It is not necessary to probe further the original legend. Enough has been shown to prove that Æschylus and Sophocles wove into their Orestean story portions of it, and therefore thought it suitable for their tragedies. Euripides, on the contrary, seems to have quite neglected it. He makes, indeed, Pylades a Delphian, but by banishing him from his country, after the work of retribution is complete, he severs the links of the symbolic story.
Is there any improbability in supposing Euripides, a man of the new era, to have viewed the grim though picturesque stories of the old and waning times as inconsistent with the bright, free, and intelligent Athens in which he dwelt? The pupil of Anaxagoras and Prodicus might well regard a people as little beyond the verge of barbarism for whom the priest was the philosopher, whose heroes yet strove with wild beasts, who trembled at the phenomena of nature, and among whom ignorance generally prevailed. And among such a people it was that the legends were created and cherished. Imagination was strong, while reason was weak; but did it therefore follow that men capable of reason should always remain children? Perhaps some insight into the feelings of Euripides on theological questions may be gleaned from the story of Socrates, who, while scrupulously worshipping the gods of the state, made no secret that he regarded them as little more than masks—nay, often as unworthy disguises—of the
taken, greatly abridged, from K. O. Müller's "Essay on the 'Eumenides' of Æschylus," p. 131, English translation.
