CHAPTER V. EURIPIDES, born B.C. 480. THE THREE TRAGIC POETS FORM SUCCESSIVE ERAS IN LITERARY TASTE. THESE ARE ANALOGOUS TO THE PROGRESS MADE BY THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. EURIPIDES, HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER. RELIGIOUS, POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL SENTIMENTS UNPOPULAR. UNJUSTLY SLANDERED. HIS SUPPOSED HATRED OF THE FEMALE SEX. STORY OF HIS MARRIAGES AND DIVORCES. HIS EXILE, DEATH, AND EPITAPH. THE AGE OF EURIPIDES A PHILOSOPHICAL ERA. THE EFFECTS OF THIS ON HIS POETRY. WAS EURIPIDES THE MOST TRAGIC OF POETS? HIS PROLOGUES. THE REAL OBJECTIONS TO THEM. THE USE WHICH HE MAKES OF DIVINE INTERPOSITION. HIS POLITICAL PRINCIPLES. HIS FONDNESS FOR SPECIAL PLEADING. HIS LYRIC POWER. MONODIES. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PLAYS. ALCESTIS. MEDEA. HECUBA. ELECTRA. CYCLOPS. PASSAGES FROM THE TRAGEDIES OF EURIPIDES. ION. ACHAEUS. AGATHON. EUPHORION. IOPHON. THE YOUNGER SOPHOCLES AND EURIPIDES. CHREMON. THEODECTES. So great are the absolute excellences of Euripides, and yet so manifest his defects, as compared with Aeschylus and Sophocles, that it is difficult to determine whether his dramas show an advance or decline in tragic poetry. Thus much at least is plain, that the characteristic features of his writings mark a new era in the public taste, whilst an independent boldness of thought which pervades them, proves that he was not one to imitate even the beauties and perfections of others, or to belong to a school, but able and determined to strike out a new line for himself. The natural law of progress in literary taste may be traced in the works of the three great tragic poets. They seem, as the leading minds of their age succeeding each other at such intervals as to occupy amongst them the period of three generations, to be the representatives and directors of popular taste in its gradual growth and development. The mysterious and supernatural wonders of Aeschylus are succeeded by the dignified and heroic, but nevertheless natural, characters of Sophocles; and these, in their turn, give place to the romance of private every-day life, PROGRESS OF NATIONAL TASTE. 253 the unexpurgated picture of manners, in which the human heart and the affections which influence it in its domestic relations, constitute the leading subject. A view of human nature is exhibited, which shocks us at first as embodying a low standard, but which is in fact not below reality. In it one of the great moving springs of action is sexual love; it unites tenderness with weakness the pathos of the tragic with the wit of the comic poet, and is seasoned with a shrewd and subtle knowledge of human nature. It is not even averse to the brilliant sophisms of a selfish and worldly philosophy. These are the principal features of the Euripidean drama, which distinguish it from that of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Sophocles, it has been said, represented men as they ought to be, Euripides as they really are. 1 The judgment which would prefer Euripides to Aeschylus and Sophocles may be a degenerate one, but it is clear that such is the usual progress of national literary taste, through its three phases of unreal mysticism, historic truth, and romantic fiction. The individual mind exhibits the same phenomena in the growth and unfolding of the imaginative powers, which are, of course, those cultivated by poetry. The child delights first in the supernatural wonders of the fairy tale, next he descends from the beings of another world, and takes an interest in the heroes, and kings, and princes, as recorded in biography and history; and it requires time before he can take interest in the love scenes and every-day occurrences of a novel. The birth of Euripides took place in troubled but glorious times. When the Persian invasion threatened Greece, Themistocles advised his countrymen to leave their native city, and to trust to their fleet for protection.* Amongst the exiles the parents of Euripides, Mnesarchus and Clito, left their home in Attica and fled to Salamis. They had previously, according to Suidas, 3 migrated from Boeotia. The bitter satire of Aristophanes, 4 who hated the degenerate taste and false philosophy of Euripides, accused his mother of being an herb-woman of bad character, but there is no foundation for this slander. On the contrary, the probability is that his parents were persons of rank 1 Arist. Poet. xxv. f Herod. vii. 143. * Suidas, O.T. * Arist. Eq. 19, et passim. 