Their unsound vessels; when the inclement time
Seafaring men restrains, and in that while
His bark one builds anew, another stops
The ribs of his that hath made many a voyage.
One hammers at the prow, one at the poop;
This shapeth oars, that other cables twirls,
The mizzen one repairs and mainsail rent."[1]
Artists, too, who wrought neither with brush nor chisel, were drawn to Athens by the magnet of public or private demand—poets eager to celebrate her glories, and contend for lyric or dramatic prizes; philosophers no less eager to broach new theories in morals, or to teach new devices in rhetoric and logic. It was a new world in comparison with the severe and simple Marathonian time in which Æschylus was trained; and, like most new worlds, it was worse in some things, better in others—removed further from gods and god-like heroes, approaching nearer to man, his sorrows and joys; less awful and august, more humane and civilised. And the change is visible in the worst no less than in the best plays of Euripides, and one to be borne in mind by all who would judge of them fairly.
Pass over a few years of the poet's life, and we come to a period when this scene of political, artistic, and social activity is at first clouded over, and in the end rent and dislimned. Among other effects of the Peloponnesian war, one was, that a stop was put to public buildings and the costly arts by which they are adorned: while those that, like the Erectheium, were unfinished
