



Produced by Ted Garvin, Charles Bidwell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team









HIPPOLYTUS and THE BACCHAE

By Euripides

Translated by GILBERT MURRAY



Nine  Greek  Dramas

By Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides And Aristophanes

Translations By
  E.D.A. Morshead
  E.H. Plumptre
  Gilbert Murray
    And
  B.B. Rogers


INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Euripides, the youngest of the trio of great Greek tragedians was born at
Salamis in 480 B.C., on the day when the Greeks won their momentous naval
victory there over the fleet of the Persians. The precise social status of
his parents is not clear but he received a good education, was early
distinguished as an athlete, and showed talent in painting and oratory. He
was a fellow student of Pericles, and his dramas show the influence of the
philosophical ideas of Anaxagoras and of Socrates, with whom he was
personally intimate. Like Socrates, he was accused of impiety, and this,
along with domestic infelicity, has been supposed to afford a motive for
his withdrawal from Athens, first  to Magnesia and later to the court of
Anchelaues in Macedonia where he died in 406 B.C.

The first tragedy of Euripides was produced when he was about twenty-five,
and he was several times a victor in the tragic contests. In spite of the
antagonisms which he aroused and the criticisms which were hurled upon him
in, for example, the comedies of Aristophanes, he attained a very great
popularity; and Plutarch tells that those Athenians who were taken