guished master of the tragic art, confesses that Euripides was the best model of style for orators; and this is the reason, no doubt, why he was such a favourite in the schools of eloquence, that, while of Æschylus and Sophocles only seven works remain to attest the genius of each, there are still extant eighteen, or (if we admit the "Rhesus") nineteen, of the seventy or ninety pieces which Euripides is said to have composed. In the most modern times the restoration of Æschylus and Aristophanes to their proper place and significance in Greek literature, was naturally accompanied by a considerable degradation of Euripides from the high place which he held among the ancients; but as both parties have now been heard, and the excesses of polemical warfare are over, an impartial mind may at length pronounce a pretty fair judgment on the literary merits and demerits of the man. On the one hand, it must be admitted that in the mere management of the drama, as a special form of art, Euripides not only did not make any advance on his predecessors, but he positively retrograded. The prologue, which Thomas Magister notes as one of his inventions, is a mere prolix recital of the most antidramatic nature possible, and which never can be necessary, where the tragic writer knows how to use in the most effective way the most significant points of his action. More than this, there is, through the whole economy of his pieces, a favour shown to long statements and argumentations, which savours more of rhetorical pleading than of dramatic point. There is also a very prominent trick of parading philosophical apothegms—"preaching and sermonizing," as we would say—very far removed from the natural style of an action dramatically developed. Euripides was accused also of changing the whole nature of the Greek tragedy, by putting his gods and heroes into situations of mere modern difficulty and intrigue, in a manner quite unworthy of the ideal type that Æschylus and Sophocles maintained in their compositions; and if we consider what the real nature of the Greek tragedy was, we must perceive that complaints of this kind were founded on sound principles of taste. The Greek tragedy was not a representation of the characters and events of common life, such as might suit a modern novel; but it was essentially a sacred or religious opera, the nature of which will be best understood by us, if we imagine the history of Abraham, King David, Judith, or Judas Maccabeus, represented in our churches or in some building attached to the churches, at the Easter and Christmas holidays, as part of a solemn religious celebration. In this case, the feelings of the audience would be too high-toned, and the conversations too serious, to admit of much of that display of every-day life, character, and incident, with which Shakspeare has contrived so richly to diversify the secular drama of the English stage. Again, it has been prominently brought forward by the Germans and certain English critics who sympathize with them, that Euripides, as a philosopher and a sceptic, and with no honest faith in the gods of Greece, was altogether in a false position when he produced these gods in the sacred drama of his country, very often taking very little pains to conceal that he did not believe in them, and preaching the νοῦς of Anaxagoras, while he exhibited the Jove of Homer as the supreme ruler of the universe. All this is very true; but there are some weighty considerations that tend very much to mitigate the effect of such objections. In the first place, the mere artistic form of the Greek tragedy, as a distinct species of art, was such a small element in the whole effect of the sacred opera, that a poet might offend very grossly against the laws of the effective drama as known to us, and yet remain an artist of a very high order. In fact, the pure drama in the classical age of Greece never shook itself free from the lyrical and epic elements out of which it arose; and as Euripides was confessedly great in both of these elements, his excellence in the hybrid sort of composition then called drama could not be gainsaid. Then as to his making such ostentatious parade of philosophic gnomes, we must bear in mind that philosophy was young in those days, and that the novelty of thoughtful maxims tersely expressed was, with the greater part of the public, an excuse for their want of dramatic fitness. As to the want of harmony between the personal faith of the poet and the people, for whose religious service he wrote his plays, that was a great misfortune no doubt, so far as his own pure pleasure as an artist was concerned, and so far also, as we regard the entireness and unity of the impression produced by his plays; but there was a great moral nobility, and a plain public utility nevertheless, in a poet who recognized the puerility of the ancient mythologic fables, using these fables as a medium for conveying deep moral truths, and indicating the day when a more rational theology would be demanded by the mass of the people, as much as it was then felt by the thoughtful few. Euripides, in fact, by bringing the doctrines of Anaxagoras on the stage, whether, in every case with dramatic propriety or not, was pioneering the way for Plato, who, in his Republic, with good reason rejects Homer, the national poet, altogether as a theological guide; and both the poet and the philosopher were performing an important service to the heathen mind, by turning up the soil, and killing the grubs, as a necessary preparation for the seed of gospel truth to be sown in due season by more highly-favoured hands.
