); and we find the same statement made by Gellius (15.20) from Theopompus; but to neither of these testimonies can much weight be accorded (for Theopompus, see Plut. Lys. 30 ; Ael. VH 3.18; Clem. Alex. Strom. 1.1 ; Joseph. c. Apion. 1.24; C. Nep. Alc. 11), and they are contradicted by less exceptionable authorities. That the family of Euripides was of a rank far from mean is asserted by Suidas (s. v.) and Moschopulus (Vit. Ear.) to have been proved by Philochorus in a work no longer extant, and seems, indeed, to be borne out by what Athenaeus (x. p. 424e.) reports from Theophrastus, that the poet, when a boy, was cup-bearer to a chorus of noble Athenians at the Thargelian festival,--an office for which nobility of blood was requisite. We know also that he was taught rhetoric by Prodicus, who was certainly not moderate in his terms for instruction, and who was in the habit, as Philostratus tells us, of seeking his pupils among youths of high rank. (Plat. Apol. p. 19e.; Stallb. ad loc. ; Arist. Rhet. 3.14.9; Philostr. Vit. Sop/h. Prodicus.) It is said that the future distinction of Euripides was predicted by an oracle, promising that he should be crowned with " sacred garlands," in consequence of which his father had him trained to gymnastic exercises; and we learn that, while yet a boy, he won the prize at the Eleusinian and Thesean contests (see Dict. of Ant. pp. 374, 964), and offered himself, when 17 years old, as a candidate at the Olympic games, but was not admitted because of some doubt about his age. (Oenom. apud Euseb. Praep. Evan. 5.33; Gel. 15.20.) Some trace of his early gymnastic pursuits is remarked by Mr. Keble (Prael. Acad. xxix. p. 605) in the detailed description of the combat between Eteocles and Polynices in the Phoenissae. (5.1392, &c.) Soon, however, abandoning these, he studied the art of painting (Thom. Mag. Vit. Eur. ; Suid. s. v.), not, as we learn, without success; and it has been observed that the veiled figure of Agamemnon in the Iphigeneia of Timanthes was probably suggested by a line in Euripides' description of the same scene. (Iph. in Aul. 1550; Barnes, ad loc. ; comp. Ion, 183, &c.) To philosophy and literature he devoted himself with much interest and energy, studying physics under Anaxagoras, and rhetoric, as we have already seen, under Prodicus. (Diod. 1.7, 38; Strab. xiv. p.645; Heracl. Pont. Alleg. Homer. § 22.) We learn also from Athenaeus that he was a great book-collector, and it is recorded of him that he committed to memory certain treatises of Heracleitus, which he found hidden in the temple of Artemis, and which he was the first to introduce to the notice of Socrates. (Athen. 1.3a.; Tatian, Or. c. Graec. p. 143b.; Hartung, Eur. Rest. p. 131.) His intimacy with the latter is beyond a doubt, though we must reject the statement of Gellius (l.c.), that he received instruction from him in moral science, since Socrates was not born till B. C. 468, twelve years after the birth of Euripides. Traces of the teaching of Anaxagoras have been remarked in many passages both of the extant plays and of the fragments, and were impressed especially on the lost tragedy of Melanippa the Wise. (Orest. 545, 971; Pors. ad loc. ; Plat. Apol. p. 26d. e.; Troad. 879, Hel. 1014; Fragm. Melanip., ed. Wagner, p. 255; Cic. Tusc. Disp. 1.26; Hartung, p. 109; Barnes, ad Eur. Heracl. 529; Valck. Diatr. c. 4, &c.) The philosopher is also supposed to be alluded to in the Alcestis (5.925, &c.; comp. Cic. Tusc. Disp. 3.14). " We do not know," says Mluller (Greek Literature, p. 358), " what induced a person with such tendencies to devote himself to tragic poetry." He is referring apparently to the opposition between the philosophical convictions of Euripides and the mythical legends which formed the subjects of tragedy; otherwise it does not clearly appear why poetry should be thought incompatible with philosophical pursuits. If, however, we may trust the account in Gellius (l.c.), it would seem,--and this is not unimportant for our estimation of his poetical character,--that the mind of Euripides was led at a very early period to that which afterwards became the business of his life, since he wrote a tragedy at the age of eighteen. That it was, therefore, exhibited, and that it was probably no other than the Rhesus are points unwarrantably concluded by Hartung (p. 6, &c.), who ascribes also to the same date the composition of the Veiled Hippolytus. The representation of the Peliades, the first play of Euripides which was acted, at least in his own name, took place in B. C. 455. This statement rests on the authority of his anonymous life, edited by Elmsley from a MS. in the Ambrosian library, and compared with that by Thomas Magister; and it is confirmed by the life in the MSS. of Paris, Vienna, and Copenhagen. In B. C. 441, Euripides gained for the first time the first prize, and he continued to exhibit plays until B. C. 408, the date of the Orestes. (See Clinton, sub annis.) Soon after this he left Athens for the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, his reasons for which step can only be matter of conjecture. Traditionary scandal has ascribed it to his disgust at the intrigue of his wife with Cephisophon, and the ridicule which was showered upon him in consequence by the comic poets. But the whole story in question has been sufficiently refuted by Hartung (p. 165, &c.), though objections may be taken to one or two of his assumptions and arguments. The anonymous author of the life of Euripides reports that he married Choerilla, daughter of Mnesilochus, and that, in consequence of her infidelity, he wrote the Hippolytus to satirize the sex, and divorced her. He then married again, and his second wife, named Melitto, proved no better than the first. Now the Hippolytus was acted in B. C. 428, the Thesmophoriazusae of Aristophanes in 414, and at the latter period Euripides was still married to Choerilla, Mnesilochus being spoken of as his κηδεστής with no hint of the connexion having ceased. (See Thesm. 210, 289.) But what can be more unlikely than that Euripides should have allowed fourteen years to elapse between his discovery of his wife's infidelity and his divorce of her ? or that Aristophanes should have made no mention of so piquant an event in the Thesmophoriazusae? It may be said, however, that the name Choerilla is a mistake of the grammarians for Melitto; that it was the latter whose infidelity gave rise to the Hippolytus ; and that the intrigue of the former with Cephisophon, subsequent to 414, occasioned Euripides to leave Athens. But this is inconsistent with Choerilla's age, according to Hartung, who argues thus :-- Euripides had three sons by this lady, the youngest of whom must have been born not later han 434, for he exhibited plays of his father (?) in 404, and must at that time, therefore (?), have been thirty years old (comp. Hartung, p. 6); consequently Choerilla must have become the wife of Euripides not later than 440. At the time, then, of her alleged adultery she must have been upwards of fifty, and must have been married thirty years. But it may be urged that Choerilla may have died soon after the representation of the Thesmophoriazusae (and no wonder, says Hartung, if her death was hastened by so atrocious an attack on her husband and her father !), and Euripides may then have married a young wife, Melitto, who played him false. To this it is answered, that it is clear from the Frogs that his friendship with Cephisophon, the supposed gallant, continued unbroken till his death. After all, however, the silence of Aristophanes is the best refutation of the calumny. [Cephisophon.] With respect to the real reason for the poet's removal into Macedonia, it is clear that an invitation from Archelaüs, at whose court the highest honours awaited him, would have much temptation for one situated as Euripides was at Athens. The attacks of Aristophanes and others had probably not been without their effect; there was a strong, violent, and unscrupulous party against him, whose intrigues and influence were apparent in the results of the dramatic contests; if we may believe the testimony of Varro (apud Gell. 17.4), he wrote 75 tragedies and gained the prize only five times; according to Thomas Magister, 15 of his plays out of 92 were successful. After his death, indeed, his high poetical merits seem to have been fully and generally recognized; but so have been those of Wordsworth among ourselves even in his lifetime ; and yet to the poems of both, the φωνᾶντα συνετοῖσι of Pindar is perhaps especially applicable. Euripides, again, must have been aware that his philosophical tenets were regarded, whether justly or not, with considerable suspicion, and he had already been assailed with a charge of impiety in a court of justice, on the ground of the well-known line in the Hippolytus (607), supposed to be expressive of mental reservation. (Arist. Rhet. 3.15.8.) He did not live long to enjoy the honours and pleasures of the Macedonian court, as his death took place in B. C. 406. Most testimonies agree in stating that he was torn in pieces by the king's dogs, which, according to some, were set upon him through envy by Arrhidaeus and Crateuas, two rival poets. But even with the account of his end scandal has been busy, reporting that he met it at the hands of women while he was going one night to keep a criminal assignation,--and this at the age of 75 ! The story seems to be a mixture of the two calumnies with respect to the profligacy of his character and his hatred of the female sex. The Athenians sent to ask for his remains, but Archelaus refused to give them up, and buried them in Macedonia with great honour. The regret of Sophocles for his death is said to have been so great, that at the representation of his next play he made his actors appear uncrowned. (Ael. VH 13.4 ; Diod. 13.103; Gel. 15.20; Paus. 1.20; Thom. Mag. Vit. Eur.; Suid. s. v. Εὐριπίδης; Steph. Byz. s. v. Βορμίσκος; Eur. Arch. ed. Wagner, p. 111 ; see Barnes, Vit. Eur. § 31; Bayle, Dict. Histor. s. v. Euripides, and the authorities there referred to.) The statue of Euripides in the theatre at Athens is mentioned by Pausanias (1.21). The admiration felt for him by foreigners, even in his lifetime, may be illustrated not only by the patronage of Archelaus, but also by what Plutarch records (Nic. 29), that many of the Athenian prisoners in Sicily regained their liberty by reciting his verses to their masters, and that the Caunians on one occasion having at first refused to admit into their harbour an Athenian ship pursued by pirates, allowed it to put in when they found that some of the crew could repeat fragments of his poems.

