Page:Euripides (Donne).djvu/37



received date of the "birth of Euripides is the year 480 B.C. He was accordingly forty-five years junior to Æschylus, and fifteen years younger than Sophocles. This difference in their respective ages is not unimportant as regards their very different views of dramatic art. His birthplace was the island of Salamis, where his mother, with other Athenian women, and with men too old, or children too young, for the defence of their native city, was taking refuge, and he came into the world on the day of the great sea-fight that has immortalised its name. Of his father Mnesarchus little is known; hut it may be supposed he was a person of good station and property, since he could afford his son a liberal and expensive education, such as at that time was within reach of only wealthy families. His mother Clito, thanks to the poet's enemies, is better known to us. Probably she was not of