Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived complete (there has been debate about his authorship ofRhesus, largely on stylistic grounds) and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly due to mere chance and partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenesand 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. Yet 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'sPhèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg," in which "...imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates", and yet he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
This book contains collection of best 19 books
BOOK 1 : Alcestis
BOOK 2 : Andromache
BOOK 3 : The Bacchantes
BOOK 4 : The Cyclops
BOOK 5 : Electra
BOOK 6 : Hecuba
BOOK 7 : Helen
BOOK 8 : The Heracleidae
BOOK 9 : Heracles
BOOK 10 : Hippolytus
BOOK 11 : Ion
BOOK 12 : Iphigenia at Aulis
BOOK 13 : Iphigenia in Tauris
BOOK 14 : Medea
BOOK 15 : Orestes
BOOK 16 : The Phoenissae
BOOK 17 : Rhesus
BOOK 18 : The Suppliants
BOOK 19 : The Trojan Women