Euripides was a Greek dramatist. He was born in 480 BC ior 485 BC at Phyla on the island of Salamis and died in 406 BC. He studied under Prodicus and Anaxagoras, and is said to have begun to write tragedies at the age of eighteen, although his first published play, the Peliades, appeared only in 455 BC. He was not successful in gaining the first prize until the year 441 BC, and he continued to exhibit until 408 BC, when he exhibited the Orestes. The violence of unscrupulous enemies, who accused him of impiety and unbelief in the gods, drove Euripides to take refuge at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, where he was held in the highest honour. According to a tradition he was killed by hounds in 406 BC.
Euripides is a master of tragic situations and pathos, and shows much knowledge of human nature and skill in grouping characters, but his works lack the artistic completeness and the sublime earnestness that characterize AEschylus and Sophocles. Euripides is said to have composed seventy-five, or according to another authority ninety-two tragedies. Of these eighteen (or nineteen, including the Ehesus) are extant: Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, Hecuba, Heracleidse, Supplices, Ion, Hercules Eurens, Andromache, Troades, Electra, Helena, Iphigenia in Tauris, Orestes, Phcenissse, Bacchas, Iphigenia in Aulis, and Cyclops. Research Euripides
Johann Agricola was a German theologian. He was born in 1492 at Eisleben and died in 1566. He was the son of a tailor at Eisleben, and was called, from his native city, master of Eisleben. One of the most active among the theologians who propagated the doctrines of Luther, in 1537, when professor in Wittenberg, he stirred up the Antinomian controversy with Luther and Melanchthon. He afterwards lived at Berlin, where he died in 1566, after a life of controversy. Besides his theological works he composed a work explaining the common German proverbs.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe was a German poet and writer. He was born in 1749 at Frankfort-on-the-Main and died in 1832. His father, who was a Doctor of Laws and imperial councillor, was a well-to-do citizen and an admirer of the fine arts. The Seven Years' War broke out when Johann Goethe was eight years old, and Count de Thorane, lieutenant du roi of the French army in Germany, was quartered in the house of his father. The count, being an amateur and liberal patron of art, encouraged the boy's incipient taste for pictures. At the same time young Johann Goethe learned the French language practically; and a French theatrical company, then performing at Frankfort, awakened his taste for dramatic performances. Drawing, music, natural science, the elements of jurisprudence, and the languages, occupied him alternately.
After the breaking off of a youthful love affair, which gave a name to the heroine of his great work Faust and some features to his Wilhelm Meister, he was sent to the University of Leipzig to prepare himself for the legal profession, but he did not follow any regular course of studies. Johann Goethe began at this period, what he practised throughout his life, to embody in a poem, or in a poetical form, whatever occupied his mind intensely;
and no one, perhaps, was ever more in need of such an exercise, as his nature continually hurried him from one extreme to another.
In 1768 he left Leipzig, and after an illness of some length he went to the University of Strasburg in 1770, to pursue the study of law, according to his father's wishes. At Strasburg he became acquainted with Herder - a decisive circumstance in his life. Herder made him more acquainted with the Italian school of the fine arts, and inspired his mind with views of poetry more congenial to his character than any which he had hitherto conceived. While here he fell in love with Frederica Brion, daughter of the pastor of Sesenheim, but the affair, though it made a more abiding impression on him than some others, resulted in nothing.
Johann Goethe's numerous love affairs form one of the most curious studies in biography. His attachments were all fugitive; the love passion was continuous, but the object was ever changing. In 1771 he took the degree of Doctor of Jurisprudence, and wrote a dissertation on a legal subject. He then went to Wetzlar to practise law, where he found, in his own love for a betrothed lady, and in the fate of a young man named Jerusalem, the subjects for his striking work, The Sorrows of Werther, which formed an epoch in German literature. The attention of the public had already been attracted to him, however, by his drama Gotz von Berlichingen (published 1773). Werther appeared in 1774. Not long after the publication of Werther, Charles Augustus, the hereditary duke of Saxe-Weimar, met Johann Goethe on a journey, and when in 1775 he took the government into his own hands, he invited Johann Goethe to his court. Johann Goethe accepted the invitation, and on the 7th of November, 1775, arrived at Weimar. Wieland was already there, having been the duke's tutor: Herder was added to the band in 1776; Schiller was afterwards one of its members for a few years; and other poets and critics and novelists were gathered round these chiefs.
Johann Goethe was the leading spirit of the group even during the last quarter of the 18th century, when these men and others were constructing and guiding the literature of all Germany; and his supremacy became yet more absolute afterwards, when for another generation he stood alone.
