Think what indignation at such ingratitude must have welled up in every spectator’s heart! Later on in the same play (vss. 1026 ff.) the Argive king, Eurystheus, whom Athens has just defeated in battle, is made to say:
But I bestow
On Athens, who hath spared, who shamed to slay me,
An ancient oracle of Loxias,
Which in far days shall bless her more than seems, etc.
[Way’s translation]
Again, in Euripides’ Alcestis (vs. 452) the chorus of Pheraean elders drags in an allusion to “wealthy, splendid Athens,” using the adjective λιπαραί. Aristophanes said (Acharnians, vs. 640) that the Athenians could refuse nothing to anyone who applied this epithet to their city. In Euripides’ Trojan Women the choreutae are represented as wondering to what part of Greece the allotment of the spoils will send them, and express the wish that they “might come to the renowned, heaven-blest land of Theseus” (vss. 208 f.). There was absolutely no reason why Trojans should entertain such a partiality toward Athens, and this undramatic sentiment is frankly directed to the amor patriae of the playwright’s compatriots. In the same poet’s Andromache the title-character is made to burst out into the following invective against Sparta (vss. 445 ff.):
O ye in all folk’s eyes most loathed of men,
Dwellers in Sparta, senates of treachery,
Princes of lies, weavers of webs of guile,