Hippolytus Study Guide

Reliable biographical information on Euripides is sparse, and any facts are difficult to disentangle with the legends that pile up. As a child on the island of Salamis he likely participated in athletics and studied art and philosophy under the renowned figures Anaxagoras and Proclus. He is said to have had two failed marriages with women that were unfaithful to him. After he went to Athens, several of his tragedies – of which a few survive, though many more are fragmentary or completely lost – won the first prize at an annual dramatic competition. He is also said to have isolated himself in a cave on the shore of Salamis and to have written his tragedies there, even as he became famous. He died after moving to the humbler court of Macedonia.

The Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, which would cause the end of the 5th-century Athenian Golden Age, began in 431, three years before Euripides staged the play. But the war would need to rage for almost thirty years before it took its toll on Athens, and the cultural dominance of Athens still persisted in 428.

Ancient tragedians took their subjects from the common body of Greek mythology, and often recycled the same material that other tragedians used. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were the three major Greek tragedians, and Sophocles at least wrote his own Phaedra, perhaps after Euripides wrote his Hippolytus, which was some version of the same myth. Unfortunately, Sophocles’ Phaedra exists only in some fragments, so the comparison is hard to make. Later, the Roman philosopher and tragic poet Seneca composed his own Phaedra. Since Phaidra’s ancestor was Medea, the play can also be seen as connected to Euripides’ famous Medea.