prominence of dialogue at the expense of the choral songs. "Let some one bring me a lyre," says Æschylus in his contest with Euripides; "and yet what occasion for a lyre against him? Where is she that rattles with the castanets? Come hither, Muse of Euripides, to whose accompaniment these songs are adapted for singing." Not mediating between opposing parties (save to some extent in the Medea), as the chorus of Sophocles had fulfilled its dramatic function, much less dominating the entire drama as in Æschylus, the chorus of Euripides is often an inferior actor, the confidant of the protagonist, while its odes are frequently "arbitrarily inserted (embolima) as a lyrical and musical interlude between the acts without any reference to the subject of the play, much in the same way as these pauses are nowadays filled up with instrumental music ad libitum." Of the nineteen extant tragedies of Euripides, five indeed derive their names from the chorus—the Hêrakleidæ, Suppliants, Trojan Women, Bacchæ, and Phœnissæ; but we need only compare the proportion of each of these dramas assigned to the chorus with the proportion so assigned in the Suppliants of Æschylus to realise the complete subordination into which the central figure of the old drama has fallen. In the Suppliants of Æschylus, as we have already observed, considerably more than one-half of the entire play is assigned to the chorus; in the Hêrakleidæ of Euripides less than one-fifth of the play is so assigned; in his Suppliants and Trojan Women about one-fifth is so assigned; in his Bacchæ about one-fourth belongs to the chorus, and in his Phœnissæ little more than one-sixth.
This subordination of the chorus to the dialogue in Euripides is accompanied by the withdrawal of the ethical pivot of the old drama. None of the extant plays of Euripides makes the clan ethic its real centre of interest.
