In conclusion, a few single lines or couplets may be strung together for their proverbial pithiness and verbal delicacy:
ἔνεστι γάρ τις καὶ λόγοισιν ἡδονὴ
λήθην ὅταν ποιῶσι τῶν ὄντων κακῶν.
τὸ μὴ γὰρ εἶναι κρεῖσσον ἢ τὸ ζῆν κακῶς.
πόνου μεταλλαχθέντος οἱ πόνοι γλυκεῖς.
εἰ σῶμα δοῦλον ἀλλ' ὁ νοῦς ἐλεύθερος.
ὅρκους ἐγὼ γυναικὸς εἰς ὕδωρ γράφω.
ὦ θνητὸν ἀνδρῶν καὶ ταλαίπωρον γένος·
ὡς οὐδέν ἐσμεν, πλὴν σκιαῖς ἐοικότες,
βάρος περισσὸν γῆς ἀναστρωφώμενοι.
θάρσει, γύναι· τὰ πολλὰ τῶν δεινῶν ὄναρ
πνεύσαντα νυκτὸς ἡμέρας μαλάσσεται.
τὰ μὲν διδακτὰ μανθάνω, τὰ δ' εὑρετὰ
ζητῶ, τὰ δ' εὐκτὰ παρὰ θεῶν ᾐτησάμην.[37]
Whenever we compare Euripides with his predecessors, we are led to remark that he disintegrated the drama by destroying its artistic unity and revealing the modus operandi of the scientific analyst. All the elements of a great poem were given as it were in their totality by Æschylus. Sophocles, while conscious of the effect to be gained by resolving the drama into its component parts, was careful to recombine them by his art. It is difficult with either Æschylus or Sophocles to separate a passage from its context without injuring the whole, or to understand the drift of a sentence without considering both circumstance and person. With Euripides the case is somewhat different. Though he composed dramas supremely good in the aggregate impression left upon our mind, we feel that he employed his genius with delight in perfecting each separate part regarded by itself alone. So much of time and talent might be spent on the elaboration of the plot, so much on the accentuation of the characters, so much on lyric poetry, so much on moral maxims, so much on description, and so much on artificial argument. There is something over-strained in this crude statement; yet it serves to indicate the analytic method noticeable in Euripides. It consequently happened that his plays lent themselves admirably to the scissors and paste-box method of the compilers. He was a master of gnomes and sentences, and his tragedies were ready-made repertories of quotations. The good cause and the better were pleaded in his dialogues with impartial skill, because it was the poet's aim to set forth what might be said rhetorically—because he took a lively interest in casuistry for its own sake. These qualities, combined with so much that is attractive in his fables, radiant in his fancy, tender in his human sympathy, and romantic in his conduct of a play, endeared him to the Greeks of all succeeding ages. What they wanted in dramatic poetry he supplied better than any other playwright, except perhaps Menander, who, for similar reasons, shared a similar exceptionally lucky fate. The result is that, besides possessing at least eighteen of the plays of Euripides, as against seven of Sophocles and seven of Æschylus, our anthology of Euripidean excerpts is voluminous in the same ratio. The majority of these we owe to the industry of Stobæus, who always found something to his purpose in a drama of Euripides, while collecting wise precepts and descriptive passages to illustrate the nature of a vice or virtue. We must be careful, amid the medley of sentiments expressed with equal force and equal ease, to remember that they are not the poet's own, but put into the mouth of his dramatic personages. What is peculiar is the impartiality of rhetorical treatment they display—a quality which, though it may not justify, accounts for, the Aristophanic hostility to the Euripidean school of talkers on all subjects.