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116-683: The name means originating from Hesperos (evening). Hesperos , or Vesper in Latin, is the origin of the name Hesperus , the evening star (i.e. the planet Venus ) as well as having a shared root with the English word "west". Ordinarily, the Hesperides number three, like the other Greek triads (the Three Graces and the Three Fates ). "Since the Hesperides themselves are mere symbols of

232-528: A "spiritual biography", along these lines: 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

348-431: A barbarous act to annihilate a city which produced such men" ( Life of Lysander ). 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

464-490: A bewildering variety of labels. He has been described as 'the poet of the Greek enlightenment' and also as 'Euripides the irrationalist'; as a religious sceptic if not an atheist, but on the other hand, as a believer in divine providence and the ultimate justice of divine dispensation. He has been seen as a profound explorer of human psychology and also a rhetorical poet who subordinated consistency of character to verbal effect; as

580-467: A change in speakers was loosely denoted with a variety of signs, such as equivalents of the modern dash, colon, and full-stop. The absence of modern literary conventions (which aid comprehension), was an early and persistent source of errors, affecting transmission. Errors were also introduced when Athens replaced its old Attic alphabet with the Ionian alphabet, a change sanctioned by law in 403–402 BC, adding

696-476: 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

812-485: A difference in outlook between the three—a 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

928-532: A joint project with Brigham Young University , using multi-spectral imaging technology to retrieve previously illegible writing (see References). Some of this work employed infrared technology—previously used for satellite imaging—to detect previously unknown material by Euripides, in fragments of the Oxyrhynchus papyri , a collection of ancient manuscripts held by the university. It is from such materials that modern scholars try to piece together copies of

1044-510: 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 , but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources. Traditional accounts of the author's life are found in many commentaries, and include details such as these: He

1160-534: A loosely structured, simple, and jovial form of entertainment. But in Cyclops (the only complete satyr-play that survives), Euripides structured the entertainment more like a tragedy and introduced a note of critical irony typical of his other work. His genre-bending inventiveness is shown above all in Alcestis , a blend of tragic and satyric elements. This fourth play in his tetralogy for 438 BC (i.e., it occupied

1276-432: A man most fell in wanton violence, most grim in form; and his eyes flashed beneath his scowling brow; a ruthless wretch; and he was clad in the skin of a monstrous lion of raw hide, untanned; and he bare a sturdy bow of olive, and a bow, wherewith he shot and killed this monster here. So he too came, as one traversing the land on foot, parched with thirst; and he rushed wildly through this spot, searching for water, but nowhere

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1392-433: A misogynist and a feminist; as a realist who brought tragic action down to the level of everyday life and as a romantic poet who chose unusual myths and exotic settings. He wrote plays which have been widely understood as patriotic pieces supporting Athens' war against Sparta and others which many have taken as the work of the anti-war dramatist par excellence, even as attacks on Athenian imperialism. He has been recognized as

1508-506: A new complication to the task of copying. Many more errors came from the tendency of actors to interpolate words and sentences, producing so many corruptions and variations that a law was proposed by Lycurgus of Athens in 330 BC "that the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides should be written down and preserved in a public office; and that the town clerk should read the text over with the actors; and that all performances which did not comply with this regulation should be illegal." The law

1624-468: 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 dramatist—he 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

1740-527: A position in the "ever-changing genre" where he could easily move between tragic, comic, romantic, and political effects. This versatility appears in individual plays and also over the course of his career. Potential for comedy lay in his use of 'contemporary' characters, in his sophisticated tone, his relatively informal Greek (see In Greek below), and in his ingenious use of plots centred on motifs that later became standard in Menander's New Comedy (for example

1856-420: A preoccupation with individual psychology and its irrational aspects is evident....In his hands tragedy for the first time probed the inner recesses of the human soul and let passions spin the plot ." The tension between reason and passion is symbolized by his characters' relationship with the gods: For example, Hecuba's prayer is answered not by Zeus, nor by the law of reason, but by Menelaus, as if speaking for

1972-410: A radical change of direction". Euripides is also known for his use of irony. Many Greek tragedians make use of dramatic irony to bring out the emotion and realism of their characters or plays, but Euripides uses irony to foreshadow events and occasionally amuse his audience. For example, in his play Heracles , Heracles comments that all men love their children and wish to see them grow. The irony here

2088-537: A rationalized cosmos, but the speech is ill-suited to her audience, the unsophisticated listener Menelaus, and is found to not suit the cosmos either (her grandson is murdered by the Greeks). In Hippolytus , speeches appear verbose and ungainly, as if to underscore the limitations of language. Like Euripides, both Aeschylus and Sophocles created comic effects, contrasting the heroic with the mundane, but they employed minor supporting characters for that purpose. Euripides

