Euthyphro
Plato's youthful dreams of becoming a playwright are evident right off the bat in his dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro. Euthyphro, to me at least, appears to be the epitome of a tragic hero. The way that Euthyphro speaks about the gods and himself, which is particularly clear in section 5a, shows that he thinks himself above other people. Euthyphro reminds me of Narcissus, spurning those who love him (i.e. his family), in order to uphold a principal that he thought was right. Now, I'm not necessarily saying that Euthyphro was in the wrong here, but ancient Greeks might have thought otherwise. While Athens was a "democracy" it was an extremely hierarchical place prone to political mayhem. In the violent and competitive world of Ancient Greece it as difficult to trust anyone outside of your family thus making betrayals in a family the most horrible an ancient greek could imagine. Athens was also extremely patriarchal , which made it so that the father was the center of the famaily and all power in the family radiated from him. Destroying this family center was an viewed as sinful (to use christian terminology) by the Greeks. The concept is further ingrained in Greek myth in the story of Oedipus, who kills his father then has a series of unfortunate events. As is seen in the stories of Narcissus and Oedipus, the actions that Euthyphro is taking could lead him down a dangerous path. The elements of literature that Plato adds to his writing makes it entertaining and helps him take a deeper look at the human condition.
I am curious of what you thought of Euthyphro’s prosecution of his father, specifically the circumstances in which the offenses occurred and how extraneously Euthyphro considers them. The victim whom Euthyphro brings the case against his father on behalf of is a slave who himself is guilty of murder in wrath, and whose death was the cause of negligence (on the part of Euthyphro’s father), not of wrath. Nevertheless, Euthyphro’s exacting pursuit of justice for the servant murdered out of negligence continues as relentlessly as if it were a conviction against a servant who murdered his father out of wrath he was prosecuting. In this, I find your qualification of Euthyphro as a tragic hero, one who is dedicated to the cause of equality under justice, yet under these principles, must engage in a sort of patricide to convict his father and uphold these virtues, to be an apt literary analysis.
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