Civilization #9: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides as Prophets of Democracy

Every society has a problem: how do we organize the thinking of the people within it? How do you create an identity? In modern society, there are three institutions that create a collective identity.

• Public Schools: You're here to learn about the history of China, to learn about the politics of China. The idea is to make everyone think alike or have the same basic knowledge and worldview.
• Mass Media: When you turn on a TV or read a Chinese newspaper, it's presenting a particular worldview. When you absorb this worldview, you become more Chinese.
• Mass Culture: This includes TV shows, movies, and books.

Through these three institutions, societies can create a national identity. Depending on your society, you create a different worldview. In America, Americans would want to create an individualistic identity, whereas in China, we want to create a collectivist identity.

Athenian society was doing the same thing, but it was doing it through theater. The main function of theater was to create an identity as a democratic citizen. Why do we have a democracy? What does it mean to live in a democracy? What is your responsibility as a citizen to be in a democracy? That's what theater does in Athens.

The Social Function of Greek Theater

Theater formed the basic structure of Athenian society. There were two months of the year when everyone went to the theater: once in winter and once in the summer. They were called the Festival of Dionysus. Dionysus was the Greek god of the theater, of art, music, sex, and wine. The Festival of Dionysus had religious elements to it, but it was mainly about watching theater. Through the process of watching theater, Athenians created a national identity that they all believed in.

This happened twice a year for one month, and it was free for everyone. The rich paid for all the plays to be performed, and that's how the aristocratic families won favor from the people. In fact, Athenians considered going to the theater the greatest birthright of being an Athenian. It was the privilege and the right of being an Athenian. It was the highest honor in Athens to participate in the festival as a playwright.

Every festival, there would be two competitors. They were called the protagonist and the antagonist. Today, we know that protagonist means the hero of a novel and antagonist means the villain. But back then, all this meant was you were the first competitor, and the antagonist was the second competitor.

The entire point of theater was to promote democracy in Athens, and they did that through many mechanisms. First of all, whoever won the festival was decided by popular vote. The entire process of theater was democratic. There were no professional actors in Athens; people were selected from the community to act out the play, and everyone participated in watching. The largest amphitheaters—these were all outdoor theaters—could hold 10,000 to 15,000 people. The maximum population of Athens was 50,000 people, so this was a huge community event that brought everyone together.

The three most famous playwrights in Athens at that time were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. These were playwrights and poets, but they were first and foremost prophets of democracy. They were teachers of democracy who told the Athenian people why we have democracy, why democracy is good, and how we should protect and promote our democracy. In their plays, the very heart and soul was about the promotion of democracy in Athens. These three were the most admired of all the playwrights. Everyone at that time wanted to be a playwright because that was the highest honor in Athens. To win first place at the Festival of Dionysus is like winning the Nobel Prize in physics today.

Now, I will go over their most famous plays so we can understand how they promoted democracy through their artwork.

How did acoustics work in ancient amphitheaters?

That's a great question about acoustics. The theater was designed like an oval with the stage at the bottom. The sound was captured in a cavern-like space, so there was resonance. But obviously, you were required to shout out the words slowly so everyone could hear.

Second, these plays were so popular that everyone memorized the lines. They already knew the content of the plays, but they wanted to participate in the community aspect of it. So, the two things are that the theater was designed in a way so that sound traveled very freely, but also everyone memorized the lines anyway.

Aeschylus and the Oresteia: The Divine Origins of Democracy

Aeschylus was really the first of the major playwrights, and he wrote a play called the Oresteia. I will explain the plot before I explain the meaning and interpretation of the play.

All these plays come from Greek mythology because everyone knows mythology. What the playwrights did was they took material from Greek mythology and packaged it in a contemporary context to explore modern themes.

The Oresteia is set in a place called Argos during the Mycenaean period, before the Bronze Age collapse. In Mycenaean Greece, Argos was the most powerful city. When the king died, he left the throne to his eldest son, named Atreus. But often what happens in these cases is the younger brother refuses to accept the authority of the eldest and he rebels. A war was fought over the Argos throne. Atreus won, and then his brother came and begged for forgiveness. Atreus, being the king, said, "You're my brother. I want to show I'm a benevolent king, so I will forgive you. And to show that I forgive you, I will host for you a banquet and a feast."

