Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/403

381 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 381 The predilection of antiquity for Euripides has also preserved us one of his satyric dramas, the Cyclops (the only specimen we have of this sort of play), though Euripides had not distinguished himself parti- cularly in this branch of dramatic poetry. As a specimen of the satyric drama, for which the story of Polyphemus is peculiarly adapted, the play possesses some interest, but it wants that genial originality which we should have been warranted in expecting in a satyrical drama by iEschylus. Euripides probably died in Olymp. 93. 2. b. c. 407, though the ancients also assign the following year for his death.* Sophocles mourned for him in common with the rest of Athens and brought his actors uncrowned to the tragic contest. This must have happened at the dramatic contests in the winter of b. c. 407 and 406 ; Sophocles himself died soon after, about the spring of b. c. 406 (Olymp. 93. 2.), if we may give credit to the old stories which place his death in con- nexion with the feast of the Anthesteria. CHAPTER XXVI. § 1. Inferiority of the other tragic poets. § 2. Contemporaries of Sophocles and Euripides: Neophron, Ion, Aristarchus, Aehaeus, Carcinus, Xenocles. § 3. Tragedians somewhat more recent : Agathon ; the anonymous son of Cleomachus. Tragedy grows effeminate. § 4. Men of education employ tragedy as a vehicle of their opinions on the social relations of the age. § 5. The families of the great tragedians : the j^Eschyleans, Sophocleans, and the younger Euripides. § 6. Influence of other branches of literature ; tragedy is treated by Chaeremon in the spirit of lax and effeminate lyric poetry. § 7. Tragedy is subordinated to rhetoric in the dramas of Theodectes. § 1. We may consider ourselves fortunate in possessing, as speci- mens of Greek tragedy, master-pieces by those poets, whom their contemporaries and all antiquity unanimously regarded as the heroes of the tragic stage. iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are the names which continually recur whenever the ancients speak of the height which tragic poetry attained at Athens ; the state itself dis- tinguished them by founding institutions the object of which was to preserve their works pure and unadulterated, and to protect them the extant piece bears no mark of the pen of Euripides, and must rather be con- sidered as an imitation of j^schylus or Sophocles. It probably belongs to the later Athenian tragedy, perhaps to the school of Pkiiocles, for it is clear from v. 944 that it comes from Athens. The scene in which Paris appears the instant that Diomedes and Ulysses have left the s-tage, while Athena is still there, requires four actors;. and this may also be used as an argument to prove that it was composed at a bitt-r period.
 * See Chap. XXIV. 6 11 note.