Reviled by critics from Aristophanes to Nietzsche as sophistic, iconoclastic, and sensationalistic, Euripides has long been held responsible for the decline of Greek tragedy – and, to some degree, of Athenian culture. Yet the author of such wrenching and disturbing plays as the Medea and the Bacchae has a fundamentally conservative side: his drama conveys longing for an idealized, pre-sophistic age that still respected the gods and traditional codes of right conduct. The Euripidean nostalgia for a lost voice of transcendent truth that would speak clearly to all, combined with his proclivity for skeptical analysis, epitomizes the discursive practice of his era, as exemplified by Thucydidean history, Aristophanic comedy, and Platonic philosophy. In fact, this book grounds its interpretation of the plays in key passages from the “scientific” historian Thucydides, who also expresses yearning for a bygone “simplicity” or “singleness of heart.” But the unstable mix of nostalgia and skepticism gives particular power and pathos to Euripidean tragedy, which consistently calls attention to the unbridgeable distance between a mythical past and the playwright's own world. The fact that Euripides explicitly addresses this distance in his drama also sets him apart from his fellow tragedians, helping explain Aristotle's assessment of him as “the most tragic of the tragic poets” (Aristotle, Poetics 1453a29–30; translation).

The combination of romantic longing for a simple, clear voice of truth with cynicism and scientific detachment speaks to our own postmodern condition.