Marie Delcourt

Euripides is one of the three great tragic playwrights of ancient Greece (the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles) and lived between 480 and 408 B. C. in a historical period characterized by three fundamental phases: the peak years of Athens under the governance of Pericles, the prolonged Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta with the consequent decline of the former’s political and cu