Euripides 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. There are many fragments 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 the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Bust of Euripides
2nd century AD statue of Euripides, Louvre, Paris
19th century statue of Euripides in a niche on the Semperoper, Germany
Ancient Roman wall painting from House of the Vettii in Pompeii, showing the death of Pentheus, as portrayed in Euripides's Bacchae
Tragedy is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsis, or a "pain [that] awakens pleasure,” for the audience. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.
Mask of Dionysus. Greek, Myrina, 2nd century BCE.
Scene from the tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. Roman fresco in Pompeii.
Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911) King Lear, Cordelia's Farewell
French actor Talma as Nero in Racine's Britannicus.