254 GREEK CLASSICAL LITERATURE. and consideration. He is said to have been born on the same day on which the battle of Salamis was fought. If so, a remarkable coincidence links together the three great poets, for Aeschylus, as has been stated, a warrior in the prime of life, distinguished himself on that glorious day, and Sophocles, then a youth of great personal beauty, took part in the public rejoicings with which the victory was celebrated. In early life he was a painter, and received a complete philosophical education. Prodicus instructed him in rhetoric, Socrates in morals, and Anaxagoras in physics. To this he owed the acuteness of his mind, and the pleasure which he took in indulging his taste for subtle disputation. Although he did not gain a prize until B.C. 441, he is said to have devoted himself to tragic poetry at a very early age, and to have exhibited the “Peliades,” in his own name, when he was twenty-five years old. 1 Few men have suffered more from slander than Euripides. He was of an austere and ascetic temper, and this may have rendered him unpopular with the light-hearted and social Athenians; and his attachment to the new philosophy and the modern system of education, which Aristophanes attacked with all his bitterness, and never failed to bring on all occasions before the public notice, exposed him to hatred and suspicion. We know that party spirit was very violent against him. His belief in the physical system of Anaxagoras, and his consequent rejection of the mythological absurdities of the popular creed, would render him, like his great master Socrates, liable to the vague but easy accusation of impiety. His political sentiments were likewise unacceptable to the Athenian populace, who were, in fact, the judges of a dramatic poet’s capacity, and no sin was visited by them so severely as opposition to the will of the sovereign people. His well-known sentiment, * η δε “My tongue has sworn, but my mind is unsworn,”* which he may have derived from the sophistical rhetoric of Prodicus, subjected him to a public prosecution. The effect of this 1 Vit. anon. Hippol. 608; Arist. Rhet. iii. 15. HIS DEATH. 255 unpopularity continued during after ages, and Athenaeus unjustly names him as a man of grossly immoral character. The imputation of his having been an implacable hater of the female sex has also no foundation to rest upon, except the fact, that he attributes so many terrible consequences to the uncontrolled violence of female passion. His enemies have forgotten and lost sight of the devoted affection of his Antigone and Alcestis, and have pointed to the fearful terms in which he so often depicts female depravity. Unfortunately, the legendary field which furnished subjects for Greek tragedy, was too fruitful in examples of blood-thirsty and profligate females. Perhaps he need not have selected instances of female rather than of male immorality; but it must be remembered, that it was new to the Greek drama to make love the point on which the interest turned, and, therefore, his attention was directed, more than that of his predecessors, to study the different phases, either bad or good, of female character. So many inconsistencies occur in the accounts given of his marriages, the infidelities and consequent divorces of his wives, that no dependence can be placed upon them. The common story is, that he first married Choerilla, who bore him three sons; that, on her proving unfaithful, he divorced her, and married Melitto, in which connection he was equally unfortunate. Party feeling drove Euripides (B.C. 408), as it had already driven Aeschylus, from Athens, and he sought an asylum at the court of Archelaus, King of Macedon, who treated him with the greatest kindness and respect. He escaped public odium only to fall a victim to private jealousy. In Macedonia he provoked the envy of two poets, Arrhidaeus and Crateuas, and they let loose upon him some savage hounds belonging to the king, who tore him to pieces, at the advanced age of seventy-five, 1 in the year of the disastrous battle of Arginusae. Another account deals out to him poetical retribution, as a woman-hater, and asserts that he was torn to pieces by women. Archelaus caused him to be buried at Pella. The number of his dramas is said by some to have been seventy-five, by others ninety-two. 1 B.C. 405, Olym. 93, 3. 256 GREEK CLASSICAL LITERATURE. The following elegant epigram to his memory, by an anonymous author, is preserved in the “Anthology,” 1 and it has been imitated by Ben Jonson, on Drayton’s tomb in Westminster Abbey. Ου δυν μνημα σος ται’, Ευριπιδη, δωιο αν τουδε, Τιδ αγ γαρ Divine Euripides, this tomb we see So fair, is not a monument for thee, So much as thou for it; since all will own, Thy name and lasting praise adorn the stone. Such was the life of one who, although during the greater part of his career the contemporary of Sophocles, belongs, as has already been partially shown, to a new generation, and represents a new phase of the Athenian mind. The age in which he flourished was one of philosophy rather than of poetry. The warmth of genius was now succeeded by the cold calculations and ingenious subtleties of speculative criticism, and Euripides, whether his was a master mind which led the public taste, or his plays merely an indication of what was the state of the Athenian mind, evidently delighted in the nice distinctions of a sophistical philosophy in brilliant and sharp antitheses, startling paradoxes, hair-splitting arguments, a dexterous use of language, like that of the Athenian law courts, and an affectation of pedantic ornament which Aristophanes considers as characteristic of his style.