‘Impiety’ and ‘Atheism’ in Euripides' Dramas

Classical Quarterly 39 (01):70- (1989)
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Abstract

In the surviving plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles the gods appear to men only rarely. In the Eumenides Apollo and Athena intervene to bring acquittal to Orestes. In Sophocles' Philoctetes Heracles appears ex machina to ensure that the hero returns to Troy, and we learn from a messenger how the gods have summoned the aged Oedipus to a hero's tomb. In Sophocles' Ajax Athena drives Ajax mad and taunts him cruelly. Prometheus Bound might seem to be an exception, since all but one of its characters are gods. But nonetheless the intervention of the gods in the life of the one human character, Io, brings pain and trouble as well as promise of benefit. Io has been driven mad because she has refused to obey the dreams that tell her to go to the meadow where Zeus wants to have intercourse with her. The god does not make his request in person, and it is only in the course of her wanderings that Io learns how Zeus will bring a gentle end to her sufferings. Her informant is another god, Zeus' adversary Prometheus, who answers her questions, at times grudgingly , and in ways that are not immediately clear to her

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Citations of this work

Le dieu de la loi.Fulcran Teisserenc - 2018 - Philosophie Antique 18:37-69.
TrGF 2.624 – A Euripidean Fragment.Christoph Riedweg - 1990 - Classical Quarterly 40 (01):124-.
Reconsidering euripides' Bellerophon.Dustin W. Dixon - 2014 - Classical Quarterly 64 (2):493-506.

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References found in this work

The Presocratic Philosophers.G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven & M. Schofield - 1983 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 36 (4):465-469.
Wer Galt im altertum AlS atheist?Marek Winiarczyk - 1984 - Philologus: Zeitschrift für Antike Literatur Und Ihre Rezeption 128 (1-2):157-183.
Der „herakles“ Des euripiDes und die götter.Waltraut Desch - 1986 - Philologus: Zeitschrift für Antike Literatur Und Ihre Rezeption 130 (1-2):8-23.

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