CLASS221 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Euripides
19 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Our second play by euripides, produced three years after medea but still relatively early in his career. Several of the same ideas as the medea, but a couple things brought out more sharply: Correct relationship of human beings to gods". Two extended scenes involving god (one includes direct interaction, which is rare. Treatment of women brought up more subtly. Theseus is greatest athenian mythical hero, thought of as in some way having founded. Main achievement is slaying the minotaur, but that was well before the action of the play. It involved him seducing, running away with, and later dumping. Left her on the island of maxos. Theseus is now married to phaedra but has illegitimate adult son from amazon. We know that this is the second play euripides did on this theme, which is rare, and the first is said to have flopped because it portrayed phaedra as too sexually aggressive.
