Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/169

 EUKIPIDES. 151 liis family have yielded a willing assent to the new religion. This solemn warning against the dangers of a self-willed OeoyLay^ia seems to have made this drama highly suggestive to those intelligent and educated Jews, who first had a misgiving with regard to the wisdom of their opposition to Christianity^. And the devout and religious tone of the play would almost make us suppose that Euri- pides himself, at the close of his life, had become converted from the sophistic scepticism of his earlier years ^ It is probable that the Bacchce was always a favourite play in Macedonia, where it was first produced. Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, openly played the part of the mother of Pentheus^, and Alexander himself was able to make an apposite quotation from the text of this Tragedy^. 1 This important reference was first made by the writer of these pages in a work entitled, Christian OHhodoxy reconciled with the conclusions of modern Biblical Learning, Lond. 1857, pp. 291 — -294, ^ cf. vv. 200 : ovdev ao(pi^6/j.€ada ro?ai daifxoac, k.t., '^' 393 • '''0 (^O(pov S' ov aocpia, TO T€ /XT] dvrjTa (ppoveXv /Spaxi'S alwv. V. 880 : opjiidTai fioXis dX' S^ojj TncTTov TO 7e detov adevos k.t.X. 3 Plutarch, Vit. Alex. c. 2. ^ Id. Ibid. c. 53 : el-rre7u odu tov ' AXe^avSpou otl KaT EvpL7r'L0T]v' Thv Xa^ovTO. tQu KaXas d(popfJiai ov [ley ^pyov ev Xeyeiv. See Bacch. vv. 266, 267.