In 1776 he was made privy-councillor of legation, with a seat and vote in the privy-council. In 1782 he was made president of the chamber, and ennobled. In 1786 he made a journey to Italy, where he remained two years, visited Sicily, and remained a long time in Rome. This residence in Italy had the effect of still further developing his artistic powers. Here his Iphigenia was matured, Egmont finished, and Tasso projected. The first of these was published in 1787, the second in 1788, and the third in 1790. In the same year with Tasso was published the earliest form of the first part of Faust, with the title Dr. Faust, ein Trauerspiel (Dr. Faust, a Tragedy), a poem in a dramatic form, which belongs rather to Johann Goethe's whole life than to any particular period of it.
At the time that Johann Goethe was engaged in the production of these works of imagination he had been pursuing various other studies of a scientific nature with as ardent an interest as if these had belonged to his peculiar province. The result of his studies in botany was a work published also in 1790, Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu Erklaren (Attempts to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants), in which he gives expression to the view that the whole plant; and its different parts, may all be regarded as variously modified leaves. In the following year (1791) he began to apply himself to optics, and in 1791-1792 he published a work on this subject called Beitrage zur Optik.
On the 1st of May, 1791, he became director of the court theatre at Weimar. In 1792 he followed his prince during the campaign of the Prussians against the revolutionary party in France, and was present at the Battle of Valmy on the 20th of September. At the Weimar theatre he brought out some of the dramatic chefs-d'oeuvre of Schiller, and there, too, his own dramatic works first appeared, Goetz von Berlichingen, Faust, Iphigenia in Taurus, Tasso, Clavigo, Stella, and CountEgmont.
In 1794-1796 Johann Goethe published Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship), a novel which has become well known to English readers through the translation of Carlyle, and which had as a continuation Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (that is, his travels as a journeyman; 1821). His next work of importance was Hermann und Dorothea (1797), a narrative poem, in hexameterverse, the characters of which are taken from humble life.
In 1806 Johann Goethe married Christiane Vulpius, with whom he had lived since 1788, and of whom he always spoke with warmth and gratitude for the degree in which she had contributed to his domestic happiness. In 1808 he published another edition of Faust in a considerably altered form. In 1809 was published Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities), another novel, and in
1810 the Farbenlehre or Theory of Colours, a work in which he had the boldness to oppose the Newtonian theory, and to which Goethe himself attached great importance, although the theory therein promulgated met with no acceptance among scientists. In 1811-1814 appeared Johann Goethe's autobiography, with the titleAus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit; in 1819 the Westostlicher Divan, a remarkable collection of oriental songs and poems. Johann Goethe's last work was the second part of Faust, which was completed on the evening before the last anniversary of his birthday which he lived to see.
Johann Goethe's works taken altogether form a rich constellation of poetry, romance, science, art, and philosophy. His greatest production is his Faust, emphatically a philosophical dramatic poem, and the best of Goethe's productions in a department for which he seems to have been born. Much light is thrown on Goethe's life and character by the published correspondence with his contemporaries, Herder, Frau von Stein, Lavator, Jacobi, Merck, Countess Stolberg, etc; by Eckermann's Conversations, and especially by his own autobiography, which he himself describes as 'poetry and truth,' and in which probably the truth is sometimes clouded by the poetry. Research Johann Goethe
Maria Luigi Carlo Zenobio Salvatore Cherubini was an Italian composer. He was born in 1760 at Florence and died in 1842. His first opera, Quinto Fabio, was produced in Alessandria in 1780, and in Rome (in an altered form) in 1783, with such success as to spread his fame over Italy. After visiting London he finally settled in Paris, where he became director of the L'ecole Royale in 1822. Among his compositions are Iphigenia in Aulide; Lodoiska, Faniska, Les Deux Journees, etc. In his later years he confined himself almost exclusively to the composition of sacred music, and gained a lasting fame by his Coronation Mass, and more especially his gorgeous Requiem. Research Maria Cherubini
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was a Greek hero of the Trojan wars, son of Atreus, king of Mycenae, and brother of Menelaus. He married Clytemnestra, and their children included Electra, Iphigenia, and Orestes. He sacrificed Iphigenia in order to secure favourable winds for the Greek expedition against Troy and after a ten years' siege sacked the city, receiving Priam's daughter Cassandra as a prize. On his return home, he and Cassandra were murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. His children Orestes and Electra later killed the guilty couple. Research Agamemnon
In Greek mythology, Iphigenia was a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. She was sacrificed by her father at Aulis to secure favourable winds for the Greek fleet in the expedition against Troy, on instructions from the prophetCalchas. According to some accounts, she was saved by the goddess Artemis, and made her priestess. Research Iphigenia
The Iphigenia was a British second-class cruiser of 3600 tons launched in 1891. The name Iphigenia has been used for British naval vessels since 1780. Research Iphigenia
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Euripides
