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Friday Filosophy v.08.12.2022

Friday Filosophy v.08.12.2022

Friday Filosophy v.08.12.2022 shares quotes, words of wisdom, and thoughts for consideration from Euripedes.

Euripides; c.480 – c.406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined – he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with HomerDemosthenes, and Menander. 

Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became “the most tragic of poets”, focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was “the creator of … that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare’s Othello, Racine’s Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg,” in which “imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates”. But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw

His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

 

Traditional accounts of the author’s life are found in many commentaries, and include details such as these: He was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC, with parents Cleito (mother) and Mnesarchus (father), a retailer who lived in a village near Athens. On receiving an oracle that his son was fated to win “crowns of victory”, Mnesarchus insisted that the boy should train for a career in athletics. But the boy was destined for a career on the stage (where he was to win only five victories, one of these posthumously). He served for a short time as both dancer and torch-bearer at the rites of Apollo Zosterius. His education was not confined to athletics, studying also painting and philosophy under the masters Prodicus and Anaxagoras. He had two disastrous marriages, and both his wives—Melite and Choerine (the latter bearing him three sons)—were unfaithful. He became a recluse, making a home for himself in a cave on Salamis (the Cave of Euripides, where a cult of the playwright developed after his death). “There he built an impressive library and pursued daily communion with the sea and sky”. The details of his death are uncertain. It was traditionally held that he retired to the “rustic court” of King Archelaus in Macedonia, where he died in 406 BC, but modern scholarship is skeptical of these claims. It is possible that in reality he never visited Macedonia at all, or if he did, he might have been drawn there by King Archelaus with incentives that were also offered to other artists. 

  • He is not a lover who does not love forever. 
  • To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.
  • The greatest pleasure of life is love.
  • Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.
  • One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
  • Those whom God wishes to destroy; he first makes mad.
  • Much effort, much prosperity.
  • Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.
  • The good and the wise lead quiet lives.
  • Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.
  • The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.
  • Love makes the time pass. Time makes love pass.
  • Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.
  • No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.
  • Cleverness is not wisdom.
  • Who so neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.
  • There is something in the pang of change More than the heart can bear, Unhappiness remembering happiness.
  • But learn that to die is a debt we must all pay.
  • It’s not beauty but fine qualities, my girl, that keep a husband.
  • Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.
  • Lucky that man whose children make his happiness in life and not his grief, the anguished disappointment of his hopes.
  • Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err. 

The Time is Now

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