We have already intimated that the accounts which we find in Athenaeus and others of the profligacy of Euripides are mere idle scandal, and scarcely worthy of serious refutation. (Athen. xiii. pp. 557, e., 603, e.; comp. Suid. l.c.; Arist. Ran. 1045; Schol. ad loc.) On the authority of Alexander Aetolus (apud Gell. 15.20; comp. Ael. VH 8.13) we learn that he was, like his master Anaxagoras, of a serious temper and averse to mirth (στρυφνὸς καὶ μισογέλως); and though such a character is indeed by no means incompatible with vicious habits, yet it is also one on which men are very apt to avenge themselves by reports and insinuations of the kind we are alluding to. Certainly the calumny in question seems to be contradicted in a great measure by the spirit of the Hippolytus, in which the hero is clearly a great favourite with the author, and from which it has been inferred that his own tendency was even to asceticism. (Keble, Prael. Acad. p. 606, &c.) It may be added, that a speculative character, like that of Euripides, is one over which such lower temptations have usually less power, and which is liable rather to those of a spiritual and intellectual kind. (See Butler's Anal. part 2.100.6.) Nor does there appear to be any better foundation for that other charge which has been brought against him, of hatred to the female sex. The alleged infidelity of his wife, which is commonly adduced to account for it, has been discussed above; and we may perhaps safely pass over the other statement, found in Gelliuis (15.20), where it is attribulted to his having had two wives at once,--a double dose of Matrimony ! The charge no doubt originated in the austerity of his temper and demeanour above mentioned (Suid. s. v.); but certainly he who drew such characters as Antigone, Iphigeneia, and, above all, Alcestis, was not blind to the gentleness, the strong affection, the self-abandoning devotedness of women. And if his plays contain specimens of the sex far different from these, we must not forget, what has indeed almost passed into a proverb, that women are both better and worse than men, and that one especial characteristic of Euripides was to represent human nature as it is. (Arist. Poet. 46.)

With respect to the world and the Deity, he seems to have adopted the doctrines of his master, not unmixed apparently with pantheistic views. [Anaxagoras.] (Valck. Diatr. 4-6; Hartung, Eur. Rest. p. 95, &c.) To class him with atheists, and to speak in the same breath, as Sir T. Browne does (Rel. Med. § 47), of " the impieties of Lucian, Euripides, and Julian," is undoubtedly unjust. At the same time, it must be confessed that we look in vain in his plays for the high faith of Aeschylus, which ever recognizes the hand of Providence guiding the troubled course of events and over-ruling them for good; nor can we fail to admit that the pupil of Anaxagoras could not sympathise with the popular religious system around him, nor throw himself cordially into it. Aeschylus indeed rose above while he adopted it, and formally retaining its legends, imparted to them a higher and deeper moral significance. Such, however, was not the case with Euripides; and there is much truth in what Müller says (Greek Literature, p. 358), that " with respect to the mythical traditions which the tragic muse had selected as her subjects, he stood on an entirely different footing from Aeschylus and from Sophocles. He could not bring his philosophical convictions with regard to the nature of God and His relation to mankind into harmony with the contents of these legends, nor could he pass over in silence their incongruities. Hence it is that he is driven to the strange necessity of carrying on a sort of polemical discussion with the very materials and subjects of which he had to treat." (Herc. Fur. 1316, 1317, Androm. 1138, Orest. 406, Ion, 445, &c., Fragm. Beller. ed. Wagner, p. 147; Clem. Alex. Protrept. 7.) And if we may regard the Bacchae, written towards the close of his life, as a sort of recantation of these views, and as an avowal that religious mysteries are not to be subjected to the bold scrutiny of reason (see Müller, Gr. Lit. p. 379, Eumen. § 37; Keble, Prael. Acad. p. 609), it is but a sad picture of a mind which, wearied with scepticism, and having no objective system of truth to satisfy it, acquiesces in what is established as a deadening relief from fruitless speculation. But it was not merely with respect to the nature and attributes of the gods that Euripides placed himself in opposition to the ancient legends, which we find him altering in the most arbitrary manner, both as to events and characters. Thus, in the Orestes. Menelaüs comes before us as a selfish coward, and Helen as a worthless wanton; in the Helena, the notion of Stesichorus is adopted, that the heroine was never carried to Troy at all, and that it was a mere εἴδωλον of her for which the Greeks and Trojans fought (comp. Herod. 2.112_120) ; Andromache, the widow of Hector and slave of Neoptolemus, seems almost to forget the past in her quarrel with Hermione and the perils of her present situation; and Electra, married by the policy of Aegisthus to a peasant, scolds her husband for inviting guests to dine without regard to the ill-prepared state of the larder. In short, with Euripides tragedy is brought down into the sphere of every-day life, τὰ οἰκεῖα πράγμαρα, οἷς χρώμεθʼ, οἷς ξύνεσμεν (Arist. Ran. 957); men are represented, according to the remark of Aristotle so often quoted (Poet. 46), not as they ought to be, but as they are; under the names of the ancient heroes, the characters of his own time are set before us; it is not Medea, or Iphigeneia, or Alcestis that is speaking, says Mr. Keble (Prael. Acad. p. 596), but abstractedly a mother, a daughter, or a wife. All this, indeed, gave fuller scope, perhaps, for the exhibition of passion and for those scenes of tenderness and pathos in which Euripides especially excelled; and it will serve also to account in great measure for the preference given to his plays by the practical Socrates, who is said to have never entered the theatre unless when they were acted, as well as for the admiration felt for him by the poets of the new comedy, of whom Menander professedly adopted him for his model, while Philemon declared that, if he could but believe in the consciousness of the soul after death, he would certainly hang himself to enjoy the sight of Euripides. (Schlegel, Dram. Lit. lect. vii.; Aelian, Ael. VH 2.13; Quint. Inst. Or. 10.1; Thom. Mag. Vit. Esurip.; Meineke, Fragm. Com. Graec. i. p. 2086, iv. p. 48.) Yet, even as a matter of art, such a process can hardly be justified : it seems to partake too much of the fault condemned in Boileau's line : Peindre Caton galant et Brutus dameret; and it is a graver question whether the moral tendency of tragedy was not impaired by it,--whether, in the absence especially of a fixed external standard of morality, it was not most dangerous to tamper with what might supply the place of it, however ineffectually, through the medium of the imagination,--whether indeed it can ever be safe to lower to the common level of humanity characters hallowed by song and invested by tradition with an ideal grandeur, in cases where they do not tend by the power of inveterate association to colour or countenance evil. And there is another obvious point, which should not be omitted while we are speaking of the moral effect of the writings of Euripides, viz. the enervating tendency of his exhibitions of passion and suffering, beautiful as they are, and well as they merit for him from Aristotle the praise of being " the most tragic of poets." (Poet. 26.) The philosopher, however, qualifies this commendation by the remark, that, while he provides thus admirably for the exciteument of pity by his catastrophes, " he does not arrange the rest well " (εἰ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα μὴ εν̓͂ οἰκονομεῖ); and we may mention in conclusion the chief objections which, artistically speaking, have been brought with justice against his tragedies. We need but allude to his constant employment of the " Deus ex machine," the disconnexion of his choral odes from the subject of the play (Arist. Poet. 32; Hor. Ep. ad Pis. 191, &c.), and the extremely awkward and formal character of his prologues. On these points some good remarks will be found in Muller (Greek Lit. pp. 362-364) and in Keble. (Prael. Acad. p. 590, &c.) Another serious defect is the frequent introduction of frigid γνῶμαι and of philosophical disquisitions, making Medea talk like a sophist, and Hecuba like a freethinker, and aiming rather at subtilty than simplicity. The poet, moreover, is too often lost in the rhetorician, and long declamations meet us, equally tiresome with those of Alfieri. They are then but dubious compliments which are paid him in reference to these points by Cicero and by Quintilian, the latter of whom says that he is worthy to be compared with the most eloquent pleaders of the forum (Cic. Fam. 16.8; Quint. Inst. Or. 10.1); while Cicero so admired him, that he is said to have had in his hand his tragedy of Medea at the time of his murder. (Ptol. Hephaest. 5.5.)

