Euripides was born near Athens between 485 and 480 BC and grew up
during the years of Athenian recovery after the Persian Wars. His first
play was presented in 455 BC and he wrote some hundred altogether. His
later plays are marked by a sense of disillusion at the futility of
human aspiration which amounts on occasion to a philosophy of
absurdism. A year or two before his death he left Athens to live at the
court of the king of Macedon, dying there in 406 BC. Nineteen of his
plays survive, including Hippolytos, The Bacchae, Iphigeneia at Aulis,
Hecuba, Medea, and The Trojan Women.