Euripides Rubio

Euripides (; grc, Εὐριπίδης, Eurīpídēs, ; ) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the ''Suda'' says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete ('' Rhesus'' is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declinedMoses Hadas, ''Ten Plays by Euripides'', Bantam Classic (2006), Introduction, p. ixhe became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.L.P.E.Parker, ''Euripides: Alcestis'', Oxford University Press (2007), Introduction p. lx

Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became "the most tragic of poets",The epithet "the most tragic of poets" was mastered by Aristotle, probably in reference to a perceived preference for unhappy endings, but it has wider relevance: "For in his representation of human suffering Euripides pushes to the limits of what an audience can stand; some of his scenes are almost unbearable."B. Knox,'Euripides' in ''The Cambridge History of Classical Literature I: Greek Literature'', P. Easterling and B. Knox (ed.s), Cambridge University Press (1985), p. 339 focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown.Moses Hadas, ''Ten Plays by Euripides'', Bantam Classic (2006), Introduction, pp. xviii–xix He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's ''Othello'', Racine's ''Phèdre'', of Ibsen and Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.

His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia,Denys L. Page, ''Euripides: Medea'', Oxford University Press (1976), Introduction pp. ix–xii but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

Life

Traditional accounts of the author's life are found in many commentaries, and include details such as these: He was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC, with parents Cleito (mother) and Mnesarchus (father), a retailer who lived in a village near Athens. On receiving an oracle that his son was fated to win "crowns of victory", Mnesarchus insisted that the boy should train for a career in athletics. But the boy was destined for a career on the stage (where he was to win only five victories, one of these posthumously). He served for a short time as both dancer and torch-bearer at the rites of Apollo Zosterius. His education was not confined to athletics, studying also painting and philosophy under the masters Prodicus and Anaxagoras. He had two disastrous marriages, and both his wivesMelite and Choerine (the latter bearing him three sons)were unfaithful. He became a recluse, making a home for himself in a cave on Salamis (the Cave of Euripides, where a cult of the playwright developed after his death). "There he built an impressive library and pursued daily communion with the sea and sky". The details of his death are uncertain. It was traditionally held that he retired to the "rustic court" of King Archelaus in Macedonia, where he died in 406 BC, but modern scholarship is sceptical of these claims. It is possible that in reality he never visited Macedonia at all, or if he did, he might have been drawn there by King Archelaus with incentives that were also offered to other artists.

Such biographical details derive almost entirely from three unreliable sources:Justina Gregory, 'Euripidean Tragedy', in ''A Companion to Greek Tragedy'', Justina Gregory (ed.), Blackwell Publishing Ltd (2005), p. 252

* folklore, employed by the ancients to lend colour to the lives of celebrated authors;
* parody, employed by the comic poets to ridicule the tragic poets; and
* 'autobiographical' clues gleaned from his extant plays (a mere fraction of his total output).

The next three sections expand on the claims of each of these sources, respectively.

A fabled life

Euripides was the youngest in a group of three great tragedians, who were almost contemporaries: his first play was staged thirteen years after Sophocles' debut, and three years after Aeschylus's ''Oresteia''. The identity of the trio is neatly underscored by a patriotic account of their roles during Greece's great victory over Persia at the Battle of SalamisAeschylus fought there, Sophocles was just old enough to celebrate the victory in a boys' chorus, and Euripides was born on the very day of the battle. The apocryphal account, that he composed his works in a cave on Salamis island, was a late tradition, probably symbolizing the isolation of an intellectual ahead of his time. Much of his life, and his whole career, coincided with the struggle between Athens and Sparta for hegemony in Greece, but he did not live to see the final defeat of his city. It is said that he died in Macedonia after being attacked by the Molossian hounds of King Archelaus, and that his cenotaph near Piraeus was struck by lightningsigns of his unique powers, whether for good or ill (according to one modern scholar, his death might have been caused instead by the harsh Macedonian winter). In an account by Plutarch, the catastrophic failure of the Sicilian expedition led Athenians to trade renditions of Euripides' lyrics to their enemies in return for food and drink (''Life of Nicias'' 29). Plutarch also provides the story that the victorious Spartan generals, having planned the demolition of Athens and the enslavement of its people, grew merciful after being entertained at a banquet by lyrics from Euripides' play ''Electra'': "they felt that it would be a barbarous act to annihilate a city which produced such men" (''Life of Lysander'').

A comic life

Tragic poets were often mocked by comic poets during the dramatic festivals Dionysia and Lenaia, and Euripides was travestied more than most. Aristophanes scripted him as a character in at least three plays: ''The Acharnians'', '' Thesmophoriazusae'' and ''The Frogs''. But Aristophanes also borrowed, rather than merely satirized, some of the tragedian's methods; he was himself ridiculed by Cratinus, another comic poet, as: According to another comic poet, Teleclides, the plays of Euripides were co-authored by the philosopher Socrates: According to Aristophanes, the alleged co-author was a celebrated actor, Cephisophon, who also shared the tragedian's house and his wife, while Socrates taught an entire school of quibblers like Euripides:

In ''The Frogs'', written when Euripides and Aeschylus were dead, Aristophanes has the god Dionysus venturing down to Hades in search of a good poet to bring back to Athens. After a debate between the shades of Aeschylus and Euripides, the god brings Aeschylus back to life, as more useful to Athens, for his wisdom, rejecting Euripides as merely clever. Such comic 'evidence' suggests that Athenians admired Euripides even while they mistrusted his intellectualism, at least during the long war with Sparta. Aeschylus had written his own epitaph commemorating his life as a warrior fighting for Athens against Persia, without any mention of his success as a playwright; and Sophocles was celebrated by his contemporaries for his social gifts, and contributions to public life as a state official; but there are no records of Euripides' public life except as a dramatisthe could well have been "a brooding and bookish recluse". He is presented as such in ''The Acharnians'', where Aristophanes shows him to be living morosely in a precarious house, surrounded by the tattered costumes of his disreputable characters (and yet Agathon, another tragic poet, is discovered in a later play, '' Thesmophoriazusae'', to be living in circumstances almost as bizarre). Euripides' mother was a humble vendor of vegetables, according to the comic tradition, yet his plays indicate that he had a liberal education and hence a privileged background.

