ISO AN TIEN T METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



mention what the fize of the body was, only fays in general, that it 

 was a great body ; by which he no doubt means that it was a body 

 much above the fize of the Athenians at that time. 



The moft of our philofophers at prcfent are, I believe, of the opi- 

 nion of the fmith in Herodotus, who might be excufed for having 

 that opinion at a time when perhaps no other heroic body had been 

 difcovered. But, in later times, I believe there was not the moft 

 vulgar man in Greece, who did not believe that thofe heroes were 

 very much fuperior, both in Mind and Body, to the men of after 

 times. Indeed, they were not confidered as mere men, but as fome- 

 thing betwixt gods and men, and had heroic honours paid them, 

 which were next to the divitte^. On the ftage they were reprefented 

 as of extraordinary fize, both as to length and breadth : For the 

 adtor was not only raifed upon very high fhoes", which they called 

 cothurns^ but he was put into a cafe that fwelled his fize prodigi- 

 oufly t- This accounts for the high ftyle of antient tragedy, in which 

 the heroes fpcak a language fo uncommon, that, if I confidered them 

 as men nowife fuperior to us, I lliould think it little better than fu- 

 ftian, and ihould be apt to apply to it, what Falftaff fays to Piftol, 

 ' Pritliec, Piflol, fpcak like a man of this world J.' And I apply the 



fame 



* Thefe two honours the Greeks exprefTdby the words ©u«» and Ev«><;h» ; the 

 former of which applied to the Gods, the other to the Heroes ; See Herod. Lib. ii. 

 Cap. 44. 



f See Lucian in his treatife De Saltationc, p. 508. (Paris edit, in fo! 161 5.) 

 where we have a particular defcription of the drefs and appearance of a tir.gic ..dor ; 

 and I h^ve fomewhere read a very ridiculous flory of one of them, who, coming 

 upon the ftnge, fell, and broke his cafr, fo that all the trafh with which it was 

 fluffed came out, and was fcattered upon the ^ig'Z in the view of the whole peo- 

 ple. 



■\. 'Ihis ohfcrvation applies particularly to ^.fchylus and iSophocles, whofr- ftile is 

 truly ht-roic, and worthy of the Cothurn. As to Euripides, whatever other merit he 

 mnhave, I think he makes his heroes fpcik much too like the fophifts and rhe- 

 ioricians of his own time. 



