*EU)RIPI/DHS, son of Mnesarchus (Mnesarchides?) of Phyle c.485 or 480 to 406BC

 Euripides was born in the Attic deme of Phyle in either 485/4 or 480BC. Stories from antiquity about his life seem to derive almost entirely from comic satire. Nonetheless, accounts consistently portray Euripides as moody, reflective, and intellectual. Reports that he was unhappily married and maintained a large library may be reliable. Scholars generally believe the report that he retired to Macedonia and died there a recluse, frustrateed with his native Athens.

 Euripides wrote some 78 or 92 plays, of which nineteen survive under his name. He first competed at the City Dionysia in 455 and competed a total of twenty times. Despite winning only four times (once posthumously), he was one of the best known tragedians of his day. Ironically, after his death, Euripides' popularity soared beyond any of his rivals and exerted an enormous, constant influence on all subsequent drama in the Western tradition. For all this popularity, however, a larger number of his plays have survived not because of his success but because of the chance survival of a part of a larger collection of Euripidean plays (a section apparently including plays whose titles begin E through I). We have reliable production information for only a few of the plays. In alphabetical order, they run as follows:
 
 
 
 
 

Due to Euripides' popularity throughout most of antiquity, we have more fragments of his lost plays than of all other tragedians combined. Unfortunately, several of Euripides' most popular and influential plays survive only in excerpts and fragments.