2204-451: A select edition, possibly for use in schools, with some commentaries or scholia recorded in the margins. Similar editions had appeared for Aeschylus and Sophocles—the only plays of theirs that survive today. Euripides, however, was more fortunate than the other tragedians, with a second edition of his work surviving, compiled in alphabetical order as if from a set of his collect works; but without scholia attached. This "Alphabetical" edition

2320-405: 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 wives—Melite and Choerine (the latter bearing him three sons)—were unfaithful. He became a recluse, making a home for himself in a cave on Salamis (

2436-443: 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

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2552-415: A speech that he seems to have written in defence of himself as an intellectual ahead of his time (spoken by Medea): σκαιοῖσι μὲν γὰρ καινὰ προσφέρων σοφὰ δόξεις ἀχρεῖος κοὐ σοφὸς πεφυκέναι· τῶν δ᾿ αὖ δοκούντων εἰδέναι τι ποικίλον κρείσσων νομισθεὶς ἐν πόλει λυπρὸς φανῇ. ἐγὼ δὲ καὐτὴ τῆσδε κοινωνῶ τύχης [298–302]. If you bring novel wisdom to fools, you will be regarded as useless, not wise; and if

2668-454: 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 citizens—he

2784-494: A spring created by Heracles who likewise longing for a draught while wandering the land, smote a rock near Lake Triton after which the water gushed out. The following passage recounts this meeting of the Argonauts and the nymphs: Then, like raging hounds, they [i.e. Argonauts] rushed to search for a spring; for besides their suffering and anguish, a parching thirst lay upon them, and not in vain did they wander; but they came to

2900-498: 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: ἐκ δὲ γενναίων δόμων τόδ᾿ ἦρξε θηλείαισι γίγνεσθαι κακόν· ὅταν γὰρ αἰσχρὰ τοῖσιν ἐσθλοῖσιν δοκῇ, ἦ κάρτα δόξει τοῖς κακοῖς γ᾿ εἶναι καλά. [...] μόνον δὲ τοῦτό φασ᾿ ἁμιλλᾶσθαι βίῳ, γνώμην δικαίαν κἀγαθὴν ὅτῳ παρῇ [409–427]. This contagion began for

3016-533: A war theme, so that his plays are an extraordinary mix of elements. The Trojan Women , for example, is a powerfully disturbing play on the theme of war's horrors, apparently critical of Athenian imperialism (it was composed in the aftermath of the Melian massacre and during the preparations for the Sicilian Expedition ), yet it features the comic exchange between Menelaus and Hecuba quoted above, and

3132-435: A willow's sacred trunk. And forth from these trees their forms looked out, as clear as they were before, a marvel exceeding great, and Aegle spake with gentle words answering their longing looks: "Surely there has come hither a mighty succour to your toils, that most accursed man, who robbed our guardian serpent of life and plucked the golden apples of the goddesses and is gone; and has left bitter grief for us. For yesterday came

3248-498: Is an issue for many critics, such as Aristotle, who cited Iphigenia in Aulis as an example ( Poetics 1454a32). For others, psychological inconsistency is not a stumbling block to good drama: "Euripides is in pursuit of a larger insight: he aims to set forth the two modes, emotional and rational, with which human beings confront their own mortality." Some think unpredictable behaviour realistic in tragedy: "everywhere in Euripides

3364-619: Is called Erythia, by Timæus and Silenus Aphrodisias, and by the natives the Isle of Juno . The island was the home of Geryon , who was overcome by Heracles . Hespera or The Hesperides tend a blissful garden in a far western corner of the world, located near the Atlas mountains in North Africa at the edge of the encircling Oceanus the world ocean . According to Pliny the Elder, the garden

3480-585: Is depicted sitting in bliss in the Gardens of the Hesperides, attended by the maidens. After the hero Heracles killed Ladon and stole the golden apples, the Argonauts during their journey, came to the Hesperian plain the next day. The band of heroes asked for the mercy of the Hesperides to guide them to a source of water in order to replenish their thirst. The goddesses pitying the young men, directed them to

3596-436: Is not to sit beside Socrates and chatter, casting the arts aside and ignoring the best of the tragedian’s craft. To hang around killing time in pretentious conversation and hairsplitting twaddle is the mark of a man who's lost his mind 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

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3712-433: Is one of the Hesperides. The name was applied to an island close to the coast of southern Hispania , which was the site of the original Punic colony of Gades (modern Cadiz). Pliny's Natural History (VI.36) records of the island of Gades: On the side which looks towards Spain, at about 100 paces distance, is another long island, three miles wide, on which the original city of Gades stood. By Ephorus and Philistides it

3828-565: 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 declined —he became, in

