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36 his later years he quitted Athens, there is no trace of his leaving Attica, except the single fact of an inscription in the island of Icarus ascribed to him. This, however, is no evidence at all of his being from home, since a waxen tablet or a snip of papyrus could have conveyed the inscription, while Euripides remained in his grotto or his library, wrapt in contemplation on his next new play, or striving to solve hard sayings of Prodicus or Protagoras.

Once, indeed, we find him at home. It was in his house that Protagoras is said to have read one of the works by which that philosopher incurred a charge of atheism; and this worshipful society, once bruited abroad, was not likely to be overlooked by the pious writers of comedy. Often, indeed, does Athens, at the period of the Peloponnesian war, present an image of Paris in the last century. There the Church was despised, and yet stanchly supported by men of notoriously evil life; in Athens, divinities, whom the people worshipped superstitiously, if not devoutly, when the theatre was closed, were butts for the people's mirth and laughter when it was open. We have a record of only the two banquets of this time already mentioned. Could we have a report of a "petit souper d'Alcibiades," it might very likely remind us of those symposiums where the head of the Church, Leo the Tenth, encouraged his parasites and buffoons to debate on the greatest mysteries of religion; or the still better known conversations that took place at the supper-table of Baron Holbach. Had we any such report of the petits soupers at Athens, possibly