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II.] their parabasis. For we find even the comic poets, who had this recognised vehicle, often passing out of the character of the actor into personal relations with the audience. But if such helps existed for the Attic public, they are lost for us. This much is certain, that, like Racine in the seventeenth century, so the Greek dramatists of the Periclean age regarded themselves as essentially moral teachers; nay, almost as a sort of established clergy. It was the recognition of this claim by the Attic public which created Euripides' greatest difficulties when he endeavoured to rise above traditional dogma and conventional morals into speculations on divine philosophy and burning pictures of intense passion.

18. As to the poet's studies and the materials he had before him, we may notice, first, that though deeply learned in epic lore, and familiar with every obscure legend of the Trojan and Theban cycle, he seems (like Sophocles) to have avoided direct contact with Homer in his tragedies, and even in his language there are few