Euripides
Euripides was the youngest of the three great tragic playwrights of classical Athens. He lived in the last part of the 400s BC, during the Peloponnesian War. He competed against Sophocles in many dramatic competitions, and sometimes Euripides won, and sometimes Sophocles.
Many of Euripides' plays, like Medea and Phaedra, have important female characters, and he is sometimes thought of as very sympathetic to women and thinking that women should be treated more fairly. But this is probably not true, or only partly true. Euripides is using women to represent the irrational, or craziness, not thinking, following your nature instead of your mind. The action in the plays is between this irrational female character, and a rational man.
Why did people want to punch Socrates?
Where did Egyptians bury your liver?
How old are the Rocky Mountains?
What does a half-timbered house look like?
How do you spin wool?
(a project)
But it is not always the rational man who wins. Euripides insists that we all must acknowledge both sides of ourselves, the animal and the godly, and not pretend that we can always rule our bodies with our minds, like Star Trek's Vulcans. In the Bacchae, for instance, Pentheus tries to be rational, but ends up being torn into pieces because he will not let himself go dance.
To find out more about Euripides, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Greek Theatre, by Stewart Ross (1999). For kids.
Greek and Roman Theater, by Don Nardo. For teenagers.
The Bacchae and Other Plays, by Euripides, translated by Philip Vellacott (Penguin 1954). The plays themselves, in an inexpensive form.
Euripides (Oxford Readings in Classical Studies), by Judith Mossman (2003). A collection of essays by different people trying to explain what Euripides means. Good for college students, and maybe high school students too.
Some plays by Euripides:
Iphigeneia
Phaedra
Bacchae
Medea
Main Greek literature page
Main Greeks page
Main literature page
