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6 But in no case are these considerations more important than in that of Euripides, the poet who has bequeathed to us the largest and most varied materials to estimate his age; while on the other hand, his age—the age of Thucydides and of [[Author:Aristophanes|Aristophanes, of Pericles and of Alkibiades, of Phidias, and of Alkamenes—is the best known and most brilliant epoch in Athenian history. He was indeed no public man, but a confirmed student, a lover of books and of solitude; but yet certainly the personal friend of Pericles and Socrates, his elder and younger contemporaries, the hearer of Anaxagoras|Anaxagoras and Prodicus; if not the active promoter, at least the close observer of all that was great and brilliant in Athens, then the Hellas of Hellas, the inmost and purest shrine of all the national culture. We will therefore introduce the poet by a short survey of the society in which he lived, and the conditions under which he pursued his art. For those who desire to know more of this inexhaustible subject,—the Periclean age—there is a whole library of fuller books in various languages.

2. The life of Euripides reached from the battle of Salamis almost to that of Ægospotami; his boyhood therefore was in that very obscure period which precedes the blaze of light shed by Pericles and his contemporaries on the full-grown Athenian empire. Except Thucydides' valuable summary at the opening of his History, and Plutarch's Life of Kimon, we have no account of the means by which Athens attained her greatness. But we know that an extraordinary and feverish activity inspired every Athenian, high and low, to build up the imperial sway of his native city. The wise reforms of Cleisthenes had given each citizen an interest in the constitution and a voice in the management of public affairs. The common calamities of poverty and exile, the common glories of victory, especially of naval victory, in which the poorest classes had the main share, welded together all ranks