Euripides has been called the poet of the sophists,--a charge by no means true in its full extent, as it appears that, though he may not have escaped altogether the seduction of the sophistical spirit, yet on the whole, the philosophy of Socrates, the great opponent of the sophists, exercised most influence on his mind. (Hartung, Eur. Rest. p. 128, &c.)

On the same principles on which he brought his subjects and characters to the level of common life, he adopted also in his style the every-day mode of speaking, and Aristotle (Aristot. Rh. 3.2.5) commends him as having been the first to produce an effect by the skilful employment of words from the ordinary language of men (comp. Long. de Subl. 31), peculiarly fitted, it may be observed, for the expression of the gentler and more tender feelings. (See Shakspeare, Merch. of Venice, act v. sc. 1 ; comp. Muller, Greek Lit. p. 366.) Works

According to some accounts, Euripides wrote, in all, 75 plays; according to others, 92. Of these, 18 are extant, if we omit the Rhesus, the genuineness of which has been defended by Vater and Hartung, while Valckenaer, Hermann, and Müller have, on good grounds, pronounced it spurious. To what author, however, or to what period it should be assigned, is a disputed point. (Valeken. Diatr. 9, 10; Hermann, de Riheso tragoedia, Opusc. vol. iii.; Müller, Gr. Lit. p. 380, note.) A list is subjoined of the extant plays of Euripides, with their dates, ascertained or probable. For a fuller account the reader is referred to Miüller (Gr. Lit. p. 367, &c.) and to Fabricius (Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. p. 239, &c.), the latter of whom gives a catalogue also of the lost dramas. Alcestis.

Alcestis. B. C. 438. This play was brought out as the last of a tetralogy, and stood therefore in the place of a satyric drama, to which indeed it bears, in some parts, great similarity, particularly in the representation of Hercules in his cups. This circumstance obviates, of course, the objection against the scene alluded to, as a " lamentable interruption to our feelings of commiseration for the calamities of Admetus,"--an objection which, as it seems to us, would even on other grounds be unenable. (See Herm. Dissert. de Eurip. Alceest., prefixed to Monk's edition of 1837.) While, however, we recognize this satyric character in the Alcestis, we must confess that we cannot, as Müller does, see anything farcical in the concluding scene. Medea.

Medea. B. C. 431. The four plays represented in this year by Euripides, who gained the third prize, were Medea, Philoctetis, Dictys, and Messores or Θερισταί, a satyric drama. (See Hartung, Eur. Rest. pp. 332-374.) Hippolytus Coronifer.

Hippolytus Coronifer. B. C. 428. In this year Euripides gained the first prize. For the reason of the title Coronifer (στεφανηφόρος), see vv. 72, &c. There was an older play, called the Veiled Hippolytus, no longer extant, on which the present tragedy was intended as an improvement, and in which the criminal love of Phaedra appears to have been represented in a more offensive manner, and as avowed by herself boldly and without restraint. For the conjectuad reasons of the title Καλυπτόμενος, applied to this former drama, see Wagner, Fragm. Eurip. p. 220, &c.; Valcken. Praef. in Hippol. pp. 19, 20; comp. Hartung. Eurip. Rest. pp. 41, &c., 401, &c. Hecuba.

Hecuba. This play must have been exhibited before B. C. 423, as Aristophanes parodies a passage of it in the Clouds (1148), which he brought out in that year. Müller says that the passage in the Hecuba (645, ed. Pors.), στένει δὲ καί τις κ. τ. λ., " seems to refer to the misfortunes of the Spartans at Pylos in B. C. 425." This is certainly possible ; and, if it is the case, we may fix the refresentation the play in B. C. 424. Heracleidae.

Heracleidae. Müller refers it, by conjecture, to, B. C. 421. Supplices.

Supplices. This also he refers, by conjecture, to about the same period. Ion,

Ion, of uncertain date. Hercules Furens,

Hercules Furens, of uncertain date. Andromache,

Andromache, referred by Müller, on conjecture, to the 90th Olympiad. (B. C. 420-417.) Troades.

Troades. B. C. 415. Electra,

Electra, assigned by Müller, on conjecture and from internal evidence, to the period of the Sicilian expedition. (B. C. 415-413.) Helena.

Helena. B. C. 412, in the same year with the lost play of the Andromeda. (Schol. ad Arist. Thesm. 1012.) Iphigeneia at Tauri.

Iphigeneia at Tauri. Date uncertain. Orestes.

Orestes. B. C. 408. Phoenissae.

Phoenissae. The exact date is not known; but the play was one of the last exhibited at Athens by its author. (Schol. ad Arist. Ran. 53.) Bacchae.

Bacchae. This play was apparently written for representation in Macedonia, and therefore at a very late period of the life of Euripides. See above. Iphigeneia at Aulis.

Iphigeneia at Aulis. This play, together with the Bacchae and the Alcemaeon, was brought out at Athens, after the poet's death, by the younger Euripides. [No. 3.] Cyclops,

Cyclops, of uncertain date. It is interesting as the only extant specimen of the Greek satyric drama, and its intrinsic merits seem to us to call for a less disparaging criticism than that which Müller passes on it. Letters ascribed to Euripides

Besides the plays, there are extant five letters, purporting to have been written by Euripides. Three of them are addressed to king Archelaus, and the other two to Sophocles and Cephisophon respectively. Bentley, in a letter to Barnes (Bentley's Correspondence, ed. Words. vol. i. p. 64), mentions what he considers the internal proofs of their spuriousness, some of which, however, are drawn from some of the false or doubtful statements with respect to the life of Euripides. But we have no hesitation in setting them down as spurious, and as the composition of some later ἀρεταλόγος, though Barnes, in his preface to them, published subsequently to Bentley's letter, declares that he who denies their genuineness must be either very impudent or deficient in judgment. Editions

The editio princeps of Euripides contains the Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis, and Andromache, in capital letters. It is without date or printer's name, but is supposed, with much probability, to have been edited by J. Lascaris, and printed by De Alopa, at Florence, towards the end of the 15th century. In 1503 an edition was published by Aldus at Venice: it contains 18 plays, including the Rhesus and omitting the Electra. Another, published at Heidelberg in 1597, contained the Latin version of Aemil. Portus and a fragment of the Danae, for the first time, from some ancient MSS. in the Palatine library. Another was published by P. Stephens, Geneva, 1602. In that of Barnes, Cambridge, 1694, whatever be the defects of Barnes as an editor, much was done towards the correction and illustration of the text. It contains also many fragments, and the spurious letters. Other editions are that of Musgrave, Oxford, 1778, of Beck, Leipzig, 1778-88, of Matthiae, Leipzig, 1813-29, in 9 vols. with the Scholia and fragments, and a variorum edition, published at Glasgow in 1821 in 9 vols. 8vo. The fragments have been recently edited in a separate form and very satisfactorily by Wagner, Wratislaw, 1844. Of separate plays there have been many editions, e. g. by Porson, Elmsley, Valckenaer, Monk, Pflugk, and Hermann. Translations

There are also numerous translations of different plays in several languages, and the whole works have been translated into English verse by Potter, Oxford, 1814, and into German by Bothe, Berlin, 1800. The Jocasta, by Gascoigne and Kinwelmarsh, represented at Gray's Inn in 1566, is a very free translation from the Phoenissae, much being added, omitted, and transposed.

