Ten Plays by Euripides

The first playwright of democracy Euripides wrote with enduring insight and biting satire about social and political problems of Athenian life.  In contrast to his contemporaries he brought an exciting--and to the Greeks a stunning--realism to the pure and noble form of tragedy.  For the first time in history heroes and heroines on the stage were not idealized:  as Sophocles himself said Euripides shows people not as they ought to be but as they actually are.