EURIPIDES
Aristophanes closely watched all the workings of the sophistical spirit, and was sagacious enough to perceive that they were not confined to any particular sphere, but pervaded every province of thought and action. He was naturally led to observe its influence with peculiar attention in the branches of literature or art which were most nearly allied to his own. He was able to trace it in the innovations which had taken place in music and lyrical poetry, but above all in the tragic drama: and Euripides, the last of the three tragic poets who are known to us by their works, appeared to him as one of the most dangerous sophists, and was on this account among the foremost objects of his bitterest ridicule. The earnestness with which Aristophanes assailed him seems to have increased with the growth of his reputation; for of the three comedies in which he is introduced, the last, which was exhibited after his death, contains by far the most severe as well as elaborate censure of his poetry. It is not however quite certain that Euripides, even in the latter part of his career, was so popular as Sophocles. In answer to a question of Socrates, in a conversation which Xenophon probably heard during the latter part of the Peloponnesian War, Sophocles is mentioned as indisputably the most admirable in his art.
It has often been observed, 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 life-time to the favour of a party, which was strong rather in rank and fortune than in numbers; the same which is said to have been headed by Alcibiades, and to have deprived Aristophanes of the prize.
Alcibiades employed Euripides to celebrate his Olympic victories; and his patronage was sufficient to spread the poet’s fame at home and abroad. The anecdote about the celebrity which he had acquired in Sicily is perfectly consistent with this view; as is the invitation which he received a little before his death from Archelaus of Macedon, at whose court he ended his life; and the admiration which Dionysius of Syracuse expressed for him, by buying his tablets and pen at a high price, to dedicate them in the temple of the Muses.
Aristophanes was so far from being blind to the poetical merits of Euripides, that he was himself charged by his rivals with borrowing from him, and in one of his lost plays acknowledged that in his diction he had imitated the terseness of the tragic poet, but asserted that his thoughts were less vulgar. How accurately he had studied the works of the tragic drama, how vividly he perceived the genuine character of Greek tragedy, and the peculiar genius of each poet, is sufficiently proved by the mode in which he has conducted the contest which he feigns between Æschylus and Euripides. But his criticism would probably have been less severe, if he had not considered Euripides less in his poetical character than in his connection with the sophistical school. Euripides had in fact been a hearer of Anaxagoras, and probably both of Protagoras and Prodicus. In his house Protagoras was said to have read one of his works by which he incurred a charge of atheism. He was also on intimate terms with Socrates, who was therefore reported to have aided him in the composition of his tragedies, and perhaps may have done so, in the same way as Prodicus and Anaxagoras; and this connection was, as we shall see, of itself a sufficient ground with Aristophanes for suspicion and aversion. The strength of Euripides lay in passionate and moving scenes, and he sought like other poets for situations and characters which afforded the best opportunity for the display of his powers. But he was too frequently tempted to work upon the feelings of his audience by an exhibition of sufferings which were quite foreign to the heroic dignity of the persons who endured them, who were therefore degraded by the pity they excited. The misery of his heroes often consisted chiefly in bodily privations, which could only awaken the sympathy of the spectator’s animal nature.
His irreligion is contrasted with the piety of Æschylus, who invokes the goddess of the Eleusinian mysteries; a hint which, after the prosecution of Alcibiades, was easily understood, as to the party to which Euripides belonged. It was probably in the same point of view that Aristophanes considered the plays which he founded on tales of criminal passion.
Euripides was undoubtedly induced to select such subjects, some of which were new to the Greek stage, chiefly by the opportunity they afforded him of displaying his peculiar dramatic talent. But in his hands they seldom failed to give occasion for a sophistical defence of conduct repugnant to Greek usages and feelings, which to Aristophanes would appear much more pernicious than the example itself. But his plays were likewise interspersed with moral paradoxes, which in more than one instance are said to have excited the indignation of the audience. A line in which the most pious of his heroes distinguishes between the oath of the tongue and that of the mind, in terms which might serve to justify any perjury, became very celebrated, and Aristophanes dwells upon it, apparently as a striking illustration of the sophistical spirit. It seems clear that these, and others of the novelties just mentioned, cannot have been designed to gain the general applause of the audience. Though we must reject a story told by some of his Greek biographers, which indeed is at variance with chronology, that the fate of his master Anaxagoras deterred him from philosophical pursuits, and led him to turn his thoughts to the drama, we might still wonder at his indiscretion, if it had not appeared probable that he aimed at gratifying the taste, not so much of the multitude, as of that class of persons which took pleasure in the new learning, and was in fact the favourite poet, not so much of the common people, as of a party, which was growing more and more powerful throughout his dramatic career.
Euripides, however, occupies only a subordinate place among the disciples and supporters of the sophistical school, whom Aristophanes attacked. The person whom he selected as its representative, and on whom he endeavoured to throw the whole weight of the charges which he brought against it, was Socrates. In the Clouds, a comedy exhibited in 423, a year after the Knights had been received with so much applause, Socrates was brought on the stage under his own name, as the arch-sophist, the master of the free-thinking school. The story is of a young spendthrift, who has involved his father in debt by his passion for horses, and having been placed under the care of Socrates is enabled by his instructions to defraud his creditors, but also learns to regard filial obedience and respect, and piety to the gods, as groundless and antiquated prejudices; and it seems hardly possible to doubt that under this character the poet meant to represent Alcibiades, whom it perfectly suits in its general outline, and who may have been suggested to the thoughts of the spectators in many ways not now perceived by the reader. It seems at first sight as if in this work Aristophanes must stand convicted either of the foulest motives or of a gross mistake. For the character of Socrates was in most points directly opposed to the principles and practice which he attributes here and elsewhere to the sophists and their followers. Yet in the Clouds this excellent person appears in the most odious as well as ridiculous aspect; and the play ends with the preparations made by the father of the misguided youth to consume him and his school.[c]
Remains of a Temple at Metapontum