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168 For we are not only told in the Lives that "The Athenians bore a grudge against him," and that "he lost patience with the ill-will of his fellow-citizens," but one of our earliest witnesses, Philodemus, says that when he left Athens he did so "in grief, because almost all in Athens were rejoicing over him." The word used means, like the German "Schadenfreude," rejoicing at another's injury. So there must have been some injury for them to rejoice at.

The old Satyrus tradition, with its tone of scandal and misunderstanding, says that his wife was false to him, but the story will not bear historical criticism. And it would not be safe to use so rotten a foundation to build any theory upon, however likely it may be in itself that a man of this kind should meet with domestic unhappiness in one or other of its many forms. In thinking of Euripides one is constantly reminded of Tolstoy. And there are many ways of making husbands miserable besides merely betraying them.

Whatever the cause, shortly after the production of the Orestes in 408 the old poet's endurance snapped, and, at the age apparently of seventy-six, he struck off into