Euri'pides

3. The youngest of the three sons of the above, according to Suidas. After the death of his father he brought out three of his plays at the great Dionysia, viz. the Alcmaeon (no longer extant), the Iphigeneia at Aulis, and the Bacchae. (Schol. ad Arist. Ran. 67.) Suidas mentions also a nephew of the great poet, of the same name, to whom he ascribes the authorship of three plays, Medea, Orestes, and Polyxena, and who, he tells us, gained a prize with one of his uncle's tragedies after the death of the latter. It is probable that the son and the nephew have been confounded. Aristophanes too (Eccles. 825, 826, 829) mentions a certain Euripides who had shortly before proposed a property-tax of a fortieth. The proposal made him at first very popular, but the measure was thrown out, and he became forthwith the object of a general outcry, about B. C. 394. It is doubtful whether he is to be identified with the son or the nephew of the poet. (See Böckh, Publ. Econ. of Athens, pp. 493, 506, 520.) [E.E]

Euripĭdes

(Εὐριπίδης). (1) A celebrated Athenian tragic poet, son of Mnesarchus and Clito. He was born B.C. 480, in Salamis, on the very day of the Grecian victory near that island. His mother, Clito, had been sent over to Salamis, with the other Athenian women, when Attica was given up to the invading army of Xerxes; and the name of the poet, which is formed like a patronymic from the Euripus, the scene of the first successful resistance to the Persian navy, shows that the minds of his parents were full of the stirring events of that momentous crisis. Aristophanes repeatedly imputes meanness of extraction, by the mother's side, to Euripides (Thesmoph. 386, 455; Acharn. 478; Equit. 17; Ranae, 840). He asserts that she was an herb-seller; and, according to Aulus Gellius (xv. 20), Theophrastus confirms the comedian's insinuations. Whatever one or both of his parents might originally have been, the costly education which the young Euripides received implies a certain degree of wealth and consequence as then at least possessed by his family. The pupil of Anaxagoras, Protagoras, and Prodicus (an instructor famous for the extravagant terms which he demanded for his lessons), could not have been the son of persons at that time very mean or poor. It is most probable, therefore, that his father was a man of property, and made a mésalliance. In early life we are told that his father made Euripides direct his attention chiefly to gymnastic exercises, and that, in his seventeenth year, he was crowned in the Eleusinian and Thesean contests (Aul. Gell. xv. 20). Even at this early age he is said to have attempted dramatic composition. He seems also to have cultivated a natural taste for painting, and some of his pictures were long afterwards preserved at Megara. At length, quitting the gymnasium, he applied himself to philosophy and literature. Under the celebrated rhetorician Prodicus, one of the instructors of Pericles, he acquired that oratorical skill for which his dramas are so remarkably distinguished. Quintilian, in comparing Sophocles with Euripides, strongly recommends the latter to the young pleader as an excellent model. Cicero, too, was a great admirer of Euripides. From Anaxagoras, Euripides imbibed those philosophical notions which are occasionally brought forward in his works, and for which reference may be made to the monograph of Parmentier, Euripide et Anaxagore (Paris, 1893). Here, too, Pericles was his fellow-disciple. With Socrates, who had studied under the same master, Euripides was on terms of the closest intimacy, and from him he derived those maxims so frequently interwoven into his dramas that Socrates was suspected of largely assisting the tragedian in their composition.

Euripides began his public career as a dramatic writer in B.C. 455, the twenty-fifth year of his age. On this occasion he was the third with a play called the Pleiades. In B.C. 441, he won the prize. In B.C. 431, he was third with the Medea, the Philoctetes, the Dictys, and the Theristae, a satyric drama. His competitors were Euphorion and Sophocles. He was first with the Hippolytus, B.C. 428, the year of his master's (Anaxagoras's) death; second, B.C. 415, with the Alexander (or Paris), the Palamedes, the Troades, and the Sisyphus, a satyric drama. It was in this contest that Xenocles was first (Aelian. V. H. ii. 8). Two years after this the Athenians sustained the total loss of their armament before Syracuse. In his narration of this disaster, Plutarch gives an anecdote (Nicias) which, if true, bears a splendid testimony to the high reputation which Euripides then enjoyed. Those among the captives, he tells us, who could repeat any portion of that poet's works were treated with kindness, and even set at liberty. The same author also informs us that Euripides honoured the soldiers who had fallen in that siege with a funeral poem, two lines of which he has preserved. The Andromeda was exhibited B.C. 412; the Orestes, B.C. 408.

Soon after this time the poet retired into Magnesia, and from thence into Macedonia, to the court of Archelaüs. As in the case of Aeschylus, the motives for this self-exile are obscure and uncertain. We know, indeed, that Athens was by no means the most favourable residence for distinguished literary merit. Report, too, pronounced Euripides unhappy in his own family. His first wife, Melito, he divorced for adultery; and in his second, Choerilé, he was not more fortunate. To the poet's unhappiness in his matrimonial connections Aristophanes refers in his Ranae (1045 foll.). Envy and enmity among his fellow-citizens, infidelity and domestic vexations at home, would prove powerful inducements to the poet to accept the invitations of Archelaüs. Perhaps, too, a prosecution in which he became involved, on a charge of impiety, grounded upon a line in the Hippolytus (Aristot. Rhet. iii. 15), might have had some share in producing this determination to quit Athens; nor ought we to omit that, in all likelihood, his political sentiments may have exposed him to continual danger. In Macedonia he is said to have written a play in honour of Archelaüs, and to have inscribed it with his patron's name, who was so much pleased with the manners and ability of his guest as to appoint him one of his ministers. He composed in this same country also some other dramatic pieces, in one of which (the Bacchae) he seems to have been inspired by the wild scenery of the land to which he had come. No further particulars are recorded of Euripides, except a few apocryphal anecdotes and apophthegms. His death is said to have been, like that of Aeschylus, of an extraordinary kind. Either from chance or malice the aged dramatist was exposed, according to the common account, to the attack of some ferocious hounds, and was by them so dreadfully mangled as to expire soon afterwards, in his seventy-fifth year. This story, however, is clearly a fabrication, for Aristophanes, in the Ranae, would certainly have alluded to the manner of his death had there been anything remarkable in it. He died B.C. 406 (Clinton, Fast. Hellen. i. 81). The Athenians entreated Archelaüs to send the body to the poet's native city for interment. The request was refused, and, with every demonstration of grief and respect, Euripides was buried at Pella. A cenotaph, however, was erected to his memory at Athens.

We have some cutting sayings of Sophocles concerning Euripides, although the former was so void of all the jealousy of an artist that he mourned over the death of his rival; and, in a piece which he shortly after brought upon the stage, did not allow his actors the ornament of a garland. The jeering attacks of Aristophanes are well known, but have not always been properly estimated and understood. Aristotle, too, brings forward many important causes for blame; and when he calls Euripides “the most tragic of poets” (Poet. xiii. 10), he by no means ascribes to him the greatest perfection in the tragic art generally; but he alludes, by this phrase, to the effect which is produced by his dramatic catastrophes. In Euripides we no longer find the essence of ancient tragedy pure and unmixed; its characteristic features are already partly effaced. These consisted principally in the idea of destiny which reigns in them, in ideal representation, and the importance of the chorus. The idea of destiny had, indeed, come down to him from his predecessors as his inheritance, and a belief in it is inculcated by him, according to the custom of the tragedians; but still, in Euripides, destiny is seldom considered as the invisible spirit of all poetry, the fundamental thought of the tragic world. On the other hand, he derived it from the regions of infinity, and, in his writings, inevitable necessity often degenerates into the caprice of chance. Hence he can no longer direct it to its proper aim—namely, that of elevating, by its contrast, the moral free-will of man. Very few of his dramas depend on a constant combat against the dictates of destiny, or an equally heroic subjection to them. His men, in general, suffer, because they must, and not because they are willing. The contrasted subordination of idea, loftiness of character and passion, which in Sophocles, as well as in the graphic art of the Greeks, we find observed in this order, are in him exactly reversed. In his plays passion is the most powerful; his secondary care is for character; and if these endeavours leave him sufficient room, he seeks now and then to bring in greatness and dignity, but more frequently amiability. Euripides has, according to the doctrine of Aristotle (Poet. xv. 7, xxvi. 31), frequently represented his personages as bad without any necessity—for example, Menelaüs in the Orestes. More especially, it is by no means his object to represent the race of heroes as pre-eminent above the present race by their mighty stature, but he rather takes pains to fill up the chasm between his contemporaries and the olden time, and reveal the gods and heroes of the other side in their undress. This is what Sophocles meant when he said that he himself represented men as they should be, Euripides as they were. It seems to be a design of Euripides always to remind his spectators, “See, these beings were men; they had just such weaknesses, and acted from exactly the same motives as yourselves, and as the meanest among you does.” In other words, Euripides is the first of the realists among the Greeks.

In his dramas the chorus is generally an unessential ornament, its songs are often altogether episodical, without reference to the action. The ancient comic writers enjoyed the privilege of sometimes making the chorus address the audience in their own name, this being called a Parabasis. Although it by no means belongs to tragedy, yet Euripides, according to the testimony of Iulius Pollux, often employed it, and so far forgot himself in it that in the Danaïdes he made the chorus, consisting of women, use grammatical forms which belonged to the masculine gender alone. In the music of the accompaniments he adopted all the innovations of which Timotheus (q.v.) was the author, and selected those measures which are most suitable to the sensuous nature of his poetry. He acted in a similar way as regarded prosody; the construction of his verses is rather florid, and approaches irregularity. He strives after effect in a degree which can not be conceded even to a dramatic poet. Thus, for example, he seldom lets any opportunity escape of having his personages seized with sudden and groundless terror; his old men always complain of the infirmities of old age, and are particularly given to mount, with tottering knees, the ascent from the orchestra to the stage, which frequently represented the declivity of a mountain, while they lament their wretchedness. His object throughout is emotion, for the sake of which he not only offends against ancient decorum, but sacrifices the symmetry of his plays. He likes to reduce his heroes to a state of beggary; makes them suffer hunger and want; and brings them on the stage with all the external signs of indigence, covered with rags, as Aristophanes so humourously throws in his teeth in the Acharnians (410-448).

