Athenian Dramatists -- 5th c.
BCE -- Tragedians
The Athenian dramatists of the 5th
c. BCE are a major source of Greek mythology.
Their plays can be found in English
translations at the Perseus Project.
Aeschylus (525-456)
Wrote some 90 plays; 7 have survived:
- Suppliants (about the daughters
of Danaus). Earliest, but undatable.
- Persians (472)
- Seven Against Thebes (467)
- Prometheus Bound (undatable,
but probably after 478).
- Oresteia (458)
- Agamemnon
- Choephoroe or Libation
Bearers
- Eumenides
Sophocles (496-406 BC)
Wrote some 120 plays, won 18 victories.
Seven of his tragedies survive. He first won the prize over Aeschylus in 468.
- Antigone (441)
- Oedipus Tyrannus (undatable;
perhaps around 430)
- Electra (of uncertain date,
but probably early)
- Ajax (of uncertain date,
perhaps the first of his surviving plays)
- Trachiniae (about the death
of Herakles; of uncertain date)
- Philoctetes (409)
- Oedipus at Colonus (401;
produced after his death, by his son)
Euripides (480-406 BC)
Wrote 80 or 90 plays; won the prize
five times, first in 441. After 408 he went to Macedonia from Athens. Eighteen
of his tragedies survive, if we include the doubtful Rhesus; the Hypsipyle
is a fragment.
- Alcestis (438)
- Medea (431)
- Hippolytus (428)
- Trojan Women (415)
- Helen (412)
- Orestes (408)
- Iphigenia in Aulis (405)
- Bacchae (405)
- Andromache (of uncertain
date)
- Children of Herakles (of
uncertain date)
- Hecuba (of uncertain date)
- Suppliant Women (of uncertain
date)
- Electra (of uncertain date)
- Madness of Herakles (of
uncertain date)
- Iphigenia in Tauris (of
uncertain date)
- Ion (of uncertain date)
- Phoenician Women (of uncertain
date, but after 413)
- Cyclops (a satyric drama
of uncertain date)
- Rhesus (a doubtful play
of uncertain date)
- Hypsipyle (a fragment of
uncertain date)