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EURIPIDES.
"Oh listen to me, and so shall you be stout-hearted and fresh as a daisy;
Not ready to chatter on every matter, nor bent over books till you're hazy:
No splitter of straws, no dab at the laws, making black seem white so cunning;
But wandering down outside the town, and over the green meadow running,
Ride, wrestle, and play with your fellows so gay, like so many birds of a feather,
All breathing of youth, good-humour, and truth, in the time of the jolly spring-weather,
In the jolly spring-time, when the poplar and lime dishevel their tresses together."[1]
Such were Athens, its people, and its theatre, when Euripides was boy and man: we now proceed to inquire what manner of person he was himself.
- ↑ The extract from the Areopagitic oration of Isocrates is taken from Bulwer's Athens—its Rise and Fall,' vol. ii. ch. 5, p. 577; the translation of Aristophanes from a most wise and beautiful little book, entitled 'Euphranor, a Dialogue on Youth' (1851).