The younger brother was very happy about this. But before the feast, what Atreus did was he killed all the sons of his younger brother and cooked them. During the feast, he fed them to his younger brother. When his younger brother found out about this, he died, but before he died, he cursed Atreus and said, "Curse upon you and your house." A feast is a contract between you and the gods. When you hold a feast, you promise the gods this feast will be peaceful, so people trust you and come and eat your food. When you poison your food like this, you are insulting the gods. "So I curse you and your entire house." Before he died, his only remaining son, Aegisthus, escaped. Aegisthus was now responsible for avenging the death of his family.

Atreus became king and had two sons who inherited his throne. The first was Agamemnon, who became king of Argos. He was the king of kings, the one who started the Trojan War and launched an invasion of Troy. His brother was Menelaus, who became king of Sparta. They both married sisters. Agamemnon married Clytemnestra, and Menelaus married Helen. This is important because Helen ran away to Troy, and Menelaus told his brother Agamemnon, who got upset. They agreed to organize this massive Greek army to invade and destroy Troy and get Helen back.

But when they were about to set sail for Troy, there was no wind. Agamemnon knew the gods were not happy with them. He consulted a fortune-teller who told him how to win the favor of the gods. He told Agamemnon, "You have to sacrifice your daughter, Iphigenia." At this point, Agamemnon should have said, "I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to sacrifice my daughter so that I can go to Troy. And why do I want to go to Troy in the first place? Helen is not my wife; it's Menelaus's wife. Not my problem. I should just give this up because obviously the gods don't want me to go." That's what he should have done. But instead, he said, "Fine, I'll kill my daughter." He killed his daughter Iphigenia, the wind was released from the skies, and they set sail to Troy. We know what happened: they were there for 10 years and ended up destroying Troy.

Who's really angry now? Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon, because their daughter had been killed for no reason. While Agamemnon was away for 10 years, she plotted her revenge. She found Aegisthus, and they became lovers. They plotted how to avenge the death of Iphigenia. Ten years later, when Agamemnon came back from Troy victorious, Clytemnestra killed him. She made Aegisthus the new king of Argos.

The problem is that Agamemnon has a son named Orestes. During this time, Orestes was exiled from Argos. Now, upon hearing of the death of his father, he was honor-bound to kill his mother. Obviously, he didn't want to do that, so he was struggling emotionally about what to do. He consulted Apollo, who was basically the god of justice, and Apollo told him, "You are right and just to want to avenge your father." So Orestes went back to Argos and killed his mother, Clytemnestra, and Aegisthus. Now he was king of Argos.

The problem now is that because he killed his mother, there are these demons called the Furies who came up from the underworld and began to haunt him. They were torturing him. Orestes became so tortured that he ran away from Argos, trying to escape the Furies, but they refused to let him go. Orestes said to them, "I killed my mother in order to avenge my father. That was the right and just thing to do." The Furies said to him, "We are old gods. We are responsible for maintaining order and structure in the universe. One thing that you cannot do is kill your parents, especially your mother. By doing so, you are breaking the order of the universe. Therefore, we will haunt you for the rest of eternity. We will not let you go."

Orestes went and talked to Apollo, who tried to intercede on his behalf. The Furies said to Apollo, "You are a young god, a new god. We are the old gods. We are much older than you are, much wiser than you are. You have no authority over us. We don't care about justice; we don't care about the laws of men. We care about the laws of the universe, and Orestes has broken the law of the universe."

Now Orestes was in a lot of trouble. In an act of desperation, the last thing he did was run to Athens, where Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was. Orestes told Athena his story and begged for her help. Athena took pity on Orestes and said, "I'm going to convene a jury of 500 Athenian citizens. You will make your case before them, the Furies will make their case before them, and they will decide whether or not you are guilty."

Both Orestes and the Furies made their case, and morally speaking, both cases were compelling. Even though Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon, the fact of the matter is Agamemnon was an awful person. He killed their daughter for no particular reason and then went off to Troy and killed a lot of people for no reason as well. Both cases were very strong. At the end of the day, 250 Athenians decided Orestes was guilty, and 250 decided he was innocent. It was what we call a hung jury; it was divided evenly.

What happened then was Athena came in and said, "Because you are deadlocked, I will be the deciding vote. I vote in favor of Orestes." Now Orestes was free to go home and live his life in peace. The Furies said to her, "No, no, no, we don't accept your laws, Athena." Then Athena said to them, "Fine, I'll make you a deal. Right now, you're demons, and everyone fears and hates you. But I will now make you stand for justice, truth, and righteousness, so that we, the Athenian people, will worship you and admire you." The Furies said, "Okay, that's a pretty good deal." They accepted this deal, and Orestes was allowed to go home. The story ends.

