ABSTRACT
Euripides perhaps represents what Sophocles was most afraid of: although only ten years or so younger he breathes the air of sceptical rationalism, and acknowledges no mysteries that the mind cannot probe. We know that he moved among the intellectual 'sophists' and probably therefore knew and debated with Socrates. Certainly he is proof of the astonishing swiftness of mental emancipation that came with democracy. This shows in his provocative representations of the gods (he considers the cult of Apollo at Delphi an immoral and reactionary institution, and so represents him with sarcastic detachment) but equally in his use of myth and language. The myths are reworked to the point of parody and the language his characters speak, although it can rise to poetry too, is intellectually clear and often verges on everyday speech. When Euripidean characters argue, they cut into each others' lines with a rapidity that Aristophanes called 'chatter' (lalia), and when they present their case we often have the sense of listening to public speech-making in the agora.
