Raging Misogynist or Original Social Justice Warrior? The Murky Life of Euripides

Published Sep 3, 2024, 7:00 AM

We have more of Euripides' work than either of the other tragedians combined and yet the details of his life, him as a real person composing real art, are frustratingly lacking. And when they're not lacking, they're often just slander or wild misunderstandings of history. Today we begin looking at the life and times of Euripides, the first BEST playwright.

CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.

Sources: Brill's Companion to Euripides "Life of Euripides", William Blake Tyrell; Isabelle Torrance's Euripides; Euripides' Bacchae, translated by TA Buckley; Euripides' Phoenissae, translated by EP Coleridge; Euripides' Alcestis, translated by David Kovacs; Euripides' Trojan Women, translated by EP Coleridge.

Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.

 

I, the son of Zeus, have come to this land of the thebans Dionysus, whom once Semile Cadmus's daughter or delivered by a lightning bearing flame. Oh hi, hello there. I almost didn't see. I was simply too involved obsessing over the first playwright, Euripidies. This is let's talk about myths Baby, and I am that ridiculous host of yours who's become so consumed by a man who's been dead for going on twenty five hundred years that I'm dedicating an entire month of episodes to picking apart every little thing possible. I didn't say my name yet, that sentence was too long. I am live, and I would just do about anything for Euripides. But first, a quick reminder. We are currently collecting names for people interested in joining for either of next year's group trips to Greece. It's so cool I get to do this again. Head to Mythsbaby dot com, slash group dash Tour, or just click the link in this episode's description to learn more and enter. The deadline is going to be posted on that site as soon as we confirm it, but tentatively it's September tenth, so keep that in mind. We'll be selecting twelve people for each group. Obviously, I don't want any participating in both tours, just so that everyone gets the best opportunity to come. One of the tours is less expensive than the other, so I hope there's a bit more that's attainable for some listeners. If you're loaded, I mean honestly, like I'm just going to say this, if you're really financially stable, don't pick the shorter trip, pick the longer one, because then you give a chance to people who can't. Anyway, I'm just a person who is live paycheck to paycheck for most of my adult life. I want everyone to be able to come. Also, you only have to pay a deposit upfront and then the full amount is due like quite a ways down the line, so we're not asking you to have everything up front. There are more details on that site, but also a link to the form which is handled by Antonia with travel Bug, and that's where all the real information comes from, because she's a professional, and I am just sending you all her way so that we can go hang out together in Greece and she does all the heavy lifting. We love Antonia and I do hope to make this a regular thing in years to come. So if you can't make it next June, I have high hopes there will be more opportunities for those ready to ask. Already, I don't think I could ever say that I will host a trip in July or August, because I mean, even without climate change, it was too hot, or at least earlier, because it's now been twenty years since I was doing that, and twenty years ago I went to Greece in July, and when I tell you, it was just too hot, and I swore never to do it again, I'm not lying, so I apologize. But June, and I mean maybe September if I heard enough calls for it. That's about all we're gonna get. I'm just so excited about this trip. But honestly, that is enough because today today is about Euripides. But what is it about this singular ancient source that, in my opinion at least makes him so far in a way more interesting than the entire rest of the ancient men that we learn about today. The answer is everything. That's why we're spending a month looking at him and his work. I'm so excited. You probably have a pretty good idea of why all of your abities like. I've talked about it a little bit, but never have I been able to lay it all out, like the good and the bad, and really look at what we know about him, what we don't know about him, and what we might imagine of him. Every other time I've talked about him, it's been in the context of a specific play, But now I want to look at him in the context of all of his work, him as a person. But spoilers, we don't have all that much about the man himself, and what we do have is arguably more confusing than anything else. But it doesn't mean we can't look at his work, his choices, his timeline, ancient Athens and Greece's timeline, and so much more to form a picture of the man who managed to make a child killer sympathetic, the man who made a mother tearing her son's head off interesting, the man who made Apollo look like the predator he often was in the myths Euripities. He wasn't the first playwright, but I maintain and perhaps we might consider the next week's of episodes. My argument in favor of Euripides was the first best playwright. It doesn't make any sense, but it looks really good on my logo raging misogynist or original social justice warrior. The murky life of Euripides, I, the son of Zeus, have come to this land