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Mnesarchus or Mnesarch (Greek: Μνήσαρχος, Mnēsarkhos), of Athens, was a Stoic philosopher, who lived c. 160 – c. 85 BC. Biography. Mnesarchus was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon and Antipater of Tarsus.
Mnesarchus （ *Mnh/sarxos). 1. The son of Euphron or Euthyphron, and father of Pythagoras. He was generally believed to be not of purely Greek origin. According to some accounts, he belonged to the Tyrrhenians of Lemnos and Imbros, and is said to have been an engraver of rings. (Clemens Alex. Strom. i. p. 300; Schol.
As it turns out, while Mnesarchus was off on one of his long voyages, Parthenis was secretly seduced by Apollo. Afterwards she was renamed Pythais, in honor of Apollo, who had destroyed the python guarding the oracle at Delphi, making the place his own.
Mnesarchus or Mnesarch may refer to: Father of Pythagoras; Mnesarchus of Athens, a Stoic philosopher, lived c. 100 BC; A possible name of the father of Euripides; Father of Callias of Chalcis; An assistant archon of Athens (thesmothete) From the Phoenician city of Tyre
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- Life and career
- Dramatic and literary achievements
Euripides (born c. 484 bc, Athens [Greece]—died 406, Macedonia) last of classical Athens’s three great tragic dramatists, following Aeschylus and Sophocles.
It is possible to reconstruct only the sketchiest biography of Euripides. His mother’s name was Cleito; his father’s name was Mnesarchus or Mnesarchides. One tradition states that his mother was a greengrocer who sold herbs in the marketplace. Aristophanes joked about this in comedy after comedy; but there is better indirect evidence that Euripides came of a well-off family. Euripides first received the honour of being chosen to compete in the dramatic festival in 455, and he won his first victory in 441. Euripides left Athens for good in 408, accepting an invitation from Archelaus, king of Macedonia. He died in Macedonia in 406.
Euripides’ only known public activity was his service on a diplomatic mission to Syracuse in Sicily. He was passionately interested in ideas, however, and owned a large library. He is said to have associated with Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and other Sophists and philosopher-scientists. His acquaintance with new ideas brought him restlessness rather than conviction, however, and his questioning attitude toward traditional Greek religion is reflected in some of his plays. Of Euripides’ private life, little can be said. Later tradition invented for him a spectacularly disastrous married life. It is known that he had a wife called Melito and produced three sons. One of these was something of a poet and produced the Bacchants after his father’s death. He may also have completed his father’s unfinished play Iphigenia at Aulis.
The ancients knew of 92 plays composed by Euripides. Nineteen plays are extant, if one of disputed authorship is included. At only four festivals was Euripides awarded the first prize—the fourth posthumously, for the tetralogy that included Bacchants and Iphigenia at Aulis. As Sophocles won perhaps as many as 24 victories, it is clear that Euripides was comparatively unsuccessful. More to the point is that on more than 20 occasions Euripides was chosen, out of all contestants, to be one of the three laureates of the year. Furthermore, the regularity with which Aristophanes parodied him is proof enough that Euripides’ work commanded attention. It is often said that disappointment at his plays’ reception in Athens was one of the reasons for his leaving his native city in his old age; but there are other reasons why an old poet might have left Athens in the 23rd year of the Peloponnesian War.
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Euripides’ plays exhibit his iconoclastic, rationalizing attitude toward both religious belief and the ancient legends and myths that formed the traditional subject matter for Greek drama. These legends seem to have been for him a mere collection of stories without any particular authority. He also apparently rejected the gods of Homeric theology, whom he frequently depicts as irrational, petulant, and singularly uninterested in meting out “divine justice.” That the gods are so often presented on the stage by Euripides is partly due to their convenience as a source of information that could not otherwise be made available to the audience.
Given this attitude of sophisticated doubt on his part, Euripides invents protagonists who are quite different from the larger-than-life characters drawn with such conviction by Aeschylus and Sophocles. They are, for the most part, commonplace, down-to-earth men and women who have all the flaws and vulnerabilities ordinarily associated with human beings. Furthermore, Euripides makes his characters express the doubts, the problems and controversies, and in general the ideas and feelings of his own time. They sometimes even take time off from the dramatic action to debate each other on matters of current philosophical or social interest.
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Euripides differed from Aeschylus and Sophocles in making his characters’ tragic fates stem almost entirely from their own flawed natures and uncontrolled passions. Chance, disorder, and human irrationality and immorality frequently result not in an eventual reconciliation or moral resolution but in apparently meaningless suffering that is looked upon with indifference by the gods. The power of this type of drama lies in the frightening and ghastly situations it creates and in the melodramatic, even sensational, emotional effects of its characters’ tragic crises.
Given this strong strain of psychological realism, Euripides shows moments of brilliant insight into his characters, especially in scenes of love and madness. His depictions of women deserve particular attention; it is easy to extract from his plays a long list of heroines who are fierce, treacherous, or adulterous, or all three at once. Misogyny is altogether too simple an explanation here, although Euripides’ reputation in his own day was that of a woman hater, and a play by Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria, comically depicts the indignation of the Athenian women at their portrayal by Euripides.
Astraeus was by Mnesarchus entrusted to Pythagoras, who received him, and after studying his physiognomy and the emotions of his body, instructed him. First he accurately investigated the science about the nature of man, discerning the disposition of everyone he met.
Summary. Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher who made important developments in mathematics, astronomy, and the theory of music. The theorem now known as Pythagoras's theorem was known to the Babylonians 1000 years earlier but he may have been the first to prove it. View twelve larger pictures.