Euripides, as already stated, had studied philosophy, and prided himself upon his familiarity with philosophical doctrine. Hence, as contrasted with his two dramatic predecessors, Aeschylus and Sophocles, his rationalistic method of treatment seemed to his audiences startling and almost impious. His allegorical interpretations must often have had a flavour of sacrilege about them, and the whole spirit and temper of his plays were an embodiment of the “higher criticism” of the day. The Athenians were prone to identify the sentiments of his characters with those of the author himself. It is related of him that he made Bellerophon come on the stage with a panegyric on riches, in which he preferred them before every domestic joy; and said, at last, “If Aphrodité (who had the epithet of ‘golden’) shone like gold, she would indeed deserve the love of men” ( Epist. 115). The audience, enraged at this, raised a great tumult, and were proceeding to stone the orator as well as the poet. Euripides, on this, rushed forward and exclaimed, “Wait patiently till the end; he will fare accordingly.” Thus, also, he is said to have excused himself against the accusation that his Ixion spoke too abominably and blasphemously, by replying that, in return, he had not concluded the piece without making him revolve on the wheel. He has also great command of that sophistry of the passions which gives things only one appearance. The following verse (Hippol. 608) is notorious for its expression of what casuists call mental reservation: “My tongue took an oath, but my mind is unsworn.”

In the connection in which this verse is spoken, it may indeed be justified, as far as regards the reason for which Aristophanes ridicules it in so many ways; but still the formula is pernicious on account of the turn which may be given it. Another sentiment of Euripides (Phoeniss. 534), “It is worth while committing injustice for the sake of empire; in other things it is proper to be just,” was continually in the mouth of Caesar, in order to make a wrong application of it ( Iul. 30). Seductive enticements to the enjoyment of sensual love were another article of accusation against Euripides among the ancients. Thus, for example, Hecuba, in order to incite Agamemnon to punish Polymnestor, reminds him of the joys Cassandra had afforded him; who, having been taken in war, was his slave, according to the law of the heroic ages: she is willing to purchase revenge for a murdered son by consenting to and ratifying the degradation of a daughter who is still alive. This poet was the first to take for the principal subject of a drama the wild passion of a Medea or the unnatural love of a Phaedra, as, otherwise, it may be easily understood, from the manners of the ancients, why love, which among them was far less ennobled by delicate feelings, played merely a subordinate part in their earlier tragedies. Notwithstanding the importance imparted to female characters, he brings out a multitude of sayings concerning the weaknesses of the female sex and the superiority of men, as well as a great deal drawn from his own experience in domestic relations. A cutting saying, as well as an epigram, of Sophocles have been handed down to us by Athenaeus, in which he explains the pretended hatred of Euripides for women by supposing that he had the opportunity of learning their frailty through his own unhallowed desires.

That independent freedom in the method of treating the story, which was one of the privileges of the tragic art, frequently, in Euripides, became caprice. It is well known that the fables of Hyginus, which differ so much from the relations of other writers, are partly extracted from his plays. As he often overturned what had hitherto been well known and generally received, he was obliged to use prologues, in which he announces the situation of affairs according to his acceptation, and makes known the course of events. (Compare the amusing scene in Aristophanes, Ranae, 1177 foll., and Porson's explanation of the employment of such prologues by Euripides, Praelect. in Eurip. p. 8 foll.). These prologues make the beginnings of the plays of Euripides monotonous, and produce the appearance of deficiency of art.

The style of Euripides is, on the whole, not sufficiently compressed, and it has neither the dignity and energy of Aeschylus nor the chaste grace of Sophocles. In his expressions he frequently aims at the extraordinary and strange, and, on the other hand, loses himself in commonplace. For these reasons, as well as on account of his almost ludicrous delineation of many characteristic peculiarities (such as the clumsy deportment of Pentheus in a female garb, when befooled by Bacchus [Bacchae, 782 foll.], or the greediness of Heracles [Alcestis, 764 foll.], and his boisterous demands on the hospitality of Admetus), Euripides was a forerunner of the New Comedy. Menander, in fact, expressed admiration for him, and declared himself to be his scholar; and there is a fragment of Philemon, full of extravagant admiration of him. “If the dead,” he says, or makes one of his personages say, “really possessed sensation, as some suppose, I would hang myself in order to see Euripides.”

Of the 120 dramas which Euripides is said to have composed, we have remaining in their complete form only eighteen tragedies and one satyric piece. The following are the titles and subjects: (1) Ἑκάβη, Hecuba. The sacrifice of Polyxena, whom the Greeks immolate to the shade of Achilles, and the vengeance which Hecuba, doubly unfortunate in having been reduced to captivity and deprived of her children, takes upon Polymnestor, the murderer of her son Polydorus, form the subject of this tragedy. The scene is laid in the Grecian camp in the Thracian Chersonesus. The shade of Polydorus, whose body remains without the rites of sepulture, has the prologue assigned it. Ennius and L. Attius, and in modern times Erasmus, have translated this play into Latin verse.

(2) Ὀρέστης, Orestes. The scene of this play is laid at Argos, the seventh day after the murder of Clytaemnestra. It is on this day that the people, in full assembly, are to sit in judgment upon Orestes and Electra. The only hope of the accused is in Menelaüs, who has just arrived; but this chief, who secretly aims at the succession, stirs up the people in private to pronounce sentence of condemnation against the parricides. The sentence is accordingly pronounced, but the execution of it is left to the culprits themselves. They meditate taking vengeance by slaying Helen; but this princess is saved by the intervention of Apollo, who brings about a double marriage by uniting Orestes with Hermioné, the daughter of Helen, and Electra with Pylades. Some commentators think that they recognize the portrait of Socrates in that of the simple and virtuous citizen who, in the assembly of the people, undertakes the defence of Orestes. This play is ascribed by some to Euripides the Younger, nephew of the former.

(3) Φοινίσσαι, Phoenissae. The subject of this piece is the death of Eteocles and Polynices. The chorus is composed of young Phoenician women, sent, according to the custom established by Agenor, to the city of Thebes, in order to be consecrated to the service of the temple at Delphi. The prologue is assigned to Iocasta. The subject of the Phoenissae is that also of the Thebaïs of Seneca. Statius has likewise imitated it in his epic poem.

(4) Μήδεια, Medea. The vengeance taken by Medea on the ungrateful Iason, to whom she has sacrificed all, and who, on his arrival at Corinth, abandons her for a royal bride, forms the subject of this tragedy. What constitutes the principal charm of the play is the simplicity and clearness of the action, and the force and natural cast of the characters. The exposition of the plot is made in a monologue by the nurse: the chorus is composed of Corinthian women. It is asserted that Euripides gave to the world two editions of this tragedy, and that, in the first, the children of Medea were put to death by the Corinthians, while in the second, which has come down to us, it is their mother herself who slays them. According to this hypothesis, the 1378th verse and those immediately following, in which Medea says that she will impose on Corinth, contemptuously styled by her the land of Sisyphus, an expiatory festival for this crime, have been retained by mistake in the revision in which they should have disappeared. Medea has no expiation to demand of the Corinthians, if they are not guilty of the murder of her sons. Aelian informs us (V. H. v. 21) that the Corinthians prevailed upon Euripides to alter the tradition in question. According to others, they purchased this compliance for the sum of five talents.

(5) Ἱππόλυτος στεφανοφόρος, Hippolytus Coronifer, “Hippolytus Crowned.” The subject of this tragedy is the same with that which Racine has taken for the basis of his Phèdre, a subject eminently tragical. It presents to our view a weak woman, the victim of the resentment of Aphrodité, who has inspired her with a criminal passion. An object of horror to him whom she loves, and not daring to reveal her own shame, she dies, after having compelled Theseus, by her misrepresentations, to become the destroyer of his own son. The title of this tragedy is probably derived from the crown which Hippolytus offers to Artemis. Euripides at first gave it the name of Ἱππόλυτος καλυπτόμενος. He afterwards retouched it, and, changing the catastrophe and the title, reproduced it in the year that Pericles died. It gained the prize over the pieces of Iophon and Ion, which had competed with it in the contest. It is sometimes cited under the title of the Phaedra, and the celebrated chef-d'oeuvre of Racine is an imitation of it, as is also the tragedy of Seneca.