of the Thebans Dionysus, whom once Semile Cadmus's daughter bore, delivered by a lightning bearing flame, and having taken a mortal form instead of a god's, I am here at the fountains of dear Kay and the water of his menace. And I see the tomb of my thunder stricken mother here near the palace, and the remnants of her house smoldering with the still living flame of Zeus's fire, the everlasting insult of hera against my mother. I praise Cadmus, who has made this place hallowed the shrine of his daughter, and I have covered it all around with the cluster bearing leaf of the vine. That was the opening lines of Euripides's Backeye, the play that won euripides first prize in the year four to oh five. Tragically, Euripides had died the year before Backeye was produced posthumously, and was one of the few times Euripides ever won first place. He wasn't particularly appreciated in his time. Not to say that he wasn't at all, but he was a little too much for many of the people of classical Athens. He pushed the boundaries a little too much. She drew outside the lines. That's why we love him. When people spoke of Euripides back then, it was often in contrast with Sophocles, his contemporary. Both men began their careers in the shadow of Eschylus, the most famous playwright of their time, but Sophocles came first. Euripides first produce to play that was shown at the City Dionysia, the big important festival that defined ancient Athenian tragedy as we know it, in the year four fifty five. This Euripides' first production was only one year after Eschylus had died, and he was a tough act to follow. Sophocles two had already made a name for himself before Euripides joined the scene and was well positioned to become the most respected playwright after the death of Eschylus. And then in Walk's Euripides, he's a lot younger. He's following in the footsteps of these incredibly well respected men who wrote works that defined their generations. Meanwhile, here's Euripides with his tendency to be weird. Even though the first play he ever produced for the city, Dionysia, was in for fifty five BC, it isn't until four thirty eight when a play was produced that survives for us today Alkestis. Alcestis didn't win, it did get second place, though, remember there's only three places actually, the Euripides he rarely won. Like I said, he won once before Alcestis in four forty one, and in total he only won five times as far as we know. Three of those winning plays, though, survive, Hippolytus, if Agnai at Aulis and Backeye. The latter two won first in the same year four oh five, if you're following along, that was after he died. But remember he won the Dionysia only five times, but each time three plays compete to win, and so we're just really lucky that two of his winning plays from the year four oh five managed to survive. Still, like I said, he wasn't particularly appreciated in his time. Like that isn't to say he wasn't popular, it's just that he wasn't necessarily respected in the way that Sophocles and Eschylus were. If he wasn't compared to them, thing might have been really different. He was selected to produce plays about as many times as Sophocles was, so he was certainly regarded as talented, just that he wasn't really first place material in his time, And as I already hinted at, often what we know about Euripides is presented in this way this direct contrast to Sophocles, which doesn't make it particularly convincing. And it doesn't help that the two men died within a year or so of each other, which meant that when Sophocles died so soon after Euripides, the comparisons only increased posthumously. And that's only one of the many issues we have in determining, like just about anything, of Euripides' life. Because he wasn't the most popular of his time, and because the men who were more broadly respected for their genius, and because Euripidy is often pushed at the boundaries of Athenian sensibilities. Because of all these things, most if not all, of the biographical details that we have for him could also maybe be either like inside jokes made by friend friends who liked to poke fun or misunderstandings based in misunderstanding misogyny, or I mean, gods how many or I mean gods know how many other possibilities, given most of these so called biographies were written at least hundreds of years after his death, and like, that's not even considering the mess that Aristophanes made with his comedies that Lambas did euripidies. Broadly, he reminds me of Shakespeare, actually, and not just because they both liked body jokes and dramatic reveals. But nothing about Shakespeare's biography is particularly certain rumors and lies mixed with the truth to make a kind of mythologized, mysterious soup of so called facts. Fortunately, any soup made of euripoities facts, however credulous they may be, is a soup I'd like to devour. That was weird. I'm sorry, House of Admatus, in you, I brought myself to taste the bread of menial servitude. God, though I am Zeus was the cause he killed my son Asclepius, striking him in the chest with the lightning bolt, and in anger at this I slew the cyclops who forged Zeus's fire, and my punishment for this, Zeus compelled me to be a serf in the house of a mortal. That was the opening lines to Alcestes, the earliest surviving Euripides play, and also fortunately one of his weirdest. Euripides was born on the island of Salamis. We think