Euripides and his Times

Euripides’ life spanned most of the fifth century BCE. An Athenian from the deme of Phyla, he was born in the latter 480s (ancient sources record both 485 and 480 for his birth) and died in 406. It seems as if his family was reasonably well-off and Euripides himself perhaps rich. His early education would have included rhetoric, music, and athletics. In 455, he produced his first group of plays, the title of one of which we know was the Peliades (Daughters of Pelias). Aeschylus (ca. 525-456) had died shortly before that first production but at this time Sophocles (ca. 495-405) was in his long prime of successful dramatic productions. Euripides did not win first prize at the festival that year and did not do so until 441. In fact, Euripides, although often awarded the honor of putting on plays at the Athenian dramatic festivals, was victorious only five times, one of which was posthumously. He produced more than 90 plays, and on occasion wrote in other genres. Near the end of his life, he left Athens and moved north to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, where he died.

As in the case of almost all ancient poets, we have only modest information about the details of Euripides’ life. Beyond the information given in the brief sketch above, ancient sources preserve many interesting but often implausible anecdotes. Some of these stories, including remarks on the poet’s personal traits and habits, derive from his own plays and the traditions of contemporary comedy, which happily exaggerated and invented stories about playwrights, politicians, and others. But although there is much fiction in the biographical tradition, too skeptical an approach to this material is unwarranted. From the ancient traditions and their half-truths, a certain picture of the poet emerges, even if the details are blurred. Euripides is said to have owned a library in an age of few books. It is reported that he had a cave on the island of Salamis, where he could avoid crowds, and that he was often lost in thought. The stories about Sophocles, themselves exaggerated and at times apocryphal, suggest an ideal citizen, active in the social, religious, and military life of Athens. The contrasting pictures of Sophocles and Euripides were very possibly drawn in caricature to highlight the differences between the two men, but it seems unlikely that they were invented from whole cloth. The ancient sources present Euripides as something of a loner (but we need not assume a misanthrope), who was more caught up than his contemporaries in the intellectual movements of his age.

Athens was experiencing its most dynamic and stimulating era, and Euripides’ life is virtually framed by the rise and fall of Athenian preeminence. The year 480, given as one of the dates for his birth, perhaps reflects the ancient predilection for linking notable events, in this case the birth of the poet Euripides and the battle of Salamis. At this battle, the Greek navy defeated the attacking Persians, and although hostilities between these two powers continued, it signaled an end to the Persian attempt to dominate the Greek world. The victory not only freed Greece from the decades-old threat of Persian rule but helped to establish Athens’s dominance in Greek affairs, for it was the Athenian naval forces that drove back the Persians. Athens had only recently cast off its own tyrants and treasured its democratic rule, which became increasingly democratic as the century progressed. Some Athenians continued to support oligarchy, but they did not hold sway.

An important consequence of Athenian prominence in the Persian defeat was the great confidence it inspired, confidence that strengthened and characterized the city-state for the rest of century. Freedom of speech characterized this confidence and Athenian democracy itself. Held proudly by Athenians as their privilege, this freedom helped to create the environment hospitable to the great intellectual achievement of the age. There were boundaries on speech, and trials for impiety, the most famous of which was that of Socrates in 399, are recorded. But Euripides, Sophocles, the comic poet Aristophanes (ca. 445 – ca. 385), and others worked in a city that permitted and indeed fostered their genius.

Over the next fifty years after the defeat of the Persians, Athens would come to be the most dominant city-state in the Greek world and, perhaps inevitably, the most ambitious and feared. This preeminence came to an end when Sparta, the other leading city-state of the Greek world, and her allies went to war with Athens and her allies in what we call the Peloponnesian War. As the contemporary historian Thucydides wrote in his account of the war (1.23), “I conclude that the truest cause [of the war], although most concealed officially, was that the Athenians, by becoming powerful and causing fear to the Spartans, compelled them to war.” Hostilities had flared between these two powers earlier in the century, but this war was on a much greater scale. With some interruptions it went on from 431 until the defeat of Athens in 404, shortly after Euripides’ death.

