Role Model to Superheroes: Euripides (Εὐριπίδης)

“Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes angry.” 
 
 
“I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” 
 
Euripides (Εὐριπίδης, ca. 480 BC – 406 BC) was the last of the three great tragedians of classical Athens (the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles). Euripides wrote ninety-five plays, eighteen have survived complete. Euripides is known for portraying strong female characters and focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown to Greek audiences. Sophocles said that he himself portrayed men as they ought to be, and Euripides portrayed them as they were.
 
“I was thinking”, he answered absently, “about Euripides; how, when he was an old man, he went and lived in a cave by the sea, and it was thought queer at the time. It seems that houses had become insupportable to him. I wonder whether it was because he had observed women so closely all his life.” Willa Cather, The Professor’s House
 
 
“Our Euripides the human, 
With his droppings of warm tears, 
and his touchings of things common 
Till they rose to meet the spheres.” 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning