Biography of Euripides | Greek tragic poet.

(Salamis, current Greece, 480 BC.-Pella, today disappeared, today Greece, 406 BC) Greek tragic poet. Humble family, Euripides took as teachers to Anaxagoras, Protagoras and Prodicos sophists and Socrates, whose teachings are reflected in his work.

In 455 BC, Euripides presented to contest his first tragedy, The Peliades, which won third place. They would continue 92 more works, of which seventeen tragedies, which, however, little fame and recognition provided him in life have been preserved: only got four victories in the annual festivals that were celebrated in Athens, so towards the end of his life decided to move to Macedonia to join the Court of the King Arquelao (408 BC), where according to the legend was devoured by a dog.

Euripides

The works of Euripides represent a change in philosophy of the tragic genre, in accordance with the new ideas he had learned from the Sophists; Thus, his skepticism toward mythical and religious beliefs is manifest in his works, which lowered the heroic and spiritual tone that Aeschylus and Sophocles had grown closer to current reality and the man treated.

Hero is portrayed with his failings and weaknesses, dominated by dark and secret feelings preventing him to confront his destiny, which is finally freed by the intervention of the gods at the end of the work (called resource deus ex machina, for the scenic gadgets used to introduce the God); his other innovations are the introduction of a prologue and a narrower choir role assignment. In his tragedies happens to foreground the psychological treatment of the characters of great depth.

Misunderstood in his time, Euripides became model to imitate already by tragic latinos, and then their influence continued during the neo-classicism and German romanticism (Goethe, Lessing, Schiller).

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas