An historian, who wrote centuries after Euripides had passed beyond these and other vexations, cannot conceal his surprise that one Xenocles should have been the successful competitor in a contest with the son of Mnesarchus. He fairly calls the judges and spectators on the occasion a parcel of fools—dunderheads unworthy to bear the name of Athenian. But in missing the first or even the second crown, Euripides only fared alike with Æschylus and Sophocles; and that, with such samples of the two latter as have come to our hands, is a much more remarkable circumstance than the one it puzzled Arrian to account for.[1] What dramatic giants must they have been who strove for the mastery with the old Marathonian soldier, and with the Shakespeare of the Grecian world! Perhaps another cause occasionally cost Euripides the crown. He, like Ben Jonson, was at times perverse in the choice or in the treatment of his subjects. Even from the satire of Aristophanes it is plain that he had an unlucky propensity to tread on debatable, and even dangerous, ground. By his innovations in legendary stories, by occasionally tampering with criminal passion, by perhaps carrying to excess his fondness for mere stage effect, he perplexed or offended his audience, not inclined to accept as an apology for the exhibition of wicked characters his plea that in the end they were all well punished for their sins.[2] Even his constant applauder from the benches, Socrates, had, it is said, once to implore him to cut out from a play certain offensive lines; and a story preserved by a
