Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/30

26 chance suggestion that Euripides had learnt from his own experience all the varied villanies of his wicked heroines. The idea took root, and he is represented in the anecdotes as a deceived husband, like his own Theseus or Proetus, and uttering lines suitable to the occasion out of his own tragedies; as having two wives at once, like his own Neoptolemus—one of them named Choirile, or "Piggy," and each of course worse than the other; as torn to pieces by hounds, like his own Actaeon, or by wild women, like his own Pentheus.

Something of this sort is possibly the origin of a famous joke about Euripides' mother, which runs through Aristophanes and is repeated as a fact in all the Lives. We know from Philochorus that it was not true. The joke is to connect her with chervil—a grassy vegetable which grew wild and was only eaten in time of famine—or with wild greenstuff in general, or simply to call her a greengrocer. It was also a joke to say anything about beet-root. (Acharn. 894, Frogs 942), A man begs Euripides to bring