A tragedian's life

Euripides first competed in the City Dionysia, the famous Athenian dramatic festival, in 455 BC, one year after the death of Aeschylus; and did not win first prize until 441 BC. His final competition in Athens was in 408 BC. ''The Bacchae'' and ''Iphigenia in Aulis'' were performed in 405 BC, and first prize was awarded posthumously. He won first prize only five times.

His plays, and those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, indicate a difference in outlook between the threea generation gap probably due to the Sophistic enlightenment in the middle decades of the 5th century: Aeschylus still looked back to the archaic period, Sophocles was in transition between periods, and Euripides was fully imbued with the new spirit of the classical age. When Euripides' plays are sequenced in time, they also reveal that his outlook might have changed, providing a "spiritual biography", along these lines:
* an early period of high tragedy (''Medea'', '' Hippolytus'')
* a patriotic period at the outset of the Peloponnesian War (''Children of Heracles'', '' The Suppliants'')
* a middle period of disillusionment at the senselessness of war (''Hecuba'', ''The Trojan Women'')
* an escapist period with a focus on romantic intrigue (''Ion'', ''Iphigenia in Tauris'', '' Helen'')
* a final period of tragic despair (''Orestes'', ''Phoenician Women'', ''The Bacchae'')
However, about 80% of his plays have been lost, and even the extant plays do not present a fully consistent picture of his 'spiritual' development (for example, ''Iphigenia in Aulis'' is dated with the 'despairing' ''Bacchae'', yet it contains elements that became typical of New Comedy). In the ''Bacchae'', he restores the chorus and messenger speech to their traditional role in the tragic plot, and the play appears to be the culmination of a regressive or archaizing tendency in his later works (for which see Chronology below). Believed to have been composed in the wilds of Macedonia, ''Bacchae'' also dramatizes a primitive side to Greek religion, and some modern scholars have interpreted this particular play biographically, therefore, as:
* a kind of death-bed conversion or renunciation of atheism;
* the poet's attempt to ward off the charge of impiety that was later to overtake his friend Socrates;
* evidence of a new belief that religion cannot be analysed rationally.
One of his earliest extant plays, ''Medea'', includes a speech that he seems to have written in defence of himself as an intellectual ahead of his time (spoken by Medea):

Work

Athenian tragedy in performance during Euripides' lifetime was a public contest between playwrights. The state funded it and awarded prizes. The language was metrical, spoken and sung. The performance area included a circular floor (called orchestra) where the chorus could dance, a space for actors (three speaking actors in Euripides' time), a backdrop or skene, and some special effects: an ekkyklema (used to bring the skene's "indoors" outdoors) and a mechane (used to lift actors in the air, as in deus ex machina). With the introduction of the third actor (attributed to Aeschylus by Themistius; to Sophocles by Aristotle), acting also began to be regarded as a skill worth prizes, requiring a long apprenticeship in the chorus. Euripides and other playwrights accordingly composed more and more arias for accomplished actors to sing, and this tendency became more marked in his later plays: tragedy was a "living and ever-changing genre" (cf. previous section, and Chronology; a list of his plays is below).

The comic poet Aristophanes is the earliest known critic to characterize Euripides as a spokesman for destructive, new ideas associated with declining standards in both society and tragedy (see Reception for more). But fifth-century tragedy was a social gathering for "carrying out quite publicly the maintenance and development of mental infrastructure", and it offered spectators a "platform for an utterly unique form of institutionalized discussion". The dramatist's role was not only to entertain but also educate fellow citizenshe was expected to have a message.Philip Vellacott, ''Euripides: The Bacchae and Other Plays'', Penguin Classics (1954), Introduction p. 10 Traditional myth provided the subject matter, but the dramatist was meant to be innovative, which led to novel characterizations of heroic figures and use of the mythical past as a tool for discussing present issues. The difference between Euripides and his older colleagues was one of degree: his characters talked about the present more controversially and pointedly than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, sometimes even challenging the democratic order. Thus, for example, Odysseus is represented in ''Hecuba'' (lines 131–32) as "agile-minded, sweet-talking, demos-pleasing", i.e. similar to the war-time demagogues that were active in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Speakers in the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles sometimes distinguish between slaves who are servile by nature and those servile by circumstance, but Euripides' speakers go further, positing an individual's mental, rather than social or physical, state as a true indication of worth. For example, in '' Hippolytus'', a love-sick queen rationalizes her position and, reflecting on adultery, arrives at this comment on intrinsic merit:

Euripides' characters resembled contemporary Athenians rather than heroic figures of myth.

As mouthpieces for contemporary issues, they "all seem to have had at least an elementary course in public speaking". The dialogue often contrasts so strongly with the mythical and heroic setting that it can seem like Euripides aimed at parody. For example, in ''The Trojan Women'', the heroine's rationalized prayer elicits comment from Menelaus:

Athenian citizens were familiar with rhetoric in the assembly and law courts, and some scholars believe that Euripides was more interested in his characters as speakers with cases to argue than as characters with lifelike personalities.B. M. Knox, 'Euripides' in ''The Cambridge H