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Euripides (Encyclopedia of the Ancient World)

Life

The disproportion between what little can be ascertained about Euripides’ (yoo-RIHP-uh-deez) life and the richness and completeness of his texts is immense. Plutarch gives his date of birth, dramatically but probably incorrectly, as the day of the Battle of Salamis in 480 b.c.e. Born to the farmer Mnesarchus (or Mnesarchides) and his wife Clito, he rose from rather humble beginnings to gain an education in Athens, perhaps in the schools of Anaxagoras and

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