Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/796

780 EURIPIDES EUROPA bly embittered his life at Athens. Accord- ing to tradition, Euripides was not happy in his domestic relations, but the details on this subject seem to rest on no credible author- ity. He lived but a short time after he went to Macedon. According to tradition, he was torn in pieces by the hounds of the king. Du- ring his short residence there he acquired a great ascendancy over Archelaus, who load- ed him with gifts and honors. When the news of his death reached Athens, it threw the whole city into mourning. Sophocles, then 90 years old, was so deeply moved that he changed his garments, and required his actors to lay aside their crowns and appear in mourning on the stage. The Athenians requested that his remains might be sent home for burial; but the request was not granted. They, however, erected a cenotaph to the poet, on the road from the Piraeus to Athens, and his statue was afterward set up, with those of JEschylus and Sophocles, in the Dionysiac theatre, by Lycur- gus the orator, a contemporary of Demosthenes. The inscription on the cenotaph is supposed to have been written by Thucydides the historian. Of the numerous works of Euripides only 19 entire pieces have come down to our times. Many fragments of other plays exist, and are published in the editions of his works. Of the extant pieces, the genuineness of one, " Rhe- sus," has been called in question. Seventeen are tragedies, and two, "Cyclops" and "Al- cestis," were intended as afterpieces, like the satyric dramas (of which " Cyclops " is indeed the only remaining specimen) in tetralogies. The earliest of all is " Alcestis," which was brought out in 438 ; the date of " Orestes " is the latest ascertained, 408 ; but several of his pieces were brought out after his death by his son Euripides. The best editions are those of Beck (Leipsic, 1778-'88), of Matthia3 (Leipsic, 1813-'37), that of Glasgow (1821), Kirchhoff (Berlin, 1855), Nauck (Leipsic, 1857), Donner (Leipsic, 1859), and Fritze (Berlin, 1866-'8). Paley's edition (3 vols., London, 1857-'60) is the most beautiful. The whole works of Eu- ripides have been translated into English verse by Potter (2 vols. 4to, London, !781-'2 ; 2 vols. 8vo, Oxford, 1814), and into prose by Buck- ley in Bohn's "Classical Library." On the moral, intellectual, and poetical merits of Eu- ripides, there was in ancient times, as there is in modern, a great diversity of opinion. Among his contemporaries, Socrates thought so high- ly of him that he made it a point to attend the theatre whenever a play of his was to be performed, and the philosopher delighted in his conversation. Aristophanes, on the other hand, pursued him with the keenest ridicule, denouncing him as the corrupter of tragedy and the teacher of immoral doctrines, and con- trasting him unfavorably in these respects with JEschylus and Sophocles. In modern times, A. W. von Schlegel and the critics of his school have adopted the representations of Aristo- phanes as the basis of a disparaging judgment. Aristotle, while censuring his faulty manage- ment) in some respects, yet pronounces him the most tragic of poets. Milton's opinion nearly coincided with that of Aristotle. Euripides is censured as a woman-hater, and it is supposed that his distrust of the female sex grew out of his own domestic experience. He, like Soc- rates, is charged with a want of belief in the gods of his country. In a literary point of view, the principal charges against him are that he lowered the tone of tragedy and weak- ened its style; that he degraded heroic charac- ters by representing them in beggary and rags, and by these coarse means attempting to work out pathetic effects ; that he too often intro- duced his plays with long and tedious narrative or genealogical prologues ; that his choruses frequently have little to do with the subject of the piece ; and finally, that he delighted in the representation of criminal and unnatural passions. These statements, though having a germ of fact, are quite too absolutely made. In his style Euripides is not lofty like zEschy- lus, nor elaborately elegant like Sophocles. In his plots he is not so simple as ^Eschylus, nor so carefully balanced as Sophocles. But in the study of human passions, in the analysis of the characters of men and women, in tracing actions to their hidden motives through all the labyrinthine windings of pretence or self-de- ception, he is undoubtedly their superior. In his-plays there is more of philosophy, in spite of the occasional sophistry that deforms them ; there are more pithy maxims, sententious ex- pressions of metaphysical and ethical truth, and discussions that really evolve important conclusions bearing upon the conduct of pri- vate or public life. If we judge by the busts and statues of Euripides that have come down to us in the collections of ancient art, he was a man of capacious brain, of grave countenance, and studious habits. EURIPUS, the narrowest part of the channel separating the island of Eubcea, in the Grecian archipelago, from the coast of Bceotia. Its width, opposite the town of Chalcis, is 200 ft., and its average depth from 7 to 8 ft. In the channel is a rocky islet, on which is a small square castle, partly of Venetian and partly of Turkish construction, connected by bridges with both shores. It is under this double bridge, which was built originally in the 21st year of the Peloponnesian war, that the extraordinary changes of current, noted by both ancient and modern writers, take place. These irregulari- ties of the tide are probably caused by the windings of the gulf K and S. of the strait. In the middle ages Euripus was corrupted into Egripo, which afterward became Egripo-ponte, and finally Negroponte, its more modern ap- pellation. "With other important points in Greece it has lately resumed its ancient name. EUROPA, in mythology, according to the Iliad, a daughter of Phoenix, mother of Minos and Rhadamanthus by Zeus, who, disguised as a white bull, bore her upon his back across the