‘Rightly does Aphrodite’s Name begin with aphrosune’: Gods and Men between Wisdom and Folly

In this paper I propose to investigate how Euripides frames the phenomena of wisdom and folly, in order to distinguish between mortals and the gods. Both the triumph of reason and its breakdown are subject to the relativism that derives from human ideas of good judgement, which are apparently different from the gods’. In his tragedies, Euripides outlines characters who wonder whether it is possible to define wisdom unambiguously, as the result of cognitive effort. We will look at examples of a plausible double system of values, and at the difficulty of being able to attach coherent definitions of both wisdom and folly to the very same phenomena, which indicates the inadequacy of human language and its incapability of signifying reality. These examples bring out an interesting aspect of Euripides’ incessant exploration of the meaning of the divine.