witnesses, against the orators who had advised, and the oracle-mongers and prophets who had guaranteed, the success of that disastrous expedition.[1]
There was, indeed, much in the Homeric theology that, however well suited to the artist, was intolerable to the philosopher. The gods themselves were criminals, and Euripides made no secret that he thought them so. "He could not," says K. O. Müller, "bring his philosophical convictions into harmony with the contents of the old legends, nor could he pass over their incongruities." Yet far advanced as he was beyond his time, the time itself was not quite unprogressive. Æschylus, who belonged to an earlier generation, and Sophocles, who avoided every disturbing force as perilous to the composure of art, accepted the Homeric deities as they found them. Nevertheless faith in them was in the sear and yellow leaf, and the reverence that should accompany old age was nearly worn out. The court of Areopagus in Athens was, without any similar external violence, sharing the fate of our High Commission Court in the seventeenth century. It no longer took cognisance of every slight offence against religion; it consulted its own safety by letting the gods, in many instances, look after their own affairs. Euripides was at the most a pantheist. He believed in the unity of God, in His providence, His omnipotence, His justice, His care for human beings. Supreme mind or intelligence was his Jupiter—the destroyer of the Typhon, unreasoning faith, his Apollo. Aristophanes, who professed to believe, and
- ↑ Thucydides, viii. c. 1.
