Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/146

 9 6 General History of Europe to hear the lectures of some noted Sophist ( 120), he was told that no one knew with any certainty whether the gods existed, nor what they were like. Whatever the gods might be like, the Sophist was sure they were not such beings as he found pictured in the Homeric poems. The youth and his educated friends were all reading the splendid plays of Euripides ( 126), with their uncertainties and struggles and doubts about life and the gods. Euripides, to whom the Athe- nians had rarely voted a victory during his lifetime, had now tri- umphed ; and his triumph meant the defeat of the old beliefs, the rejection of the old ideas of the gods, and the incoming of a new age in thought and religion. 145. Socrates. One of the chief doubters of the time was a poor Athenian named Socrates, whose ill-clothed figure and ugly face had become familiar in the streets to all the folk of Athens since the outbreak of the second war with Sparta. He was ac- customed to stand about the market place all day long entering into conversation with anyone he met and asking a great many questions very hard to answer. Socrates' questions left most people in a very confused state of mind, for he seemed to throw doubt on many things which the Athenians had hitherto taken for granted. Yet the familiar and homely figure of this stonecutter's son was the personification of the best and highest things in Greek genius. Without desire for office or a political career, Socrates' greatest interest nevertheless was the State. He believed that the State, made up as it was of citizens, could be purified and saved PORTRAIT OF EURIPIDES The name of the poet ( 126) is engraved in Greek letters along the lower edge of the bust