Euripides

Introduction
Life and career
Dramatic and literary achievements
The plays
- Alcestis
- Medea
- Children of Heracles
- Hippolytus
- Andromache
- Hecuba
- Suppliants
- Electra
- Madness of Heracles
- Trojan Women
- Ion
- Iphigenia Among the Taurians
- Helen
- Phoenician Women
- Orestes
- Iphigenia at Aulis
- Bacchants
- Cyclops

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At a Glance

Euripides summary

Quizzes

Marble bust of Alexander the Great, in the British Museum, London, England. Hellenistic Greek, 2nd-1st century BC. Said to be from Alexandria, Egypt. Height: 37 cm.

Ancient Greece

Portrait of Plato (ca. 428- ca. 348 BC), Ancient Greek philosopher.

An Odyssey of Grecian Literature

Related Questions

How did Euripides adapt the myth of Medea for his play Medea?
How did Euripides’ competition record compare with Sophocles’ record?
How did Euripides connect ancient myths with the social and philosophical debates of his time?
How did Euripides’ lyric songs change after 415 BCE?
How did Euripides portray women in his tragedies?
How did Euripides rank among the three great tragic dramatists of classical Athens?
How did Euripides’ tragicomedies anticipate New Comedy?
How did Euripides use a deus ex machina at the end of his plays?
How did Euripides use prologues at the beginning of his plays?
How did the role of the chorus change in Euripides’ later plays?
How do Iphigenia and Orestes escape from Tauris in Iphigenia Among the Taurians?
How does Agave kill Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchants?
How does Apollo resolve the violent conflict at the end of Euripides’ Orestes?
How does Euripides’ Suppliants present both praise and criticism of Athenian democracy?
How does Heracles restore Alcestis to Admetus in Euripides’ Alcestis?
How does Hippolytus show Aphrodite’s revenge against a mortal who neglected her worship?
How does Odysseus defeat Polyphemus in Euripides’ Cyclops?
How does a recognition scene change the action in Euripides’ later plays?
How does the ending of Hippolytus reveal Hippolytus’ innocence?
How many plays by Euripides have survived?
How many plays did ancient sources attribute to Euripides?
What causes Agamemnon to sacrifice Iphigenia in Iphigenia at Aulis?
What did each competing poet present at the tragic contests of the Dionysia?
What did the ancient term lalia suggest about Euripides’ dramatic dialogue?
What evidence suggests that Euripides came from a well-off family?
What happens to Iphigenia after Artemis saves her in Iphigenia Among the Taurians?
What warning about religious ecstasy does Bacchants present?
What was Euripides’ only known public activity outside the theatre?
When did Euripides first compete at the Athenian dramatic festival?
When did Euripides live?
When did Euripides win his first dramatic competition?
Where did Euripides die?
Which Euripides plays are considered tragicomedies with happy endings?
Which Macedonian king invited Euripides to his court?
Which Sophist philosophers and scientist-philosophers did Euripides reportedly know?
Who were Euripides’ parents?
Why are the songs in Euripides’ Bacchants especially admired?
Why did Aristophanes joke that Euripides’ mother was a greengrocer?
Why did Euripides become more popular than Aeschylus and Sophocles in the Hellenistic period?
Why did Euripides leave Athens for Macedonia in 408 BCE?
Why did Euripides’ plays receive attention even though he won relatively few first prizes?
Why did some Athenians consider Euripides a woman hater?
Why does Alcestis die in place of her husband Admetus?
Why does Dionysus punish Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchants?
Why have more plays by Euripides survived than plays by Aeschylus or Sophocles?
Why have some modern critics considered Euripides’ deus ex machina endings artificial?
Why is Cyclops important in the history of ancient Greek drama?
What was Seneca’s family like?
What did Seneca write?
What were Seneca’s political accomplishments?
How did Seneca die?
Why is Federico García Lorca important?
What was Federico García Lorca’s childhood like?
How did Federico García Lorca die?
What was William Butler Yeats best known for?
What is William Butler Yeats’s most famous poem?
Whom did William Butler Yeats marry?

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External Websites

World History Encyclopedia - Euripides
Perseus Digital Library - A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology - Euripides
Amercian Society of Authors and Writers - Euripides
Classical Literature - Euripides ï¿½ The Last Great Tragedian | Plays, Tragedy

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Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

Euripides - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Euripides

Greek dramatist

Written by

H.D.F. Kitto

Professor of Greek, University of Bristol, England, 1944–62. Author of Greek Tragedy; Form and Meaning in Drama.

H.D.F. KittoAll

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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

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History

Euripides (born c. 484 bc, Athens [Greece]—died 406, Macedonia) was the last of classical Athens’s three great tragic dramatists, following Aeschylus and Sophocles. It is possible to reconstruct only the sketchiest biography of Euripides. His mother’s name was Cleito; his father’s name was Mnesarchus or Mnesarchides. One tradition states that his mother was a greengrocer who sold herbs in the marketplace. Aristophanes joked about this in comedy after comedy; but there is better indirect evidence...

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