The ancient authorities for the life of Euripides are the biography in Suidas; that of Thomas Magister in Musgrave's edition; that first published by Elmsley in his edition of the Bacchæ, 1821; and Aulus Gellius xv. 20. The materials offered by these and some incidental sources, are fully discussed in Bernhardy's Griechische literatur, Smith's Dictionary, and by Paley in the edition to be immediately noticed. The most notable editions of the whole works of Euripides are those of Barnes, 1694; Musgrave, 1778; Matthiæ, 1813; and Paley, 1858. An account of special editions will be found in Engelmann's Bibliotheca Script. Class. 7th ed. Leipzig, 1858.—J. S. B.
EURYDICE, wife of Amyntas II., king of Macedonia, lived in 400 b.c. She was the mother of the great Philip. A criminal connection with her daughter's husband made her conspire against Amyntas, but her purpose was discovered by Euryone her daughter. Both Alexander and Perdiccas, her sons, perished through her intrigues shortly after each had ascended the throne; but on the accession of Philip she put herself under the protection of the Athenian general Iphicrates.—R. M., A.
EURYDICE, daughter of Amyntas III., and granddaughter to Perdiccas, lived 320 b.c., married her uncle Arrhidæus, the illegitimate son of Philip. Arrhidæus ascended the Macedonian throne after the death of Alexander the Great, but was powerless in the hands of his wife, who recalled Cassander and put herself at the head of an army against Polysperchon and Olympias. Her soldiers would not fight against the mother of Alexander. Both she and her husband were put to death by Olympias.—R. M., A.
EURYMEDON, an Athenian general in the Peloponnesian war. In 428 b.c. he commanded sixty ships in the neighbourhood of Corcyra, where he incurred the disgrace of sanctioning the cruelties inflicted by the commons on their political opponents. The following summer, in conjunction with Hipponicus, he obtained the command of the whole Athenian force by land. In 425, accompanied by his colleague Sophocles, he set out with forty ships for Sicily, but having touched at Corcyra, and spent some time in petty enterprises, he had only reached his destination when he received orders to return home, a general pacification having been effected by Hermocrates. In 414 Eurymedon was again employed upon the Sicilian coasts, where, after some active service in conjunction with his colleague Demosthenes, he was defeated and slain by Agatharchus.—J. S., G.
EUSDEN, Lawrence, born in Yorkshire, an English poet not much heard of now, but conspicuous enough in his own day to have the laureateship, which honour he obtained in 1718. He incurred some enmity in consequence. Pope gave him a place in the Dunciad. He died in 1730 at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, of which parish he was rector.—J. B. J.
EUSEBIUS, Bishop of Cæsarea, surnamed Pamphili, the father of church history, was probably a native of Palestine, and was born somewhere about the year 260. We know from himself that he was educated and spent his youth in Palestine, and that his instructors in sacred things were Meletius, the exiled bishop of Pontus, and Dorotheus, a presbyter of the church of Antioch (Vit. Const. i. 19; H. E. vii. 32). He owed much to the study of Origen, and to works which he found in the library collected by Bishop Alexander at Jerusalem, and that at Cæsarea belonging to the Presbyter Pamphilus (H. E. vi. 20; vii. 32). With the latter he became acquainted, on being ordained to the clerical office by Agapius, bishop of Cæsarea, probably in the year 295. It was in his school that Eusebius made his first attempt at the explanation of scripture (De martyr. Palæst. c. 4); and to Pamphilus he seems to have been chiefly indebted for his intellectual training—an obligation which he gratefully acknowledges in several of his writings. From his close intimacy with this teacher, he received the surname of Pamphili (i.e., friend of Pamphilus). After his death, which happened during the Diocletian persecution, Eusebius retired to
