Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/388

366 366 HISTORY OF THE § 7. The style of Euripides in the dialogue cannot be distinguished in any marked manner from the mode of speaking then common in the public assemblies and law courts. The comedian calls him a poet of law- speeches ; conversely, he psserts, it is necessary to speak "in a spruce Euripidean style "* in the public exhibitions. The perspicuity, facility, and energetic adroitness of this style made the greatest impression at the time. Aristophanes, who was reproached with having learned much from the poet to whom he was so constantly opposed, admits that he had adopted his condensation of speech, but adds, sarcastically, that he takes his thoughts less from the daily intercourse of the market-place. t Aristotle remarks,! that Euripides was the first to produce a poetical illusion by borrowing his expressions from ordinary language ; that his audience needed not for illusion's sake to transport themselves into a strange world, raised far above themselves, but remained at Athens in the midst of the Athenian orators and philosophers. Euripides was incontestably the first who proved on the stage the power which a fluent style, drawing the listener along with it by means of its beautiful periods and harmonious falls, must exert upon the public mind ; nay more, he even produced a reaction on Sophocles by means of it. But it cannot be denied that he gave himself up too much to this facility also, and his characters sometimes display quite as much garrulity as eloquence : the attentive reader often misses the stronger nourishment of thoughts and feelings furnished by the style of Sophocles, which, though more difficult, is at the same time more expressive. Euripides, too, descends so low to common life in his choice of expressions that he actually uses words of a nobler meaning in the sense which they bore in the common colloquial language. § Finally, it must be remarked, though the establishment of this position belongs to the history of the Greek language, that we find traces in Euripides of an impaired feeling for the laws of his own language. In the lyrical pas- sages he uses forms of inflexion., and in the dialogue compound words, which offend against the well-founded analogy of the Greek language ; and he is perhaps the first of all the Greek authors who can be charged with this. § 8. In these considerations of the poetry of Euripides in general we have often referred to the distinction which subsists between the earlier •)■ ^ouu.a.1 yttp cei/rov tov o, rt>(*.u.'ros tZ iTT^oyyuXeo, tovs vov; o ayopaiov; yittov ; i ' xilvos vr/iiu '. — Fragment in the Scholia to Plato's Apology, p. 93, 8. Fragm. No. 397. Dindorf. % Rhetor. III. 2. § 5. § Thus he used apvls in a bad sense, as signifying "proud," "arrogant;" Medea, 219, see Elmsley; Hippolyt.93, 1056; vxXaiortis as signifying "simplicity," " foolishness ;" He/ena, '066.
 * y.ofi^iv^fVtxus : The Knights, v. 18.