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The MouseionEuripides

Euripides

20 works in the library, 19 with an English translation.

Classical Athenian playwright, born at Salamis Island. From Wikidata; Wikipedia.

Lived
5th c. BC
Kinds of writing
Tragedy (18), Comedy
Dialect
Attic
Analysed
180,178 words

The 20 works

First the work Euripides is best known for; then the works here with a translation and the most familiar vocabulary: the fewest rare words to look up. That is vocabulary only; grammar, dialect and ideas may still be demanding.

The road of the text

Follow the text from Euripides's own day to the book in your hands. The gaps are the long silences between one mark and the next.

Before you read. Little numbers like 1 are footnotes. Tap one and it jumps to the source at the bottom of the page, so you can check us. Ancient tradition / legend This is what ancient writers told; it may not be what happened. No label? Then the sources simply state it as fact.

  • The author
  • Copies
  • Print and editions
  1. c. 480 BCThe authorBorn on Salamis, by tradition on the day of the battle1 Ancient tradition / legend
  2. about 30 years later455 BCThe authorFirst competes at the Dionysia1
  3. 14 years later441 BCThe authorWins first prize for the first time1
  4. 3 years later438 BCThe authorAlcestis takes second prize, in the place usually held by a satyr play1
  5. 7 years later431 BCThe authorMedea is placed third1
  6. 3 years later428 BCThe authorHippolytus wins first prize1
  7. 13 years later415 BCThe authorThe Trojan Women takes second prize1
  8. 7 years later408 BCThe authorOrestes is produced1
  9. about 2 years laterc. 406 BCThe authorDies, traditionally in Macedon at the court of Archelaus1 Ancient tradition / legend
  10. about 1 years later405 BCThe authorThe Bacchae and Iphigenia at Aulis are produced after his death and win first prize1
  11. about 600 years laterc. AD 200CopiesA select edition of ten plays circulates, about AD 200, possibly for schools1
  12. about 1,290 years laterc. 1494Print and editionsThe first printed Euripides appears at Florence, with four plays: Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis and Andromache3
  13. about 9 years later1503Print and editionsAldus Manutius prints all the plays but Electra at Venice3
  14. about 490 years later1994Print and editionsDiggle's third volume completes his Oxford Classical Text (volumes of 1981, 1984 and 1994)5,6
  15. 10 years later2004Print and editionsKannicht's edition of the fragments of Euripides (TrGF 5) is published at Göttingen10

Life and work

Checked against sources · 30 September 2026

More of Euripides' plays survive than of Aeschylus' and Sophocles' put together. Nineteen have come down to us more or less complete, though one of them, the Rhesus, is often thought not to be his. Some ancient scholars credited him with ninety-five plays; the Suda says ninety-two at most.1 Part of the reason so many survive is that his popularity grew as theirs declined: in the Hellenistic Age he became a cornerstone of ancient literary education.1

He did not win easily. He first competed in 455 BC, and did not win first prize until 441. In all he won first prize only five times: four in his lifetime and one after his death, when the Bacchae and Iphigenia at Aulis were produced in 405.1 Alcestis (438) took second prize and stood in the place normally held by a satyr play. Medea (431) was third, Hippolytus (428) first and the Trojan Women (415) second.1 Aristophanes made him a character in at least three plays, the Acharnians, the Thesmophoriazusae and the Frogs.1

He is the tragedian who sounds most like people talking. Aristotle says so in the Rhetoric: art is best hidden when the speaker “chooses his words from ordinary language and puts them together like Euripides, who was the first to show the way”.2

Ancient tradition / legend Tradition says he was born on the island of Salamis, about 480 BC, on the very day of the battle there, and that he ended his life at the “rustic court” of King Archelaus in Macedon, dying in 406.1 Some modern scholars think he may never have gone to Macedonia at all.1

Things readers still argue about

Is the Rhesus his? It is among the nineteen, but its authorship is a matter of dispute.1

How many plays did he write? Some ancient scholars said ninety-five; the Suda said ninety-two at most.1

How the words reached us

Manuscripts & transmission

Passed from hand to hand

Two streams. The plays reached the Middle Ages by two routes. One was a select edition of ten plays, circulated about AD 200 and “possibly for use in schools”; its plays survive in many medieval manuscripts. The other was a group of nine plays in alphabetical order. “Some unknown Byzantine scholar” put the two together, which gave the nineteen plays we have.1

Two manuscripts for nine plays. The alphabetical plays are preserved in L, in the Laurentian Library at Florence, and P, in the Palatine Library.1

Fragments on papyrus. The fragments of the lost Hypsipyle are extensive enough to allow tentative reconstructions of the play.1

Print. Four plays were printed at Florence in about 1494 (Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis and Andromache), and Aldus Manutius printed all the plays but the Electra at Venice in 1503.3

Textual variants

Where the copies disagree

Plays with only two witnesses. The nine alphabetical plays survive through two manuscripts alone, L in the Laurentian Library at Florence and P in the Palatine Library, so they have no second route to fall back on.1

A play in dispute. The authorship of the Rhesus is a matter of dispute.1

Fragments. What survives of his lost plays is gathered in Kannicht's TrGF 5.10

Books to read it in

  • G. Murray, Euripidis Fabulae (Oxford Classical Texts, 1902–13).4 The Greek plays in the reader are Perseus's copies of Murray's text.
  • E. P. Coleridge's translations (1906), T. A. Buckley's Bacchae (1850) and Gilbert Murray's Rhesus (1913).4 The English in the reader.
  • J. Diggle, Euripidis Fabulae, 3 vols (Oxford Classical Texts, 1981–94).56 The standard modern Greek text.
  • D. Kovacs, Euripides, 6 vols (Loeb Classical Library, 1994–2003).78
  • D. J. Mastronarde, Euripides: Medea (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics, 2002).9 With a commentary.
  • R. Kannicht, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 5, Euripides (Göttingen, 2004).10 The fragments.

Where this comes from

Sources (10)
  1. Wikipedia, Euripides (his plays, victories, the streams of manuscripts, L and P, Rhesus, the papyri)
  2. Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.2.5, in the reader
  3. Wikipedia, List of editiones principes in Greek (Euripides, about 1494 and 1503)
  4. Perseus's copies of Euripides shown in the reader; each file's header names its edition (Murray's Oxford text, 1902–13; Coleridge, 1906; Buckley, 1850; Gilbert Murray, 1913)
  5. Oxford University Press, Euripides, Fabulae (J. Diggle, Oxford Classical Texts)
  6. The Classical Review, “The Re-Editing of Euripides”, on Diggle's Euripidis Fabulae, vol. 2 (1981)
  7. Loeb Classical Library, Euripides, Cyclops, Alcestis, Medea (D. Kovacs, 1994)
  8. Loeb Classical Library, Euripides, Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus (D. Kovacs, 2003)
  9. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2003.07.23 on D. J. Mastronarde, Euripides: Medea (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
  10. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2006.05.23 on R. Kannicht, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 5, Euripides (Göttingen, 2004)

We checked every statement above against these sources on 30 September 2026. Where they disagree, we say so. What we could not confirm, we left out.

In The Painted Stoa

Entries that quote or point to Euripides's Greek.

Greek statues were paintedThe gleaming white marble of Greek sculpture, admired for centuries as the image of classical purity, is a modern accident.Hipparchia the CynicAround 300 BC a young woman from Thrace threatened to kill herself unless she was allowed to marry a penniless philosopher.Women's livesAlmost everything we read about Greek women was written by men.

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