As a priestess of the chthonic goddess Hecate, Medea is also adept in the arts of magic. Medea is the princess of the eastern kingdom of Colchis (on the Black Sea coast of modern-day Georgia), the daughter of Aeetes and thus granddaughter of the sun god Helios. Her backstory, which Euripides’ audience knew as they entered the Theater of Dionysus in 431 BCE, is familiar to readers of Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica and/or viewers of Jason and the Argonauts, a tale itself with a number of heavy metal adaptations. Its title character, equally magnetic and repellant, is one of the most powerful and complex in all of classical literature, male or female. Medea was the first tragedy I read in the original Greek, and for many this is the first, if only exposure to Euripides in any language. The two exceptions to this dearth of Euripidean metal are Medea and the Bacchae, to which we now turn. This is not to say there are examples of protagonistic women in metal, Antigone being our most recent example along with the two aforementioned. They infrequently cast mythical and historical women as the protagonists in their songs, more often portraying them as antagonists, as we have seen with both Medusa and Cleopatra. Traditionally, metal’s reception of classical antiquity has privileged the male heroes. Yet this may also be due to many of the plays’ focus on the heroism and plight of women, such as Trojan Women, Hecuba, Andromache, Hippolytus, and Iphigenia at Aulis. Most of Euripides’ plays remain too obscure to grab the attention of metal bands. However, this potential remains largely untapped. Given Euripides’ iconoclastic and irreverent approaches to the tragic stage, one would think his plays readily adaptable to heavy metal music.

He was an artist and thinker ahead of his time, who despite his inclusion among the Athenian intelligentsia, led a lonely, introverted existence, and his unpopularity eventually drove him out of town, to where he spent his final days at the court of the Macedonians.īust Euripides. Finally, Euripides’ portrayal of the Olympian gods as petty, brazen, selfish, and immoral beings earned him accusations of blasphemy and atheism. Showing the influence on Euripides of contemporary philosophers and sophists, these characters used this language to engage in highly rhetorical debates over the nature of justice and religion. Rather than sticking to the elevated language of the tragic genre, his characters spoke, and looked, more down to earth and identifiable with the everyday citizen rather than as larger-than-life, noble heroes and heroines. Euripides experimented with poetic meters, playing something like jazz or prog rock for those used to classic(al) styles.

Such elements in and of themselves did not necessarily alienate Euripides’ audience and critics, but they were combined with a creativity and novelty that many were not ready for. Indeed, his plays are packed with strong emotions, violent death, a sense of helplessness both against the cruelty of gods and mortals alike, and against the irrational instincts that overpower our rational faculties. His popularity in the remainder of antiquity, which persisted well into the Byzantine era, partly accounts for the fact that while only seven complete plays apiece survive of Aeschylus and Sophocles, 19 of his 95 total plays have survived the ravages of history.Īristotle, while preferring Sophocles, nevertheless calls Euripides “the most tragic” of playwrights. However, it was only after his death that his genius came into vogue, and his dramatic technique would inspire subsequent tragedy and comedy both.

His innovative approaches to the art of Attic tragedy were little appreciated during his lifetime, and even mocked by comedians such as Aristophanes, and he earned few first-place victories in the tragic competitions at the Dionysia festival. 406 BCE) is the Vincent Van Gogh of Greek literature.

Line drawing of anesidora