580

the cosmopolitanism of Socrates, traces of which we find in Euripides, he anticipates Goethe. A poetic associate of the sophists, he was naturally not orthodox. He did not actually deny the existence of the gods- that were dangerous in Athens and in the theatre impossible. Euripides simply puts the question to his audience and so troubles their souls. He shrinks from discussing no question of heaven or earth. Toward the close of his life he is supposed to have drawn nearer to the religion of his fathers, but the only monument of this change is that remarkable play, the 'Baccha. No chronological development in his religious views can be shown. He was a skeptic and a seeker after truth, but not a creative philosopher. No other poet gives us a better conception of what the truth-seeking Athenian knew and read.

Much has been written about the poet's hatred of women. But we have only to read the 'Alcestis,' or 'Iphigenia,' to discover that he can portray the noblest types of womanhood. Euripides knew le mal que peut faire une femme, but no man understood better the capabilities of woman's nature. He is the first Greek after Homer that showed any approach to a just conception of what under normal circumstances woman may and should be to society. True, he assailed fiercely a certain type of woman, but this does not prove that the women of his time were especially depraved. Often the condemnation is due to the dramatic situation. He does satirize the women of his time for their gossiping disposition, for their cleverness and for their love of slander with a persistence that leaves no doubt as to his intentions; but, being a pessimist, his mind emphasized the bad rather than the good.

The plays of Euripides are not so subtle in structure as those of Sophocles. He cared more for striking situations than for articulated plots, more for thrilling scenes than for unity and symmetry of the whole. But he made a special study of the recognition as leading_to the dénouement. Another innovation of Euripides was the introduction of the prologue. In the very beginning he gives the entire setting of the piece, relates all the circumstances. This mechanical opening has been criticized as flat and jejune. But he worked on a different plan from Sophocles. Like Lessing, he believed that the audience should know more than the characters themselves. He disdained to excite vulgar curiosity. So he conceived the prologue as an integral part of the play. Moreover, he leaves the most important part untold; the audience does not know at the outset how the poet proposes to treat the myth; hence the pleasure of surprise is not The audience enjoys also entirely lacking. the sudden revelations to the individual characters. Furthermore, the Greeks cared more for the quiet contemplation of situations than we do. Nevertheless, this practice of beginning the play with a prologue became a mannerism and was justly ridiculed by Aristophanes. Euripides' plays have also a mechanical ending when the conflict seems insoluble, the deus ex solve diffimachina interfers expressly to culties, to cut the cords atwain that seem too intrinse to loose. This is not high antique art; but the flaw-hunters unduly emphasize

the defect. Many of the plays also break in two in the middle. This is, indeed, a fault. Nevertheless, the scenes are interesting, sometimes stirring. Often the thoughts expressed are not adapted to the speaker; and the choral odes frequently seem irrelevant. The poet's monodies constitute an undue proportion of the lyrical element.

We have 80 titles of plays, but very few fixed dates. There are 19 extant dramas - 18 tragedies and one satyr drama (Cyclops'). The 'Rhesus, regularly printed in the editions of the Euripidean corpus, is certainly not by Euripides. The earliest extant play is the 'Alcestis' (438); the most famous is the 'Medea' (431); but probably the two greatest tragedies are the 'Hippolytus) (428) and the 'Baccha (407). One of the most interesting is the 'Iphigenia in Tauris (414) and the most charming the 'Ion' (about 416). The dates are approximate other plays with Iphigenia in Aulis (407), 'Orestes (408), (Phoenissæ (410), Helen' (412), (Electra' (413), Troades (415), Andromache (417), Heracles (418), Supplices' (420), Hecuba) See ALCESTIS; (424), 'Heraclidæ (430). MEDEA.

JOSEPH E. HARRY, Author of 'The Greek Tragic Poets.' EURIPUS, ü-ri'pus, in ancient geography, the strait between the island of Euboea and the mainland, Boeotia in Greece. At Chalcis, the width at the narrowest part was 120 feet. The term Euripus is also sometimes applied to the southeast part of the Euboean Channel.

EUROCLYDON, ü-rõkʼlĭ-dŏn, a tempestuous wind that frequently blows in the Levant, and which was the occasion of the disastrous shipwreck of the vessel in which Saint Paul sailed, as narrated in Acts xxvii, 14 44. In the form in which the word is found in the revised version it must be taken as made up of the two Greek words, euros, the east or rather southeast wind, and klydōn, a wave. But the word used for it in the Vulgate is Euro-aquilo, a Latin compound signifying a northeast wind; and some of the best MSS. have the reading Eurakylōn instead of Euroclydon, which is accepted by some scholars as the preferable reading. Whatever may have been the true form of the word, it was applied to a northeast or north-northeast, and not an east or southeast wind, as the course taken by the vessel referred to indicates. Exactly such a wind is described by sailors of the present day as prevalent at certain seasons (especially in early spring) in the Mediterranean. The name by which the wind is now known is Gregalia.

EUROPA, ū-rō'pa, in Greek mythology, the daughter of Agenor or of Phoenix, king of the Phoenicians, and a sister of Cadmus. The fable relates that she was abducted by Jupiter, who assumed the form of a bull, and swam with his prize to the island of Crete. Here Europa bore to him Minos, Sarpedon and Rhadamanthlus. Zehus made her miraculous presents, Talos (a bronze man), a dog that always kept track of his prey and a spear that never missed its mark. By his order also she became the wife of Asterius, king of Crete. As Hellotia, Europa was worshipped in Crete in the capacity of the goddess of fertility. She