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CHAP. II.] set to it against his will, and may have had closer experience than most men of the habits and the character of professional athletes. There were also shown at Megara pictures ascribed to him, so that he certainly possessed the reputation of large and varied culture. The caricature of Aristophanes describes him as a recluse student, occupied with metaphysical speculations; and his collection of books was early celebrated. He was certainly the friend, possibly the pupil, of Anaxagoras (to whom he alludes pathetically in his Alcestis, v, 904), probably, too, of Protagoras and of Prodicus. He is mentioned in maturer life as a friend and the favourite tragic poet of Socrates. Thus we find him distinctly one of the new school, early breaking loose from traditional orthodoxy, and taking no part in public affairs; but devoting all his life, from the age of twenty-five, to the composition of plays, in which he shadowed out his studies in theology, in metaphysics, and in the changing moods of human nature. He was certainly a prolific and a very popular poet; but though he must have contended about twenty times with groups of four plays on each occasion, he only won the prize four times during his life, and once with plays brought out shortly after his death. When he produced his first play, Æschylus was just dead, and though Sophocles was in the zenith of his fame, and the delight of all Athens, men must have looked anxiously for the appearance of a new poet, who would succeed to the place left vacant by the veteran dramatist. To such Euripides must have been indeed disappointing. His last plays came out about the time of Sophocles' death, when men despaired of seeing any worthy heir of either in tragedy, for the younger generation had tried in vain to rival these poets even in their old age, as Aristophanes plainly informs us. Thus our poet's life extended from the noon to the sunset of Greek