Euripides

The influence of Euripides on the development of the dramatic genre cannot be overstated. Along with Sophocles and Aeschylus he is regarded as one of the three great Greek tragedians from classical antiquity. One of the most important of Euripides' surviving dramas is "Medea", the story of its title character, the wife of Jason of the Argonauts, who seeks revenge upon her unfaithful husband when he abandons her for a another bride. Set in Corinth...

A tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides, first produced at the Athens City Dionysia dramatic festival in 438 BCE (at which it won second prize). It is the oldest surviving work by Euripides, although at the time of its first performance he had already been producing plays for some 17 years. It presents the story of Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, who according to Greek mythology sacrificed her own life in order to bring her husband back...

These two powerful classics of ancient drama are excellent examples of the author's gift for adapting traditional material for decidedly nontraditional effect. Through them Euripides critically examines social and moral aspects of contemporary life and even specific political events. He endows his figures with shrewdly observed individual character, implicitly deflating the emblematic simplicity of traditional narratives and making him seem the

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Euripides I contains the plays?Alcestis,? translated by Richmond Lattimore;?Medea,? translated by Oliver Taplin;?The Children of Heracles,? translated by Mark Griffith; and?Hippolytus,? translated by David Grene. Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management...

One of Euripides' late plays, Ion tells the story of Kreousa, queen of Athens, and her son by the god Apollo. Apollo raped Kreousa; she secretly abandoned their child, assuming thereafter that the god had allowed him to die. Ion, however, is saved to become a ward of Apollo's temple at Delphi. In the play, Kreousa and her husband Xouthos go to Delphi to seek a remedy for their childlessness; Apollo, speaking through his oracle, gives Ion to Xouthos...

"Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. Under the general editorship of Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, each volume includes a critical introduction, commentary...

"In Andromache, Euripides challenges our concept of tragic character as he transforms our expectations of tragic structure. Through its subtly varied metrics, the play develops an increasingly complex plot and concludes with a simultaneous realization of realism and supernaturalism. The play takes place in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Andromache has become a concubine to Achilles' son, Neoptolemus, bearing him a child, Molossus. The captive Andromache...

Euripides was a brilliant and powerful innovator within the traditional framework of Attic drama.

Helen receives word from the exiled Greek Teucer that Menelaus never returned to Greece from Troy, and is presumed dead, putting her in the perilous position of being available for Theoclymenus to marry, and she consults the prophetess Theonoe, sister to Theoclymenus, to find out Menelaus' fate. Her fears are allayed when a stranger arrives in Egypt and turns out to be Menelaus himself, and the long-separated couple recognize each other. At first,...

Euripides, the youngest of the trio of great Greek tragedians was born at Salamis in 480 B.C., on the day when the Greeks won their momentous naval victory there over the fleet of the Persians. The precise social status of his parents is not clear but he received a good education, was early distinguished as an athlete, and showed talent in painting and oratory. He was a fellow student of Pericles, and his dramas show the influence of the philosophical...