* An amusing instance of Euripides’ love for speculative philosophy is found in the “Melanippe.” Melanippe bore two children to Neptune, and hid them in a cow-house. Her father discovered them, and ordered them to be burnt as monsters. She accordingly argues, according to the physical principles of Anaxagoras, that they might be natural, and thus pleads for their preservation. The philosophical innovations which he introduced, however objectionable, prove him at any rate to have been a man of independent thought and fearless courage. It is said, that, on one occasion, the audience clamorously demanded that a sentiment, in the play which they were witnessing, should be expunged, but the poet came forward, and boldly told them that it was his duty to teach them, not theirs to teach him. Foreigners could 1 Anthol. vii. 46. * Κοθυρνωτικως, Aristoph. Equit. 18. EURIPIDES TRUE TO NATURE. 257 appreciate the sweetness of his poetry, to which his own countrymen were at times insensible, for the suffering relics of Nicias’ army in Sicily were released from their bondage, because they recited some verses from his tragedies. Genius invests its heroes in the brightest colors; it delights to paint them of heroic mould, and to measure them by a higher moral standard than that of ordinary human nature. It forms to itself a chivalrous ideal of characters belonging to historical or mythical ages. Their passions and feelings, though called by the same names, are nobler and more sublime than those which agitate the breasts of those with whom we are in daily intercourse. The philosopher sees that this view is an untruthful one, and therefore curbs his genius and confines himself to the result of his observation and experience. This is the reason for the commonplace, unromantic view which Euripides takes of human nature. He does not transport himself into the world of ideal heroism, but brings down gods and heroes to a level with Athenian citizens, with the very auditory which fills the theatre, and witnesses the dramas which he represents. In the tragedies of Euripides, there is more truth and less poetry. They probably present a fair and just picture of Athenian life and manners and modes of thinking. He did not transgress the custom of deriving his plots from the usual heroic and mythical sources, but his heroes were no longer the same, except in name, with those of Homer and Aeschylus and Sophocles; they argued, disputed, conversed, like Athenian citizens, who had received their theoretical education in the schools of the philosophers, and their practical training in the law courts and the ecclesia. His dramas were unnatural, inasmuch as they did violence to the traditional belief, with which the Athenian mind was imbued, and represented characters, with which they had been familiar from time immemorial, in a different moral garb to that which they had hitherto worn. They were natural, inasmuch as they represented men and women, such as were met with in the intercourse of daily life, in the places of public resort in Athens. The low moral position which woman so often occupies in the Euripidean tragedy; the proverbial sayings respecting the frailty of the sex; the terrible crimes which he paints, as resulting from 17 258 GREEK CLASSICAL LITERATURE. lawless love, are consistent with the state of Athenian society; they are indications of woman’s social position. The seclusion in which Athenian women of character lived, narrowed their minds; the domestic duties, which alone were supposed to belong to them, rendered a refined education unnecessary. When we find Demosthenes describing the only object of marriage, as being “to have legitimate children, and a trustworthy guardian of one’s property,” we see at once that an Athenian did not look upon a wife as a companion. A virtuous woman was almost secluded from the occupations and amusements of Athenian life. Those with whom men associated, were of loose morals, violent passions, shrewd intellect, and elegant accomplishments. They were such as Euripides so often describes.” His audience were almost entirely men, and therefore they would not only recognize the truth of the picture, but also their vanity would be gratified, by the superiority ascribed by the poet to their own sex. No one observed these two leading characteristics of Euripides more keenly than Aristophanes. He saw in him the representative and supporter of the new and now fashionable system of education, which attributed the highest possible importance to the skilful use of words; the patron of a loose morality, the introducer of an artificial and affected rhetoric, inimical to the true principles of pathos and tragic effect. He saw that he lowered the dignity of tragic subjects; that he depressed gods and heroes to the level of men, and even made them beggars, and garbed them in all the outward attire of poverty, of “looped and windowed raggedness,” in order to excite sympathy. Is there then any truth in the criticism of Aristotle, that Euripides is the most tragic of poets? Schlegel 1 has reconciled this opinion with the many defects of Euripides, and his manifest inferiority in so many points to Aeschylus and Sophocles, by supposing that Aristotle alluded to the fact of all his dramas ending unhappily. This may have been one element in his criticism, but not the whole. Doubtless, if in his conception of heroic characters, Euripides presented a true picture of Athenian every-day life, seasoned with that polished wit which Greek critics termed amoebia, he deserves the epithet of comic rather than 1 Lect. v. PROLOGUES OF EURIPIDES. 