However short-lived Athens’ dominance would prove to be, its accomplishments during this period were extraordinary. Like Paris and New York in later ages, Athens was the center of artistic and intellectual activity, producing or attracting the leading practitioners of the various arts. In this period, a remarkable building program was undertaken on the Acropolis, culminating in the brilliant display of excellence in architecture and sculpture seen in the Parthenon, the magnificent temple of the city’s patron deity, Athena. (This and other ambitious projects were funded by money collected from city-states in the so-called Delian League, which was formed originally as an alliance against the Persian threat and was eventually based in and exploited by Athens.) Vase painting, depicting domestic and mythological scenes alike, reached its acme in this period and had its finest workshops in Athens. Athens was also the home of tragedy and comedy, the two most popular and influential genres of the age.

Very influential on Euripides’ career was the contemporary intellectual movement, named after a group of men, collectively referred to as the sophists. These men, Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and Prodicus among them, did not form a “school” but individuals who toured Greece and in many instances resided in Athens for extended periods. They were teachers offering instruction in a wide variety of subjects. Much of their teaching was aimed at practical knowledge that would help their students succeed in any endeavor. Rhetoric played a large role in their instruction, in part because in a democracy the ability to speak well and sway public opinion in the law court or the assembly was crucial for success. Some of their teaching was devoted to more theoretical areas such as epistemology and theology. An idea of the sophists’ intellectual concerns may be gleaned from a few quotations. Protagoras wrote, “About the gods, I am unable to know whether they exist or not or what form they have. For many things impede this knowledge, the obscurity [of the issue], and the shortness of a human’s life.” (fragment 4) And, again, “Of all things a man is the measure, of those that are, that they are, and of those that are not that they are not.” (fragment 1) These fragments give a brief glimpse of the fundamental nature of some of the sophists’ inquiries. We can also see their keen interest in rhetoric from a statement made by another sophist, Gorgias: “Speech is a great ruler, which with the smallest and least manifest body accomplished divine deeds.” (Helen 8)

Biographical traditions link Euripides to these thinkers. The two men mentioned above were said to have been his teachers (the biographers’ way of saying “there is a connection between”), and Socrates is recorded as a friend. And his plays also show the engagement with these and other contemporary thinkers. Euripides was not the only playwright influenced by these intellectuals: Sophocles and the author of Prometheus Bound, for example, also can be seen responding to these men’s ideas and questions. But Euripides seems to have had a greater affinity with the issues that concerned them. Rhetoric, at times even self-conscious, is more prominent in his plays than in those of the other dramatists. And questions about the gods and their role in human life are often at the forefront of his plays and presented in ways that could disturb the audience.

Although only mildly successful in his own time, Euripides’ works became very popular after his death, in part because his interests prefigured those of later ages. (Euripides is often thought of as the most modern of the three tragedians.) In later antiquity, his plays were frequently produced, and their texts reproduced. Owing to his later popularity and a stroke of good fortune, many more of his plays survive than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Eighteen genuine plays (along with the spurious Rhesus) are found in manuscripts, the oldest one of which containing all these plays dates from the early fourteenth century. We have, in other words, almost a full fifth of his total dramatic output, compared with, for example, about six percent of Sophocles’ plays. Ten of these plays derive from a gradual process of selection, culminating with 10 plays in about 200 CE; these are often called the “select plays,” and the Alcestis belongs to this group. The other plays survive by chance from what was once a complete edition of Euripides, these titles, all coming from the same section of the alphabet, are often referred to as the “alphabetic plays.” Thus, we have plays of Euripides that were not subject to the tastes and decision making of later antiquity. In addition to these complete plays, many fragments from other plays survive, more so than in the case of the other two tragedians. Often of considerable size, these fragments, in conjunction with other evidence from antiquity, allow for a reconstruction of the plays, resulting in a reasonably full picture of Euripides’ oeuvre.

