Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/14

10 by two of the greatest judges. Aristotle, writing at a period when Euripides was rather out of fashion, and subjecting him to much serious and sometimes unintelligent criticism, considers him still "the most tragic of the poets." And Goethe, after expressing his surprise at the general belittling of Euripides by "the aristocracy of philologists, led by the buffoon Aristophanes," asks emphatically: "Have all the nations of the world since his time produced one dramatist who was worthy to hand him his slippers?" (Tagebüchern, November 22, 1831.) We must try, if we can, to bear duly in mind all these different lines of approach.

As a playwright the fate of Euripides has been strange. All through a long life he was almost invariably beaten in the State competitions. He was steadily admired by some few philosophers, like Socrates; he enjoyed immense fame throughout Greece; but the official judges of poetry were against him, and his own people of Athens admired him reluctantly and with a grudge.

After death, indeed, he seemed to come into his kingdom. He held the stage as no other tragedian has ever held it, and we hear of