This paper seeks to investigate the use of non-select Euripidean plays (i.e. plays not included in the ancient selection that determined to a certain degree the formation of Euripides’ extant corpus) in ancient education from the third century bc to the fourth century ad. A number of questions arise: How extensive was the knowledge of Euripidean tragedies beyond literary circles? Which plays, apart from those belonging to the Selection (as known from the manuscript tradition), were used in education? To what extent were complete texts studied, and to what extent were excerpts or even dramatic hypotheses employed? To address these questions, the authors explore and assess inscriptional and papyrus evidence, as well as material coming from school-buildings in Greco-Roman Egypt. It may bededuced that Euripidean drama —particularly lesser-known plays now lost and the so-called ‘alphabetic’ plays that survived by chance— was widely used, regardless of any canon, at all levels of education, mainly in the form of excerpts or hypotheses, and served a broad range of educational purposes: learning to read and write, acquiring knowledge of mythology, and training in critical thinking and text composition within the context of advanced rhetorical education.
