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Ok, here is the place to discuss Euripides and his tragedies.

For those of you who have read Euripides' plays will know that his plays take a complitely different tone when telling a story.
Its very rare, (if ever) that in any play by Euripides you have the ''good'' guys and the ''bad'' guys. All characters are usually as bad as each other, reader at some point feels sorry for every single character in his plays.

I thought that here we could talk about his plays like

Medea - one of my fave, i think there should be a movie about Medea, the way Euripides told it. I think the best thing in revenge is getting a revenge and getting away with it I love Medea and the lenghts she went through to get revenge.
Electra, Orestis, Hippolytus(also really good play, really powerful i recomend everyone should read, jealousy and spite are very powerful emotions), Ion, Madness of Hercules as well as Children of Hercules...and others.


Anyone else likes? Anyone read any of these? If not, i recomend them all, i think they can be accesed over the internet too.

Like Euripides too. That he with Medea chose to deal a bit with the woman's role in the time's society was very brave.
Still, Medea's revenge doens't make her all that happy, does it? In the end, it seems more like it's something she'll have to do because she's made up her mind to do it and because her pride tells her to do so? She gets her revenge, and gets away with it, but pays quite a big price for it.
I'll have to admit it's a few years ago that I read it, though.

Indeed, she in a sense didnt win, because she payed a huge price for it lives of her two children She wanted a revenge on Jason by any means, but she also knew what she had to do.

I do believe she takes a little bit of pleasure in not leting him touch the bodies of his dead sons and in that she had in fact taken away everything from him.

She killed her brother and betrayed her father for him, she gave him 2 children and in return he He left her got married to Creon's daughter Glaucke(i cant spell it to save my life), and she was going to, on top of that be exailed (thats men for you)

Even though she lost a hell of a lot, she did get her own back on Jason...didnt make her happy, but it made them somewhat even


Best quote:

''Go home Jason, you wife waits to be burried''

Jason was indeed a big time bastard and I do sympathize with Medea. And yes, she probably has experienced some sort of twisted pleasure in her revenge. But at the same time, that she had to take it that far's very sad. For her in particular.
Still, as I mentioned before, I'm very fascinated by the fact that Euripides chose such a person as his main character ( a foreigner and a woman - couldn't be placed any lower in society) and sort of forced the audience to sympathize with her, in spite of themselves. That he was not rewarded for that is sad.

you can read medea here:
http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/medea.html
If I'm not mistaken, I read it last year, should do it again though to freshen up my memory

You can be so usefull at times, yerss where did you get that link from?

searching on the net is always a good thing to do

You search for stuff like that? Surpricing as well as usefull ...

Indeed. Thats what was so great about him, I think.


Have you by any chance read Hippolytus?

Unfortunately no. Think this is the only one I've read by Euripides. I've read more of Sophokles' works.

The only work of merit Euripides did was the Bacchae - Dionysus is like a super empowered Hannibal Lecter!

The others were pretty formulaic. Hippolytus is too self indulgent a protagonist really And Jason really should have had some idea of what he was dealing with after living with Medea for so long

Yeah, he had it coming, dear Jason

But seriously he gets his message across with best efficacy in the Bacchae. He wants the audience to go "right, I'm off women forever!" In the Hypolytus he just bashes the female gender for acts on end anyone could do that.

Hippolytus was suffering from hubris...he wasnt arrogant...on purpose That makes no sense, but...you know what i mean.

Its still tragic though, what happened to him and his father. By the way, his father went to Tartarus instead of Elysium and he was in Tarturs to await rebirth and suffer for what he has done to his son...

Thats according to Virgil by the way.

A more popular version has it that Theseus was fused with Hades' couch, bt Heracles released him - according to Graves it was necessary to remove his buttocks which is why the Athenians are absurdly small buttocked.

Anyhow, the Bacchae is 100 times better. Good drama always gives me goosebumps

I havent actually read that....yet

I will have to read it...Euripides is awesome.

I saw a production of it once in London (translated of course) which was reconstructed to have a cyclical story (necessary as the text towards the end is corrupt)

It was a nearly all-female production. The only actor was the protagonist and it worked very well; really accentuated the hysterical atmosphere. It assumed that the shepherds and soldiers would be women but that is not a huge stretch

If you want loyalty, get yourself a spaniel and not a jackal

Just a piece of totally random advice