decided aversion shown to stepmothers, but it is held that illegitimate children are often as good or better than those born in lawful wedlock and that "they have a bad name but the same nature." Various questions are also raised anent heredity and eugenics. While conflicting opinions are expressed, the prevailing view seems to be that the sins of the parents are visited upon their offspring and that "no one can make the evil good by bringing it up well."
Old age and friendship are topics touched on by Euripides with great frequency nearly four centuries before Cicero summed up the sentiments of antiquity on these themes in his De Senectute and De Amicitia.
We have already described Eupripides as a great representative of the New Learning of the later fifth century, of the period of Socrates and of the Sophists. The sophists were educators of the youth of the time in public speaking and in argument, and they also tried to settle all questions by discussion and reasoning. Aristophanes makes Aeschylus accuse Euripides of having "trained in the speech making arts even creeping infants" and Euripides himself to boast that he "taught all the town to talk with freedom—taught them to see, think, understand, to scheme for what they wanted, to fall in love, think evil, question all things." At any rate, his plays are full of debates and argumentative speeches. "Come now, put argument against argument," one character will say to another, and then the action of the play will halt, while they display their verbal and dialectical cleverness to the delighted Athenian audience. Euripides, however, does not sympathize with those sophists who boasted that they could make the worse cause appear the better, and many passages contrast deeds with words, or lament that the better speaker often has the weaker case or is the worse man.
For instance, when Jason has concluded his sophistical defense of his conduct in abandoning Medea for another wife, the chorus says, "Jason, you have well arranged your arguments, yet to me at least, even if I speak contrary to the generally accepted opinion, you seem to have acted unjustly in betraying your wife," and Medea herself adds, "I am different from many mortals in many things, for to my mind the unjust man who is a clever speaker deserves the greatest penalty."
Wisdom and intelligence are, however, repeatedly praised. Not only "is the mind in each of us a god," but another fragment says, "There is no other temple of persuasion than reason and her altar is in human nature." "Wrongly you blame my weakness and womanish body," says a third, "for if I can think straight, that's better than a strong right arm." "The mind must be regarded," says a fourth, "for what good is beauty of figure when it has not fair thoughts?" "Slight is man's strength," adds a fifth, "but by the resourcefulness of his mind he tames the
—19—