259 tragic; but still he has great power over the feelings. His softness charms, although he is deficient in moral earnestness and severe grandeur. We are more ready to sympathize with his characters, even from the very fact of their being on a level with ourselves. With regard to the structure of the Euripidean tragedy, Aristophanes and other succeeding critics have found fault with the prologue. The feature, although not unusual, was not an essential portion of the Athenian drama; in fact Aeschylus has prefixed prologues to but few of his plays, Sophocles to none. Euripides, on the other hand, has made use of prologues in all his plays, and evidently piqued himself on his skill in their composition. The principal objection brought against the Euripidean prologue is, that it not only made the audience acquainted with all that it was necessary for them to know previous to the time when the action is supposed to commence, but also anticipated the events, and, therefore, the interest of the play. This was, doubtless, in some instances the case; as, for example, in the “Hecuba,” the “Ion,” and the “Troades.” But it must be remembered, that, owing to the well-known sources from which tragic plots were derived, this was not so great an evil as we should imagine. An Athenian audience could witness with the greatest delight, the representation of a play, the plot of which was almost the same as those of many former tragedies, and which was founded on incidents with which they had been familiar from childhood. In the same way (if it is allowable to compare small things with great), the unaltered representation of the well-known adventures of Punch, is always witnessed with delight by spectators who can anticipate every scene, and are well acquainted with every incident. From the mode in which Aristophanes attacks the prologues of Euripides in the “Frogs,” this does not appear to have been the objection which struck his mind. It is far more probable that the reasons which rendered them offensive to Athenian taste were, firstly, that it was an unartistic and clumsily contrived method of bringing about a denouement; which ought, according to all the rules and precedents of classic art, to have been effected by the regular and natural action of the play itself; and secondly, 260 GREEK CLASSICAL LITERATURE. that the constant and uniform indulgence in this habit struck the nice and discriminating taste of an Athenian audience as stupid and monotonous; their fickle and volatile nature looked for variety and novelty of construction, as they could not expect much novelty of plot. This, as far as it can be understood, appears to be the point to which Aristophanes directs his sarcasm. “Look,” says Aeschylus, in his controversy with Euripides for the tragic throne, “I will destroy all your prologues with a bottle.” 1 He then proceeds to show, by quotations, that all the wondrous adventures which each prologizer so garrulously narrates are wound up by the loss of a bottle. For example, he commences with the prologue to the “Archelaus:” Aegyptus, as the legend tells, And fifty daughters, at the Argive coast, Arrived with plashing oars, and lost a bottle! The same deficiency in artistic skill led to his so frequently unravelling any complication in the plots, and extricating the characters from any involved situation, by the intervention of a deity. But the feeling with which Euripides contemplates the power of deity, differs totally from that of Sophocles and Aeschylus. He neither invests them with that supernatural awfulness, nor bows in their presence with that solemn veneration which is so discernible in Aeschylus, and even in Sophocles. The gods are to him evidently not objects of belief, but the machinery of the poet, a machinery of the most powerful kind, because venerated by the people. He deferred to the popular theology, although the philosophical system which he professed, whose aim was ingenious sophistry, did not stop short of entire scepticism. As in the plays of his two great predecessors, we can, in the Euripidean tragedy, trace his political bias, and discern occasions on which he made the sentiments uttered by his characters the vehicle for political instruction. Bitter as was the hatred of Aristophanes towards Euripides, as the introducer of a new and degenerate taste in poetry, and the supporter of the modern superficial and sophistical system of education, in one point at least they were entirely agreed. 