EURIPIDES (ca. 480 BCE - 406 BCE) was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles.  Eighteen or nineteen of his plays have survived complete (depending if one includes his authorship of RHESUS) and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays.  More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly due to mere chance and partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined -- he became, in 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.  Yet he also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown.

His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism, both of them being frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes.  Whereas Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence, Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia.


All the following books are in PDF format:

* ALCESTIS / MEDEA / HIPPOLYTUS (Hackett, 2007).  Translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien, with an Introduction and Notes by Robin Mitchell-Boyask.

* ALCESTIS OF EURIPIDES, Literally Translated into English Prose from the Text of Monk with the Original Greek… (1824; reprinted Cambridge University Press, 2010).  Edited and translated by T. W. C. Edwards.

* BAKKHAI (Oxford University Press, 2001).  Translated by Reginald Gibbons, with an Introduction and Notes by Charles Segal.

* CYCLOPS (Oxford University Press, 2001).  Translated by Heather McHugh, with an Introduction and Notes by David Konstan.

* HELEN (Oxford University Press, 1981).  Translated by James Michie and Colin Leach.

* HERAKLES (Oxford University Press, 2001).  Translated by Tom Sleigh, with an Introduction and Notes by Christian Wolff.

* ION (Oxford University Press, 1996).  Translated by W. S. Di Piero, with Introduction, Notes and Commentary by Peter Burian.

* IPHIGENEIA IN TAURIS (Oxford University Press, 1973).  Translated by Richmond Lattimore.

* MEDEA (Hackett, 2008).  Translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien, with an Introduction and Notes by Robin Mitchell-Boyask.

* MEDEA & OTHER PLAYS [Hecabe; Electra; Heracles] (Penguin Classics, 1963).  Translated with an Introduction by Philip Vellacott.

* ORESTES (Oxford University Press, 1995).  Translated by John Peck and Frank Nisetich.

* RHESOS (Oxford University Press, 1978).  Translated by Richard Emil Braun.

* TROJAN WOMEN (Oxford University Press, 2009).  Translated by Alan Shapiro, with an Introduction and Notes by Peter Burian.

* WOMEN ON THE EDGE: Four Plays by Euripides [Alcestis; Medea; Helen; Iphigenia at Aulis] (Routledge, 1999).  Translated and edited by Ruby Blondell, Mary-Kay Gamel, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, and Bella Zweig.