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III.] us the starting-point of his career. But neither this, nor apparently any of his juvenile work, survives, our first play being probably the Alcestis, which did not appear till 438 B.C., and which was therefore composed in his full maturity. On the other hand, his latest plays, the Bacchæ and the Iphigenia in Aulis, remain, the latter not even finished by the masters hand; and their survival has with difficulty saved the poet from the hands of the German critics, who would willingly show, from the Helena, the Orestes, and other such plays, that in advanced age he had lowered himself in tone and dignity, had condescended to careless writing, having become a foolish reflection of that ochlocracy which figures so largely in their imaginary pictures of Athens at the close of the fifth century. But his latest plays which gained the first prize in spite of, perhaps on account of, Aristophanes' venomous attack in the Frogs (405 B.C.), show him in the very zenith of his power, none of his works being more perfect either in plot or in execution than the Bacchæ and the finished portions of the Iphigenia.

29. Thus the favourite German theory, that we can determine the advancing dates of literary works by the advancing weakness or diffuseness of the style, is happily upset by the benevolent fate which has preserved to us these parting gifts of the aged Euripides to the human race. Their greater perfection is probably to be assigned to his Macedonian leisure, and to the relief from the pressure of competition at Athens, where, as we know, the tragic poets composed with amazing rapidity, to suit the popular temper of the season, so that possibly parts of the plays may not have been written until the poet had secured the State sanction by obtaining the grant of a chorus. It is this hurried production—a feature common to the great dramatists, indeed, the great artists, of all ages—which will best account for uneven workmanship, and for the undue prominence, in some of the plays, of the political sympathies or antipathies of the hour.