Euripides
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Euripides. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
u-rlp'l-dez (480-406 B. C.), a celebrated tragic poet of Athens. According to popular tradition, he was born on the day of the defeat of the fleet of Xerxes. His birthplace was the island of Salamis to which his parents had fled for refuge from the burning city. His rivals for honors at the hands of the Athenian people were Sophocles and Aeschylus, both of whom are ranked above him by modern critics. He wrote seventy-five plays, of which eighteen are extant. His subjects were drawn chiefly from Grecian mythology. The most celebrated are perhaps the Alcestis, Medea, Andromache, Iphigenia at Aulis, Electra, Orestes, and Cyclops. See Aeschylus ; Sophocles ; Drama SAYINGS OF EURIPIDES. Cowards do not count in battle. Second thoughts are ever wiser. Leave no stone unturned. Toil is the sire of fame. A bad beginning makes a bad ending. Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife. The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children. The gifts of a bad man bring no good with them. My tongue took an oath, but my mind is un-sworn. SAID OF EURIPIDES. Euripides stands pre-eminent in true natural expression of the passions in interesting situations, original groupings of character, and varied knowledge of human nature.--Americana. Our Euripides, the Human, With his droppings of warm tears, And his touches of things common, Till they rose to touch the spheres. --Browning.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
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 2026 Editor's Note: Ancient sources attributed between ninety-two and ninety-five plays to Euripides , but only nineteen have survived more or less complete, with one (Rhesus) often considered not genuinely his work. The page's claim of seventy-five tragedies reflects neither the ancient attributions nor the modern survival count. Euripides portrayed female characters with detailed psychology and used them to convey critiques of women 's condition and social injustices in Greek society. This approach established women as subjects in Greek literature, distinguishing his realism from that of his contemporaries. (Ed: BR 2026-07-10)