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Historical person
c. 480s BCE–c. 400s BCE
Euripides was an Athenian tragedian of the fifth century BC. His plays often revisit heroic myths from the perspective of women, captives, foreigners and defeated communities, reflecting the moral and political strains of wartime Athens.
Euripides was born in Salamis Island and died in Pella. Euripides wrote for the Athenian stage during the Peloponnesian War and became known for psychologically complex characters and sceptical treatment of heroic convention; plays such as Medea, Hippolytus and The Bacchae remained influential long after his death.
The linked collections present Euripides through the surviving dramas themselves. Medea and Other Plays includes his devastating treatment of Medea’s revenge and the vulnerability of outsiders within the Greek household. The Bacchae and Other Plays shows his late fascination with religious ecstasy, authority and the destructive encounter between Pentheus and Dionysus. The Trojan Women and Other Plays turns the aftermath of Troy into an indictment of war through the fate of captive women. Electra and Other Plays revisits the murder of Clytemnestra and the moral corrosion of revenge, while Orestes and Other Plays follows the same cursed family into political panic, threatened execution and further violence.
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Oxford World’s Classics is a long-running series from Oxford University Press that publishes authoritative editions of major works of literature, philosophy, politics and religion from across the world. Designed for general readers as well as students, its volumes pair reliable texts or modern translations with scholarly introductions, explanatory…
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Penguin Classics: Ancient World brings together foundational works of literature, history, philosophy, drama and poetry from the earliest civilisations through classical Greece and Rome. The wider Penguin Classics series began in 1946 with E. V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey, reflecting its original aim of making important texts…
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