| This dissertation examines the impact of important historical, social, and cultural developments on the last plays of Euripides' career: Orestes, Iphigenia in Aulis, and the Bacchae. These tragedies share distinct commonalities that set them apart from earlier plays in Euripides' corpus. In each, members of the aristocratic class are marked conspicuously by weakness in various forms, rather than by the circumstantial flaws that plague heroes of other tragedies. Underscoring the aristocrats' inefficacy in each play are unusual breaches of philia, the code of appropriate behavior between friends and family members. These tragedies particularly stand out, though, for the prominent influence that the political and social underclass, guided by a demagogic figure, exert on the events of each play. Euripides' preoccupation with these dynamics in his last three extant plays suggests his own anxiety about the rise of demagogues and the failings of the traditional elite in his native Athens as the Peloponnesian War ground to a painful close.;The study examines these plays in light of earlier works of Euripides, as well as those of his peers. One measure used to gauge authors' attentiveness to the underclass in the texts they produced is the frequency with which they use four terms for the masses: hoi polloi, ho demos, to plethos, and ho ochlos. Greater usage, in Euripides' work and that of his peers, invariably corresponds to greater concern with the power of the masses in the content of the texts. These words appear particularly frequently in Orestes, Iphigenia in Aulis, and the Bacchae. The study examines portrayals of the strength and competence of aristocrats and of uncommon violations of philia in these texts contextually, in comparison with comparable situations in other texts.;Analysis of findings based on this inquiry indicates that Euripides' political leanings, particularly at the end of his career, are with the oligarchic faction in Athens. However, his unflattering portrayals of aristocratic heroes in his final plays suggest that he does not see the elite as the group to salvage Athens' faltering fortunes either. Unlike other authors, notably Aristophanes, Euripides depicts only a crisis, with no ready solution. |