(6) Ἄλκηστις, Alcestis. The subject of this tragedy is moral and affecting. It is a wife who dies for the sake of prolonging her husband's existence. Its object is to show that conjugal affection and an observance of the rites of hospitality are not suffered to go without their reward. Heracles, whom Admetus had kindly received while unfortunate, having learned that Alcestis, the wife of the monarch, had consummated her mournful sacrifice, seeks her in the shades, and restores her to her husband. The play, by reason of its happy ending, is hardly to be considered a tragedy, but more of a tragi-comedy. The story of Alcestis has inspired a number of fine poems in English literature, notably Balaustion's Adventure, by Robert Browning. Others who have treated the same theme are William Morris, W. S. Landor, Palgrave, Mrs. Hemans, and W. M. W. Call.

(7) Ἀνδρομάχη, Andromaché. The death of the son of Achilles, whom Orestes slays, after having carried off from him Hermioné, forms the subject of the piece. The scene is laid in Thetidium, a city of Thessaly, near Pharsalus. Some have asserted that the aim of Euripides in writing this tragedy was to render odious the law of the Athenians which permitted bigamy.

(8) Ἱκέτιδες, Supplices, “The Suppliants.” The scene of this tragedy is laid in front of the temple of Demeter at Eleusis, whither the Argive women, whose husbands have perished before Thebes, have followed their king Adrastus, in the hope of persuading Theseus to take up arms in their behalf, and obtain the rites of sepulture for their dead, whose bodies were withheld by the Thebans. Theseus yields to their request and promises his assistance. In exhibiting this play in the fourteenth year of the Peloponnesian War, Euripides wished, it is said, to detach the Argives from the Spartan cause. His attempt, however, failed, and the treaty was signed by which Mantinea was sacrificed to the ambition of Lacedaemon.

(9) Ἰφιγένεια ἡ ἐν Αὐλίδι, Iphigenia in Aulide, “Iphigenia at Aulis.” The subject of this tragedy is the intended sacrifice of Iphigenia, and her rescue by Artemis, who substitutes another victim. It is the only one of the plays of Euripides that has no prologue, for it is well known that the Rhesus, which also lacks it, had one formerly.

(10) Ἰφιγένεια ἡ ἐν Ταύροις, Iphigenia in Tauris, “Iphigenia among the Tauri.” The daughter of Agamemnon, rescued by Artemis from the knife of the sacrificer, and transported to Tauris, there serves the goddess as a priestess in her temple. Orestes has been cast on the inhospitable shores of this country, along with his friend Pylades, and by the laws of the Tauri they must be sacrificed to Artemis. Recognized by his sister at the fatal moment, Orestes conducts her back to their common country. A monologue by Iphigenia occupies the place of a prologue and exposition. The scene where Iphigenia and her brother became known to each other is of a deep and touching interest, and has been imitated by Guimond de la Touche and Goethe.

(11) Τρώαδες, Troades, “The Trojan women.” The action of this piece is prior to that of the Hecuba. The scene is laid in the Grecian camp, under the walls of Troy, which has fallen into the hands of the foe. A body of female captives have been distributed by lot among the victors. Agamemnon has reserved Cassandra for himself; Polyxena has been immolated to the manes of Achilles; Andromaché has fallen to Neoptolemus, Hecuba to Odysseus. The object of the poet is to show us in Hecuba a mother bowed down by misfortune. The Greeks destroy Astyanax, and his mangled body is brought in to the mother of Hector, his own parent being by this time carried away in the train of Neoptolemus. Ilium is then given as a prey to the flames. This succession of horrors passes in mournful review before the eyes of the spectator; yet there is no unity of action to constitute a subject for the piece, and consequently the play has no dénouement. Poseidon appears in the prologue. Seneca and M. de Chateaubrun have imitated this tragedy.

(12) Βάκχαι, Bacchae, “The female Bacchanalians,” sometimes quoted as the Pentheus, for Euripides seldom names his plays after the chorus. The arrival of Bacchus at Thebes and the death of Pentheus, who is torn in pieces by his mother and sister form the subject of this drama, in which Bacchus opens the scene and makes himself known to the spectators. The Bacchae is regarded by Jebb as “in its own kind, by far the most splendid work of Euripides that we possess.” It is a succession of rich paintings, of tragic situaations, of brilliant verses, unique among existing Greek plays in picturesque splendour. The spectacle which this tragedy presented must have been at once imposing and well calculated to keep alive curiosity. Some have held that the play is a recantation by the poet of his former irreligious sentiments; but on this see Tyrrell in the introduction to his edition of the Bacchae (1892). It is related that the Bacchae was performed before Orodes and his court, when the actor sustaining the part of Agavé gave a hideous reality to the action by holding up the bloody head of the Roman general Crassus, just slain in battle by the Parthian warriors of the king (Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, iv. p. 436).

(13) Ἡρακλεῖδαι, Heraclidae. The descendants of Heracles, persecuted by Eurystheus, flee for refuge to Athens, and implore the protection of that city. The Athenians lend aid, and Eurystheus becomes the victim of the vengeance he was about bringing upon them. Iolaüs, an old companion of Heracles, explains the subject to the spectators. The poet manages to impart an air of great interest to the piece.

(14) Ἑλένη, Helena. The scene is laid in Egypt, where Menelaüs, after the destruction of Troy, finds Helen, who had been detained there by Proteus, king of that country, when Paris wished to convey her to Ilium. The action passes at the isle of Pharos, where Theoclymenus, the son and successor of Proteus, keeps Helen in custody with the view of espousing her. She employs a stratagem in order to escape from his power. The dénouement of this piece resembles that of the Iphigenia in Tauris.

(15) Ἴων, Ion. Ion, son of Apollo and Creüsa, daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, has been brought up among the priests at Delphi. The design of Apollo is to make him pass for the son of Xuthus, who has married Creüsa. The interest of the play consists in the double danger which Creüsa and Ion run, the former of being slain by Ion and the latter of perishing by the poison prepared for him by a mother who is ignorant of his being her son. The play, however, is somewhat complicated, and has need of a long exposition, which is assigned to Hermes. The scene is laid at the entrance of Apollo's temple in Delphi, a place expressly chosen in order to give to the spectacle an air of pomp and solemnity. A religious tone, full of gravity and softness, pervades the whole piece. There is much resemblance between this tragedy and the Athalie of Racine.

(16) Ἡρακλῆς μαινόμενος, Hercules furens. After having killed, in his frenzy, his wife and children, Heracles proceeds to submit himself to certain expiatory ceremonies, and to seek repose at Athens. Amphitryon appears in the prologue: the scene is laid at Thebes.

(17) Ἠλέκτρα, Electra. The subject of this play has been treated also by Aeschylus and Sophocles, but by each in his peculiar way. Euripides transfers the scene from the palace of Aegisthus to the country near Argos: the exposition of the play is made by a cultivator, to whom Electra has been compelled to give her hand, but who has taken no advantage of this, but has respected in her the daughter of a royal line.

(18) Ῥῆσος, Rhesus. A subject derived from the tenth book of the Iliad. Some able critics have tried to prove that this piece was never written by Euripides.—Φαέθων, Phaëthon. Of this play we have about eighty verses remaining. Clymené, the mother of Phaëthon, is the wife of Merops, king of the Ethiopians, and Phaëthon passes for the son of this prince. The young man, having conceived some doubts respecting his origin, addresses himself to the Sun. The catastrophe, which cost him his life, is well known. In the tragedy of Euripides, the body of her son is brought to Clymené, at the very moment when Merops is occupied with the task of procuring for him a bride.—Δανάη, Danaë. Of this play we have the commencement alone, unless the sixtyfive verses, which commonly pass for a part of the prologue, are to be considered as the production of some imitator,

A production deserving especial mention is the satyric drama entitled Cyclops (Κύκλωψ). The story is drawn from the Odyssey. The subject is Odysseus depriving Polyphemus of his eye, after having intoxicated him with wine. In order to connect with the story a chorus of satyrs, the poet supposes that Silenus, and his sons, the satyrs, in seeking over every sea for Bacchus, whom pirates have carried away, have been shipwrecked on the coast of Sicily, where they have fallen into the hands of Polyphemus. The Cyclops has made slaves of them, and has compelled them to tend his sheep. Odysseus, having been cast on the same coast, and having been, in like manner, made captive by Polyphemus, finds in these satyrs a willing band of accomplices. They league with him against their master, but their excessive cowardice renders them very useless auxiliaries. They profit, however, by his victory, and embark with him. See Cyclops; Satyric Drama.

Of the numerous incomplete remains of Euripides that have reached us, some notice must be taken. In 1890, papyri discovered by Mr. Petrie at Tel Gurob in Egypt were found to contain fragments of a lost play of Euripides—the Antiopé. These fragments are reproduced and edited by Mahaffy in The Flinders Petrie Papyri (Dublin, 1891).

