The plot of Iphigenia in Tauris is usually thought to be Euripides' own invention. Its basic assumption can be found in Proclus' summary of the Cypria, viz. that a deer was substituted for Iphigenia during the sacrifice at Aulis and that she herself was removed to the land of the Tauri. Her later rescue by Orestes and Pylades, however, cannot be traced with probability to any work of art or literature earlier than Euripides' play. In this play, in which Orestes (...) recognizes and then saves the sister whom he had long thought dead, it is assumed that her replacement by a deer went unseen by those present at the sacrifice. The sequel which this assumption allowed Euripides to invent is original only in a limited sense, since it bears the imprint of several familiar story types. These types include the following: the murder of a kinsman is narrowly averted by a recognition; a reunion is followed by an intrigue; and a maiden is rescued. Each is used elsewhere by Euripides. The first two, for example, are found in Cresphontes, the second in Electra, and the third in Andromeda. Correspondences of this sort, based on plot patterns, will naturally gain in interest if it can be shown that they throw light on a play's meaning or on the process that led to its creation. The student of dramatic plots, however, soon discovers that analogies between them are easy to draw and can be quickly multiplied. (shrink)

Novelties introduced into traditional myths are an essential characteristic of Greek tragedy. Each and every play demonstrates, in different ways, how tragedians were versatile and innovative in handling mythic material. Modern prefaces to individual tragedies often discuss the possible innovations in the dramatization of a myth compared to previous or subsequent versions. Innovations advanced in a play sometimes became so familiar that they came to be regarded as ‘standard’. Such examples include the condemnation and death of the protagonist in Sophocles’ (...) Antigone and, in all likelihood, Medea's filicide in Euripides’ Medea. (shrink)

The plot of Iphigenia in Tauris is usually thought to be Euripides' own invention. Its basic assumption can be found in Proclus' summary of the Cypria, viz. that a deer was substituted for Iphigenia during the sacrifice at Aulis and that she herself was removed to the land of the Tauri. Her later rescue by Orestes and Pylades, however, cannot be traced with probability to any work of art or literature earlier than Euripides' play. In this play, in which Orestes (...) recognizes and then saves the sister whom he had long thought dead, it is assumed that her replacement by a deer went unseen by those present at the sacrifice. The sequel which this assumption allowed Euripides to invent is original only in a limited sense, since it bears the imprint of several familiar story types. These types include the following: the murder of a kinsman is narrowly averted by a recognition; a reunion is followed by an intrigue; and a maiden is rescued. Each is used elsewhere by Euripides. The first two, for example, are found in Cresphontes, the second in Electra, and the third in Andromeda. Correspondences of this sort, based on plot patterns, will naturally gain in interest if it can be shown that they throw light on a play's meaning or on the process that led to its creation. The student of dramatic plots, however, soon discovers that analogies between them are easy to draw and can be quickly multiplied. (shrink)

Three famous sophists are referred to together in theApology of Sokratesas still practising their enviably lucrative itinerant profession in 399b.c.(not, by implication, I in Athens): Gorgias of Leontinoi, Prodikos of Keos and Hippias of Elis. The last of these was the least well known to the Atheniandemos, having practised mainly in I Dorian cities. There is no extant reference to him in Old Comedy, but we can assume that he was sufficiently famous – especially for his fees (possibly the highest (...) charged by any sophist) – to justify his inclusion as the third of this ‘triad’; cf. the triad Protagoras – Hippias – Prodikos in theProtagoras, considered further below. Gorgias was by now a grand old man of about ninety (with more than a decade of active life still ahead of him), the last survivor of the first generation of fee-taking educators, associated first and foremost in the popular mind with the suspect arts of political and forensic persuasion. Prodikos and Hippias were probably in their sixties. (shrink)

Three famous sophists are referred to together in the Apology of Sokrates as still practising their enviably lucrative itinerant profession in 399 b.c. : Gorgias of Leontinoi, Prodikos of Keos and Hippias of Elis. The last of these was the least well known to the Athenian demos, having practised mainly in I Dorian cities. There is no extant reference to him in Old Comedy, but we can assume that he was sufficiently famous – especially for his fees – to justify (...) his inclusion as the third of this ‘triad’; cf. the triad Protagoras – Hippias – Prodikos in the Protagoras, considered further below. Gorgias was by now a grand old man of about ninety , the last survivor of the first generation of fee-taking educators, associated first and foremost in the popular mind with the suspect arts of political and forensic persuasion. Prodikos and Hippias were probably in their sixties. (shrink)

Among the most characteristic motifs in Greek mythology is the sexual union of a god with a mortal woman and the resultant birth of a hero. The existence of hexameter poetry listing the women thus favoured – the famous women in the underworld in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, and above all theEoiai– is evidence of an interest in the women involved, not only in their heroic sons, and suggests that already at an early date the theme was the (...) object not merely of passive reception but of an active consciousness. TheEoiai, indeed, saw such unions as an integral part of an earlier and better age, when mortals and immortals were closer:ξυναὶ γὰρ τότε δαῖτες ἔσαν, ξυνοὶ δὲ θόωκοιἀθανάτων τε θεῶν καταθνητοῖς τ' ἀνθρώπων(fr. 1 Μ–W)But it was not to be supposed that such a potentially rich theme would receive a unitary treatment. Already in their first appearances – at least, the first appearances for us – many individual stories are clearly distinguished by their different circumstances. A common variable is the existence, the kind and the degree of difficulty experienced by the woman as a result of the encounter. Polymele, for instance, mother of Eudorus by Hermes atIliad16.179–92, has seemingly no difficulty in leaving her child to be brought up by her father while she goes on to marry a mortal husband. But suffering of some sort is perhaps more usual, and famous sufferers include Cassandra, punished for spurning Apollo's advances; Danae, first imprisoned by her father in a brazen tower to prevent her pregnancy, and then locked in a chest with her baby and set afloat on the waves; and Semele, destroyed when her lover Zeus appeared to her in his true form. Such different experiences could suggest further multiple versions of the same general theme, diverging especially in the consequences of the union (or attempted union) for the mortal partner. Even the same characters could potentially undergo quite different variants of the story; the chief constant is the unfailing popularity of the mythical motif. (shrink)