Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/155

 EURIPIDES. 137 call sophists and sometime the sophist and the rhapsode were united in the same person : indeed so completely were they identi- fied in most cases, that Plato makes Socrates treat Hippias the sophist, who was also a rhapsode, and Ion the rhapsode, who seems to have been a sophist too, with banter and irony of precisely the same kind. Since then Euripides was nursed in the lap of sophistry, was the pupil and friend of the most eminent of the sophists, and perhaps to all intents a sophist himself, we cannot wonder that he should turn the rhapsodical element of the Greek Drama into a sophistical one: in fact, the transition was not only natural, but perhaps even necessary. It may, however, be asked, how is this reconcileable with the statement that Socrates assisted Euripides in the composition of his Tragedies ? for Socrates was, if we can believe Plato's representation of him, the sworn foe of the sophists. We answer that Socrates was, in the more general sense of the word, himself a sophist ; his opposition to the other sophists, w^hich has probably been exaggerated by his pupils and apologists, to whom we owe nearly all we know about him, is no proof of a radical difference between him and them : on the contrary, it is proverbial that there are no disagreements so rancorous and impla- cable as those between persons who follow the same trade with different objects in view. That Socrates was the least pernicious of the sophists, that, if he was not a good citizen, he was at least an honest man, we are very much disposed to believe ; but in the eyes of his contemporaries he differed but little from the rest of the tribe : Aristophanes attacks him as the head of the school, and per- haps some of the comedian's animosity to Euripides may have arisen from his belief that the tragedian was only a Socrates and a sophist making an epideixis in iambics^. Euripides was not only a rhetorical sophist. He also treated his audience to some of the physical doctrines of his master Anaxa- goras^ For instance, he goes out of his way to communicate to them the Anaxagorean discovery, that the sun is nothing but an 1 The young student will find some interesting remarks on these personages in Coleridge's Friend, Vol. in. p. 112 fol. See also the articles on Prodicus in Nos. I. and IV. of the Rhein. Mus. 1832. 2 Aristophanes speaks of him thus : Sre br} KarrjXO' 'Evpiiridrjs ^ireSelKwro TOis XiOTTodvTais, k.t.X. Ranee, 771. ' On the allusions which Euripides makes to the philosophy of Anaxagoras, the reader of this poet should consult Valckenaer's Diatribe, pp. 25 — 58.