Euripides Electra
Euripides, Electra (Ἠλέκτρα). Digital edition based on: Euripidis Fabulae. Gilbert Murray, ed. Oxford. Clarendon Press (1902). Original SGML digital edition by The Perseus Project, G. Crane, ed. This derived edition, C. Blackwell, Furman University. 2026. Source texts and code for this page (and others) on GitHub. Licensed CC-BY-NC. urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0006.tlg012:
Euripides (c. 480–406 BC) was an Athenian playwright and one of the three principal tragedians of classical Greece, alongside Aeschylus and Sophocles. Born in the deme of Phlya near Athens, he produced approximately 92 plays over a career spanning from his debut in 455 BC until his death, with 18 or 19 surviving intact today.
Euripides competed 22 times at the City Dionysia festival, securing only four first-place victories—three posthumously in 405 BC with productions including Bacchae and Iphigenia at Aulis—reflecting mixed contemporary reception despite his enduring influence.
In his final years, Euripides accepted patronage from King Archelaus of Macedon, composing works like Archelaus there before dying in 406 BC, after which his reputation surged, with Aristophanes and later audiences praising his rhetorical skill and emotional depth.
Electra (Ἠλέκτρα), produced between 420 and 410 BC, focuses on the aftermath of the murder of Agamemnon and the quest for vengeance by his daughter Electra and son Orestes. The play dramatizes Electra's prolonged grief and unyielding demand for justice against her mother Clytemnestra and Clytemnestra's lover Aegisthus, who killed Agamemnon upon his return from the Trojan War, and culminates in the siblings' execution of revenge. Unlike Aeschylus' and Euripides' versions of the Electra myth, Sophocles' treatment places Electra at the center, emphasizing her emotional intensity and moral conviction while downplaying the Furies' pursuit of Orestes after the matricide.