3944-409: Is shown to be flawed, as if Euripides were exploring the problematical nature of language and communication: "For speech points in three different directions at once, to the speaker, to the person addressed, to the features in the world it describes, and each of these directions can be felt as skewed". For example, in the quotation above, Hecuba presents herself as a sophisticated intellectual describing

4060-472: Is that Heracles will be driven into madness by Hera and will kill his children. Similarly, in Helen , Theoclymenus remarks how happy he is that his sister has the gift of prophecy and will warn him of any plots or tricks against him (the audience already knows that she has betrayed him). In this instance, Euripides uses irony not only for foreshadowing but also for comic effect—which few tragedians did. Likewise, in

4176-509: Is the Evening Star , the planet Venus in the evening. A son of the dawn goddess Eos ( Roman Aurora ), he is the half-brother of her other son, Phosphorus (also called Eosphorus; the "Morning Star"). Hesperus' Roman equivalent is Vesper (cf. "evening", "supper", "evening star", "west" ). By one account, Hesperus' father was Cephalus , a mortal, while Phosphorus was the star god Astraeus . Other sources, however, state that Hesperus

4292-607: Is the man <who> is roasting a new play for Euripides, and Socrates is laying down the kindling. [...] Euripides bolted together with Socrates Aristophanes alleged that the 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: χαρίεν οὖν μὴ Σωκράτει παρακαθήμενον λαλεῖν ἀποβαλόντα μουσικὴν τά τε μέγιστα παραλιπόντα τῆς τραγῳδικῆς τέχνης. τὸ δ᾿ ἐπὶ σεμνοῖσιν λόγοισι καὶ σκαριφησμοῖσι λήρων διατριβὴν ἀργὸν ποιεῖσθαι, παραφρονοῦντος ἀνδρός So what's stylish

4408-626: The Bacchae , Pentheus's first threat to the god Dionysus is that if Pentheus catches him in his city, he will 'chop off his head', whereas it is Pentheus who is beheaded at the end of the play. The spoken language of the Euripidean plays is not fundamentally different in style from that of Aeschylus or Sophocles—it employs poetic meters , a rarefied vocabulary, fullness of expression, complex syntax, and ornamental figures, all aimed at representing an elevated style. But its rhythms are somewhat freer, and more natural, than that of his predecessors, and

4524-522: 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

4640-542: The Fabulae names them as Aegle, Hesperie, and Aerica. In another source, they are named Aegle , Arethusa , and Hesperethusa, the three daughters of Hesperus. Hesiod says that these "clear-voiced Hesperides", daughters of Ceto and Phorcys, guarded the golden apples beyond Ocean in the far west of the world, gives the number of the Hesperides as four, and their names as: Aigle (or Aegle, "dazzling light"), Erytheia (or Erytheis), Hesperia ("sunset glow") whose name refers to

4756-606: The Hellenistic Age , a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer , Demosthenes , and Menander . 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", focusing on

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4872-683: The Old Man of the Sea , the shape-shifting sea god, to learn where the Garden of the Hesperides was located. In some versions of the tale, Heracles went to the Caucasus , where Prometheus was confined. The Titan directed him concerning his course through the land of the peoples in the farthest north and the perils to be encountered on his homeward march after slaying Geryon in the farthest west. Follow this straight road; and, first of all, thou shalt come to

4988-471: 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

5104-420: 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

5220-484: The island of Crete , was also called one of the Hesperides. They are sometimes called the "Western Maidens", the "Daughters of Evening", or Erythrai , and the "Sunset Goddesses", designations all apparently tied to their imagined location in the distant west. Hesperis is appropriately the personification of the evening (as Eos is of the dawn) and the Evening Star is Hesperus . In addition to their tending of

5336-554: The 'recognition scene'). Other tragedians also used recognition scenes, but they were heroic in emphasis, as in Aeschylus's The Libation Bearers , which Euripides parodied in Electra (Euripides was unique among the tragedians in incorporating theatrical criticism in his plays). Traditional myth with its exotic settings, heroic adventures, and epic battles offered potential for romantic melodrama as well as for political comments on

5452-536: The Boreades, where do thou beware the roaring hurricane, lest unawares it twist thee up and snatch thee away in wintry whirlwind. As payment, Heracles freed Prometheus from his daily torture. This tale is more usually found in the position of the Erymanthian Boar , since it is associated with Chiron choosing to forgo immortality and taking Prometheus' place. Another story recounts how Heracles, either at

5568-469: The Byzantine period, following a change in script (from uncial to minuscule ), and many were "homophonic" errors—equivalent, in English, to substituting "right" for "write"; except that there were more opportunities for Byzantine scribes to make these errors, because η, ι, οι and ει, were pronounced similarly in the Byzantine period. Around 200 AD, ten of the plays of Euripides began to be circulated in

