![]() ![]() ![]() Nevertheless, it was only after long hesitation that the Medea was selected as the subject for this third Euripidean study. ![]() No other of the eighteen extant plays can be referred positively, or even with probability, to so early a date, and these three are therefore naturally grouped together as our only specimens of Euripides’ earlier art though even these are by no means essays of a ’prentice hand. ![]() The group of dramas of which the Medea alone has been transmitted to us was presented in 431, and “ won third prize ” that is, was adjudged inferior to the trilogies of both the rival poets, Euphorion and Sophocles. It is the Alkestis, which was but the light after-piece appended to the graver tragic trilogy. The earliest drama of our poet now remaining carries us back only to the year 438. Though eighteen of his works survive, while the two elder dramatists are represented by but seven extant plays each, yet, if we permit our thoughts to linger over the wealth we have lost, the scattered remnants which we still possess will seem, in the case of Euripides as in so many others, to be but the chance drift from the wreck, cast in mockery at our feet by the tide whose waves are years. His literary activity continued until his death, in 406. EURIPIDES first “ received a chorus ” - that is, was chosen as one of three contending poets, each of whom was to present a trio of dramas at the festival of Dionysos - in 455 R. ![]()
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