EURIPIDES.
CHAPTER I.
HIS AGE AND SURROUNDINGS.
1. Nothing is more disappointing to the student of the literature of Greece than the obscurity which clouds the life of almost all her greatest authors. Except in those few cases where our Greek books imply an autobiography by their very contents, such as the fragments of Solon, the Anabasis of Xenophon, or the speeches of Demosthenes, we are thrown back upon notices exceedingly scanty and exceedingly untrustworthy. We may therefore best learn to know the real author, apart from vulgar gossip or trivial anecdote, by studying the age in which he lived and the society in which he moved. Every Greek poet (I might indeed say every poet) is strictly the child of his day, the exponent of a national want, the preacher of a national aspiration, at once the outcome and the leader of a literary public, or at least of a public which craves after spiritual sustenance. From Homer to Menander this feature marks social life in Greece, and makes the history of Greek literature pre-eminently the history of the Hellenic people.[1]
- ↑ We have nothing analogous, in modern days, to this intimate connection of poets and public, except the relation of the daily press to the people in England, where it is hard to say, in any single case, whether the public leads the papers, or the reverse, action and reaction being constant and immediate.
