LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 3S5 their auditors. In the drama called Sisyphus (which is perhaps more rightly ascribed to Critias than to Euripides*) there was a developement of the pernicious doctrine of the sophists, that religion was an ancient political institution, designed to sanction the restraints of law by super- adding the fear of the gods; and we are told that Dionysius wrote a drama against Plato's theory of the state, which was called a tragedy but had rather the character of a comedy. It is well known, too, that Plato also composed a tragic tetralogy in his younger days, which he committed to the flames when he had convinced himself that dramatic poetry was not his vocation. In the opposite party, among the ac- cusers of Socrates, Meletus was not a philosopher, but a tragedian by profession ; we are told, however, that his poetry was as frigid and tedious as his character appears hateful to us from his persecution of the illustrious sage. § 5. The families of the great poets contributed in a considerable degree to continue the tragic art after their deaths. As the great poets not only felt themselves called upon by their own taste to devote themselves to dramatic poetry, and to bring out plays and teach the chorus year after year, but really practised this art as an ostensible pro- fession, we cannot wonder that this, like other employments and trades, was transmitted by a regular descent to their sons and grandsons. JE.schylus was followed by a succession of tragedians, who flourished through several generations ;f his son Euphorion sometimes brought out plays of his father's which had not been represented before, some- times pieces of his own, and he gained the tragic prize in competition with both Sophocles and Euripides ; similarly, iEschylus' nephew, Philocles, gained the prize against the King (Edipus of Sophocles, a piece which, in our opinion, is not to be surpassed. Philocles must
- See above, chap. XXV. § 25.
f To make this clearer, we subjoin the pedigree of the whole family, chiefly de- rived from Boeckh. Tragced. Grcecce princtpes, p. 32. aad Clinton Fast. Htllen. II. p. xxxiii. : — Euphorion , -A, , /Eschylus A sister — Philopeithcs A . I Euphorion Bion Philocles Morsimus Astydamas Philocles II. Astydamas II. According to Suidas, Bion was also a tragedian. Philocles must have flourished even before the Peloponnesian war, for his son Morsimus is ridiculed as a tragic poet in the Knights (Olymp. 88.4. b. c. 424.) and Peace (Olymp. 90. 1. B.C. 419.) of Aristophanes ; and Astydamas came out as a tragedian in Olymp. 95. 2. b c. 398, 2 c