This picture does not permit a monolithic view of the playwright. Several of his plays, for example, often called romances (Helen, Ion, and Iphigenia among the Taurians), have “happy endings,” and do not conform to the common notions of tragedy. Other plays have unusual structures and twists and very novel treatments of the mythological materials. The many surviving plays suggest a remarkably diverse, clever, and thoughtful playwright. If he is harder to pin down as a result, he is all the more stimulating and fascinating. When we approach the Alcestis, it is important to keep in mind its author’s creativity and boldness in experimentation.

Circumstances of Production

The Alcestis was produced in 438 in Athens at the City Dionysia, an annual religious festival in honor of the god Dionysus. The day it was performed, thousands of people, chiefly Athenian and almost exclusively male, gathered in the open-air Theater of Dionysus located in the god’s precinct, adjacent to his temple on the southern slope of the acropolis. The Greek word drâma etymologically means “the thing done, enacted.” Yet our direct experience is with the written word. And even the words we have (the texts) are removed from their context and offer no explicit stage directions or information about the music and dance that were originally part of the performance. The words themselves are vivid, textured, and moving poetry, but we must remember that they were part of a larger structure of words and actions. Fortunately, the plays themselves, although containing no explicit information about production, do provide evidence from which to make inferences and to establish the patterns and conventions of the ancient Greek theater. We also have additional sources of information: writers in later antiquity provided material that can be mined for valuable gems, and the archaeological record, including the remains of the theaters themselves, tells us a great deal about the circumstances of performance.

The Theater of Dionysus in the time of Lycurgus (latter part of the fourth century BCE), about which we have better information, could seat approximately 15,000 spectators, although it held not nearly so many at the time of the Alcestis’s production. The viewing area, with rows of seats going up the slope of the acropolis, was called the theatron, whence English “theater;” the performance itself took place below. The spectator’s view was dominated by the orchêstra, a large dancing area, dominated by the chorus and one of the foci for the drama’s action. (In the fourth century, the orchêstra was most commonly circular; in the fifth century, however, it more likely was rectilinear.) The other chief focus was the skênê, an originally wooden building with a roof strong enough to support more than one actor, located at the far side of the orchêstra. It served as the backdrop for the play’s action and could represent whatever the world of the play claimed it to be, in Alcestis the palace of Admetus. In addition to providing a backdrop, the building was also a stage building, serving as a changing room for the actors. The building also helped with the projection of the actors’ voices in this large open-air environment. The skênê had at least one door, on occasion perhaps two or three; the debate on the number remains unresolved.

The skênê offered one place from which characters could enter and into which they could exit. Characters could also enter and leave along the two long entrance ramps, each called an eisodos or parodos. Most entrances occurred along these ramps. “The dramatic weight of comings and goings is proportional to the openness of space that the Greek theater presented to the playwright, who was also producer, for exploitation.” (J. Gould, 1985, 270) The areas to which these ramps led, although codified later in theater history, in this period represented whatever the world of the play indicated. In Alcestis, one led to the city of Pherae and environs, while the other led out to the areas beyond the city.

The Greek theater had two other devices, neither of which was used in Alcestis. A crane-like instrument called the mêchanê allowed for appearances on high, usually of gods. An ekkyklêma was a platform that could be wheeled out from the skênê and reveal an interior scene to those on stage and the audience. By convention, all action of a Greek play occurred outdoors, and interior scenes were either narrated, as in the female servant’s speech in Alcestis, and/or revealed via the ekkyklêma.

A vexed and unresolved question is whether for this period there was a stage, that is, an elevated platform in the orchêstra to be used by the actors, in contrast to the chorus, which performed in the orchêstra proper. We know that the later Greek and Roman theater had a significantly elevated stage, furthering the distance between the worlds of the actors and the chorus. This was not the case in the fifth century. As the plays themselves make amply clear, even if the actors played their parts on a slightly elevated platform, they and the chorus communicated freely with one another and impinged on each other’s area; no barrier was felt between these two groups. Although certainty is impossible, I believe that the evidence makes it less likely that there was a raised stage for this period of Greek theater.