What's the relevance of this story? For Athens, it tells them where democracy comes from. Athena, the goddess herself, gave democracy to Athens. But it also tells them what a tremendous gift this is because by giving the Athenian people democracy, it basically gave them the power of gods. When you have these 500 jurors, each of them has the same power and authority as the goddess Athena herself. Athena could only cast one vote.

What this is telling the Athenian people is that the gods gave you democracy; honor them by taking it very seriously. When you vote, do so very seriously, because when you vote in a good way—meaning you've thought very clearly over your decision—then you bring justice, truth, and righteousness into the world. That's why Aeschylus is a prophet of democracy. Through this play, he is telling the Athenian people where democracy comes from, why it's important, and what they can do to ensure democracy stays in Athens.

Sophocles and the Oedipus Trilogy: A Warning Against Hubris

Sophocles wrote many plays, but his most famous is the Oedipus Trilogy. You may have heard of it, but I will summarize the story for you.

In the city of Thebes, a king and his wife had a young son. As was the custom at that time, they went to see a fortune-teller, who told them, "Your son is going to kill you, the father, and marry you, the mother." The king freaked out and ordered his soldier to go out and kill the baby. The soldier took the baby—maybe a few days or a few weeks old—out into the woods. He was supposed to kill the baby, but he was a soldier and felt it would be dishonorable to kill a baby. So he just left the baby in the woods and ran away, thinking maybe the wolves would come and eat it.

Instead, a shepherd from another city came and found the baby and took care of him. He went home. In his city, the king and queen had no child, no son, no heir. The shepherd presented the baby to the king, who named him Oedipus. Oedipus grew up to be a very strong, noble, and handsome young man. When he was of age, he went and talked to a fortune-teller. The fortune-teller told him, "I am sorry, but you are cursed. You are cursed to kill your father and marry your mother." Oedipus freaked out and said, "I don't want to do that. I don't want to kill my parents who love me." So he ran away from his city.

He was going to Thebes, and on the way, he got into an argument with an old man and his friends and killed all of them. This old man happened to be his real father, the King of Thebes. He went into Thebes, and everyone was crying. Oedipus asked what the problem was, and the citizens told him, "Our king is dead, and also there's a Sphinx, an evil demon, who is haunting us." Oedipus volunteered to challenge the Sphinx to a duel. The Sphinx asked Oedipus a riddle. If Oedipus could get it right, the Sphinx would go away, but if he got it wrong, the Sphinx would eat him. The riddle was: "What walks in the morning with four legs, in the afternoon with two legs, and in the evening with three legs?" The answer is man. It's a very famous riddle. He got it right, and the Sphinx lost and flew away.

The people of Thebes were so thankful they made him King of Thebes. If you're King of Thebes, you marry the Queen of Thebes. So he had done it: he married his mother and killed his father.

Twenty years later, there was a plague in Thebes. Oedipus, now the king, knew that somehow he had angered the gods. He talked to a fortune-teller, who told him, "The gods are angry at you because you've killed your father and you've married your mother, and you've had children with your mother. All your children are products of incest, so the gods are angry at you." What Oedipus did was he blinded himself and exiled himself to die somewhere else.

The problem now was who would inherit the throne. His eldest son was supposed to inherit the throne, but he had another son named Polynices who rebelled and fought for the throne. The two brothers killed each other in battle. Now Creon, the brother of the dead queen (the queen had killed herself), inherited the throne. The first thing he did was announce that the dead king would be given a state funeral. "We will honor him. But Polynices, who rebelled against the king and who caused all this suffering and misery, will not be given a funeral. He will not be buried." The reason why is that Greeks believed that only by burying the dead could they find peace in the afterworld. It was a very serious thing not to bury the dead.

Antigone, who was the daughter of Oedipus and the sister of Polynices, found out about this and thought it was unjust. Polynices had done a lot of bad things, but no one deserved this. She secretly buried Polynices. Creon found out and demanded Antigone be arrested. Creon said to her, "How dare you defy my laws? How dare you disrespect my orders?" Antigone said to him, "Your laws are unjust." Creon replied, "The laws are the laws. Without laws, there will be complete chaos." Then Antigone responded by saying:

Human laws must conform to Justice. There are these laws in the universe that are divine, unwritten, and immutable, and we must respect these laws. Human laws cannot override these laws of Justice.

