Page:Measuring Euripides.djvu/12

 eternal," his body returns to the earth from which it came, but his breath or spirit likewise rejoins its native ether.

If we seek for Euripides' own belief amid the extensive and varied picture which he gives of the religious life and thought of his times perhaps we may detect it in an utterance put into the mouth of old Hecuba in the Trojan Women—an utterance which elicits from Menelaus the exclamation, "What's that? A strange prayer you make to the gods." Hecuba had prayed: "Oh thou who dost support the earth and who restest thereupon, whosoe'er thou art, a riddle beyond our ken! Be Thou Zeus, or force of nature, or mind of man, to thee I pray. For thou goest everywhere with noiseless tread ruling the affairs of men with justice."

Passages have already been or will later be quoted from Euripides suggestive in thought and wording of the New Testament. Some other examples are: in a prayer to Zeus in Helen "If you but touch us with the tip of your finger we shall reach our desired goal." The notion found twice in Euripides and once before him in Aeschylus that on a great occasion, a house or walls would cry out or could hear what was said. A passage in the Suppliants to the effect that the wild beast has the rocks as a refuge and the slave the altar of the gods but that human happiness is always uncertain. A line in one of the fragments: "A healer of others, himself swollen with sores." Such passages, while not exactly corresponding in phraseology to verses of the Bible, are sufficiently similar to suggest that the writers of some of the books of the New Testament were considerably influenced by Euripides either directly or indirectly. Possibly Jesus himself was thus influenced. In the first epistle to the Corinthians, fifteenth chapter, thirty-third verse, the words translated in the King James' version as "Evil communications corrupt good manners" are an exact quotation of one of Euripides' fragments, although it might better be translated, "Evil company corrupts good morals."

Euripides' characters frequently express scepticism as to the divination of the future which often enters into his plots; but magic philtres and incantations are frequently mentioned in a matter-of-fact sort of way. Astrology seems almost unknown Euripides.

Because of the religious origin and character of the Greek drama we expect to find in Euripides many passages concerning the gods and their dealings with men and the duties of men towards the deities. Since his plays are tragedies we also find many reflections concerning man's woes and sufferings, and the transitoriness of human happiness and that death which regularly terminates the careers of the chief actors in a