Euripides
A celebrated tragic poet born at Salamis. He studied eloquence under Prodicus, ethics under Socrates, and philosophy under Anaxagoras. He often retired to a solitary cave, where he wrote his tragedies. He brought down the ancient heroes and heroines to the ordinary standard of men and women of his own times, and represented men, not as they ought to be, but as they are. The most serious defects in his tragedies as works of art are the disconnection of the choral odes from the subject of the play and the too frequent introduction of philosophical maxims. It is said that he met his death by being attacked and torn in pieces by dogs, 407 years before the Christian era, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He is accredited with the authorship of seventy-five tragedies, of which only nineteen are extant.
IOOO CLASSICAL CHARACTERS