adventures of Medea—a theme that a few years after he was to handle with signal success. The third prize was awarded to him—no mean distinction for a novice. But not until Euripides was just forty years old did he obtain the first prize; and the name of this successful trilogy is not preserved. Prominent as the "Medea" now stands among his works, the trilogy of which it formed a part gained only the third prize. Six years after the production of the "Medea," Aristophanes opened upon its author his double battery of sarcasm and parody, not indeed against the "Medea," but against a companion drama, now lost, the "Philoctetes."[1] It is difficult to perceive any possible link between the Colchian princess and the possessor of the bow and arrows of Hercules; we may therefore infer that the group to which these two plays belonged was made up of fables unconnected with each other—a departure from earlier practice that did not originate with Euripides, though he is sometimes taxed with it.
He was twice married; his first wife was Chœrilla, a daughter of the Mnesilochus who appears in Aristophanes's comedy of the "Thesmophoriazusæ;" by her he had three sons: his second was Melitto. According to some accounts he was a bigamist; in
- ↑ Of this "Philoctetes" there is a very fair account—by no means a common piece of luck with Euripides—by Dion Chrysostom, Oration lii. Dion compares the "Philoctetes" of Æschylus (lost) and that of Sophocles (extant) with the Euripidcan drama; and he shows that each of these pieces has its several merits.