1 Rane, 1165. HIS POLITICAL SENTIMENTS. They both equally hated a demagogue, and saw the evils resulting to their country from the pernicious influence of this class of men. They are attacked in the “Hecuba,” under the person of Ulysses, and in the “Orestes,” still more openly. He was a friend to the agricultural rather than to the commercial interest, which he now saw was becoming too powerful. He attacked, in no measured terms, the maritime class, 1 which, although originally the source of freedom and wealth and national glory, had now become the promoter of anarchy and insubordination. But though he saw the destructive tendency of ochlocratic influence, he was a friend to true liberty, and diametrically opposed to oligarchical principles: in the “Andromache,” for example, he controverts the principles of the Lacedaemonian constitution, and his hostility to the Dorians and their political system is openly displayed in the “Heraclidae,” the whole object of which is political. He was, in fact, a moderate man, who saw that safety and good order were inconsistent with either extreme; that neither demagogues, like Cleon and their followers on the one hand, nor rich profligates like Alcibiades, on the other, were likely to maintain inviolate their national institutions. He considered, that in the prosperity of the middle classes was bound up the welfare of a community. Of his fondness for what is popularly termed “special pleading,” and for introducing into the theatre the language of the law courts, little need be said, every play is full of examples of this litigious disputation. It is sufficient to mention the scenes between Admetus and his father, in the “Alcestis;” between Hecuba and Ulysses, between Orestes and Tyndareus, and between Peleus and Menelaus, in the “Andromache.” From a poet, whose great art was the exciting the softer emotions, whose plays are, strictly speaking, plays of the passions, we should naturally expect softness and beauty in his lyrical poetry. Nor is the reader disappointed; for his choral odes and lyric pieces are the most tender, and, at the same time, the sweetest of his compositions; and his monodies, or solo passages recited by the principal dramatis personae, are unrivalled. In his day, the chorus had evidently lost the high and dignified position in tragedy, which it had formerly enjoyed. The odes are fewer, the subjects of the choral songs less connected 1 Hecuba, 610. 262 GREEK CLASSICAL LITERATURE. with the dramatic action. Many more lyric pieces were recited by the persons of the drama than was usual in the older tragedies. One cannot help thinking, that the chorus now began to be employed, rather in deference to prejudice and established custom, than as an essential part of the tragedy. Beautiful as the choruses of Euripides undoubtedly are, many of them might be omitted without detriment, which never could be the case with those of the two other tragic poets. The following is a list of the extant dramas of Euripides, with the dates of their representations: B.C. Alcestis 438 Medea 431 Hippolytus 428 Hecuba 423 Heraclidae 421? Supplices Ion Hercules Furens Uncertain, Andromache Iphigenia at Tauris Troades 415 Electra (about) 415 Helena Iphigenia at Aulis Bacchae Uncertain. Phoenissae Cyclops (Satyric) Orestes 408 The first of these, the “Alcestis,” is a melo-drama, as the comic scenes which it contains disqualify it for the appellation of a tragedy; and notwithstanding its tragic subject, it is said to have been exhibited in the place of the usual satiric drama at the conclusion of a tragic trilogy. Above all the other plays, the “Medea” contains the true elements of tragedy. The contest between parental affection and the pangs of jealousy which agitates the heart of Medea, is inferior to nothing in Aeschylus and Sophocles. Nor is the “Hecuba” much inferior in pathetic power. How tenderly and touchingly depicted is the resignation of Polyxena! how deep the affliction of the bereaved mother! how terrible the resolution CYCLOPS OF EURIPIDES. 263 with which she rises superior to her overwhelming sorrows, and lays her plans for the gratification of her vengeance! In the “Electra,” however, we most clearly discover the inferiority of Euripides. Each of the three tragic poets has selected the same subject, and, therefore, the methods in which they have treated it may thus be subjected to a strict comparison. In these tragedies the leading features of the authors are strikingly illustrated. In the “Choephori,” terror is the chief characteristic; in the “Electra” of Sophocles, tenderness; in that of Euripides, homeliness. The “Cyclops,” is a most interesting and important relic of antiquity, for in it we have the only example of the satiric drama which has been handed down to modern times. Inferior as Euripides is to Aeschylus and Sophocles in art and taste, he has, in this case, been happy in the choice of a subject singularly suitable to the purpose, and has adorned it with all the graces of elegant simplicity. The language and thought, which might have been thought too homely for tragedy, are here not out of place, amidst rural occupations and the scenes of pastoral life. The passage, of which the following is a translation, is a pleasing specimen of the poetry which adorned the ancient satiric drama: In yon trench, by yonder cave, Slake your thirst, your fleeces lave; Or if ye must wander still, Seek at least the dewy hill: Must a pebble bring you back, Flung across your wilful track; Hie thee, horned one, back again To the shepherd Cyclops’ den; See, the porter stands before His rustic master’s rocky door: Mothers, hear your sucklings bleating, For their evening meal entreating; Penned, the livelong day they lie, Now give them food and lullaby. Will ye never, never learn From the grassy mead to turn; Never rest, when day grows dim, In Aetna’s grot, each weary limb. Cyclops, 41 (ANSTICE). 