5684-787: 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. Some modern scholars however claim that in reality Euripides may have 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: The next three sections expand on

5800-528: The Garden of the Hesperides grew. After Heracles completed his first ten Labours , Eurystheus gave him two more claiming that neither the Hydra counted (because Iolaus helped Heracles) nor the Augean stables (either because he received payment for the job or because the rivers did the work). The first of these two additional Labours was to steal the apples from the garden of the Hesperides. Heracles first caught

5916-536: The Hellenistic period (as mentioned in the introduction) and, due to Seneca's adaptation of his work for Roman audiences, "it was Euripides, not Aeschylus or Sophocles, whose tragic muse presided over the rebirth of tragedy in Renaissance Europe." In the seventeenth century, Racine expressed admiration for Sophocles, but was more influenced by Euripides ( Iphigenia in Aulis and Hippolytus were

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6032-508: The Hesperides is Hera 's orchard in the west, where either a single apple tree or a grove grows, producing golden apples . According to the legend, when the marriage of Zeus and Hera took place, the different deities came with nuptial presents for the latter, and among them the goddess Gaia , with branches having golden apples growing on them as a wedding gift. Hera, greatly admiring these, begged of Gaia to plant them in her gardens, which extended as far as Mount Atlas. The Hesperides were given

6148-403: The apples himself, but Heracles tricked him again by agreeing to take his place on condition that Atlas relieve him temporarily so that Heracles could make his cloak more comfortable. Atlas agreed, but Heracles reneged and walked away, carrying the apples. According to an alternative version, Heracles slew Ladon instead and stole the apples. There is another variation to the story where Heracles

6264-568: The arrows had left in his blood the bitter gall of the Lernaean hydra, flies withered and died over the festering wounds. And close at hand the Hesperides, their white arms flung over their golden heads, lamented shrilly; and the heroes drew near suddenly; but the maidens, at their quick approach, at once became dust and earth where they stood. Orpheus marked the divine portent, and for his comrades addressed them in prayer: "O divine ones, fair and kind, be gracious, O queens, whether ye be numbered among

6380-426: The chorus considers Athens, the "blessed land of Theus", to be a desirable refuge—such complexity and ambiguity are typical both of his "patriotic" and "anti-war" plays. Tragic poets in the fifth century competed against one another at the City Dionysia , each with a tetralogy of three tragedies and a satyr play . The few extant fragments of satyr plays attributed to Aeschylus and Sophocles indicate that these were

6496-402: The city regards you as greater than those with a reputation for cleverness, you will be thought vexatious. I myself am a sharer in this lot. 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

6612-504: The claims of each of these sources, respectively. 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 Salamis —Aeschylus fought there, Sophocles

6728-511: The colour of the setting sun, red, yellow, or gold; and lastly Arethusa. In addition, Hesperia, and Arethusa, the so-called "ox-eyed Hesperethusa". Apollodorus gives the number of the Hesperides also as four, namely: Aigle, Erytheia, Hesperia (or Hesperie), and Arethusa while Fulgentius named them as Aegle, Hesperie, Medusa , and Arethusa. However, the historiographer Diodorus in his account stated that they are seven in number with no information of their names. An ancient vase painting attests

6844-683: The comically insistent rhyme "is not Love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides" in Love's Labours Lost (iv.iii) and John Milton mentioned the "ladies of the Hesperides" in Paradise Regained (ii.357). Hesperides (published 1647) was the title of a collection of pastoral and religious verse by the Royalist poet Robert Herrick . Hesperus In Greek mythology , Hesperus ( / ˈ h ɛ s p ə r ə s / ; Ancient Greek : Ἕσπερος , romanized :  Hésperos )

6960-482: The daughters of Atlas and Hesperis , or of Phorcys and Ceto , or of Zeus and Themis . In a Roman literary source, the nymphs are simply said to be the daughters of Hesperus , embodiment of the "west". Nevertheless, among the names given to them, though never all at once, there were either three, four, or seven Hesperides . Apollonius of Rhodes gives the number of three with their names as Aigle , Erytheis , and Hespere (or Hespera). Hyginus in his preface to

7076-620: 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

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7192-438: The example to "Hesperus is Phosphorus" so that it utilized proper names. Saul Kripke used the sentence to posit that the knowledge of something necessary (in this case the identity of Hesperus and Phosphorus) could be empirical rather than knowable a priori . Euripides Euripides ( c.  480  – c.  406 BC ) was a Greek tragedian of classical Athens . Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles , he

