Myths abound about the life of Euripides. He appears to have led a quiet personal existence, so chroniclers and comic poets filled in the blanks with jokes and gossip, and by reading specious autobiography into his plays. Aristophanes, who satirized him often, shoulders some of the blame, but he was not alone. "Biography" of that era relied more on anecdote and speculation than fact.

The Parian Marble chronology gives Euripides' year of birth as 485/484 BC. He was an Athenian citizen, raised in the district of Phyla. Tradition holds he was born on the island of Salamis on September 23, 480 BC, the disputed date of the Greeks' famous naval victory over the Persians off its shores. Aeschylus is said to have fought in the battle, while the teenage Sophocles led a chorus in the victory celebration - rather too neat a coincidence placing "The Big Three" of Greek tragedy within that significant event. Fateful combinations of notable people are a cliche in those old biographical sketches; similar stories link Euripides as a student of Anaxagoras and close friend of Socrates. (Plato surely would have said something if the latter was true). But there is no doubt he was in some way connected with Salamis, even if it wasn't his birthplace. His father may have owned property on the island which the author later inherited, and it's plausible that during his childhood the family sought refuge there from the Second Persian War (480 to 479 BC), when Athens and its outlying communities were burned. After Euripides' death his cenotaph was placed not in Athens but at its port city Piraeus, from where it is only one mile across the Saronic Gulf to Salamis.

An unorthodox artist who shocked audiences and rubbed politicians the wrong way was bound to get some flack. Euripides was variously caricatured as a recluse, a misanthrope, a charlatan, an atheist, and as lacking a sense of humor. Since adulterous women appeared in his plays, it was assumed he must have been a cuckold. The earliest reference to Euripides' alleged marriage woes appeared after his death in Aristophanes' "The Frogs" (405 BC), in which Dionysus tells the playwright, "The marital disasters you dramatized for the stage came home to you". Others developed the rumor with the addition of a philandering second wife, with an obscene Greek word ("Choerile") for a name. Aristophanes, it should be noted, also said that Euripides' dead mother had sold vegetables in the marketplace, a common Athenian insult aimed at the nobility. He was ready to say anything about anybody to get a laugh.

The Attic historian Philochorus (3rd Century BC) wrote that stories of Euripides' humble origins were malicious falsehoods. His father was a well-to-do merchant, his mother came from a noble family. Euripides' name could be seen in a public list of aristocrats at Phyla. He evidently had an education commensurate with his class and owned a large private library, a very expensive possession. In his "Rhetoric" (c. 334 BC) Aristotle noted that Euripides was once involved in a lawsuit with a man named Hygiainon over whose turn it was to finance some municipal work, as wealthy Athenian citizens were required to do. Playwrighting itself, while competitive, was also considered a public service, and was not very remunerative except in prestige. All this points to Euripides as a man of indepedent means, with the luxury of being able to devote so much of his life to the stage.

Of all ancient authors, none had more empathy for women than Euripides; their plight in a patriarchal world is a theme implicit in his work. But the frankness with which he portrayed the opposite sex, and especially some of his crazed or vengeful heroines (Medea, Phaedra, Alcmene, Cassandra, etc.) led many to accuse him of misogyny. Aristophanes made it the premise of his comedy "Thesmophoriazusae" (411 BC), in which the ladies of Athens conspire to kill Euripides for revealing their secrets. The issues raised by the vitality and recriminations of his female characters were upsetting to the male order. What better way to diffuse them than by manipulating Euripides' own words against him?The charge stuck until the 20th Century.

For some reason - envy, perhaps - the Greeks loved inventing cruel and demeaning deaths for their famous cultural figures, as if they had to pay for rising above the lot of ordinary mortals. Euripides fared rather worse than most. The gist of his legend is that he was mauled to death by Archelaus' hunting dogs, either by accident, the will of the gods, or through the machinations of a resentful courtier. Another tale claimed he was torn to pieces by female worshippers of Dionysus, a la "The Bacchae" (with a dash of Aristophanes thrown in). It says a lot for Euripides' posthumous reputation that someone in antiquity took the trouble to refute this nonsense. The Macedonian poet Adaeus composed an epigram that some said was inscribed on the tomb in Arethousa: "Dogs did not kill you, Euripides, nor the rage of women, but Death and old age".

Finally, there's the widely accepted tale that Euripides, recluse that he supposedly was, lived or at least wrote in a cave on Salamis. In "The Acharnians" (425 BC) Aristophanes shows Euripides composing his tragedies while sitting on the roof of his house, a visual pun for his "loftiness". There was more comic potential in the cave business and it's hard to believe Aristophanes would have let it slip if the story had been circulating in his time. There is no mention of it in his surviving comedies. The earliest source is a reputedly firsthand record by Philochorus, who said it was in a lonely spot facing the sea. Philochorus was cited by Satyrus in his "Life of Euripides" (3rd Century BC), and by the Roman Aulus Gellius in "Attic Nights" (2nd Century AD), who also claimed to have visited the site. Satyrus and Aulus Gellius are unreliable because they were content to perpetuate all the trashy anecdotes about the subject, including those Philochorus rejected.

In 1997, Greek archaeologists announced they had discovered the likely site of Euripides' legendary retreat. A 5th Century BC bowl shard with a partial inscription of Euripides' name was unearthed from a cave in Peristeria, Salamis, "incontrovertible proof" of the grotto's association with the author. Its isolated location and view of the sea appear to accord with the ancient accounts. It had served as a votive sanctuary since the Neolithic Age and continued as such into the Roman era. However, while the bowl dates from Euripides' time, the inscription was added some 300 years later. The lead archaeologist claimed Aulus Gellius offered the best confirmation as a foreigner documenting a longstanding tradition, even though he merely affirmed Philochorus' statement without providing original observations. The "London Times" was skeptical: "Isn't it just as likely that some enterprising Salaminians 'discovered' a suitable cave to fit the tradition, and sold the Roman tourists tacky souvenirs?" There is still no evidence Euripides himself set foot there, but today it's a tourist attraction called - you guessed it - the Cave of Euripides. (Text by Robert Edwards)

Detail of 2009 photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen, issued on Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

2010 photograph by Sailko, issued on Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.