this audacity. He produced in the theatre, the Conquest of Miletus.[1] The people of Athens, with a whimsicality which is characteristic of them, condemned the poet to a very heavy fine, for having disobeyed the law and crowned him because of the tears which they shed at the representation of his work. But this was not enough, confounding thus reality and allegory; soon, sacred and profane things were mingled by forging without any kind of moral aim, subjects wholly false and fantastic. The poet Agathon, who was the author of this new profanation had been the friend of Euripides.[2] He proved thus that he knew nothing of the essence of dramatic poetry and makes it doubtful whether Euripides knew it any better.
Thus, in the space of less than two centuries, tragedy, borne upon the car of Thespis, elevated by Æschylus to a nobler theatre, carried to the highest degree of splendour by Sophocles, had already become weakened in the hands of Euripides, had lost the memory of its celestial origin with Agathon, and abandoned to the caprices of a populace as imperious as ignorant, inclined toward a rapid degeneration.[3] Comedy less reserved did not have a happier destiny. After having hurled its first darts upon the heroes and demi-gods of Greece, having taken possession of certain very unguarded allegories, to turn even the gods to ridicule[4]; after having derided Prometheus and Triptolemus, Bacchus and the Bacchantes, after having made sport of heaven and earth, of the golden age and the seasons[5]; it attacked
- ↑ Hérodot., l. vi., 21; Corsin., Fast. attic., t. iii., p. 172; Aristot., De Poët., c. 9.
- ↑ Aristot., De Poët., c. 9.
- ↑ Susarion appeared 580 B.C., and Thespis some years after. The latter produced his tragedy of Alcestis in 536 B.C.; and the condemnation of Socrates occurred in 399 B.C. So that only 181 years elapsed between the initial presentation of comedy and the death of this philosopher.
- ↑ Aristot., De Poët., c. 3.
- ↑ Aristoph, In Pac., v. 740; Schol., ibid.; Epicharm., In Nupt. Heb. apud Athen., l. iii., p. 85.
