Our fifth event saw Dr Bijan Omrani speak about one of classical Greece’s best-known and most significant playwrights, Euripides (c. 480 – c. 406 BC).
In Bijan’s own words:
"Euripides was one of the great tragedians of classical Athens. Although wildly popular in his lifetime, his work has troubled and confused audiences both ancient and modern. Aristotle said of him that he was the most tragic of poets, but Nietzsche that he, along with Socrates, caused the very extinction of the genre.
He has variously been hailed as a feminist and excoriated as a hater of women. Some have claimed him an anti-war ironist who corroded the moral fabric of Athenian life, whilst others insist that he was a staunch upholder of traditional values. Whilst Sophocles is claimed to have said that Euripides drew his characters as true to life, ‘not as they ought to be, but as they are,’ and Goethe asked ‘Have any of the nations of the world since his time produced one dramatist who was worthy to hand him his slippers,’ this has not held back some modern critics from claiming that his plays are stuffed full of ‘self-indulgent digression for the sake of rhetorical display.’
His treatment of the gods has caused the most perplexity. Many have agreed with the Victorian critic, Arthur Verrall, that he was ‘Euripides the Rationalist’, the philosopher of the stage, an early proponent of atheism, whose plays made a mockery of the gods. Others insist that he was a pious defender of the gods and received religious values. For me, regardless of his mastery of poetry and drama, and whatever might be made of his treatment of politics or gender, his grappling with the idea of the divine is the most significant and compelling part of Euripides’ legacy. With particular reference to one play, The Bacchae, (currently running at the National Theatre), I shall explore Euripides’ struggle with the idea of the gods and the holy, and why his work and thought in this field still matters."
Bijan Omrani’s doctoral research was on Euripides and early philosophy. He is the author of various books on cultural and religious history, most recently God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England.