Euripides
2 of the 6 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
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's Encyclopedia in 1910 reported that Sophocles and Aeschylus were "both ranked above him by modern critics"; that ranking has largely inverted, and Euripides is now the most frequently staged Greek tragedian, with Medea, The Bacchae and The Trojan Women in constant revival and his sceptical, psychologically detailed women read as the heart of his achievement rather than a defect. The play counts in both accounts are also off: ancient sources credited him with more than ninety plays, of which nineteen survive more or less whole, and one of those, Rhesus, is widely doubted as his. Egyptian papyri recovered through the twentieth century have restored long stretches of lost works such as Hypsipyle, so we now read substantial pieces of plays neither book knew. The lurid story that he was "torn in pieces by dogs" in Macedonia, and his tutelage under Socrates, are treated today as ancient biographical legend rather than fact.
Written for this edition, 2026.