Published in the new Methuen Classical Dramatists series

A dramatist whose trademark was the unexpected, Euripides has constantly challenged and intrigued audiences, from Athens of the fifth century BC to the present. The three plays in this volume demonstrate Euripides' versatility. Hippolytos (which was turned into Phèdre by Racine), deals with sexual passion, incest and abstinence; Suppliants (a version of the Antigone story) sets the play in Eleusis and dramatises the moment when the mothers of the dead sons of Oedipus beg Theseus to go to Thebes and demand their sons' bodies for burial. In Rhesos, all the confusion of sentry duty, the intrigue of spies and intruders, disguises and deceptions are crammed into a single night when the fortunes of war turn against the Trojans by a mixture of devious behaviour and sheer bad luck.

Hippolytos; Suppliants and Rhesos

Euripides was born near Athens between 485 and 480 BC. His first play was presented in 455 BC and he wrote some hundred altogether of which nineteen survive - a greater number than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles combined - and which include Alkestis, Medea, Bacchae, Hippolytos, Ion and Iphigenia at Aulis. He died in 406 BC.