exactly when he was born There is of matter very much up for debate, but in the end, what mattered in the minds of the Athenians who formed the opinions on the playwrights of their time, and therefore all we know was that Euripides wasn't born in time to fight at the Battle of Salamis, and likely was only just born or just a few years old by the time the Greeks fought that game changing naval battle against the Persians. Being the youngest of the great Tragedians was always going to be an issue for Euripides and his legacy, but the particular wartime timeline made it even more dramatic. Eastcles, you see, was a very well respected general in the Athenian army, and he famously fought at the Battle of Salamis, a battle which ended the Second Persian War and handed the Persians an incredibly dramatic defeat that like no one saw coming. It was basically a culturally defining battle. Sophocles was younger, but he was grown enough that this story came to be that, you know, he was old enough to be able to have danced in the victory celebrations and fully understand the weight of the war and that battle specifically. And Euripides was just a baby. So in the minds of the older Athenians boomers, if you will, Euripides was only a young whipper snapper who was entirely naive to the trials of war. He they believed, had had to learn about war, victory and celebration from others. He never learned it himself. I argue about that. Maybe that means he instead brought a more nuanced layer to those moments in human existence, like he wasn't tied to any specific ideas of past greatness that can serve to cloud the minds of those who lived during it. Modern politics, regardless his youth and where he was from, this place so uniquely tied to the Greek victory against the Persians ensure that Euripides began his career being regarded by others as less impressive than his predecessors. And then he went and wrote plays featuring people of varied levels of social standing, and shit really hit the fan. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We know so little of Euripides as a young person, or honestly, as a person generally, As with so many things from the ancient world, like it's difficult to say what is a fact and what is a kind of mythologized notion developed to like explain something else. According to one of our sources, Life of Euripides in the episode's description, some ancient writers thought that his name, which means son of Europus, might have come from the strait that separates mainland Greece and the island of Evia Europus, and so, as this source says, quote accordingly, a story had to be fabricated to explain the name. His father, originally a b ocean, lost his citizenship for failure to pay his debts and emigrated to Attica. His father, the sources variously call Minniesarkos or Minisarkiades. I mean again, we're looking at like it's a way to make him look bad while linking up to this Europus. As for Euripides his mother, her story isn't much clearer, but not to worry, it has still got a bit of misogyny sprinkled in for good measure. There was a room where you see either started or simply perpetuated by that damned troublemaker aristophaners quote that claimed Clito pedaled vegetables for a living, in particular chervil, a species of wild parsley, eaten by the poor and distressed. There's a lot happening here. We'll get there. Meanwhile, a man named Philochorus came to Europiece's defense after these like silly slanders, saying that Euripides's mother Clito quote belonged to the best of the Athenians. And honestly, all of that's most likely. We do know that Euripides likely didn't experience much in the way of financial hardship. It's most likely that he was an Athenian of the upper class who was pretty damn wealthy and able to devote his life to like the fun stuff. This is a little bit from Ruth Schodell's chapter on his life and synthesizes really well. How scholars determine things about him, so I'm going to read it. Quote from his plays, we can infer a great deal about his intellectual life, and because he was such a favorite target of Aristophanes and other comic poets, we can, to some extent rely on arguments from silence. We can be reasonably sure that he did not hold major public office, although he may have served as an ambassador. His love of nautical imagery says that he probably loved the sea, and he probably liked to watch or play the board game called pisoi, since he used metaphors from it. He had some interest in architecture and was profoundly engaged with the intellectual life of his time in all its forms natural science, rhetoric, ethics, anthropology, and religion. And instead, as Isabel Torren says in her biography of Your Abetes, the jokes and apparent anecdotes about his early life and family might imply he had humble beginnings, but instead quote can all be explained as metaphor for making fun of his style. The implication of low origins can be linked directly to caricatures of Euripides as a champion of the lower classes, and these caricatures, in turn, can be traced to his tendency for giving specific characters extraordinary rhetorical abilities, regardless of their gender or status. Or, as I like to phrase it, it's really all about the fact that he dared present women, barbarians, and enslaved people as simply human beings, capable of expressing the exact same emotions and intelligence as the wealthy Athenian elite