Tragedy was very much part of the polis, the city-state, and had been produced in the polis since first instituted in ca. 534. The City Dionysia was the primary locus for these productions, although there were other, less prestigious opportunities for producing plays. As the occasion was a religious festival, routine work was suspended, and a significant percentage of the citizens could attend. The festival was celebrated over several days in the month of Elaphebolion (roughly our March) and included a torch-light procession, sacrifices, and various artistic competitions (choruses, tragedies, and comedies). Although performed at a (state-sponsored) religious festival, these plays were not religious in our sense of the term; they were not necessarily or even frequently about religious dogma or ritual. Like so much of Greek literature, however, these plays often explored the relationship between gods and mortals, and they honored the god by their artistic excellence.

Greek society was agonistic: at the festival, three tragedians competed for prizes. To be able even to compete, one had to be selected by the magistrate presiding over the festival (the so-called the eponymous archon), who presumably made his decision based on a sample of the poet’s work and perhaps his existing prestige and previous success. In the expression of the Greeks, a playwright wishing to put on plays at the festival “asked for a chorus” and the archon “granted a chorus.” Each of the three selected playwrights would produce three tragedies and a satyr, a type of playful tragedy. (For more on the question of Alcestis and satyr play, see below.) The same archon who selected the playwrights also chose three wealthy citizens to finance most of the costs incurred in a production. The chorêgos, as each of these three individuals was called, although he could influence a production’s success by this generosity or parsimony, was not in charge of its nuts and bolts. These duties fell to the playwright, who was also director, usually choreographer, and, at times, actor.

Two groups comprised the performers of a Greek tragedy: actors and chorus. All participants would have worn the same basic outfit, a tunic (chiton) and an outer garment (himation) over it. For this period, footwear was likely a simple thin-soled shoe or boot, and occasionally actors or chorus might appear barefoot. Of course, there would be variations in costume within a given production and from one production to another to indicate sex, social status, ethnicity, etc. All parts were played by men (compare the onnagata roles—men playing women—in Japan’s Kabuki theater). This might tax our response as spectators, but for the original audience men playing female roles was conventional and all the actors (and chorus) wore full-face masks. Made in this period probably by reinforced linen, they covered the head and had wigs attached. Although, unsurprisingly, no mask survives from this era, contemporary vase painting and the evidence of the plays themselves suggest that an attempt was made at realism. (A second-century CE source lists 28 types of masks, but the situation in Euripides’ day is uncertain.) The basic requirement of the mask was to identify a character in distinction from others in the production. The masks not only allowed for these distinctions, they also encouraged a close identification between the actor in the mask and the role he was playing. As one critic describes it, the mask “presents, it does not re-present” (Jones, 1962, 59). A mask does not permit changes in facial expression, a type of nuance we have come to expect from our familiarity with close-up shots in cinema. (In any case, such fine touches would have been lost on most spectators in the vast Theater of Dionysus.) The mask with its unchanging expression draws attention “not to the unexpressed thoughts inside, but to the distant, heroic figures, whose constant ethos it portrays” (Taplin, 1978, 14).

Of the two constituent groups of a Greek tragedy the chorus seems the more distant and difficult for a modern audience to appreciate. The members of the chorus, 15 in number at the time of Alcestis, usually acted as a group, singing and dancing their parts, a continuous presence in the orchêstra once they entered. Their members include a chorus leader, coryphaeus, who would at times act independently, especially as the one to communicate with other characters in the drama. (In my translation, I use the word “chorus” to indicate both the collective and the leader as the singer/speaker of verses.) This is not what we are accustomed to in modern drama or film. Music and dance were integral features of the choral elements of the drama. (In fact, the word choros had “dance” as its primary meaning.) Music from a reed instrument, the aulos, accompanied the dancing, but the precise nature of the music and the dancing is impossible to determine from the ancient evidence. We do know, however, that generally Greek dancing was mimetic.

