The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1927-12-16

ME GREATEST VI GIe6k QIdIIldVlSE
Il was born, tradition says, on the
very day of the battle of Salamis
and on the island itself, where hi,
mother had taken refuge after the
sack of Athens.
OF his father, Mnesarchus, we
know nothing: of his mother, 'worst
than nothing" the gossip of the
time describes her as keeping gro
Gerry shop and hawking fruit anc
flowers on the street. Let every gro
GERS son take courage.
Like so many Greek geniuses
Euripides combined athletics with
scholarship. He won the victor's
crown at the Eleusinian games, ano
then passed from the gymnasium
to science and philosophy.
His father must have been a man
of means, for we hear OF Euripides
receiving instruction in physics
from 'Anaxagoras, in rhetoric from
Prodicus and in ethics from Protag-
oras.
Euripides became a passionate
lover of literature, and the first pri-
vate individual in history, so far as
we know. to collect a library.
His modest home facing the his
toric bay became a rendezvous fol-
Athens freethinkers; here it was
that Protagoras read his famous pa
per ION the Gods" for which, de-
spite the efforts of Pericles, the in
tolerant populace of Athens drove
him into exile.
We are to picture the age as
akin to the French enlightenment
Of the eighteenth century; economic
development and political supre-
macy had brought, as under Louis
XIV. and XIV, leisure, letters and
irreligion. Neither SIDE" says
ThucydideS, "cared for religion, but
both used it with enthusiasm as a
pretext for various odious purposes.
In this Hellenic illumination
Euripides was the Greek Voltaire
worshipping the Goddess Of Pesson
with free thought and clever innu-
endo in the midst of dramas that
were staged to elaborate a god.
y q =
VXTAS it strange that the crowd
w at the theatre did not like
him or that it chung to its ancient
deities and wondered why these
blasphemous plays should be pre-
scented at all?
Euripides produced dramas for
half a century, but in all that time
only four prizes were given him, and
not until 40 did he win the highest
award.
Nevertheless, the people, after
their contrary fashion, thronged to
these plays as to no others and
talked about them more. Socrates,
who would not take a step to see
other drama, said he would walk to
the Piraeus Ga serious matter for a
stout philosopher to see a produc-
ton by Euripides.
The Athenians hated the man and
liked his. plays. They did not OBJ
ject to his faults of dramatic tech
nique-his failure to weave his plots
into organic wholes, his deviation
into picturesque details, his lazy Cor
ingratiatingP) way of bringing in a
god at last to punish the wicked for
their sins and console the virtuous
for their virtue.
But it was not to save his plots
that Euripides imported the gods
into his plays.
1t was to save his face and, per-
hapS, his head.
1t was a sop to superstition. So
when the angry crowd, enraged at a
skeptical line, refused to let his
play proceed the dramatist rose in
his place and babe the audience be
comforted-the speaker of the line
would be roundly punished in the
end. Zone can hear the laughter
of Socrates across 1000 years.)
Meanwhile the people enjoyed the
lyric and dramatic quality of his
tales.
1t is true that they applauded
enthusiastically when Aristophanes
satirized the style, the themes and
the philosophy of these plays, and it
is true that they preferred the
''idealism" of Sophocles, in theory,
to the realism" of Euripides.
But in practice they found the
older poet platitudinous and moral
istic and the younger one stimulat-
ing, even in his hereSieS.
Their keen wits relished the subt-
Lefty of his lines and their excitable
minds were thrilled by the romantic
pathos of the scenes.
No one had ever painted human