Euripides - Heracles and Other Plays

HERACLES AND OTHER PLAYS

EURIPIDES , the youngest of the three great Athenian playwrights, was born around 485 BC of a family of good standing. He first competed in the dramatic festivals in 455 BC , coming only third; his record of successes in the tragic competitions is lower than that of either Aeschylus or Sophocles. There is a tradition that he was unpopular, even a recluse; we are told that he composed poetry in a cave by the sea, near Salamis. What is clear from contemporary evidence, however, is that audiences were fascinated by his innovative and often disturbing dramas. His work was controversial already in his lifetime, and he himself was regarded as a clever poet, associated with philosophers and other intellectuals. Towards the end of his life he went to live at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedon. It was during his time there that he wrote what many consider his greatest work, the Bacchae. When news of his death reached Athens in early 406 BC , Sophocles appeared publicly in mourning for him. Euripides is thought to have written about ninety-two plays, of which seventeen tragedies and one satyr-play known to be his survive; the other play which is attributed to him, the Rhesus, may in fact be by a later hand.

JOHN N. DAVIE was born in Glasgow in 1950, and was educated at the High School of Glasgow, Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford, where he wrote a thesis on Greek tragedy. From 1975 to 1984 he taught Classics at Harrow, before moving to St Pauls School to become Head of Classics, where he still teaches. He is the author of two articles on the problems of writing favourably about monarchy in a democratic society such as fifth-century BC Athens. He is a member of the Hellenic Societys visiting Panel of Lecturers.

RICHARD RUTHERFORD was born in Edinburgh in 1956, and was educated at Robert Gordons College, Aberdeen, and at Worcester College, Oxford. Since 1982 he has been Tutor in Greek and Latin Literature at Christ Church, Oxford. He is the author of a number of books and articles on classical authors, including a commentary on books 19 and 20 of Homers Odyssey (1992), and The Art of Plato: Ten Essays in Platonic Interpretation (1995).

EURIPIDES

HERACLES AND OTHER PLAYS

Translated by JOHN DAVIE ,
with an introduction and notes by

RICHARD RUTHERFORD

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4V 3B2

Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, II Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India

Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Private Bag 102902, NSMC, Auckland, New Zealand

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

This translation first published 2002

Translation copyright John Davie, 2002

Introduction and notes copyright Richard Rutherford, 2002

All rights reserved

The moral right of the translator and editor has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-196093-7

I portray men as they should be, but Euripides portrays them as they are.

(Sophocles, quoted by Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 25, 1460b334)

Whatever other defects of organization he may have, Euripides is the most intensely tragic of all the poets.

(Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 14, 1453a2830)

I am really amazed that the scholarly nobility does not comprehend his virtues, that they rank him below his predecessors, in line with that high-toned tradition which the clown Aristophanes brought into currency Has any nation ever produced a dramatist who would deserve to hand him his slippers?

(Goethe, Diaries, 22 November 1831)

What were you thinking of, overweening Euripides, when you hoped to press myth, then in its last agony, into your service? It died under your violent hands Though you hunted all the passions up from their couch and conjured them into your circle, though you pointed and burnished a sophistic dialectic for the speeches of your heroes, they have only counterfeit passions and speak counterfeit speeches.

(Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, ch. 10)