7308-678: The extent that after the failure of the Sicilian Expedition , many Athenian captives were released, simply for being able to teach their captors whatever fragments they could remember of his work. Less than a hundred years later, Aristotle developed an almost "biological' theory of the development of tragedy in Athens: the art form grew under the influence of Aeschylus, matured in the hands of Sophocles, then began its precipitous decline with Euripides. However, "his plays continued to be applauded even after those of Aeschylus and Sophocles had come to seem remote and irrelevant"; they became school classics in

7424-556: The external order of tragedy but missed its entire meaning". This view influenced Friedrich Nietzsche , who seems, however, not to have known the Euripidean plays well. But literary figures, such as the poet Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning , could study and admire the Schlegels, while still appreciating Euripides as "our Euripides the human" ( Wine of Cyprus stanza 12). Classicists such as Arthur Verrall and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff reacted against

7540-423: The female sex with the nobility. For when those of noble station resolve on base acts, surely the base-born will regard such acts as good. [...] One thing only, they say, competes in value with life, the possession of a heart blameless and good. Euripides' characters resembled contemporary Athenians rather than heroic figures of myth. For achieving his end Euripides' regular strategy is a very simple one: retaining

7656-468: 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 lightning—signs 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

7772-435: The first of goddesses with willing hearts will we bring countless gifts, libations and banquets. So he spake, beseeching them with plaintive voice; and they from their station near pitied their pain; and lo! First of all they caused grass to spring from the earth; and above the grass rose up tall shoots, and then flourishing saplings grew standing upright far above the earth. Hespere became a poplar and Eretheis an elm, and Aegle

7888-577: The following names as four: Asterope , Chrysothemis , Hygieia, and Lipara ; on another seven names as Aiopis , Antheia, Donakis , Calypso , Mermesa , Nelisa , and Tara . A pyxis has Hippolyte , Mapsaura, and Thetis . Petrus Apianus attributed to these stars a mythical connection of their own. He believed that they were the seven Hesperides, nymph daughters of Atlas and Hesperis . Their names were: Aegle, Erythea, Arethusa, Hestia, Hespera, Hesperusa, and Hespereia. A certain Crete , possible eponym of

8004-479: The garden, they have taken great pleasure in singing. Euripides calls them "minstrel maids" as they possess the power of sweet song. The Hesperides could be hamadryad nymphs or epimeliads as suggested by a passage in which they change into trees: "... Hespere became a poplar and Eretheis an elm, and Aegle a willow's sacred trunk ..." and in the same account, they are described figuratively or literally to have white arms and golden heads. Erytheia ("the red one")

8120-505: The gifts the apples embody, they cannot be actors in a human drama. Their abstract, interchangeable names are a symptom of their impersonality", classicist Evelyn Byrd Harrison has observed. They are sometimes portrayed as the evening daughters of Night ( Nyx ), either alone, or with Darkness ( Erebus ), in accord with the way Eos in the farthermost east, in Colchis , is the daughter of the titan Hyperion . The Hesperides are also listed as

8236-461: The golden apples for him, by offering to hold up the heavens for a little while (Atlas was able to take them as, in this version, he was the father or otherwise related to the Hesperides). This would have made this task – like the Hydra and Augean stables – void because he had received help. Upon his return, Atlas decided that he did not want to take the heavens back, and instead offered to deliver

8352-519: The heavenly goddesses, or those beneath the earth, or be called the Solitary nymphs; come, O nymphs, sacred race of Oceanus, appear manifest to our longing eyes and show us some spring of water from the rock or some sacred flow gushing from the earth, goddesses, wherewith we may quench the thirst that burns us unceasingly. And if ever again we return in our voyaging to the Achaean land, then to you among

8468-478: The inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. 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

8584-504: The literary conventions that modern readers expect: there was still no spacing between words; little or no punctuation; and no stage directions; but abbreviated names denoted changes of speaker; lyrics were broken into "cola" and "strophai", or lines and stanzas; and a system of accentuation was introduced. After this creation of a standard edition, the text was fairly safe from errors, besides slight and gradual corruption introduced with tedious copying. Many of these trivial errors occurred in

8700-427: The lyrics often seem dislocated from the action, but the extent and significance of this is "a matter of scholarly debate". See Chronology for details about his style. Euripides has aroused, and continues to arouse, strong opinions for and against his work: He was a problem to his contemporaries and he is one still; over the course of centuries since his plays were first produced he has been hailed or indicted under

8816-563: The main criterion for success (the system of selecting judges appears to have been flawed), and merely being chosen to compete was a mark of distinction. Moreover, to have been singled out by Aristophanes for so much comic attention is proof of popular interest in his work. Sophocles was appreciative enough of the younger poet to be influenced by him, as is evident in his later plays Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus . According to Plutarch, Euripides had been very well received in Sicily, to

