Other than Sophocles there were 2 other notable writers that lived during the same years as Sophocles. They are contemporaries to Sophocles. The older contemporary was Aeschylus and the younger contemporary of Sophocles was Euripides.
They wrote the same genre but incorporated there own styles and unique ideas with in their brilliant plays. They have all impacted to days theatre in their own ways creating diverse genres that today’s authors may choose to use. Aeschylus 525-426 bc.Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays can still be read or preformed, the others being Sophocles and Euripides.
He is often described as the father of tragedy: Our knowledge of the genre begins with his work and our understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. He also expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for conflict among them, whereas previously characters had interacted only with the chorus.Only 7 of his 70 writen plays have survived into modern time. His most impressive work was the play “The Persians”.
Which was influenced by the Persian invasion of Greece. It’s also the only classical Greek tragedy concerned with some what recent history. Which is a useful source of information about that time period. Euripides 480-406 bc.
Euripides was another Greek tragedian. He was the youngest of the three. He wrote about 95 plays, 18 of which have survived completely and many more as fragments.His most known works are Alcestis, Medea and The Bacchus.
His plays were very modern for his time in that they portrayed the characters very realistically and included strong women and wise slaves – which was very uncommon at the time. Euripides is the Greek tragedian who is known to have the biggest influence on European tragedy. As you can see they all have creativity and power to bring to the theatre. They can also be held responsible for some of the incredible new ideas that may have originated from these outstanding authors.