This made Creon very angry, and so he sentenced her to death for disobeying him. The problem was that Antigone was the fiancée of Haemon, who was Creon's son. Haemon, the prince, came and begged his father to relent. He said, "Can you please forgive Antigone?" Creon thought his son had betrayed him. "Your love for Antigone has blinded you from seeing the truth, from doing what is right." Haemon responded, "Father, I'm not doing this for Antigone. I'm doing this for you. The reason why is the people of Thebes fully support Antigone. They think she is a hero. They think she is just and right to want to bury her brother. They think you are a tyrant, Father."

Creon said, "Should I obey the mob? Should I, the king, listen to the mob?" Then Haemon said, "No, you should listen to what is right and just." Creon got very angry and kicked Haemon out. But then Creon had a change of heart. He didn't know if he had done the right thing, so he talked to a fortune-teller. The fortune-teller told him, "Antigone is right in this situation. You have to save her. If you don't save her, if she dies, the gods will be very angry at you." That scared Creon.

Creon and his guards looked for Antigone, but when they found her, she was in a cave, dead. She had killed herself because she didn't want to be executed. Weeping over the body of Antigone was Haemon. He was crying, so depressed and sad. Creon saw his son crying and tried to put his hand on him and console him. The moment that Haemon saw his father, he became so angry he lunged at him with his sword. But he missed. When he found out he had failed to kill his father, in his anger and grief, he killed himself. Both Antigone and Haemon were now dead. When Haemon's mother found out about this, she killed herself too. Now Creon was alone in the world.

What does this story mean? Remember, Athens was a democracy, so this was a message that was very much anti-king. Let's not have a king, because kings do stupid things. And why do kings do stupid things? Because of hubris. The problem with kings, with monarchy, with power, is that people develop hubris—violent, excessive arrogance—and that makes them do stupid things, like refuse to listen to what is right and good and just. That's why kingship is a bad thing. That's why we Athenians have democracy and not a king.

The second message is that the world works when the old give way to the young. The old must always listen to the young. Remember that in the Oresteia, the play ends with the Furies, the old gods, giving way to the new gods who bring justice into the world. The Oedipus Trilogy ends in tragedy because the old king refuses to give way to young people. The other message is that society works, and there is truth and justice in the world, when the old give way to the young.

Why did the characters trust fortune-tellers?

People trusted fortune-tellers because everyone was religious. The fortune-tellers spoke on behalf of the gods. They were called seers, prophets, or diviners. Their job, what made them special, was that they were able to interpret the will of the gods, and that's why the kings listened to them. For most of human history, humans were extremely religious people, including the Greeks. The Greeks were especially, incredibly religious.

Euripides: The Critic of Athenian Democracy

Euripides was the youngest of these three, and he was the least prized or respected in Athens when he was alive. The reason why is that, as you can see, the Oresteia and the Oedipus Trilogy celebrate Athenian democracy. But Euripides criticized Athenian democracy.

For example, in 415 BCE, at the height of the Peloponnesian War, he put on a play called The Trojan Women. This play is about the aftermath of the Trojan War. At the end of the war, all the Trojan men were killed, and the custom was to enslave the Trojan women. One character is Hecuba, the queen of Troy. Her husband, Priam, had been killed. Hecuba is a tragic figure because she had seen all her sons die, and then one of her daughters was sacrificed for Achilles. Achilles died in the war, so they sacrificed a young princess of Troy, Hecuba's daughter, to accompany him in the afterworld. All her daughters had either been killed by the Greeks or enslaved and forced to be the mistress or concubine of a Greek hero like Odysseus.

Then you have Andromache, the wife of Hector, the prince of Troy who died at the hands of Achilles. She saw the death of her husband, and she had a young baby, only a few months old. But he was a boy, and the law at that time was that all boys must be killed because the Greeks feared that if he grew up—and he was the son of Hector—he might want revenge. So Andromache must witness the Greeks killing her son, who was only a few months old. Then Andromache was dragged away to be a slave, basically a mistress, a lover of a Greek general, Odysseus. Hecuba must personally bury the dead child. It is a play that made everyone in Athens weep.