8932-466: The mainland! According to Diodorus' account, the Hesperides did not have the golden apples. Instead they possessed flocks of sheep which excelled in beauty and were therefore called for their beauty, as the poets might do, "golden apples", just as Aphroditê is called "golden" because of her loveliness. Others also say that it was because the sheep had a peculiar colour like gold that they got this designation. This version further states that Dracon ("dragon")

9048-514: The models for his plays Iphigénie and Phèdre ). Euripides' reputation was to take a beating in the early 19th century, when Friedrich Schlegel and his brother August Wilhelm Schlegel championed Aristotle's 'biological' model of theatre history, identifying Euripides with the moral, political, and artistic degeneration of Athens. August Wilhelm's Vienna lectures on dramatic art and literature went through four editions between 1809 and 1846; and, in them, he opined that Euripides "not only destroyed

9164-428: The mouths of characters, such as these words of his heroine Medea : [...] ὡς τρὶς ἂν παρ᾿ ἀσπίδα στῆναι θέλοιμ᾿ ἂν μᾶλλον ἢ τεκεῖν ἅπαξ [250–251]. I would rather stand three times with a shield in battle than give birth once. The textual transmission of the plays, from the 5th century BC, when they were first written, until the era of the printing press, was a largely haphazard process. Much of Euripides' work

9280-491: 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: ΕΚΑΒΗ: [...] Ζεύς, εἴτ᾿ ἀνάγκη φύσεος εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν, προσηυξάμην σε· πάντα γὰρ δι᾿ ἀψόφου βαίνων κελεύθου κατὰ δίκην τὰ θνήτ᾿ ἄγεις. ΜΕΝΕΛΑΟΣ: τί δ᾿ ἔστιν; εὐχὰς ὡς ἐκαίνισας θεῶν [886–889]. Hecuba : [...] Zeus, whether you are

9396-536: The necessity of nature or the mind of mortal men, I address you in prayer! For proceeding on a silent path you direct all mortal affairs toward justice! Menelaus : What does this mean? How strange your prayer to the gods is! 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. They are self-conscious about speaking formally, and their rhetoric

9512-428: The old gods. And the perhaps most famous example is in Bacchae where the god Dionysus savages his own converts. When the gods do appear (in eight of the extant plays), they appear "lifeless and mechanical". Sometimes condemned by critics as an unimaginative way to end a story, the spectacle of a "god" making a judgement or announcement from a theatrical crane might actually have been intended to provoke scepticism about

9628-421: The old stories and the great names, as his theatre required, he imagines his people as contemporaries subjected to contemporary kinds of pressures, and examines their motivations, conduct and fate in the light of contemporary problems, usages and ideals. 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

9744-605: The original plays. Sometimes the picture is almost lost. Thus, for example, two extant plays, The Phoenician Women and Iphigenia in Aulis , are significantly corrupted by interpolations (the latter possibly being completed post mortem by the poet's son); and the very authorship of Rhesus is a matter of dispute. In fact, the very existence of the Alphabet plays, or rather the absence of an equivalent edition for Sophocles and Aeschylus, could distort our notions of distinctive Euripidean qualities—most of his least "tragic" plays are in

9860-464: The position conventionally reserved for satyr plays) is a "tragedy", featuring Heracles as a satyric hero in conventional satyr-play scenes: an arrival, a banquet, a victory over an ogre (in this case, death), a happy ending, a feast, and a departure for new adventures. Most of the big innovations in tragedy were made by Aeschylus and Sophocles, but "Euripides made innovations on a smaller scale that have impressed some critics as cumulatively leading to

9976-411: The precursor of New Comedy and also what Aristotle called him: 'the most tragic of poets' ( Poetics 1453a30). And not one of these descriptions is entirely false. — Bernard Knox Aeschylus gained thirteen victories as a dramatist; Sophocles at least twenty; Euripides only four in his lifetime; and this has often been taken as indication of the latter's unpopularity. But a first place might not have been

10092-457: The religious and heroic dimension of his plays. Similarly, his plays often begin in a banal manner that undermines theatrical illusion. Unlike Sophocles, who established the setting and background of his plays in the introductory dialogue, Euripides used a monologue in which a divinity or human character simply tells the audience all it needs to know to understand what follows. Aeschylus and Sophocles were innovative, but Euripides had arrived at

10208-463: The remainder is derived from elsewhere. P contains all the extant plays of Euripides, L is missing The Trojan Women and latter part of The Bacchae . In addition to L, P, and many other medieval manuscripts, there are fragments of plays on papyrus. These papyrus fragments are often recovered only with modern technology. In June 2005, for example, classicists at the University of Oxford worked on

