Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/22

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EURIPIDES AND HIS WORK.

mockery of him, could behold them rocking to and fro, "slain with mirth," and hear the laughter surging over tier on tier of the vast curves like the roaring of a sea! Of what steadfast fibre must his purpose have been wrought that he should hold on unswerving in the path he had chosen, bating no jot of heart or hope, but still speaking out the thing that was in him, still publishing to his countrymen and countrywomen the message that was given him for them, through twenty embittered years! By what high thoughts was he sustained, by what loving sympathy comforted, by what consciousness of right made strong, that he fainted not nor faltered, who trod that long path of thorns!

Popularity.He had his reward, not in "first prizes," which were so seldom the reward of first merit, but in an ever increasing hold on the hearts of his countrymen, and not of these alone, but of all who inhabited that Greater Greece whose cities gemmed the shores of the Mediterranean. Not all the twenty years' ridicule of Aristophanes, not all the hostility of conservatives and aristocrats, availed to thrust back the rising tide of his popularity. In Aristophanes' own pages we find again and again an exasperated recognition of Euripides' influence, to the power of which the comic dramatist bears sufficient, if grudging, testimony. How wide-spread it was, we may infer from the story preserved by Plutarch. After describing the completeness of the disaster that overtook the great Athenian armament which invaded Sicily 415—413 B. C., and the ruthlessness with which the survivors were exterminated, he proceeds:—

"Some there were who owed their preservation to Euripides. Of all the Greeks, his was the muse whom the Sicilians were most in love with. From every stranger that landed in their island they gleaned every small specimen or portion of his works, and communicated it with pleasure to each other. It is said that on
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