CHAPTER III.
THE SCENIC PHILOSOPHER.
"In all his pieces there is the sweet human voice, the fluttering human heart."—Kenelm Digby.
Whether it were devised "by friend or foe, the title of "Scenic Philosopher" for Euripides was given by one who had read his writings attentively.[1] His early studies, his intercourse with Socrates and other philosophers of the time, encouraged in so contemplative a mind as his habits of speculation on human and divine nature, and on such physical science as then existed. And as regarded dramatic composition, he was the first to bring philosophy on the stage. The sublime and gloomy genius of Æschylus was far more active than contemplative. His sentences are masses of concrete thought, when he descends from mere passion or imagination. Such inquiries as occupied Euripides appeared to him, as they did to Aristophanes, profane, or at the best idle, curiosity.
- ↑ It appears as an accepted title in Vitruvius's work on Architecture, book viii.