What makes this play powerful is that the year before, in 416 BCE, during the height of the Peloponnesian War, Athens was attacking everyone, including an island called Melos. When they attacked Melos, they killed all the men and enslaved all the women. In many ways, The Trojan Women is a direct response to what happened in Melos. Euripides was telling the people, "Do you see how terrible we are? We are a terrible people. Do you see all the hurt and suffering we've brought onto the world because of our empire?"

Obviously, the Athenian people didn't like this play, and so he lost in the competition to an obscure nobody. Euripides got really angry and bitter about all this, so he exiled himself to Macedonia, where he died. In his last play, he wrote his masterpiece called The Bacchae in Macedonia. After he died, his friends brought this play back to Athens.

I will explain the plot of The Bacchae and then explain the interpretation. There's a god named Dionysus; another name for him is Bacchus. The Bacchae are people who worship Dionysus, the god of theater, music, festivals, wine, and sex.

The legend is that Dionysus was born in Thebes to a Theban princess, and his father was Zeus, the king of the gods. Zeus liked to go around and rape women, and he had many children, including Dionysus. But when the princess of Thebes announced that she had been impregnated by Zeus, no one believed her. Everyone laughed at her. The people of Thebes refused to worship Dionysus. Now, Dionysus was worshipped around the world, as far away as India, so he had always been bitter about this. He was bitter about the fact that his mother was insulted by the Theban people, and he was also bitter that the Theban people didn't pay homage to him.

So he plotted his revenge. He disguised himself as a wanderer, a stranger, and he made the women of Thebes insane. He made them worship him, and what they did was they ran off to the mountains where they had sex orgies. They were doing all these crazy things in the worship of Dionysus. The King of Thebes, his name is Pentheus, heard about all this chaos and decided, "I'm going to get my army, go into the mountains, and kill everyone, because the Bacchae are too disruptive. They are amoral."

He was about to do this, but then Dionysus, the wanderer, told him, "Hey, I'll make you a deal. Don't kill the Bacchae. I want to take you into the mountains, and together we can watch them have sex. We can watch their sex parties." Pentheus said, "Okay, that's interesting." So together, the two went into the mountains and hid behind a rock as the Bacchae were about to worship Dionysus. Pentheus was hiding behind the rock, but he couldn't really see that clearly. He was really excited; he really wanted to see the Bacchae in action. So Dionysus said, "Why don't you climb that tree? That tree will give you a better view of all the action." Pentheus climbed the tree and hung by a branch. He had a very clear view of the Bacchae, who were in a circle.

Then what Dionysus did was he lowered the branch so that Pentheus was now in the circle of the women. Dionysus commanded the women to kill Pentheus, to rip his body apart. One of the women in that circle was actually Pentheus's mother. Pentheus died in the mountains.

The people of Thebes were now very anxious. The king had disappeared, and the women of Thebes were in the mountains. Then Pentheus's mother came back, running and really excited. She was holding the head of Pentheus and shouting to the people of Thebes, "Look how wonderful I am! Look how brave and courageous and strong I am, because I'm holding a lion's head. With my bare hands, I killed a lion and ripped the head off its body. Here it is." It took a very long time for the people of Thebes to convince her, "That's not a lion's head, ma'am. That's your son's head."

This is an extremely weird play, and there are different interpretations of what this means. I'll tell you my interpretation. Think about this image: a mother holds her son's head in her hand, and she's celebrating how brave she is. I think this is a metaphor for war and empire. The reason why is that war and empire happen when old people send their children to fight and die for their glory. This image of a mother holding her son's head and shouting to the whole world, "Look how brave I am, look how great I am," is really a metaphor for war and empire. Remember, the Peloponnesian War was really about building an empire. Athens wanted to build its empire, and it was sacrificing its young people in order to accomplish this. So The Bacchae is a direct criticism of the Athenian empire and a direct criticism of the Peloponnesian War.

Some further evidence to support this interpretation is that in 431 BCE, the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens started. About a year afterwards, a lot of Athenian men were dead. It was the custom at that time to honor the war dead by holding a huge state funeral. The state of Athens would pay for the burial of all its war dead. During this huge funeral, all of Athens came out to watch an oration. Pericles, who was basically the first citizen of Athens, which means he was the king of Athens, gave his funeral oration. This oration is considered by many to be the greatest speech ever made. It is beautiful, extremely eloquent, and very powerful.

