I.

Introduction

Euripides (c. 480-406 bc), Greek dramatist, the third, with Aeschylus and Sophocles, of the great Attic tragic poets. Euripides wrote nearly 90 plays, of which 18 survive today. His work exerted great influence on Roman drama, English and German drama, and especially the 17th-century French dramatic poets Pierre Corneille and Jean-Baptiste Racine.

The tragedies of Euripides present the most subtle analysis of human psychology of the three Greek dramatists. Sophocles is quoted as saying that he portrayed people as they ought to be, whereas Euripides portrayed them as they are.