men. A penis does not make you smart, Europanes wrote women, as though they were as real as complex as men. The horror from the depths of salt Aegean floods, I Poseidon have come, where choirs of nyids dance in a graceful maze. For since the day that Phoebus and I, with exact measurement, set towers of stone about this land of Troy and ringed it round, never from my heart has passed away a kindly feeling for my Phrygian town, which now is smoldering and overthrown a prey to our give might. For from his home beneath par Nassas, Phocian Epius, aided by the craft of Pallas, framed a horse to bear within its womb an armed army and scent it within the battle, a deadly statue from which in days to come men shall tell of the wooden horse, with its hidden load of warriors. Groves stand forsaken, and temples of the gods run down with blood, and at the altar's very base before the god who watched his home prium lies dead. That was the opening to Euripides's Trojan women. Unlike Eschylis and Sophocles, Euripides wasn't famous for being this wartime general. And hey, maybe that's another reason why I love him. Euripides. I think it's fairly safe to assume didn't have particularly strong feelings towards the military. And it wasn't you know that it was simply that Athens was living in peacetime, because how could gods know? No, that wasn't it. Euripides lived through the long and drawn out and ultimately utterly destructive for Athens Peloponnesian War, a time when Sparta like nearly wrecked Athens a good fan full of times, and did eventually win. We have no record of Euripides taking part in that war at all. And while you know, lack of evidence isn't proof when it comes to classical Athenians, like if someone that famous went to war, like we would know about it. I mean, I think we can pretty safely say this doesn't mean, you know, he wasn't concerned with war, but I do think his lack of hands on experience, and particularly the actions of Athens during his time, served to give Euripides a much more interesting view on war and war crimes. Yeah, we're getting a little dark now. You know that we can't say much for certain about Euripides' life. There is so so so much that we can infer through his work, and sometimes when particular works were released in the grand scheme of Athenian history, you won't be surprised to hear that it's MICHAELA who's provided me with all of this historical context and shared so so so much more with me over the phone. That won't even make it into this episode, but I feel like I have got a good basis, because wow, is there a lot we might pick out of Europides's works and begin to build a kind of understanding of his morals. A little peak behind the curtain. Mikaila really does not want to read plays, and so our deal with this is that she would give me all the history and I would handle the actual plays. I'm here for it, And I mean, maybe I'm just reading too much into him. I honestly don't care. Like I don't think that there's anything that could convince me at this point that he wasn't pretty full of care and concern for people that most other Athenian men wouldn't bother to consider even remotely their equals. You see this play The Trojan Women was produced in four point fifteen BCE, one year after Athens invaded the island of Milos. Milos is an island in the Aegean whose people traditionally had ties with Sparta. Despite this, they managed to stay largely neutral during the previous years of the Peloponnesian War, but all of that ended in four sixteen when Athens, I'm guessing they were getting pretty desperate. Mikaela didn't put that in there, but I'm vibe in it. Athens invaded in four sixteen. Athens was desperate, like I said, no proof needed, and they invaded Milos. They demanded that the Melians surrender and join the Delian League. The people of Milos refused. The people of Melos refused to give up control of their land, their homes, their everything to an invading force. Athens' response to this refusal was to lay siege to them. The people of Milos refused to fall to this invading force even while laying siege. You know, but Athens had the most moral navy in the world. I'm sorry, I meant to say they have the most powerful navy in the war. Same thing, I guess a trendous sarcasm for a very specific audience, But turns out there's no such thing as a moral army. Like who'd have thought the Melians eventually surrendered to the Athenians, or rather we say they surrendered, but it might be more appropriate to call it a ceasefire deal a ceasefire between an invading force that's about a zillion times stronger than the small country they're invading, where there could never be a fair and just end to violence inflicted by a colonizing force that believes they are more worthy of land and power, even when it comes to the expense of like countless, countless, endless innocent lives. Because sometimes you know, certain types of human life, say six human lives, are just They're just worth more than the hundred people that had to die in an effort to save those six. You don't hear my sarcasm right anyway, Yeah, so Athens, you know, quote unquote, brokeered a ceasefire, which we will call a surrender later, and in response, the Athenians killed every single man from Melos and sold all of the women and children into slavery. Because it turns out, you know, if a ceasefire deal happens and one force has literally all of the firepower