In the speech, he said this:

Athens is the greatest place ever, and that's because we celebrate excellence. Athens is a place where anyone can come and through hard work, through talent, can achieve greatness. We are an open, tolerant, cosmopolitan people. We have a democracy where everyone can participate in the civic life, the political life of Athens. That's what makes Athens glorious. Therefore, we must protect our democracy through war. It is good that the young go out and fight for our empire, our democracy, because that's what gives meaning to their lives. These men who are dead before us, they died well because they died protecting Athens and defending our democracy. And we should have all young men go and fight for us.

That's literally what he said. Euripides was probably in the audience because everyone was there when the speech was given. He reimagined this funeral oration as the mother holding her son's head and saying to the world, "Look how brave I am." What Pericles was really saying is, "We're an empire, and an empire is so good because it brings glory to the old people. And so the young must protect the glory of the old people by dying in a war."

But if you think about it, even though Euripides was criticizing Athenian democracy, what he was really doing was also trying to defend it. A democracy only happens when citizens are engaged in a process of argumentation, debate, and self-reflection. What Euripides was really trying to do was put a mirror before the Athenian people. He was saying to them, "Look how awful we are. We can do better." And that's what a democracy really is: an open and honest discussion about how we can be better.

Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are considered the three greatest playwrights in Athenian history. These plays—the Oresteia, Oedipus Rex, and The Bacchae—are actually still performed in theaters around the world today. That's how amazing they were.

How do other scholars interpret The Bacchae?

There are different interpretations, but the most common one is that it is a play that explores the idea of religious devotion or religious fanaticism. This play is really about the power of religion and faith and how it drives us into madness.

Another interpretation is that Dionysus is the villain, or at least the main focus of the play, and he does a lot of bad things. For most of his life, Euripides was participating in the Festival of Dionysus, hoping to win first place, but most of the time he lost because he kept offending the Athenian people. So another interpretation is that this play, The Bacchae, is a satire on the power of Dionysus and of theater in general. It's a direct criticism of the Festival of Dionysus. What Euripides is really saying is that the Festival of Dionysus is not about art and reflection and democracy; it's really just a wild sex party that's trying to please everyone. You can also interpret this as a criticism of democracy itself: democracy is just a wild sex party.

Those are the two major interpretations: that it's about the power and dangers of religious fanaticism, and that it's a direct attack on the idea of theater itself and democracy. But I don't see it that way. I think the most likely explanation is that it is a direct criticism of empire. You can believe whatever you want; that's the power of Athenian theater. There are different ways to interpret it. Even today, modern audiences are still amazed and inspired by these plays.

What are the common themes in these plays?

You're right that all these plays have the idea of revenge. The reason why is if you think about human motivation, what really drives us to violence is revenge. Revenge is the main plot device used to drive action; it's what motivates us to do violent things. That's why throughout all these plays, revenge is a common theme.

But another very common theme is the idea of hubris, or arrogance. This is what the Greek playwrights focused on a lot. What they discovered is that things go wrong in society when the leaders, the elite, the kings, develop hubris because it leads to bad judgment. But what they also discovered is that hubris is just a part of human nature. If you put someone in a position of power, he or she will always develop hubris. So hubris is basically the most common theme throughout all these plays.

These playwrights, these poets, were trying to explore what it means to be human. They were trying to decipher the essence of being human, looking into the human heart and trying to figure out what makes us human.

What was Euripides' reputation in Athens?

The thing about Euripides was that today, scholars will all agree that of these three, Euripides was the most talented. His use of poetry, metaphors, and imagery was the most imaginative. We also agree that he was the most shocking; his ideas and the way he presented things were the most visual and imaginative. In terms of pure talent, he was the most talented.

But when he was alive, he was an extremely arrogant person who believed theater should be about awakening people, about challenging people's sense of reality. It should be about education and edification. These people tend to be hated by their contemporaries, but after they are dead, later generations respect them more.

Even though The Trojan Women did not win first place, The Bacchae did win first place, and that's because Euripides was dead. They were able to see the genius and imagination of The Bacchae much more closely. Euripides' reputation was rejuvenated after his death, but during his lifetime, he was despised by a lot of people. People respected his genius, but they didn't like the fact that he was so arrogant and candid. That's true for most of human history: if you are a controversial writer, you are not respected by your contemporaries, but after you're dead, people appreciate your genius. This is true for most really famous writers.