Homer, Aeschylus, and Euripides
• Son of Epikaste and Telemachus
• Born: around 800 BC (8th-9th century
BC)
• Got an education
• Was a court singer
• Lived either in Chios or Ionia
• Blind: Greeks thought that being blind gave you insight
• Questions of whether he even existed or not
• Heroes were usually womanizers, got help from the gods, and went
on great journeys
• Wrote primarily epics (The Iliad, Odyssey)
• A great story teller
• Many literary terms are devised from Homer’s works:
Homeric simile- a comparison between two things, using
like or as, developed over multiple lines of verse
Homeric hero- creation of a character that overcomes
feats and does heroic deeds in epics
Homeric style- stock epithets and reiteration
Just to name a few.
• Written in dactylic hexameter: form of meter in poetry
• Originally thought of as poetry, but in the 1920s, was thought
of as an oral tradition
• Was in fact told by Greeks to young men to prepare them for
war
• Set during Trojan War
• Tells of the battles and events that took place during the Trojan
War
• Themes:
The Glory of War
Military Success Over Family Values
Temporariness of Human Creations
• Homeric epics
• Tells of Odysseus’ adventure home after the Trojan War to
Ithaca, and the multiple challenges he and his crew must
overcome. Also speaks about what is happening with Odysseus’
wife and child at Ithaca while he is away. Help from gods and
goddesses, deceit, extreme hubris, and monsters and creatures
are seen to add to the action
• Thought to be written somewhere between 750 and 650 BC
• An example of a Homeric hero: Odysseus
• Consists of 24 books
• Motifs:
Story telling
Disguises
Cunning Women
• Themes:
Smarts Vs. Strength
Temptation
• Died around 701 BC in Ios, Greece
• Many different stories of his death:
Drowned in a tide pool
Old age
Committed suicide
Shot by a brother who was
 mad at him
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Born in 525 BC in Eleusis, Greece
Father: Euphorion (mother is un-known)
Family was well-off, wealthy
Worked at a vineyard
Got an education
Wrote his first play at the age of twenty-six
Won his first festival when he was 41
Wrote mainly tragedies
• Trojan War was a large part in his works
• Second of the three major tragedy writers (other two
being Sophocles and Euripides
• Wrote between seventy and ninety plays
• Only seven surviving works
• All seven surviving plays won first place in drama festivals
• Often writes connected trilogies
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Highly influential
Made costumes very elaborate to add to the plays
Written in verse
No violence was performed on stage
Strong religious values set in plays
Plays were often set in far away lands or about gods
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The Persians
Seven against Thebes
The Suppliants
Agamemnon
The Libation Bearers
The Eumenides
Prometheus Bound
Trilogy known as The
Oresteia
• Died in 456 BC
• Italy
• Has a quite interesting death: An
eagle was flying above with a
tortoise in his mouth, mistook
Aeschylus’ bald spot for a rock,
and dropped the tortoise on top
of his head.
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Born: 484 BC in Athens, Greece or on the island of Salamis
Mother was Cleito and father was Mnesarchus or Mnesarchides
Father provided an education for Euripides
Was at first going to be an athlete
Had a wife, Melito, and three sons
Women- hater
Didn’t believe in the Greek gods and goddesses of mythology
Wrote first play at twenty-five: The Peliodes
From then on was a tragic poet
• Euripides was one of the three masters of
tragedy (following Sophocles and Aeschylus)
• Often reflected Euripides’ questioning of
Greek religion and society itself
• Wrote 92 plays overall, but only eighteen
plays survive today
• Won first prize at four drama festivals
• Was chosen twenty times to be one of three
recognized writers (laureates) each year
• Plays often called tragicomedies (comedic tragedy)
• Characters were often ordinary people in extraordinary
situations
• Many women were shown as angry, or fierce, heroines
• Large use of prologues: almost all plays started with a
monologue explaining the situation
• Not much use for chorus
• Most known for his skill of expressing pathos
• Often time was taken in the middle of scenes for
characters to debate philosophy and social issues
• Had beautiful songs and lyrics
• Characters’ usually tragic fates were because of their own
flaws and mistakes
• Mocked the gods
• A god was usually revealed at the end and had a long
epilogue about the future
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Alcestis
Medea
Children of Hercules
Hippolytus
Andromache
Hecuba
Suppliants
Electra
Trojan Women
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Iphigenia Among the Taurians
Helen
Phoenician Women
Orestes
Iphigenia at Aulis
Bacchants (The Bacchae)
Cyclops
Madness of Heracles
Ion
• Re-married: Choirile and possibly had a daughter
• Left Athens: possibly because of his disappointment in the
reaction to his plays or because of the Peloponnesian War
• Wrote The Bacchae, one of his most widely known works
• Went into a self-imposed exile
• Died in 406 BC in Macedonia: unknown how, most say it was of
old age