Euripides – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Euripides’ Helen

An introduction to a classic play

Helen is not the most famous of Euripides’ plays, but it is one of the most curious – and it deserves close analysis and study. The play was first performed in 412 BC at that year’s City Dionysia. In summary, the plot of Helen turns on an old conspiracy theory first put forward by the ancient historian Herodotus: that ‘Helen of Troy’ was a mere phantom conjured by Hera, and that the real wife of Menelaus spent the duration of the Trojan War in Egypt, having been taken there by Hermes and kept safe out of harm’s way. (This is the basis of H. D.’s modernist epic poem Helen in Egypt (New Directions Books).) The Greeks and the Trojans both go to war over what is, effectively, an illusion. The goddess Hera is responsible for the phantom Helen and, therefore, the cause of the Trojan War: she’s seeking revenge on mortals over something called the Judgement of Paris.

Helen lives out seventeen long years in Egypt, chastely and loyally waiting for her husband Menelaus to come and fetch her. Like Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey, she refuses to accept that her husband is definitely dead and rejects the offer of marriage from the new king of Egypt, Theoclymenus. But he won’t wait forever.

A Short Analysis of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis

An introduction to a classic play

Iphigenia at Aulis (the title is sometimes rendered as Iphigenia in Aulis) has been criticised for its melodrama, but its portrayal of the central character’s decision to agree to renounce her life for the ‘greater good’, and Agamemnon’s ambivalence about sacrificing his own daughter, make it a curious and satisfying play which repays close analysis and discussion. The play is largely (more on that later) by the Greek tragedian Euripides, and was first performed in 405 BC. In the mid-1550s, Iphigenia at Aulis even provided an unlikely claim to fame in English literature: it became the first piece of dramatic writing to be ‘composed’ by an Englishwoman, when Joanna Lumley (alternatively Jane Lumley) translated Euripides’ play into English, thus becoming effectively the first female dramatist in the English language. (We discuss Lumley in our book of literary curiosities, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History.)

Before we go any further, though, a brief summary of the plot of Iphigenia at Aulis. At the port of Aulis (an ancient port in central Greece), the Greek fleet is all ready to sail off to the Trojan War. But Agamemnon, who will lead the fleet, has been told that in order to get calm winds for the journey, he must make a terrible sacrifice to the goddess Artemis: he must kill his own daughter, Iphigenia.

Five Fascinating Facts about Euripides

Interesting facts about a classical playwright

‘Have all the nations of the world since his time created a dramatist worthy to hand him his slippers?’ Such was Goethe’s assessment of Euripides. Even Shakespeare, it would seem, wasn’t worthy of such a slipper-carrying honour where Euripides was concerned. Here are five curious facts about the life and work of one of the great tragedians of antiquity.

1. Of the eighty or so plays Euripides is thought to have written, only eighteen have survived. Among the titles that we have lost – probably forever – are Aegeus, Antigone, Autolycus, Danae, Hippolytus Veiled, Ixion, Oedipus, Sciron, Theseus, and Thyestes.