of like the entire western world behind it, like turns out it's just not a super even kind of ceasefire deal, not especially when you consider the difference is in how many people are being held on either side. In any case, you might even say that the Athenians, in killing all of the men and selling all of the women and children off into slavery after Milos just refused to do what they said, you might even say they committed a genocide, but we call it a surrender now, just you know, the natural results of war, This genocide of an innocent people that were completely surrounded by a much much much more powerful navy where their only escape was into the water, where that much much much more powerful navy was ready to kill them before they dared swim anywhere. It's not at all familiar this genocide, but it was surprisingly extremely unpopular amongst the general public of Athens. A majority of regular citizens just didn't support a slaughter of innocence, and yet it happened anyway, wild anyway. The year after the siege slash genocide of Milos, during the city Dinysia of four point fifteen BCE, Euripides presented this the Trojan Women. The quote I read at the top, It has been a long time since I've covered that play, and I really hope to do it again in much more detail. But the gist is this. The women of Troy are sold off to Greek warlords as spoils of war. They are enslaved after the invading force of Achaeans committed genocide in Troy and went on to be celebrated for it. Oh son God, you who cut your path in Heaven's stars, mounted on a chariot inlaid with gold, and whirling out your flame with swift horses, What an unfortunate beam you shed on thebes The day that Cadmus left Phoenicia's realm beside the sea and reached this land. He married at that time Harmonia, the daughter of Kippris, and begot Polydorus, from whom they say Labdacus was born, and Lias from him. I am known as the daughter of Manicheus, and Creon is my brother. By the same month, they call me Jocasta, for so my father named me, and I am married to Lias. Huh. That was the opening lines to the Phenisi the Phoenician Women. Do you know where ancient Phoenicia was? You could google it. Let's talk Euripides and women. This you will be utterly and beyond shocked to. Here will not be the last time that we talk about Euripities and women in this series. It's weird, I know, but for now an absolutely delicious overview. But first, a really brief reminder as to surviving works. We have considerably more surviving Euripides plays than the other two tragedians, not because he was more famous or more widely read in the ancient world, but instead random luck. All three of the surviving tragedians Euripides included were widely studied. After the end of the classical period. They became school texts, just like Shakespeare is to many of us today or what. I don't know if that's still happening, and therefore survived in volumes dedicated to those purposes. For Euripides. The plays that survived for this reason because they were canonized and officially recognized in this way were Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus Andromache, Hecuba, the Trojan Women, the Phoenician Women, Orestes, and Backeye. Those plays were intentionally preserved for us today. I mean, they weren't thinking of us, but they were intentionally preserving these plays. But there are more. The plays whose titles begin with the Greek letters Epsilon through Kappa survive, though just through random turns of events. One collector's volume survived, and thank fuck for that. The plays that survived not because they were considered the best and were intentionally preserved to be studied by school boys and instead are like much more representative of just the rest. Are the children of Heracles, the suppliants Electra Heracles, if Agania, among the Taurians, Ion Helen, and if Aganaia at Aulis in many cases the weird ones. And yes, there are so many that I haven't covered yet on the show, like we have so much more to do. But why am I listening at all of these plays? Like why am I reminding you for the sax thousandth time that a large number of his plays survived through this random luck because of the choruses. Because we have so many more of Euripides' plays than the others, we have this much better idea of like how he handled his storytelling in general. But it's the choruses that I find most interesting. Choruses, remember, were incredibly important members of the cast for many reasons, Like firstly, they weren't professional, but a selection of citizens picked to participate in that year's productions. There's so much more to them. Honestly, I probably go on forever, but for our purposes, I want to look at the role they played in the plot. The chorus serves to give the audience a kind of sounding board for the characters or a group to provide like peaks behind the curtain, you know. They recap things that have happened off stage or before they sing of this setting the characters, the gods. They really set the mood. They're really important, and Eurypities really loved to make them women. The choruses and like everyone on the stage was always a man, Don't get me wrong, but they were in most of Euripides's surviving plays men depicting women, And as we know, and we'll see in much more detail in the coming weeks, like that means something of Eurypanities. As surviving plays, only four out of eighteen choruses