Euripides happened to me first in a bookshop in Kamla Nagar. I had just resumed reading then. I found his plays extremely poetic and interesting. My fascination for mythology was an ever-present factor of course. I had picked "Bacche" in the Delhi Book Fair long back. I picked it up recently, after I had become better acquainted with the Greek mythology.
The book consists of four plays : Iphigenia among the Taurians (IT), Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis (IA) and Rhesus. IA and IT talk about the house of Agamemnon, about his eldest daughter Iphigenia. Rhesus talks about the Tharcian ally king of Troy and Bacchae is about the bacchanalian rites and Bacchus as a God.
Euripides wrote with the contemporary Greek audience in mind and there are many nuances in his plays that do not strike us with as much blatancy as it would have struck his intended audience. Still, the realisms that he unravels and the psychologies that he delves in are easily relatable to the contemporary reader. It is there that Euripides makes his mark. The mocking of human behaviour and mind, the pointing out of hypocrisies, the ridiculing of human dilemmas. I would like to read more Euripides, but I have a long lists of Greek playwrights that I would like to explore first.
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