Euripides

Euripides was the third of the great Athenian tragedians, younger than Aeschylus and Sophocles and more controversial in his own time than either. Born around 480 BC, probably in Salamis, he wrote approximately ninety-two plays of which nineteen survive — a remarkable proportion compared to the seven each preserved from Aeschylus and Sophocles. His surviving plays include Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae, Electra, and The Trojan Women. Euripides was distinctive for his psychological realism, his willingness to present flawed and morally ambiguous characters — particularly women — with genuine sympathy, and his skeptical attitude toward the Olympian gods. Aristophanes mocked him relentlessly; Aristotle admired him while criticizing his dramaturgy; Goethe placed him alongside Homer as the two foundations of ancient literature. He spent his last years at the court of Archelaus of Macedon, where he died around 406 BC.

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