Roman anecdotist shows that occasionally he was obliged to come on the stage himself, and crave the spectators to keep their seats until the end of the performance.[1] It seems that Euripides could give a tart reply to his audience when their opinions happened to differ from his own; for when the whole house demanded that an offensive passage or sentiment in a tragedy should be struck out, he said, "Good people, it is my business to teach you, and not to be taught by you." How the "good people" took this curt rebuff is not recorded; but if they damned his play, he at least did not, as Ben Jonson did, sulk for a few years and leave the "loathèd stage" in dudgeon, after venting his wrath on the public by an abusive ode and some stinging epigrams. On the contrary, Euripides went on preparing plays for the greater and lesser seasons of the theatrical period, until he left Athens and his enemies therein—for ever.
Amid frequent disappointments, and smarting under the lash of the comic poets—for we may be sure that where an Aristophanes led the way, others, however inferior to him, would follow eagerly—Euripides at a moment of universal dismay perhaps enjoyed some personal consolation. The mighty host which Athens had sent to Syracuse had been nearly annihilated. Of forty thousand citizens or allies that had gone forth, ten thousand only survived. Of her vast armament—vast if we bear in mind that her free population fell below that of many English fourth-rate cities—not a war-galley, not a transport-ship returned to Peiræus: of
- ↑ Valerius Maximus.
