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ments sometimes not to the advantage of a play or a trilogy. Did the one look upon orators with an unfavourable eye? so did the other; while both agreed that nobility of birth and depth of purse did not necessarily constitute the best citizen. Yet, in spite of so much harmony in their opinions, there were differences that could not be bridged over; there was repugnance that defied reconciliation, and views of Athens as it had been, and Athens as it was then, which kept them in the compass of one town as far apart as if rivers and mountains, clime or race, had sundered them.

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The enmity of Aristophanes increased with the years, and did not relax with the death of Euripides. The first known attack upon him was made in his comedy of "The Acharnians or "The CharcoalBurners." The last was made two years after "sad Electra's poet" had been struck down by a yet more "insatiate archer" than Aristophanes himself. The spirit that breathes in "The Acharnians" reappears, but with increased bitterness, in "The Frogs," and to sharp censure on Euripidean art is added still sharper on Euripidean theology. Some modern writers on the subject of the Greek drama have contemplated Euripides through the eyes of his great satirist. They might, perhaps, have done better to consider, before following their witty leader, whether he was guiding them in the right road; whether the comic writer's objections rested on patriotic or moral, or on party or personal grounds. Aristophanes was a stubborn reactionist: the men of Marathon and Platæa, of

Salamis and Mycale, he held to be the type of good Athenians. The new schools appeared to him in the same light as Greek philosophy in general appeared to the sturdy old Sabine Cato-schools of impudence and lying. Pericles himself he seems never to have really liked, but set him below Myronides and Thucydides, men of the good old time, for the return of which, as all reactionists must ever do, he yearned in vain. Euripides, on the other hand, was a man of the new time, perhaps a little beyond as well as of it. More cheerful views of humanity, ampler range of inquiry, greater freedom of thought, supplanted in his mind the gloomy superstition or the slavish faith of a past generation, with whom an eclipse was a token of the wrath of the gods, and by whom the sun was thought to be no bigger than a heavy-armed soldier's buckler. " "Between the pass and fell incensed points of two such opposites there could be nothing but collision; and the tragic poet laboured under this serious disadvantage, that he could not bring his antagonist on the stage.

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Yet the most ardent admirer of Euripides is compelled to allow that this indefatigable writer of plays and laborious student can hardly be ranked among successful poets. "It has been observed," says an eminent judge of Greek literature, "that the success of Euripides, if it is measured by the prizes which he is said to have gained, would not seem to have been very great; and perhaps there may be reason to suspect that he owed much of the applause which he obtained in his lifetime to the favour of a party, which

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was strong rather in rank and fortune than in num-
bers, the same which is said to have been headed by
Alcibiades."-"It is not quite certain that, even in
the latter part of his career, Euripides was so popular
as Sophocles. In answer to a question of Socrates, in
a conversation with Xenophon, probably heard during
the latter part of the Peloponnesian war, Sophocles is
mentioned as indisputably the most admirable in his
art."* If, according to this very probable suggestion,
Euripides were the poet of the few and not of the
Athenians in general, his frequent failure to win the
ivy wreath may easily be explained. Democracy,
though in all times it delights in clubs, is very jealous
of coteries, especially if composed of men well-to-do
in the world, or of men noted for their learning or
refinement, and particularly jealous would all old-
fashioned Cecropids be of a club in which Alci-
biades was chairman. If, however, the wayward
Phidippidest of the comedy may sometimes have hin-
dered the poet's success in a theatrical contest, he may
as probably have atoned for this grievance at home by
obtaining for him a better reception abroad.
"There
were dwellers out of" Attica, without going to the
realm of the Birds to find them. And among the de-
pendencies of Athens, in the tributary islands and
among the Greeks of the Lesser Asia, where Alcibiades
had much influence, he may have been an efficient
patron of the often, at home, mortified dramatist.

*Thirlwall's Hist. of Greece, iv. 273.

+ Phidippides, in "The Clouds" of Aristophanes, is reputed to be a caricature of Alcibiades.

An historian, who wrote centuries after Euripides had passed beyond these and other vexations, cannot conceal his surprise that one Xenocles should have been the successful competitor in a contest with the son of Mnesarchus. He fairly calls the judges and spectators on the occasion a parcel of fools-dunderheads unworthy to bear the name of Athenian. But in missing the first or even the second crown, Euripides only fared alike with Eschylus and Sophocles; and that, with such samples of the two latter as have come to our hands, is a much more remarkable circumstance than the one it puzzled Arrian to account for.* What dramatic giants must they have been who strove for the mastery with the old Marathonian soldier, and with the Shakespeare of the Grecian world! Perhaps another cause occasionally cost Euripides the crown. He, like Ben Jonson, was at times perverse in the choice or in the treatment of his subjects. Even from the satire of Aristophanes it is plain that he had an unlucky propensity to tread on debatable, and even dangerous, ground. By his innovations in legendary stories, by occasionally tampering with criminal passion, by perhaps carrying to excess his fondness for mere stage effect, he perplexed or offended his audience, not inclined to accept as an apology for the exhibition of wicked characters his plea that in the end they were all well punished for their sins.† Even his constant applauder from the benches, Socrates, had, it is said, once to implore him to cut out from a play certain offensive lines; and a story preserved by a * Various Histories, v. + Valerius Maximus.

Roman anecdotist shows that occasionally he was obliged to come on the stage himself, and crave the spectators to keep their seats until the end of the performance.* It seems that Euripides could give a tart reply to his audience when their opinions happened to differ from his own; for when the whole house demanded that an offensive passage or sentiment in a tragedy should be struck out, he said, "Good people, it is my business to teach you, and not to be taught by you." How the "good people" took this curt rebuff is not recorded; but if they damned his play, he at least did not, as Ben Jonson did, sulk for a few years and leave the "loathed stage" in dudgeon, after venting his wrath on the public by an abusive ode and some stinging epigrams. On the contrary, Euripides went on preparing plays for the greater and lesser seasons of the theatrical period, until he left Athens and his enemies therein-for ever.

Amid frequent disappointments, and smarting under the lash of the comic poets-for we may be sure that where an Aristophanes led the way, others, however inferior to him, would follow eagerly-Euripides at a moment of universal dismay perhaps enjoyed some personal consolation. The mighty host which Athens had sent to Syracuse had been nearly annihilated. Of forty thousand citizens or allies that had gone forth, ten thousand only survived. Of her vast armament—vast if we bear in mind that her free population fell below that of many English fourth-rate cities-not a wargalley, not a transport-ship returned to Peiræus: of * Valerius Maximus.

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