10324-407: The sacred plain where Ladon, the serpent of the land, till yesterday kept watch over the golden apples in the garden of Atlas; and all around the nymphs, the Hesperides, were busied, chanting their lovely song. But at that time, stricken by Heracles, he lay fallen by the trunk of the apple-tree; only the tip of his tail was still writhing; but from his head down his dark spine he lay lifeless; and where

10440-422: The sake of rhetorical display"; and one spring to the defence: "His plays are remarkable for their range of tones and the gleeful inventiveness, which morose critics call cynical artificiality, of their construction." Unique among writers of ancient Athens, Euripides demonstrated sympathy towards the underrepresented members of society. His male contemporaries were frequently shocked by the heresies he put into

10556-918: The same planet Venus. "Heosphoros" in the Greek Septuagint and "Lucifer" in Jerome 's Latin Vulgate were used to translate the Hebrew " Helel " (Venus as the brilliant, bright or shining one), "son of Shahar (Dawn)" in the Hebrew version of Isaiah 14:12. Eosphorus/Hesperus was said to be the father of Ceyx and Daedalion . In some sources, he is also said to be the father of the Hesperides . Maurus Servius Honoratus , in his commentaries on Virgil 's Eclogues , mentions that Hesperus inhabited Mount Oeta in Thessaly and that there he had loved

10672-601: The spot where Aegle had pointed out to them the spring, until they reached it. And as when earth-burrowing ants gather in swarms round a narrow cleft, or when flies lighting upon a tiny drop of sweet honey cluster round with insatiate eagerness; so at that time, huddled together, the Minyae thronged about the spring from the rock. And thus with wet lips one cried to another in his delight: "Strange! In very truth Heracles, though far away, has saved his comrades, fordone with thirst. Would that we might find him on his way as we pass through

10788-511: The start or at the end of his task, meets Antaeus , who was immortal as long as he touched his mother, Gaia , the earth. Heracles killed Antaeus by holding him aloft and crushing him in a bearhug. Herodotus claims that Heracles stopped in Egypt , where King Busiris decided to make him the yearly sacrifice, but Heracles burst out of his chains. Finally making his way to the Garden of the Hesperides, Heracles tricked Atlas into retrieving some of

10904-575: The task of tending to the grove, but occasionally picked apples from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden an immortal, never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard. In the myth of the Judgement of Paris , it was from the Garden that Eris , Goddess of Discord, obtained the Apple of Discord , which led to the Trojan War . In later years it

11020-405: 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. Euripides first competed in

11136-524: The time of Euripides, traditional assumptions are constantly under challenge, and audiences therefore have a natural affinity with the Euripidean outlook, which seems nearer to ours, for example, than the Elizabethan. As stated above, however, opinions continue to diverge, so that modern readers might actually "seem to feel a special affinity with Sophocles"; one recent critic might dismiss the debates in Euripides' plays as "self-indulgent digression for

11252-487: The tragedian's methods; he was himself ridiculed by Cratinus , another comic poet, as: ὑπολεπτολόγος, γνωμιδιώτης, εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζων a quibbler of words, a maker of maxims, a Euripidaristophaniser According to another comic poet, Teleclides , the plays of Euripides were co-authored by the philosopher Socrates: Μνησίλοχός ἐστ᾿ ἐκεῖνος, <ὃς> φρύγει τι δρᾶμα καινόν Εὐριπίδῃ, καὶ Σωκράτης τὰ φρύγαν᾿ ὑποτίθησιν. [...] Εὐριπίδης σωκρατογόμφους. Mnesilochus

11368-421: 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: One of his earliest extant plays, Medea , includes

11484-518: The views of the Schlegels and Nietzsche, constructing arguments sympathetic to Euripides, which involved Wilamowitz in this restatement of Greek tragedy as a genre: "A [Greek] tragedy does not have to end 'tragically' or be 'tragic'. The only requirement is a serious treatment." In the English-speaking world, the pacifist Gilbert Murray played an important role in popularizing Euripides, influenced perhaps by his anti-war plays. Today, as in

11600-438: The vocabulary has been expanded to allow for intellectual and psychological subtleties. Euripides has been hailed as a great lyric poet. In Medea , for example, he composed for his city, Athens, "the noblest of her songs of praise". His lyrical skills are not just confined to individual poems: "A play of Euripides is a musical whole...one song echoes motifs from the preceding song, while introducing new ones." For some critics,

11716-641: The young Hymenaeus , son of Dionysus and Ariadne . Servius makes no distinction between the Evening Star and the Morning Star, calling them both Hesperus and the Lucifer of Ida . In the philosophy of language , "Hesperus is Phosphorus" is a famous sentence in relation to the semantics of proper names . Gottlob Frege used the terms "the evening star" ( der Abendstern ) and "the morning star" ( der Morgenstern ) to illustrate his distinction between sense and reference , and subsequent philosophers changed