Even with the paucity of information about the music and dance, it is readily apparent that the choral lyrics are rich poetry and essential to the play’s meaning. All parts of Greek drama—the speeches, dialogues, and songs—were composed in verse, but the poetry of the songs was different in kind: denser, more striking in its imagery, and more suggestive in its language. Over the years, the chorus has been called “the ideal spectator” and “the voice of the poet.” Neither suggestion accurately captures their role. Although the chorus is less well defined and at times less integral to the action than the other characters in the play, it does have a specific identity (in Alcestis older men of Pherae, friends of Admetus) and a definite role to play. The chorus responds to the action, reflecting on the events, at times recalling past as context for the present, and often expresses opinions and offers advice. Owing to the nature of their poetry and their function, the choral songs are heard in, as it were, a different key. The typical choral song is strophic, written in paired stanzas, each member of the pair having the same metrical patterns. The first is called the strophe, the second the antistrophe. While the two members of the paired stanzas are metrically identical, no two pairs are alike. After one, two, or three (or more) pairs, an ode may conclude with a single stanza with no responding element; this is called an epode. The first song of a play is called the parodos, the song delivered as the chorus enters the orchêstra; subsequent songs are each called a stasimon, a song delivered after the chorus has taken up position in the orchêstra. We will also find variations on these basic patterns, such as the multiple voices of the chorus in the opening song of the Alcestis and the alternating of lyric and spoken verses in the initial section of the scene between Alcestis and Admetus.

The origins of tragedy remain tantalizingly obscure, but without sailing the murky and shoal-ridden waters of its origins, it is fair to say that tragedy originated in a song sung at a ritual. Thespis is the name attached to the first actor, and this man is often called the creator of tragedy. Stories about this shadowy figure suggest a fundamental innovation: at a time of exclusively choral presentations, he is said to be the first to break away from the chorus and to respond to the chorus in speech. With Thespis tragedy ceased to be only a sung narrative and became enriched with a new dimension, that of actors and spoken words. After Thespis introduced the first actor, others were added: Aeschylus is said to have introduced a second actor and Sophocles a third. There the number of actors with speaking parts became fixed; each playwright worked with this number of actors. Of course, a play could have more than three characters, but this would require the doubling of roles, with a given actor playing two or more roles. On rare occasion, a given role would be played by more than one actor. There were also “mute characters,” extras who would play silent parts, such as attendants, and, uncommonly, as in Alcestis, roles for child characters with (small) singing parts. The reason for this limit of actors with speaking parts might stem from an attempt at fairness so that each playwright would be competing under the same conditions in the competition. Whatever the reason, the effect is noteworthy: the Greek tragic stage, excluding the chorus, tended to be uncrowded. Dialogue among three characters, although possible, was in fact uncommon. The plays generally show conversations between two characters, or one character and the chorus, or one delivering a soliloquy. Even when the three actors are on stage together, only infrequently do they engage in three-way dialogue. The doubling of roles necessitated by the small number of actors was also facilitated by the identification the masks created between mask-wearing actor and the character he played.

Strikingly, the Alcestis could be staged with only two actors. This does not mean that only two actors were necessarily used in the original production, but that it was possible to do so. It is difficult to assign a particular significance to this fact, as the same is also true for the Medea, produced in 431. If only two actors were used, the distribution of roles would be actor #1: Apollo, Alcestis, Heracles, and Pheres; actor #2: Death, servants (both female and male), and Admetus. If three actors were used, there is more than one possibility of distribution.

As Aristotle, writing in the fourth century BCE, observed, the fundamental dynamic of Greek tragedy is based on the alternation of speech and song, the dialogue of the actors and the odes of the chorus. Periodically in a play, a chorus leader will have a few lines to speak, and the actors will occasionally sing their lines, but the basic dynamic of the genre is the alternation of speech and song. This alternation gives tragedy much of its rich and varied texture. Tragedy’s structure involves not only the alternation of speech and song but also this alternation combined with the exit(s) of actors before the songs and their entrance(s) after them (Taplin 1977 and 1978). One should be alert to this pattern and variations on it. Since these junctures of song and exit and entrance represent the joints, as it were, of the dramas, one should pay attention to the ways in which the playwright exploits these moments for significant juxtapositions as he moves in and out of scenes and between the constituent parts of the drama, actors and chorus, action and song.

