LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 389 same name just dead.* Theodectes had so hit the taste of the age in his tragedies that he obtained eight victories in thirteen contests. f Aristotle, who was his friend, and, according to some, also his teacher, made use of his tragedies, as furnishing him with examples of rhetoric. Thus Theodectes, in his Orestes, makes the murderer of Clytaemnestra rest the justification of his deed on two points ; first, that the wife who has murdered her husband ought to be put to death ; and then, that it is the duty of a son to avenge his father; but, with sophistical address, he leaves out the third point to be proved, that the sou must murder his mother. In his Lynceus, Danaus and Lynceus contend before an Arrive tribunal. The former has discovered the secret marriage of his daughters with the sons of /Egyptus, and brings the latter bound before the tribunal in order to have him condemned and executed ; but Lynceus unexpectedly gains the victory in the court, and Danaus is condemned to death. Affecting speeches, based on skilful argumenta- tion, recognition-scenes ingeniously introduced, and paradoxical asser- tions cleverly maintained, formed the chief part of the tragedies of this time, as we may see from the quotations in Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetic. The subjects were taken from a very circumscribed set of fables, which furnished the sophistical ingenuity of the poet with an in- exhaustible fund of materials. The style approximated more and more to prose ;J for a high poetical tone, or an antique majesty of diction, would have been altogether ill-suited to the subtle niceties of reasoning with which the speeches were pervaded.
- The Archelaus of Euripides is similarly related to the Macedonian king, of the
name in whose honour it was composed. The name Mausolus was an old one in Caria. See Herod, v. 118. f According to the epigram quoted by Steph. Byzant. v. #a<r»A/j. According to Suidas, he composed fifty dramas ; if this number is correct, lie contended eleven times with tetralogies and twice with trilogies only. I See particularly Aristot. Jihetur. iii. 1. ( J. ; and compare Poetic. C. The Cleophcn, whom Aiistotle often mentions as having painted characters from every -day life, people who are quite common-place in all their thoughts and words, probably also belongs to the time of Theodectes.