The ancient writers cite also a poem of Euripides, Ἐπικήδειον, “Funeral Hymn,” on the death of Nicias and Demosthenes, as well as of the other Athenians who perished in the disastrous expedition against Syracuse. We possess also two epigrams of Euripides, each consisting of four verses, one of which has been preserved in the Anthology and the other in Athenaeus. There have, besides, come down to us five letters, ascribed to Euripides, and written with admirable purity and simplicity of style. There are also many fragments from the lost plays of Euripides scattered among the writings of antiquity. Of these fragments Nauck collected 1117, some, however, being of doubtful authenticity. The best known of the lost plays are the Andromeda, Bellerophon, Cresphontes, Erechtheus, Oedipus, and Telephus.

The popularity of Euripides was very great in antiquity, as in modern times, as is shown by the number of ancient scholars who wrote commentaries on his works—among them being Dicaearchus, Callimachus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Callistratus, and especially Didymus. An inscription at Tegea shows that his plays were represented as late as the second century B.C., winning victories at Athens, Delphi, and Dodona (Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, January-April, 1893). At Rome, Euripides was translated and adapted by Ennius and by Pacuvius. In the fourth century A.D. a curious cento, the Χριστὸς Πάσχων (Christus Patiens), of 2610 verses, was made from the plays of Euripides. (See Cento.) Later, Dante, who mentions neither Aeschylus nor Sophocles, praises Euripides; and from the sixteenth century to the present time he has been a popular favourite, giving inspiration to many imitators in French, English, and German.

Bibliography. — Few classical authors are so fully represented by MSS. as is Euripides. Nearly every European library of importance and of any age contains at least one, though no single MS. contains all the plays. The three plays oftenest found are the Hecuba, Orestes, and Phoenissae, owing to the fact that these three were much read in the schools under the Eastern Empire. The nine plays, Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenissae, Hippolytus, Medea, Alcestis, Andromaché, Troades, and Rhesus, are known in two “families” — one represented by the Codices Vaticanus, Hauniensis, Parisinus, and two Marciani Veneti, and the second (an inferior family) by later MSS. of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The MSS. of the first family mentioned are the oldest that we have, but are not earlier than the twelfth century. The great majority of the copies are very poor. The only MSS. containing all the nine plays mentioned above are the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Hauniensis; but of the former some pages are missing, while of the latter the text is in places so corrupt as to be of little use. The remaining ten plays are found in only two MSS.—the Palatinus (in the Vatican) and Florentinus II.—both of the fourteenth century. Three plays (the Helena, Hercules Furens, and Electra) are found only in the Codex Florentinus II. A palimpsest of the fifth or sixth century contains a part of the Phaëthon, and of this play an interesting “reconstruction” made by Goethe will be found in vol. xxxiii. pp. 22-43 of the 1840 edition of his works. The extaut scholia on Euripides are from the nine select plays only. The best complete edition of the scholia is that of W. Dindorf, in four vols. (1863).

The editio princeps of Euripides is that of J. Lascaris (Florence, 1496), but contains only the Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis, and Andromaché. The Aldine edition by Musurus (Venice, 1503) contains all the plays except the Electra, which was first published by P. Victorius (1545). The first edition of any critical value is that by Valckenaer in his Phoenissae (1755), and in his Diatribe in Euripidis Perditorum Dramatum Reliquias (1767), attacking the authenticity of the Rhesus. The best criticism of the text has been done by Porson (1797), Elmsley (1813), G. Hermann (1838), Badham (1851), and Nauck (1885). Recent complete editions are those of W. Dindorf (in his Poetae Scenici, 5th ed. 1870), Kirchhoff (1867), and Paley (2d ed. 1872), with commentary. Of separate plays, the following editions deserve special mention: of the Bacchae by R. Y. Tyrrell (1892), by Paley (1877), and by Sandys (1880); of the Alcestis by Earle (1894), Jerram, (1884); of the Hecuba by Paley (1877); of the Hercules Furens by Hutchinson and Gray (1878), and by Paley (1883); of the Troades by Tyrrell (1882); of the Hippolytus by Arnold after Witzschel (1853), Mahaffy and Bury (1881), and by Berthold (1880); of the Medea by Verrall (1881); of the Orestes by Paley (1879); of the Andromaché by Pflugk and Klotz, with Latin notes (1858); of the Phoenissae by Paley (1879); of the Ionby Badham (1879), Verrall (1890); of the Iphigenia in Aulide by Pflugk and Klotz (1860); of the Iphigenia in Tauris by Jerram (1884) and England (1886); of the Heraclidae by Beck (1881); and of the Helena by Jerram (1881). Prose translation by Coleridge (London, 1885). See Mahaffy, Introduction to the Study of Euripides (London, 1879).

(2) A nephew of the preceding ( Suid. s. v.; Böckh, De Trag. Graec. xiv. and xviii.), commonly styled Euripides Junior. He was a dramatic poet, like his uncle, and exhibited, besides his own compositions, several plays of the latter, then dead; one of these gained the prize. Böckh and others suspect that he reproduced the Iphigenia in Aulis, and perhaps the Palamedes. To this Euripides is ascribed, by Suidas, an edition of Homer.

Euripides

Euripides was the youngest of the three principal fifth-century tragic poets. From shortly after his death his plays were the most popular of any tragic poet and were repeatedly reperformed throughout antiquity wherever there were theaters. Aristotle seems to have regarded him as a close second to Sophocles and cites him again and again as a model for tragic writers, as well as occasionally criticizing him. He does not seem to have been nearly so successful during his lifetime, however, winning the first prize only five times in some twenty-two appearances in the tragic competitions. (One of these was for a posthumous first performance of plays left behind at his death.) Comic poets such as Aristophanes frequently parodied or otherwise made fun of him, sometimes in a friendly and appreciative spirit, sometimes in an (apparently) hostile one. It can be shown that this comic portrait is the head and font of most of the biographical tradition about Euripides. The tradition has recently been shown to be highly unreliable (see the work of M. Lefkowitz and M. Heath, cited below), and this has necessitated a re-examination of the plays themselves, whose interpretation, from Nietzsche onward, has frequently owed a great deal to the assumption that Old Comedy's portrait of Euripides as an associate of sophists and philosophers, an unsociable genius, and an artistic revolutionary provides a reliable key.

For the biography of Euripides, as for those of ancient writers in general, reliable evidence is in short supply. The following summarizes what can be known with a fair degree of probability.

Euripides was born in 484 or a date not far from it. We have it on reliable evidence that, despite a repeated joke in Aristophanes which made her a vegetable-seller, his mother came of noble family. He belonged to the deme of Phlya, north of Mount Hymettus, part of the Athenian “tribe” of Cecropis. An inscription, recorded by Theophrastus, commemorates his serving as wine-pourer for the young men “of good families” who danced in honor of Apollo Delios. Another notice makes him torch-bearer in a procession in honor of Apollo Zosterios. Both of these suggest a prominent family.

We know nothing of his education: the tradition gives him a variety of philosophers as teachers, but the notices are mostly impossible on chronological grounds. None of the notices connecting him personally with Socrates, Anaxagoras, et al., survives scrutiny.

Euripides began his career in the tragic competitions in 455, when he came in third. He won a first prize for the first time in 442, one of only five during his career. When the scholars of Alexandria in the third to second century collected his plays and titles, they found that 92 plays were attributed to him. Four of these were regarded as spurious. The remainder represent some 22 entries in the tragic competitions. Of these plays, 78 survived to Alexandria to be gathered into the Collected Works.

The plays we possess come down in two different streams. Sometime after ca. A.D. 250 a group of ten plays, which we call “the select plays,” were chosen, perhaps for school use, and increasingly only these were copied. By fortunate chance, however, one or two volumes of the Collected Works, containing nine plays beginning with the letters epsilon, eta, iota, and kappa, survived into the Byzantine period and were copied onto a single manuscript now in the Laurentian Library in Florence. The “alphabetic” plays, as they are called, are thus a chance cross-section of Euripides' work, and the fact that many of them, like the Heracles, the Ion, and the Iphigenia among the Taurians,are so good suggests that the general level of Euripides' writing must have been high. The extant plays with their dates are: Alcestis (438, second prize), Medea (431, third prize), Children of Heracles (ca. 430), Hippolytus (428, first prize), Andromache (ca. 425, not produced in Athens), Hecuba (ca. 424), Suppliant Women (ca. 423), Electra (ca. 420), Heracles (ca. 416), Trojan Women (415, second prize), Iphigenia among the Taurians (ca. 414), Ion (ca. 413), Helen (412), Phoenician Women (ca. 410), Orestes (408), Bacchaeand Iphigenia in Aulis (after 406, posthumous first prize), Cyclops (date unknown, possibly ca. 410). The Rhesustransmitted under Euripides' name is probably a fourth-century play by a now nameless poet.

