ABSTRACT
Of the ‘big three’ Athenian tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Euripides was the least regarded in his own lifetime. Euripides won the Great Dionysia, the supreme festival of Athenian drama, only five times compared with Aeschylus’ thirteen and Sophocles’ eighteen. Euripides uses a more everyday, less elevated style than Sophocles or Aeschylus. Euripides emphasizes the sacrilegious, taboo aspects of the killing. Violence in Euripides is never heroic, or redemptive. The Bacchae and Iphigenia at Aulis were both written in Macedonia and had not been performed when Euripides died. Twenty of Euripides ’ tragedies survive, more than either Sophocles or Aeschylus. Ironically the only surviving complete ‘satyr-play’—a sort of broad farce that would conclude an Athenian theatrical performance, after a tragic trilogy—is Euripides’ The Cyclops.
