Euripides
A tragedian's life
One of his earliest extant plays, Medea, includes a speech that he seems to have written in defence of himself as an intellectual ahead of his time (spoken by Medea):
Work
For achieving his end Euripides' regular strategy is a very simple one: retaining the old stories and the great names, as his theatre required, he imagines his people as contemporaries subjected to contemporary kinds of pressures, and examines their motivations, conduct and fate in the light of contemporary problems, usages and ideals.
Reception
Euripides was so widely read in the antique education that only Homer surpassed him. But the breadth of reception drew mixed responses. He aroused, and continues to arouse, strong opinions for and against his work:
Reading List
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