264 GREEK CLASSICAL LITERATURE. The beautiful choruses, of which the following passages form part, have always been admired by scholars, and are well calculated to exemplify the lyrical power of Euripides: The fatal hour was midnight’s calm, When the feast was done, and sleep like balm Was shed on every eye. Hushed was the choral symphony, The sacrifice was o’er, My lord to rest his limbs had flung, His idle spear in its place was hung, He dreamed of foes no more. And I, while I lost my lifeless gaze, In the depth of the golden mirror’s blaze; That my last light task was aiding, Was wreathing with fillets my tresses’ maze, And with playful fingers braiding. Then came a shout; Through the noiseless city the cry rang out, “Your homes are won, if ye scale the tower, Sons of the Greeks! is it not the hour?” Hec. 886 (ANSTICE). We will not look on her burial sod, As the cell of sepulchral sleep: It shall be as the shrine of a radiant God, And the pilgrim shall visit that blest abode, To worship, and not to weep. And as he turns his steps aside, Thus shall he breathe his vow Here slept a self-devoted bride Of old, to save her lord she died, She is a spirit now. Ale. 1010 (ANSTICE). The most celebrated contemporaries and competitors of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, were Ion, Achaeus, and Agathon. ION. Ion was a native of Chios, who at an early age became a resident at Athens. He possessed great versatility of talent, for, besides tragedies, he wrote a history in the Ionic dialect, several lyric, elegiac, and dithyrambic poems, and forty fables. After the death of Aeschylus, he became a competitor for the prize of tragedy, and was once successful. The titles of some AGATHON, A FRIEND OF EURIPIDES. 265 of his tragedies, together with a few fragments of considerable beauty, are still extant. He is said 1 to have been surnamed “The Eastern Star,” because he died whilst writing an ode which began with these words. The beauty and excellence of his poetry consisted rather in the absence of faults than the presence of sublime ideas. Longinus says he wrote with polish, correctness, and graceful ornament, but without the fire and enthusiasm of Sophocles. “No one,” 8 he asserts, “would hesitate to prefer the ‘Oedipus Tyrannus’ to all that Ion has ever written.” He was one of the five canonical tragic poets of the Alexandrian grammarians. ACHAEUS. Achaeus was born at Eretria, B.C. 484. Although he exhibited many tragedies, he only once gained the prize. His principal merit seems to have been as an author of satiric dramas. Some fragments, as well as seventeen titles of his tragedies, are still preserved. He was also admitted into the Alexandrian canon. AGATHON. Agathon was a rich Athenian, of good family and handsome person. His accomplishments, cheerfulness, and conversational powers, caused him to move in the fashionable literary society of the day. The “Symposium” of Plato is represented as having been given at his house, on the occasion of his gaining the prize for the first time in the dramatic contest. The date of this victory is B.C. 416, in which year the poet was about thirty years of age. A congenial taste, both in philosophy and poetry, united him in friendship with Euripides, for, like him, he delighted in the ingenuity of the sophistical philosophy. The foppery and effeminacy in which his personal beauty tempted him to indulge, appear to have affected his poetry, for although his style is celebrated for exquisite polish and softness, 3 it is disfigured by affectation.4 The introduction of choral odes not intimately connected with the subject of the tragedy, has already been noticed in the case of Euripides. This was carried to so great an extent by Agathon, 1 Vide Pearce’s Longinus. * Longinus, xxxiii. Plat. Symp. 4 Aristoph. Thesm. v. 190. 266 GREEK CLASSICAL LITERATURE. that Aristotle 1 attributes to him this alteration in the structure of the tragic drama. The most celebrated of his works bore the title of “Anthos,” the “Flower,” but the titles of only four of his tragedies are extant. After the deaths of the three great tragic poets, a taste and talent for poetry continued hereditary in their families; but it is clear that their descendants, although they wrote and exhibited tragedies for a few generations, were only poets by profession, and not from the enthusiasm of inspiration. Nothing which they produced has stood the test of time, although whilst they lived they enjoyed some reputation and gained some distinction. Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, was a successful competitor against Sophocles and Euripides. Iophon, the son of Sophocles, and Sophocles the younger, his grandson, were considered worthy of obtaining the tragic wreath. A nephew of Euripides, who bore the same name as his illustrious relative, is also mentioned as a tragic poet. Chaeremon, 9 who lived B.C. 380, possessed some excellencies, but his tragedies had more of the epic than the dramatic element in their composition. Theodectes, who exhibited about B.C. 356, was an orator and a philosopher by inclination, a tragic poet by profession; and his tragedies, as well as those of his contemporaries, although they suited the corrupt taste of the times, were displays of rhetoric rather than poetry.