were male only, and in one Alcestes like, it's not even necessarily confirmed their men, it's just their citizens, so being male is implied instead. It seems Euripides was most interested in looking at how a group of women interacted with his characters, and even better, often these were enslaved women whose voices he was really interested in imagining. Medea has a chorus of Corinthian women, Hippolotus has a chorus of Treesyan women, Andromache has a chorus of Phythian women. Hecuba has a chorus of captive about to be enslaved Trojan women. The Suppliants have a chorus of mothers and sons. Electra has a chorus of argive women, The Trojan women have a chorus of well Trojan women. Ipheganai among the Torreans has a chorus of enslaved Greek women. Ion has a chorus of handmaidens, to Creusa Helen has a chorus of captive Spartan women. The phenis Psi has a chorus of Phoenician women the play is named for them. Orestes has a chorus of argive maidens, if a gnay at Aulis has a chorus of Calcian women, And of course Becky has a chorus of bacay main ads, drunken, revelrous women of Dionysus. So what does it mean that Euripides was so interested in women's voices? To Aristophanes, it meant, even if he was likely joking with his friend or I hope, the Euripides hated women. He wrote characters like madea traumas like Creusas in Ion, violence like a Gawy's in Bacheye. So surely if he was willing to write such terrible women, he hated them. There was a rumor even that Eurypides had a collaborator who slept with his wife, and that was like partially or holy to blame for his issues with women. It's just that, like the idea that he had issues with women is based entirely in the idea that it is hateful to present women as people capable of horrors, as victims of the survivors of trauma, or those overcome by divine madness in that world. Depicting women being real, complex humans just was apparently him hating them. Euripides wrote real convincing, flawed women, and we're gonna talk so much more about them next week, though that today's is long enough. Nerds, this is so fucking exciting, Like, I am so pumped to be bringing you so much about Euripides. I cannot wait to dive a little deeper into like what is going on with his plays and what it might mean about him as a person. We're not gonna retell any plays entirely in this series like I usually do, but instead just focus on like bits and pieces and what they might say about your Rippetyes the person, especially when we don't have any other real answers about Euripides the person. Plus, I will probably keep reading opening lines like I did throughout this episode because it was really fun. And also he has so many plays that survive for us today and so I can read so many. I can't wait. Enormous thanks to Mikayla for doing so much much research for this series, unfortunately, probably more than she needs to do, because she always thinks I can't talk for one thousand years about this man. She thought we might not have an entire episode's worth of this biography, but she she doesn't have enough faith in my ability to talk about euripeties literally forever. Didn't even get through all our notes. Next week more about him Friday, though, my conversation with Sarah Olsen, who talks to me about your rippetyes and how he played with gender and performance and as we well know, like he melted the two. And that's why we're talking. And remember, if you want to try to come to Grease with me next June, click the link in this episode's description and get yourself signed up for more information or to be picked. There's no need to sign on to anything immediately, So really minimal pressure at this stage, and it's gonna be so much fun. Also, new merch is coming. I just keep underestimating how long it takes me to do all of these things, and I'm simply not done. And also technology is hard. The subscription is also coming along, but in that case the technology being hard is just a platform being slow and difficult. And not responding to my emails so soon. Also this month, you'll hear two bonus episodes here on the main feed, and this is gonna be a new series which will be exclusive to the ad free subscription options when I figure those out. So these ones released this month will be sneak peak episodes of what we will be doing behind that paywall. Mikaela and I are. We're having some fun with history. So much is happening. It's such a thrill. Let's so I Got Miss Baby is written and produced by me Live Albert. Sometimes I make a face when I record that, even though there's no one in the room. Mikaylas Smith is a hermes to my Olympians, but I don't know. As the assistant producer, she's literally perfect. Everything is going so great. I'm just happy being happy. The select music in this episode was by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the I Heard Podcast Network. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay tuned for more. People have been signing up to my Patreon and like, I love you, but I feel really behind because I'm trying to figure out this new thing and in the meantime, I haven't given you the other thing, and so like, I don't know, maybe hold off if you hear this, because I'm gonna have new stuff coming. It's gonna be better. I am live and I love this shit so much. I wish there were more hours in the day. I just like, I want to read more euipities. You guys, Someone make me a time machine.