11832-417: Was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC, with parents Cleito (mother) and Mnesarchus (father), a retailer from the deme of Phlya . 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

11948-691: Was combined with the "Select" edition by some unknown Byzantine scholar, bringing together all the nineteen plays that survive today. The "Select" plays are found in many medieval manuscripts, but only two manuscripts preserve the "Alphabetical" plays—often denoted L and P, after the Laurentian Library at Florence, and the Bibliotheca Palatina in the Vatican, where they are stored. It is believed that P derived its Alphabet plays and some Select plays from copies of an ancestor of L, but

12064-469: Was expected to have a message. 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

12180-489: Was he like to see it. Now here stood a rock near the Tritonian lake; and of his own device, or by the prompting of some god, he smote it below with his foot; and the water gushed out in full flow. And he, leaning both his hands and chest upon the ground, drank a huge draught from the rifted rock, until, stooping like a beast of the field, he had satisfied his mighty maw. Thus she spake; and they gladly with joyful steps ran to

12296-492: 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

12412-608: Was located at Lixus , Morocco , which was also the location where Heracles fought against Antaeus . According to the Sicilian Greek poet Stesichorus , in his poem the "Song of Geryon ", and the Greek geographer Strabo , in his book Geographika (volume III), the garden of the Hesperides is located in Tartessos , a location placed in the south of the Iberian peninsula . Euesperides (in modern-day Benghazi ) which

12528-445: Was lost or corrupted; but the period also included triumphs by scholars and copyists, thanks to whom much was recovered and preserved. Summaries of the transmission are often found in modern editions of the plays, three of which are used as sources for this summary. The plays of Euripides, like those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, circulated in written form. But literary conventions that we take for granted today had not been invented—there

12644-424: Was more insistent, using major characters as well. His comic touches can be thought to intensify the overall tragic effect, and his realism, which often threatens to make his heroes look ridiculous, marks a world of debased heroism: "The loss of intellectual and moral substance becomes a central tragic statement". Psychological reversals are common and sometimes happen so suddenly that inconsistency in characterization

12760-413: Was no spacing between words; no consistency in punctuation, nor elisions; no marks for breathings and accents (guides to pronunciation, and word recognition); no convention to denote change of speaker; no stage directions; and verse was written straight across the page, like prose. Possibly, those who bought texts supplied their own interpretative markings. Papyri discoveries have indicated, for example, that

12876-494: Was probably founded by people from Cyrene or Barca , from both of which it lies to the west, might have mythological associations with the garden of Hesperides. By Ancient Roman times, the garden of the Hesperides had lost its archaic place in religion and had dwindled to a poetic convention, in which form it was revived in Renaissance poetry, to refer both to the garden and to the nymphs that dwelt there. The Garden of

12992-423: Was soon disregarded, and actors continued to make changes until about 200 BC, after which the habit ceased. It was about then that Aristophanes of Byzantium compiled an edition of all the extant plays of Euripides, collated from pre-Alexandrian texts, furnished with introductions and accompanied by a commentary that was "published" separately. This became the "standard edition" for the future, and it featured some of

13108-519: Was the brother of Atlas , and thus the son of Iapetus . Hesperus is the personification of the "evening star", the planet Venus in the evening. His name is sometimes conflated with the names for his brother, the personification of the planet as the "morning star" Eosphorus (Greek Ἐωσφόρος , "bearer of dawn") or Phosphorus (Ancient Greek: Φωσφόρος , "bearer of light", often translated as " Lucifer " in Latin), since they are all personifications of

13224-508: Was the name of the shepherd of the sheep, a man who excelled in strength of body and courage, who guarded the sheep and slew any who might dare to carry them off. With the revival of classical allusions in the Renaissance, the Hesperides returned to their prominent position, and the garden itself took on the name of its nymphs: Robert Greene wrote of "The fearful Dragon... that watched the garden called Hesperides". Shakespeare inserted

13340-429: Was the only person to steal the apples, other than Perseus , although Athena later returned the apples to their rightful place in the garden. They are considered by some to be the same "apples of joy" that tempted Atalanta , as opposed to the " apple of discord " used by Eris to start a beauty contest on Olympus (which caused " The Siege of Troy "). On Attic pottery, especially from the late fifth century, Heracles

13456-640: Was thought that the "golden apples" might have actually been oranges , a fruit unknown to Europe and the Mediterranean before the Middle Ages . Under this assumption, the Greek botanical name chosen for all citrus species was Hesperidoeidē (Ἑσπεριδοειδῆ, "hesperidoids") and even today the Greek word for the orange fruit is πορτοκάλι (Portokáli)--after the country of Portugal in Iberia near where

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