Euripides (c. 480 BC – 406 BC) was one of the great trilogy of playwrights during the Golden Age of Athens, along with Aeschylus and Sophocles. In addition to these three Ancient Greeks writing some of the world’s first great plays, they also were behind the innovations of stagecraft itself. Euripides was an extremely prolific playwright, authoring about 90 plays. 19 of the plays commonly attributed to Euripides have survived in complete form, and much of his work was popular 2500 years ago and is still considered classic today. During antiquity, Euripides was one of the ancients’ most important literary writers, placing him in select company like Homer and Menander. Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in representing traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. These kinds of plays were some of the West’s first great tragedies, such as Orestes. Euripides was strongly linked to Socrates in Athenian society as a proponent of wild intellectualism. Euripides portrayed women sympathetically in some of his works, which was taboo in a society where privileged men held status. Socrates was famously tried and executed, but Euripides went into exile instead, living the rest of his life in Macedonia.