Euripides, the Athenian: the poet and friend of Socrates taught the Athenians - for whom he wrote the most joyous praise ever written for the city - and indeed through the stormy depths of his Medea - he taught them to see and to speak, to think and to understand, to be mistrustful and skeptical, and to pay attention to the dark sides, the edges of things.

The choruses of his tragedies no longer dream in the full sense of the word about what takes place in the reasoning and the theology - as they keep one eye open, turned to the blooming of their helm.

Euripides relentlessly studied human nature and the relationships among people - this is his strength - and wrote with the metaphorical directness and the observant gaze and the mnemonic of the poet - this is his grace.

Hecuba, from the depths of her misfortune, speaks of the slavery that awaits her in some Greek palace: Where will I work - like a drone - I, the old woman? He created his world (with which we feel familiar) where the gods dwell - or do they merely visit? - and where the meaning itself - meaning has none.

She asks: Can one say with certainty that there are gods in heaven? Sometimes the answer is also heard: There is nothing - no one in heaven. And yet life thrives in the lands of the sun.

In the temple of Phoebus, Ion sweeps the god's courtyard and chases away the birds with the cheerfulness of a child - always new, conversing with new ones - a child - the most fortunate of all Euripides's children, since he did not have, amidst the meanness, the pettiness and malicious inspirations of human life, the harsh fate of Iphigenia, Polyxena, Megara, Hippolytus as well, Electra and Orestes too.

Through this exceptional translation effort by the poet and philologist Anthi Leousi, who anthologizes excerpts from the eighteen works of Euripides, it is highlighted that the entirety of the Athenian tragedian's work constitutes a study in apprenticeship in the composition of the human soul.