LIFE OF EURIPIDES

Summary

Euripides the poet was the son of Mnesarchus a tradesman and Clito a herb-seller. He was an Athenian (by family), but was born at Salamis, in the Archonship of Callias, in the seventy-fifth Olympiad, when the Greeks fought at sea with the Persians. He practised at first wrestling or pugilism, his father having received an oracle that he was destined to conquer in the public prize-games; and it is said that he was victorious at Athens. However, having subsequently changed his views, he betook himself to tragedy: and here he introduced several novelties, in natural philosophy, rhetoric, and the development of his plots, as having been a disciple of Anaxagoras, Prodicus, and Protagoras, and a companion of Socrates. It is thought too that Socrates the philosopher (and Mnesilochus) helped him in some of his compositions, as Teleclides expressly affirms. Mnesilochus says that Euripides had written a new play called The Phrygians, and that Socrates contributed the fagots to it. There are some who assert that Iophon or Timocrates of Argos composed for him the lyric measures. They say likewise that he had been a painter, and that pictures of his were exhibited at Megara; also that he was a torch-bearer of Apollo of Zoster.