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Ladies and gentlemen, today I am standing up for Euripides.

He is the youngest

tragedian that we know of from the 5th century, the youngest of the big three, Sophocles, Iskoulos, Euripides.

He wrote 80 to 92 plays. We're not sure exactly how many. We have got 18 or 19 of them. That's not my vagueness, by the way.

It's because the authorship of the Reesis is contested. Now you're welcome.

So we have more Euripides plays than Eeschylus and Sophocles put together.

In other words, we have seven of each of them.

We have 18 or 19 of Euripides.

And the reason is that we have two manuscripts surviving by him.

It is just good luck.

So here's the thing.

For all three Trudedians, we have basically a greatest

hits manuscript where ancient scholars decided what the, as they perceived it, best plays were

and put them together into a kind of greatest hits. That's where the word classics comes from.

The word classici, meaning chosen, comes from this exact process where people chose their

favourites and kept them. A second manuscript survives

that covers plays which begin with the letters Eater, a long E, through to Kappa. And that's

why we have. The Electra, the Helen, the Heracles, the Heraclidae, sometimes called the

suppliants, the ion, ephigenia in Alice, ephigenia among the Taurians, and the Cyclops,

it begins with a K in Greek.

Oh! Janaya among the Taurians, and the Cyclops, it begins with a K in Greek.

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