Here he spent the last two years of his life and died B. According to a story for which there is little authority, he was torn to pieces by a pack of hounds when returning from a nocturnal festivity.
The number of his tragedies is variously given as seventy-five, seventy-eight, and ninety-two. Eighteen have come down to us: the Alcestis, Andromache, Bacchae or the arrival of Dionysus at Thebes and the murder of Pentheus , Hecuba, Helena, Electra, the Heraclidae or Demophoon of Athens protecting the descendants of Heracles against the persecution of Eurystheus ; Heracles in Madness, the Suppliants or the mothers of the Seven Chiefs who had fallen before Thebes, at whose prayers Theseus compelled the Thebans to bury the dead heroes ; Hippolytus, Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia among the Tauri, Ion, Medea, Orestes, Rhesus, the Troades or the royal house of Troy after the conquest of the city ; the Phoenissae so called after the chorus of Phoenician maidens, an incident in the story of Eteocles and POlynices ; and a satyric drama, the Cyclops, the only example of this style of composition which has survived.
The earliest of these pieces in point of time is the Alcestis, performed in B. It is also noticeable because, although not a satyric drama in the proper sense, it has comic features towards the end, and was actually performed at the end of a tetralogy in place of a satyric drama. The Bacchae, on the other hand, was written in Macedonia in the poet's last years, and performed after his death at the same time as the Iphigenia at Aulis.
The genuineness of the Rhesus was doubted even in antiquity. A great number of fragments have survived from about sixty pieces, and in particular from the Phaethon.
The tragedies of Euripides are of very unequal merit. Some of them, for instance lofty style of Sophocles, others approach it, as the Medea and Iphigenia in Tauris.
But others, as for instance the Andromache and Electra, are very carelessly put together. His strong point is not artistic composition, well contrived disposition, or the coherent design which gives the inner motive of the action. It is sufficient, in support of this statement, to call attention to his habit of prefixing to every piece a prologue, explaining the story to the spectators, and connected loosely if at all with the play; to the very slight connexion between the chorus and the action, and to his liking for bringing in a deus ex machina to cut a difficult knot.
On the other hand, it must be allowed that Euripides is a master in the art of devising pathetic situations, and shows extraordinary power in representing human passion, especially the resistless might of love in the case of women. In his religious views be differs essentially from Aeschylus and Sophocles.
With Euripides the gods are not moral powers, and fate is not so much the result of a higher dispensation as a perverseness of accident. The lack of grandeur is also a point which distinguishes him from his great predecessors. Instead of their sublime ideas he gives us maxims of worldly wisdom, often to all appearance dragged in without occasion.
The motives of action are not so pure as in Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the characters of the heroes are not raised above the level of ordinary life, but brought down to it. So fond is he of giving prominence to the faults of women, that he has been called a woman-hater. He pays more attention to the course of politics than his predecessors, and is indeed influenced by political considerations in his sketches of character.
In deference to the democratic leanings of his public, he makes his kings cruel tyrants, without dignity or majesty, and the heroes of the Peloponnese, in particular, he treats with unconcealed dislike. His dialogues are often overloaded with rhetoric and sophistical dialectic. But, in spite of all these faults, for which the spirit of the age is mainly responsible, be is a great poetical genius.
Hippolytus, however, had no interest in love and instead became a devotee of Artemis , choosing a life of hunting and virginity while scorning the love goddess Aphrodite. Angered, Aphrodite sought to punish Hippolytus for his offense, and so she had his stepmother, Phaedra , fall in love with him. Phaedra was ashamed of her feelings and after she confined in her nurse about her secret, the latter, unbeknownst to Phaedra, approached Hippolytus and informed him of Phaedra's love for him.
Hippolytus rejected his stepmother, and, fearing that he would tell Theseus, Phaedra hanged herself, leaving a note which accused Hippolytus of having raped her. Theseus was enraged upon reading the note and although Hippolytus insisted that he was innocent, Theseus refused to listen and banished his son. He then called down a curse upon Hippolytus, one of the three curses that his father, Poseidon , had given to him. As Hippolytus was riding along the coast of Troezon in his chariot, the sea god caused a bull to come out of the sea, frightening his horses.
The chariot's wheels dashed against a stone and after Hippolytus became entangled in the reins, his horses dragged him to his death. This is a folklore motif exemplified also in the story of Joseph by "Potiphar's wife. The horses throw Hippolytus off the chariot, but he is tangled in the reins and dragged over rocks until nearly dead. Artemis reveals the truth to Theseus and blames Aphrodite's spite. Hippolytus' broken body is brought forth for a death scene with daddy.
Artemis hopes Theseus can forgive himself. Euripides' innovation in his Hippolytus is to cast the woman as a sympathetic character, Aphrodite's helpless victim caught in a divine plan to destroy Hippolytus.
His audience expects to see the wicked woman vilified and the virtuous youth exalted; that is the tradition. Instead, Euripides portrays his Phaedra as a highly moral woman struggling against the shame of her passion, while Hippolytus is an intolerant prig.
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