Euphorion (playwright)

Euphorion (Greek: Εὐφορίων, Euphoríōn) was the son of the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, and himself an author of tragedies.[1] In the Dionysia of 431 BCE, Euphorion won 1st prize, defeating both Sophocles (who took 2nd prize) and Euripides, who took 3rd prize with a tetralogy that includes the extant play Medea.[1][2] 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,[3]—for several reasons, chiefly that the playwright's portrayal of Zeus is far less reverent than in other works attributed to Aeschylus,[4] 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 BCE,[4] long after Aeschylus's death. If Euphorion wrote Prometheus Bound, there are as a result five ancient Greek tragedians with one or more fully surviving plays: Aeschylus, Euphorion, Sophocles, Euripides, and the unknown author of the tragedy Rhesus.

References
  1. Ewans, M. (2007). "Medee: Benoit Hoffman and Luigi Cherubini". Opera from the Greek: studies in the poetics of appropriation. Ashgate Publishing. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-7546-6099-6.
  2. Osborn, K.; Burges, D. (1998). The complete idiot's guide to classical mythology. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-02-862385-6.
  3. West 1990.
  4. For a summary of the "Zeus Problem" and the theory of an evolving Zeus, see Conacher 1980.


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