Mat 19, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



771 



introduced into the drama found disfavor 

 among the Athenians of the old conservative 

 school. It was for this reason that Sophocles 

 vs-on five times as many prizes as his younger 

 rival; yet Sophocles himself came to see the 

 significance of the new movement and in his 

 later years began to imitate Euripides. 



As an influence in human history Sophocles 

 almost sinks into insignificance when com- 

 pared with Euripides. Historians dwell at 

 great length upon this point. Curtius in 

 speaking of " this importance of Euripides for 

 the general history of the world " makes the 

 following statement. 



The real classics, such as Pindar, .aSschylus and 

 Sophocles, are only to be thoroughly understood 

 and appreciated by contemporaries, or by those 

 who by study accommodate to them their whole 

 way of thinking. Euripides, on the other hand, 

 by the very circumstance that he put an end to 

 the severe style of earlier art, stepped forth from 

 the narrower sphere of the merely popular; he 

 asserted the purely human motives of feeling 

 which find a response in every breast, hence his 

 clearness and intelligibility; hence without pre- 

 suming any special interest in the subjects derived 

 from mythology or claiming a higher strain upon 

 the intellectual powers, he satisfies the demands 

 which men at all times and in all places make 

 upon the drama. He is at once interesting and 

 entertaining, terrific and affecting; be offers a 

 wealth of thoughts and reflections, which come 

 home and are of importance to every one, and is 

 a poet for every educated man who understands 

 the language in which he writes. For the same 

 reason, too, he was able to affect the minds of the 

 foremost among his contemporaries, such as Soc- 

 rates; and the language of the Attic stage, as he 

 developed it, became the standard for the drama. 

 For the same reason he also pointed out its path 

 to plastic art, and showed it how it could do new 

 and important things after the age of Phidias; 

 and therefore, though in his lifetime he had been 

 unable to prevail against the stUl acknowledged 

 tradition of earlier art, he filled the world with 

 his fame after his death, and found numerous 

 followers among the poets, who made use of the 

 Greek myths in order to obtain dramatic effects of 

 universal human significance. 



This passage from Curtius is of great in- 

 terest, for it not only illustrates the greater 

 historical importance of Euripides, but it also 



shows that the ultimate significance of a man's 

 work can not be measured by the prizes or 

 honors which he may receive from contempo- 

 raries and that the forces which bring a man 

 fame may go on with far greater intensity 

 after his death than during his life time. 



In order to illustrate what the historian 

 means when he says that Euripides " satisfies 

 the demands which men at all times and at all 

 places make upon the drama " a few examples 

 may be given. 



Curtius states that the plays of Euripides 

 accompanied the Athenian traveler by land 

 and sea; so also in modern times when De 

 Quincey started on his wanderings he took 

 with him a pocket volume of Euripides. Even 

 Mr. Roosevelt, when preparing for his Afri- 

 can hunting trip, included in his famous 

 " pigskin library " a copy of this same poet. 



Lucretius in discussing the indestructibility 

 of matter translates from Euripides, " Nothing 

 that exists can perish; but everything on de- 

 composing takes on a different form " ; so also 

 in modern times von Lippmann, in the intro- 

 duction of his " Abhandlungen und Vortrage," 

 hopes that the reader may imbibe the spirit of 

 Euripides, who said, " Happy the man who 

 has gained a knowledge of science." 



The Greek poet Ion in his elegy to Eurip- 

 ides reminds him that his fame will endure as 

 long as Homer's ; and Dante in his " Divine 

 Comedy " mentions among the shades of de- 

 parted Greek poets Homer first and then Eurip- 

 ides. Dante does not speak of Sophocles in 

 his whole poem, and we can see from this how 

 slight the influence of Sophocles was upon the 

 thought of the middle ages. 



Seyffert in his " Kulturgeschichte der 

 Griechen und Homer," when discussing the 

 development of the drama, states that " the 

 tragedians following Euripides made him 

 their model and pattern without qualification 

 and the Roman poets preferred paraphrasing 

 his dramas to those of other tragedians." The 

 Roman poet Ennius paraphrased the "Androm- 

 eda " and some twenty other tragedies of 

 Euripides; so also we find in more modern 

 times that Racine paraphrases the " Andro- 

 mache " and other plays, Goethe paraphrases 



