Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/383

361 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 361 against the dominion of the multitude, especially when it consisted chiefly of the sea-faring people, who were so numerous among the Athenians.* He inveighs severely against the demagogues who, hy their unbridled audacity, were hurrying the people to destruction.! He shows himself, however, no friend to the aristocrats of the time, but represents their pride in their riches and high descent as utter folly. When he declares his political creed more directly, J he makes the well- being of the state and the preservation of good order depend on the middle class. § Euripides has an especial affection for the agriculturists who till the land with their own hands : he regards them as the real patriots and the protectois of the state. || Thus we may select from the works of Euripides sentences and sentiments for every situation of human life ; for Euripides is fond of taking a general and abstract view of all relations of things : and it is just because it is so easy to extract sententious passages from his plays, and collect them in antho- logies, that the later writers of antiquity, who were hetter able to appre- ciate the part than the whole — the pretty and clever passages than the general plan of the work — have so greatly liked and admired this poet. Euripides takes such liberties with his dialogue, and allows himself such an arbitrary extension of it, that he has a place in it even for in- direct poetical criticisms, which he turns against his predecessors, espe- cially iEschylus. There are distinct passages in the Electra and the Phoenissae, which every one at Athens must have understood as object- ino-, the former to the recognition scenes in the Choephorse, the latter to the descriptions of the besieging warriors, before the decision of the battle, as stiff and unnatural.^ Euripides never expresses himself against Sophocles in this manner. Although the contemporary and rival of Sophocles, he always appears, even in the Frogs of Aristo- phanes, in hostile opposition to iEschylus, whose manner he despised as rough and uncultivated, iEschylus being the favourite of the old honest Athenians of the race of those who fought at Marathon, and Euripides the hero of the more modern youth, brought up in sophistical opinions and rhetorical studies. Sophocles stands superior to this clash of Aul. 919. t The demagogue of Argos mentioned in the Orestes, 895, " an Argive and no Argive," seems to be an allusion to Cleophon, who had great influence towards the end of the Peloponnesian war, but was said to be a Thracian, and therefore not a genuine citizen of Athens. + As in the remarkable passage of the Suppliants, 241 : T£t7 } yk^ -roX^u* fit^lhs, &c. 6 Tpiuv Se //.otpav, ri'v jj.ttrw awC,ii ToXiv. heralds, whom he attacks on every occasion. ^f Eurip. Electra, 523, Phceniss. 764. After the battle, however, Kuripides finds this description quite appropriate.
 * The yiavrmii aiao^'ia. is mentioned in the Hec. 611, and again in the Iphig. at
 * The aurav^yti: see Electra, 389, Otest. 911. He has a great antipathy to the