Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/229

Rh and insolent pride arouse the righteous indignation of the gods, and that no mortal can contend successfully against the will of Zeus.

Euripides (485–406 B.C.) was a more popular dramatist than either Æschylus or Sophocles. His fame passed far beyond the limits of Greece. Herodotus asserts that the verses of the poet were recited by the natives of the remote country of Gedrosia; and Plutarch says that the Sicilians were so fond of his lines that many of the Athenian prisoners, taken before Syracuse, bought their liberty by teaching their masters his verses.

Comedy: Aristophanes.—Foremost among all writers of comedy must be placed Aristophanes (about 444–380 B.C.). He introduces us to the every-day life of the least admirable classes of Athenian society. Four of his most noted works are the Clouds, the Knights, the Birds, and the Wasps.

In the comedy of the Clouds, Aristophanes especially ridicules the Sophists, a school of philosophers and teachers just then rising into prominence at Athens, of whom the satirist unfairly makes Socrates the representative.

The aim of the Knights was the punishment and ruin of Cleon,