The number of dramas ascribed to Euripidês is sometimes ninety-two, sometimes seventy-five. Elmsley, in his remarks on the Argument to the Medea, p. 72, thinks that even the larger of these numbers is smaller than what Euripidês probably composed; since the poet continued composing for fifty years, from 455 to 405 B.C., and was likely during each year to have composed one, if not two, tetralogies; if he could prevail upon the archon to grant him a chorus, that is, the opportunity of representing. The didaskalies took no account of any except such as gained the first, second, or third prize. Welcker gives the titles, and an approximative guess at the contents, of fifty-one lost tragedies of the poet, besides the seventeen remaining (p. 443).
Aristarchus the tragedian is affirmed by Suidas to have composed seventy tragedies, of which only two gained the prize. As many as a hundred and twenty compositions are ascribed to Neophron, forty-four to Achæus, forty to Ion (Welcker, ib. p. 889).
[510] Plato, Symposion, c. 3, p. 175.
[511] For these particulars, see chiefly a learned and valuable compilation—G. C. Schneider, Das Attische Theater-Wesen, Weimar, 1835—furnished with copious notes; though I do not fully concur in all his details, and have differed from him on some points. I cannot think that more than two oboli were given to any one citizen at the same festival; at least, not until the distribution became extended, in times posterior to the Thirty; see M. Schneider’s book, p. 17; also Notes, 29-196.
[512] See Plato, Lachês, c. 6, p. 183, B.; and Welcker, Griech. Tragöd. p. 930.
[513] Upon the point, compare Welcker, Griech. Tragöd. vol. ii, p. 1102.
[514] See Aristophan. Ran. 1046. The Antigonê (780, seq.) and the Trachiniæ (498) are sufficient evidence that Sophoklês did not agree with Æschylus in this renunciation of Aphroditê.
[515] The comparison of Herodot. iii, 119 with Soph. Antig. 905, proves a community of thought which seems to me hardly explicable in any other way. Which of the two obtained the thought from the other, we cannot determine.
The reason given, by a woman whose father and mother were dead, for preferring a brother either to husband or child,—that she might find another husband and have another child, but could not possibly have another brother,—is certainly not a little far-fetched.
[516] See Valckenaer, Diatribe in Eurip. Frag. c. 23. Quintilian, who had before him many more tragedies than those which we now possess, remarks how much more useful was the study of Euripidês, than that of Æschylus or Sophoklês, to a young man preparing himself for forensic oratory:—