The Myth

With uncommon exception, the Greek tragedians took the subject of their plays from the vast reservoir of traditional tales, their myths. The fourth-century comic playwright Antiphanes famously remarked (frag. 189) that tragedians had it easier in working with traditional materials and not needing to construct dramatic plots entirely from imagination, as comic playwrights had to. It is true that tragic playwrights worked within mythic traditions, but they had degrees of flexibility in how they presented the material. Where they started their tale, what they emphasized, what characters and what actions they put on stage, and what motivations they provided were all choices that they made in creating their tragedies. But the audience would be familiar with at least the contours of the myth and would bring to the theater certain expectations.

So, what did the audience know and expect when seeing the Alcestis in 438? This is not an easy question to answer because we have little information about the myth before Euripides’ production. In Homer’s Iliad (2.715), there is a passing reference to Alcestis as “the most beautiful of Pelias’s daughters,” and a fragment of Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women preserves her name, while an ancient commentary states that this same poem contained the story of Apollo’s servitude to Admetus, which sets in motion the action of Euripides’ play. The tragedian Phrynichus (ca. 500) produced an Alcestis, which seems to have included several elements found in Euripides’ play: the figure of Thanatos (Death) carrying a sword to take a lock of hair from Alcestis prior to her death and perhaps Heracles wrestling with Death, a motif modified in the play of 438. Sophocles produced an Admetus, but we know almost nothing about its contents or its date, although, like Hesiod’s account, it may have included Apollo’s servitude to Admetus. Some parts of the story at least were well enough known to be called to mind merely through allusion: the chorus in Aeschylus’s Eumenides (723-8) complains, without a specific reference to Alcestis, that Apollo got the Fates drunk in Pheres’ house to make mortals immortal. Later writers refer to the love of Alcestis and Admetus, with variations. Most notably, Phaedrus, a character in Plato’s Symposium (179b-d) contends that love can lead one to die on behalf of their beloved, citing the story of Alcestis and Admetus. In Plato’s version, it is the gods who bring back Alcestis from the dead, and it is likely that this version of her rescue was not original to him but was found in other competing earlier versions of the myth. In other words, while our play is the first full treatment of this myth to survive, the story in various forms was likely known to the audience of 438. Euripides seems then to have followed several pre-existing elements of the myth presented in earlier literature: Admetus’s escape from death through his wife’s self-sacrifice; physical presence of Death; Apollo’s servitude to Admetus; and the release of Alcestis from the underworld. At the same time, the playwright gave a unique shape to his play by the way in which he constructs this tale, including the prominent theme of xenia (guest-host friendship), the importance of the house, the significant role given to Heracles, and the nuances of character, motivations, and mortal limits.

In addition to versions of the Alcestis story, the Greeks were familiar with folktales that described its two main actions and helped to shape the Alcestis myth—a bridegroom’s escape from death and a wrestling with Death. Folktales of this type took various shapes and are found in many cultures. Most frequently, the bridegroom’s death is due on his wedding day, while Euripides places it much later in the story. The tales also typically involve what is called an “ascending scale of affection,” in which the efforts to find someone to substitute in death go from the less valued to the most valued near-and-dear ones. Euripides makes much of the fact that it is someone from outside the blood family who is willing to make this sacrifice. (See more in Essay.) The wrestling with Death is not always part of this folktale, and in Alcestis, it is not the groom himself who wrestles Death, but Heracles who does. This makes sense in terms of the timing of the events in the play—the promise to die is separated from the wedding day. The separation also prevents Admetus from such heroism and at the same time allows for the motif of hospitality to be played out more fully.  (A convenient summary of the play’s folktale elements is found in Parker 2007, xi-xv.)

