Why Ancient Athens Feared Euripides More Than Its Enemies

Euripides, Athens’ extremist outsider, held up a reflector to its glory, giving dependable to women and the powerless, exposing fallible gods, and confronting the city’s wartime hypocrisy. Credit: John-Grégoire, Wikimedia. CC0 1.0 Universal.

Beneath the beauteous Athenian entity and the eternal glory of the Parthenon, Euripides revealed the secrets of past Athens—realities acold little flattering for a metropolis that made its sanction synonymous with advancement and democracy.

At the highest of its glory, Athens was besides a metropolis tormented by changeless governmental upheaval, societal discontent, and passionate debates astir politics, philosophy, and the divine. During this time, Euripides emerged arsenic the creator who astir afloat captured that darker, little appealing broadside of the city. While Aeschylus paid homage to contented successful his works and Sophocles was celebrated for his consciousness of balance, Euripides acceptable himself wholly apart, becoming thing of an outcast.

This marvelous endowment took a wrecking shot to the gods, challenged each societal norm successful sight, and—most importantly—gave a almighty dependable to those usually ignored successful a metropolis that the Greeks either loved oregon hated. For galore Athenians, however, his plays were not celebrated oregon admired; they were shocking and often seen arsenic downright dangerous.

How Euripides became the outsider of Greek tragedy

Euripides was calved successful 480 BC, the precise twelvemonth Athens famously delivered the Persians a beingness acquisition astatine Salamis astir however not to messiness with them. From the start, helium lived successful a metropolis that believed it was chosen by the gods to reign implicit the known world.

Yet for immoderate reason, Euripides ne'er seemed to stock the Athenians’ profound consciousness of civic pride. Unlike Aeschylus, who thrived connected tales of battle, Euripides preferred quiescent survey and solitude, distant from the city’s fanfare and the agora’s heated debates. Literary sources adjacent suggest helium lived successful a distant cave by the sea, acold from the crowds and engaged streets of Athens.

This carnal and affectional region shaped his works. He did not constitute to boost Athens’ self-esteem oregon connection comforting affirmations of the city’s greatness. Instead, his plays acted similar surgical instruments, dissecting and exposing each flaw helium perceived successful society.

Euripides stripped distant illusions of superiority and divine favor. His heroes were often cruel, the gods capricious, and—most strikingly—women and slaves often spoke with greater contented than immoderate antheral oregon king. In a metropolis that built its individuality connected order, patriarchy, and spiritual piety, Euripides was a extremist reformist, challenging the presumption quo and unsettling the comfy myths of Athens.

Athens saw itself successful Euripides’ works, and it was not a pleasant spectacle. Credit: Leo von Klenze, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

In Euripides’ works, women spoke excessively loudly

Perhaps the astir groundbreaking facet of Euripides’ works was however helium portrayed women, who were considered inherently little important successful civic beingness than men. At a clip erstwhile women were expected to enactment astatine location arsenic housewives, mothers, and cleaners, helium dragged them retired of the shadows and placed them astatine the halfway of the stage. Take Medea, astir apt his astir celebrated heroine: she defied her unfaithful husband, Jason, and exacted an unimaginably horrific revenge by sidesplitting their ain children, each successful a hopeless effort to reclaim her dignity.

To galore Athenians, this was an implicit ungraded and an insult to their orderly society. A pistillate acting with specified terrifying powerfulness and fury was unacceptable, frightening, and a menace to the metropolis itself. Yet Medea’s words astir betrayal, loyalty, and justness stay immoderate of the astir emotionally almighty successful each of Greek literature, surviving for astir 2 and a fractional millennia. Euripides adjacent dared to suggest that women possessed interior lives arsenic analyzable and ferocious arsenic men’s—a conception centuries up of its clip and scandalously extremist for a nine similar past Athens.

Questioning the gods was his astir outrageous provocation

If giving women a dependable shocked the mean Athenian, Euripides’ portrayals of the gods were adjacent much scandalous. Where Aeschylus depicted divine justness arsenic strict but yet fair, Euripides often painted the gods arsenic cruel manipulators, nary much ethical than mortals. In Hippolytus, the goddess Aphrodite systematically destroys a young antheral simply due to the fact that helium refuses to worship her. In Ion, the deity Apollo lies to and abandons mortals, leaving them utterly broken. These were the aspects of the gods Euripides wanted Athenians to see, alternatively than worship blindly.

For Athenians, whose ideology and powerfulness were intimately tied to meticulous spiritual rituals, specified portrayals verged connected blasphemy. Euripides seemed to reason that the gods were not cleanable models of justness but alternatively disfigured reflections of quality selfishness, possessing thing inherently worthy of worship.

Athens successful crisis

It is nary coincidence that Euripides’ vocation coincided with Athens’ astir turbulent years. The Peloponnesian War brought crushing defeats, a devastating plague, and endless civilian unrest. A profound consciousness of despair runs done galore of his plays, capturing the sentiment of his clip with singular clarity.

In The Trojan Women, for example, helium portrays the suffering of guiltless women aft their metropolis is destroyed by the Greeks. For Athenians who had conscionable brutally ransacked the land of Melos oregon were astir to embark connected the catastrophic Sicilian Expedition successful Magna Graecia (today’s confederate Italy), the connection was stark: warfare leaves thing but pain, tears, and misery.

No wonderment helium was considered unsafe by his contemporaries. His plays systematically questioned decisions, practices, and the precise myths that made Athenian powerfulness consciousness sacred. Where different artists offered comfort, Euripides offered uncertainty and scandal.

Euripides yet died successful 406 BC successful Macedonia, acold from the metropolis that ne'er afloat recognized his genius. Yet successful an ironic twist, it was lone aft his decease that Athens genuinely appreciated his work. His plays became much fashionable than those of his rivals, and generations of audiences—from past Rome to modern Europe—have recovered successful his enactment a earthy honesty that continues to resonate.

Athens whitethorn person feared the mirrors Euripides held up to their flaws, but past has remembered him vividly. He forced his audiences to face themselves and their satellite without illusions. That, much than anything, is wherefore helium remains the astir extremist playwright of classical Greece.