Euphorion (playwright) in the context of "Dionysia"

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⭐ Core Definition: Euphorion (playwright)

Euphorion (Ancient Greek: Εὐφορίων, Euphoríōn, fl. 431 BC) was the son of the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, and himself an author of tragedies. He is known solely for his victory over Sophocles and Euripides in the Dionysia of 431 BC. According to the 10th century AD Suda, he won four victories by producing Aeschylus' plays, but it is suggested that this may have been a single victory with four plays.

No work bearing his name survives. He is purported by some to have been the author of Prometheus Bound—previously assumed to be the work of his father, to whom it was attributed at the Library of Alexandria,—for several reasons, chiefly that the portrayal of Zeus in Prometheus Bound is far less reverent than in other works attributed to Aeschylus, and that references to the play appear in the plays of the comic Aristophanes. This has led historians to date it as late as 415 BC, long after Aeschylus's death. If Euphorion wrote Prometheus Bound, then there may be as many as five ancient Greek tragedians with one or more fully surviving plays: Aeschylus, Euphorion, Sophocles, Euripides, and possibly the author of the tragedy Rhesus if its attribution to Euripides is incorrect.

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Euphorion (playwright) in the context of Aeschylus

Aeschylus (UK: /ˈskɪləs/, US: /ˈɛskɪləs/; Ancient Greek: Αἰσχύλος Aischýlos; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.

Only seven of Aeschylus's estimated 70 to 90 plays have survived in complete form. There is a long-standing debate regarding the authorship of one of them, Prometheus Bound, with some scholars arguing that it may be the work of his son Euphorion. Fragments from other plays have survived in quotations, and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyri. These fragments often give further insights into Aeschylus's work. He was likely the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy. His Oresteia is the only extant ancient example. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is one of very few classical Greek tragedies concerned with contemporary events, and the only one extant. The significance of the war with Persia was so great to Aeschylus and the Greeks that his epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright.

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