was strong rather in rank and fortune than in numbers,—the same which is said to have been headed by Alcibiades."—"It is not quite certain that, even in the latter part of his career, Euripides was so popular as Sophocles. In answer to a question of Socrates, in a conversation with Xenophon, probably heard during the latter part of the Peloponnesian war, Sophocles is mentioned as indisputably the most admirable in his art."[1] If, according to this very probable suggestion, Euripides were the poet of the few and not of the Athenians in general, his frequent failure to win the ivy wreath may easily be explained. Democracy, though in all times it delights in clubs, is very jealous of coteries, especially if composed of men well-to-do in the world, or of men noted for their learning or refinement, and particularly jealous would all old-fashioned Cecropids be of a club in which Alcibiades was chairman. If, however, the wayward Phidippides[2] of the comedy may sometimes have hindered the poet's success in a theatrical contest, he may as probably have atoned for this grievance at home by obtaining for him a better reception abroad. "There were dwellers out of" Attica, without going to the realm of the Birds to find them. And among the dependencies of Athens, in the tributary islands and among the Greeks of the Lesser Asia, where Alcibiades had much influence, he may have been an efficient patron of the often, at home, mortified dramatist.
- ↑ Thirlwall's Hist. of Greece, iv. 273.
- ↑ Phidippides, in "The Clouds" of Aristophanes, is reputed to be a caricature of Alcibiades.