The Production of 438

In his production of 438, Euripides, as was customary, put on a tetralogy, consisting of Cretan Women, Alcmaeon in Psophis, Telephus, and Alcestis. But this fourth play was not in any conventional sense a satyr play. Satyr plays, of which only one, Euripides’ Cyclops, is fully extant (fragments of many others survive), were a kind of burlesque, with playful, even silly, treatments of the material presented. Even the somber, profound, and emotionally charged Oresteia was followed by a satyr play, the Proteus. Notably, the chorus of a satyr play comprised satyrs, Dionysus’s ribald male companions, each of whom would be costumed for the stage with a phallus. Alcestis does not have these characteristics and should not be called a satyr play. The issue of the play’s rightful genre has received much debate from scholars. There are indeed some light elements in the play, most notably the inebriated Heracles’ advice to the servant, and verbal quibbling between Admetus and his guest. But it lacks the defining element of a satyr chorus. Furthermore, its handles Alcestis’s death and Admetus’s grief, shame, and recognition with dignity, not snark. Some scholars refer to the play as a “prosatyric drama,” but if there were such a sub-genre, there survives only this single instance of it.

If Alcestis is not a satyr play, why did Euripides present it in fourth position, which was reserved for a play of this genre? Two answers emerge to this question, one general, the other specific. Based on the names of the more than 90 plays we know that Euripides produced, fewer than a quarter appear to have belonged to satyr plays, which is the percentage one would expect when every tetralogy contained one satyr play. It is possible, of course, that we are wrong in our assumptions about play titles and satyric content, or that the survival of titles is uneven. On the other hand, it is also possible that Euripides, an iconoclast in many ways, at times did not present a formal satyr play in each tetralogy. In the case of his production of 438, there may have been a more particular reason. The year before, a (short-lived) law was passed that in vague language forbade comic personal attacks. Euripides may have taken this opportunity to stretch the interpretation of comic to include satyr play and experimented with his inclusion of Alcestis in fourth (satyr play) position. As one critic suggests, “Euripides wrote a satyrless satyr play not because he was forbidden to do so by law, but because he could claim he had been forbidden to do so by law (Marshall 2000, 231).” We cannot know for certain, but this suggestion is attractive and obviates the need to focus overly on the “satyric” nature of the drama. The Alcestis is fundamentally a tragedy, but an unusual one from a dramatist who was fond of experimenting in his dramatic productions.

On the Translation and Notes

Translation from any language involves choices, and these are guided by what the translator hopes to achieve. In rendering the Alcestis into English, I have tried to stay close to the Greek, retaining, when possible, the thought, images, and structure of the original. I have also, again as much as possible, attempted to follow the movement of the poetry and have each line of English match its Greek counterpart, without violence to English idiom and syntax. But please note that although the lines are broken off in an effort to capture the movement of the Greek verse, my version is not an attempt to produce English poetry. The lyric sections of the drama present their own special demands, and here, too, I follow as closely as possible the movement and colometry of the Greek. Since on the page the choral songs and other lyric sections of the play will lack their musical element, I have opted to visually indicate the difference between spoken and sung verse by presenting the latter in italics.

There are a few lines in the manuscripts of the Alcestis that I, along with several modern editors, do not think are genuine. Per standard convention, these lines are marked off with square brackets. Conversely, there are places in the text where a word or words are missing (meter makes this clear); these portions are indicated with slanted brackets. At times, the text is so corrupt that the editor will indicate this section with the so-called “daggers of despair” (†); these cases are not indicated in the translation, but occasionally addressed in the notes.

My translation follows in the main the Greek text of J. Diggle (Oxford 1984). Where I depart significantly from that, it is indicated in the notes.

The notes accompanying the translation cover a wide variety of topics, from glossing names and explaining beliefs and customs to describing dramatic technique, structures, and thematic threads. At all times, their goal is to help make the play more accessible and meaningful for the reader, especially one coming to Greek tragedy with little or no background in this area.