Besides plays, Euripides is said to have written a victory ode (fragments in Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, p. 391) for the Olympic chariot victory of Alcibiades, the young ward of Pericles, and an epitaph (Plut. Nic. 7) in honor of the Athenians who died in Sicily. Doubt has been cast on the latter on the grounds that Euripides, being a critic of Athenian aggression in Sicily and Melos, would not have been offered or have accepted this commission. The sole basis for the claim that he was a critic of Athenian policy, however, is the interpretation of the Trojan Womenas a protest against the slaughter of the Melians in the winter of 416-15. This interpretation has been rendered highly doubtful on chronological grounds by A. M. van Erp Thalman Kip in Mnemosynefor 1987, and was in any case already very insecure.

Some time after 408, the year of the Orestes, Euripides went to Macedon to the court of King Archelaus. Some have called this self-imposed exile, but it may not have been, since a number of artists accepted invitations from Archelaus at about this time. He died and was buried in Macedon in 407/6. He is said to have been killed by hunting dogs, either accidentally let loose on him or deliberately set on him by enemies or rivals, or torn apart by women. Such a death is possible but cannot be deemed very likely. When the news of Euripides' death was brought to Athens, Sophocles donned mourning and introduced his chorus without the customary garlands.

The biographical tradition (followed by Nietzsche and much subsequent scholarship) represents Euripides as the follower of a philosophical outlook that cast tragedy's religious foundations into question, an object of suspicion to his fellow citizens, and an anti-traditionalist in his art. Almost all of this appears to be derived directly or indirectly from Old Comedy, whose evidence must accordingly be examined with some care. The Euripides of Aristophanes is a man with the following characteristics: (1) prosaic, talky, and arid in his dialogue, his manner being that either of courtroom pleader (Aristoph. Peace 528-34) or philosopher (Aristoph. Frogs 1491-95); (2) fond of putting on the stage characters who are lame and dressed in rags (Acharnians -Aristoph. Ach.); (3) determined to make tragedy less elevated by introducing common and ordinary people and things, humble objects usually banished from tragedy, and slaves with big speaking parts (Aristoph. Frogs 937-52); (4) decadent and modernist in his lyrics, with a pronounced tendency toward metrical innovation (Aristoph. Frogs 1309-63); (5) a hater of women, who enjoys portraying heroines of dubious principle in order to discredit their sex (Thesmophoriazusae -Aristoph. Thes.); (6) an underminer of received morality, who portrays shocking or immoral actions (incest, adultery, perjury) in a favorable light and whose natural admirers are the immoralist Sophists and those whom they influence (Aristoph. Clouds 1364-78); and (7) unorthodox in his religious views, believing in new-fangled divinities like Aether and not the traditional gods of the city (Aristoph. Frogs 892-93, Aristoph. Thes. 443-56).

The conclusions of a careful examination of the evidence of Old Comedy (see the section entitled “Euripides in Old Comedy” in the Introduction to Volume One of the new Loeb Euripides) are in some measure agnostic. First, the amount of truth in a comic portrait can be extremely low, and this renders it unsafe to apply the maxim “no smoke without fire.” Second, the portrait of Euripides varies a great deal from play to play, and some of the portraits, when read on their own and without importing ideas and attitudes from other plays, are either quite gentle in their ridicule or even friendly. Third, some of the traits assigned to Euripides in comedy, such as misogyny, are highly dubious, and there is little reason to think that Euripides was like this or that this is the way his contemporaries perceived him. There is no reason to allow such tenuous evidence to interfere with our reading the plays themselves against the background of the normal expectations of the fifth-century audience.

Some of Comedy's portrait is confirmed by such a reading. Most of the plays contain passages that owe something to contemporary philosophical speculation, though it is often the unsympathetic characters who sound like the Sophists. The style of the plays is-comparatively-bare of ornament, and there is a large rhetorical element, particularly the pairing of effective speeches on both sides of a question. In the later plays especially, the lyric passages, both choral and solo, exhibit metrical (and presumably musical) innovation that owes a great deal to the lyric poet Timotheus and other contemporary artists. But just as it is better to assess Euripides' portrayal of women from the plays themselves rather than accept Old Comedy's unsupported word that Euripides was a misogynist, so it is reasonable to form our own judgment from the plays themselves about the extent to which Euripides' views on religion, morality, and art are sharply at variance with those of Sophocles or his audience. There is plenty in the plays themselves to suggest a high degree of continuity with earlier Greek poetry. In particular, both in plays that end in disaster and in those that end happily, the action and words, of characters and chorus alike, draw attention-it is Greek poetry's most venerable theme-to the precariousness of human existence, the limits of mortality, and the unpredictability of the future especially in view of the power of the gods. In the “tragicomic” plays, disaster is usually avoided by the narrowest of escapes, and often the escape owes something both to human piety and virtue and to divine intervention. In the plays that are tragic in our sense, blameless sufferers come to terms with the mortal condition and derive what solace they can from such justice of the gods as is visible. The divine order is often inscrutable or even repellent-as it is in Sophocles as well-but its reality is arguably affirmed rather than denied. The preponderance of this and related themes explains why Aristotle, who regards swift change of fortune as the life-blood of tragedy, gives Euripides full marks as “the most tragic of the poets.” In addition to his manifest charm as a writer of elegant verse, he is a poet of incident and juxtaposition. These reveal most clearly the face-grim or smiling, as it may turn out-of the world in which human beings must live.

The Greek text of Euripides' extant plays, with full apparatus criticus, is to be found in J. Diggle's Oxford Classical Text edition, 3 vols., soon to be complete. A new Loeb edition, 5 vols., with Greek text, facing English translation, notes, and introductions, is being prepared by D. Kovacs. Until the appearance of R. Kannicht's edition of the fragments, the standard edition is A. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, 2nd ed. with a supplement by B. Snell (Hildesheim, 1964). There is a series of commentaries published by Oxford, mostly with the old Oxford text of Murray. Also useful are some of the editions, with translation and brief commentary, in the Aris & Phillips series. A selection of ancient testimony on Euripides' life and art with English translations in D. Kovacs, Euripidea I (Leiden, 1993).

Some important work:

A. P. Burnett, Catastrophe Survived: Euripides' Plays of Mixed Reversal (Oxford, 1971). D. J. Conacher, Euripidean Drama: Myth, Theme and Structure (Toronto, 1967). Entretiens sur l'Antiquite Classique, VI: Euripide (Vandoeuvres and Geneva, 1960). Seven papers followed by discussion. M. Heath, The Poetics of Greek Tragedy (Stanford, 1987). --, Political Comedy in Aristophanes (Gottingen, 1987). D. Kovacs, The Heroic Muse (Baltimore, 1987). --, “Zeus in Euripides' Medea,” American Journal of Philology114 (1993) 45-70. M. Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets (Baltimore, 1981). A. Lesky, Greek Tragic Poetry, tr. M. Dillon (New Haven, 1983). A translation of Die tragische Dichtung der Hellenen, 3rd ed. (Gottingen, 1972), containing discussions of all the plays and full bibliography. J. D. Mikalson, Honor Thy Gods: Popular Religion in Greek Tragedy (Chapel Hill, 1991). A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, revised 2rd ed. with a supplement and corrections by J. Gould and D. M. Lewis (Oxford, 1988). K. Reinhardt, “Die Sinneskrise bei Euripides,” in Tradition und Geist (Gottingen, 1960), 223-56. A. Rivier, Essai sur le tragique d'Euripide, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1975). E. Segal, ed., Oxford Essays in Greek Tragedy (Oxford, 1984). Also printed as Greek Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism (New York, 1983). W. Steidle, Studien zum antiken Drama unter besonderer Berucksichtigung des Buhnenspiels (Munich, 1968). P. T. Stevens, “Euripides and the Athenians,” Journal of Hellenic Studies76 (1956) 87-94. H. Strohm, Euripides: Interpretationen zur dramatischen Form (Munich, 1957). O. Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (London, 1978). U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Einleitung in die griechische Tragodie (Berlin, 1907) [=Euripides: Herakles, vol. I (Berlin, 1895, reprinted Darmstadt, 1959)]. G. Zuntz, The Political Plays of Euripides (Manchester, 1963). David Kovacs

• tragic poet, buried in Macedonia: Paus. 1.2.2
• cenotaph at Athens: Paus. 1.2.2
• statue in theater at Athens: Paus. 1.21.1
• on the sons of Belus: Apollod. 2.1.4
• on the death of Parthenopaeus: Apollod. 3.6.8
• on the children of Alcmaeon: Apollod. 3.7.6
• as to the father and husband of Atalanta: Apollod. 3.9.2, Apollod. vol. 1.403