“‘The Chiefs against Thebes,’
That inspired each spectator with martial ambition,
Courage, and ardour, and prowess, and pride.
Dionysus
“But you did very wrong to encourage the Thebans.
Indeed you deserve to be punished, you do,
For the Thebans are grown to be capital soldiers.
You’ve done us a mischief by that very thing.
Æschylus
“The fault was your own, if you took other courses;
The lesson I taught was directed to you;
Then I gave you the glorious theme of ‘The Persians,’
Replete with sublime patriotical strains,
The record and example of noble achievement,
The delight of the city, the pride of the stage.
Dionysus
“I rejoiced, I confess, when the tidings were carried
To old King Darius, so long dead and buried,
And the chorus in concert kept wringing their hands,
Weeping and wailing, and crying, Alas!
Æschylus
“Such is the duty, the task of a poet,
Fulfilling in honour his office and trust.
Look to traditional history, look
To antiquity, primitive, early, remote:
See there what a blessing illustrious poets
Conferr’d on mankind, in the centuries past.
Orpheus instructed mankind in religion,
Reclaimed them from bloodshed and barbarous rites;
Musæus delivered the doctrine of medicine,
And warnings prophetic for ages to come.
Next came old Hesiod, teaching us husbandry,
Ploughing, and sowing, and rural affairs,
Rural economy, rural astronomy,
Homely morality, labour and thrift:
Homer himself, our adorable Homer,
What was his title to praise and renown?
What but the worth of the lessons he taught us,
Discipline, arms, and endurance of war?”
All Greek literature and art is judged by critics of all sorts from a standard almost exclusively moral. “Did he teach well?” “Did his art make people better?” Such are the questions constantly applied. The doctrine of Art for Art’s sake would have seemed to the Greeks monstrous and wicked. The actual charges made against Euripides in these scenes are (1) that he was an innovator; (2) that he was a realist, introducing lame people and beggars in rags on the idealist tragic stage; (3) that he was fond of casuistry, and thereby cultivated dishonesty; (4) that he chose immoral subjects dealing with such revolting topics as women in love! Sophocles is evidently regarded by our irrepressible bard as a personage too sacred to be brought upon his stage. That gentle spirit would have no part in such a strife either here or in the underworld.