Imaginary interview with Euripides
by Charactorium · Euripides (480 av. J.-C. — 406 av. J.-C.) · Literature · 6 min read
We met him on the island of Salamis, where the murmur of the waves drowns out that of the city. The old poet receives us at the entrance of a cave facing the open sea, a papyrus scroll resting on his knees. Evening falls over the gulf; he agrees to speak, in a low voice, of his furious women, his suspended gods, and the exile that awaits him.
—Why did you choose this windswept cave over the beautiful porticoes of Athens to compose?
Athens is a beehive, and the honey they make there is chatter. At the Agora, people recognize me, stop me, want me to decide between Protagoras and Anaxagoras as one settles a market debate. Here, on Salamis, I have only the sea as my interlocutor, and it never replies. I sit at the entrance of this cave, the scroll unrolled on my knees, and I listen to the surf dictate the rhythm of the chorus. The Athenians think me a misanthrope; I prefer to say I need silence to hear my characters cry out. A woman about to kill does not let herself be caught in the tumult. She wants to be listened to for a long time, in the dark, facing the waves.
I have only the sea as my interlocutor, and it never replies.
—You are portrayed as a fierce solitary. Does this reputation hurt you?
They laugh at me, you know. Aristophanes says my mother sold herbs at the market, as if tragedy came out of a basket of watercress. Let him laugh: he at least grants me an attention I do not give to symposia. In the evening, when others rush to the deipnon and hold out their cups of watered wine, I go home to my library of papyri, one of the first seen in Athens. They think me dry because I prefer a scroll to a guest. But believe me, the man who shuts himself in with his books is not alone: he is surrounded by all the voices he makes speak. My solitude is merely a workshop whose door I have closed.
—Putting on stage a mother who slaughters her children: what did you hope to provoke in the audience of the Dionysia?
When Medea appeared, in 431, the very year Sparta marched on Attica, I wanted them to hear what is never listened to: the lament of a betrayed foreigner. I had her say outright: "Of all creatures that have life and thought, we women are the most miserable race." Consider the bargain I describe: she must buy a husband with gold and deliver her body to him as to a master. The men in the audience shuddered, some hissed. So much the better. I do not ask that they approve of Medea; I ask that they understand where her fury comes from. A vengeance we have seen born ceases to be a monster and becomes a pain again.
A vengeance we have seen born ceases to be a monster and becomes a pain again.
—Phaedra, Hecuba, Medea... why so many leading roles given to women, at a time when they were silent?
Because silence is not innocence. With Phaedra, in Hippolytus Crowned, I showed a passion that consumes before destroying; that play earned me one of my rare first prizes, in 428. With Hecuba, I followed a queen whom the fall of Troy transforms from a grieving mother into a vengeful beast. The comic poets, in The Frogs, have me say that I made tragedy democratic, that I "made the woman speak, the slave, the master, the young girl, and the old woman." They think they mock me; they summarize my life. The stage, before me, belonged only to kings and heroes. I let in those whose voices the city does not want to hear.
—Your rivals reproach you for bringing down gods by a machine. What do you answer to this charge?
The mèkhanè is only a crane of wood and ropes, and I am reproached for abusing it to the point that people already speak, mockingly, of a god coming "from the machine." So be it. But think: when my mortals have sunk so deep into misfortune that no human wisdom can pull them out, who will come down to untie the knot? A god, suspended above the skênê, facing the seventeen thousand spectators of the Theatre of Dionysus. This apparition is not a shortcut; it is an admission: our affairs exceed us. Men think they lead their destiny; I show them a creaking pulley and a god who cuts what they could not resolve. The machine speaks the truth that pride refuses.
Men think they lead their destiny; I show them a creaking pulley.
—You experimented a lot with music and staging. What drove you to innovate like this?
Theatre was born from tragôidia, the "goat song," rough rituals offered to Dionysus. But a rite can breathe without becoming rigid. I charged my stasima with more tortuous melodies, I asked the lyre for inflections that the ancients deemed indecent. They accuse me of softening the chorus's song; I seek the right emotion, the one that tightens the throat before the mind understands. An actor raised on his cothurni, his face frozen in a linen mask, cannot say everything through gesture: it is the voice, the music, the rhythm that must carry the inner trembling. I spent my life planing the boundary between the old ritual and the bare soul of a single being.
—The Trojan Women was performed shortly before your city set out for Sicily. Was it a warning?
In 415, Athens was arming its fleet for Sicily, drunk with its own power. And I, on stage, showed only the vanquished: the women of Troy dragged from the ruins, divided like booty. No victorious hero, no song of triumph — only Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra, and the small body of Astyanax. I let one of them say that "among mortals, no one is free," neither the slave of money nor the slave of fate. Was it a warning? Let's say I held up a mirror to those who were leaving to conquer, so they might see the face of the conquered. Military glory always has a reverse side, and that reverse side bears the name of a woman in mourning.
I held up a mirror to those who were leaving to conquer, so they might see the face of the conquered.
—With Iphigenia, you return to a father who sacrifices his daughter for wind and war. What obsesses you in this myth?
The price. They always sing of Agamemnon king of kings, never of Iphigenia's offered throat at Aulis so the fleet could find its wind. I wanted to weigh that bargain, the exact cost of a glorious expedition, down to the last drop. This play was only seen after my death; they performed it as a legacy. Perhaps that is better: a dead man no longer flatters the city's pride. All my life I sought to know what wars truly charge to those who decide nothing — the daughters, the captives, the children. The trumpet calls, and someone, in the shadows, pays. That is what obsesses me: the face that is never put on the bill of victory.
—At the end of your life, you left Athens for the Macedonian court. Why this departure?
In 408, I folded my scrolls and took the road north, to Pella, where King Archelaus offered poets a roof and peace. Athens, then, was no more than a city exhausted by the Peloponnesian War, embittered, defeated in Sicily, devouring itself. I had spent my life holding up a mirror to it; it hardly forgave me. At the Macedonian court, far from the hisses and contests, I composed my last works in a strange serenity. They will call me a deserter. But a man over seventy has the right to finish his song somewhere other than under jeers. I sought a place to write without having my pen snatched away — and I found it among strangers.
I had spent my life holding up a mirror to my city; it hardly forgave me.
—Your last plays bring Dionysus back on stage, the god who saw you born into theatre. What meaning do you give to this return?
In The Bacchae, I wanted to close the circle: to return to Dionysus, the god of tragôidia, the one through whom it all began. I show King Pentheus, stiff with reason and pride, who refuses the god his worship — and whom the god breaks for that hubris. For the son of Zeus "grants equally to the poor and the rich the painless joy of wine"; to despise him is to deny a part of man. At Pella, at the end of my road, I understood that reason alone is not enough to live, that one must make room for delirium, for intoxication, for forces one cannot command. My friends presented the play after my death; it earned me, at last, a crown that the living had refused me.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Euripides's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.