ABSTRACT
Euripides, great poet though he was, represents the first symptom of the inevitable decline, for in him we can recognize a certain impatience with the form he found ready to his hand. Euripides was a favourite butt of the comedians, especially of Aristophanes, and consequently numerous anecdotes concerning him were afloat in later days, many in all probability pure fiction. Euripides gives his Admetos all the conventional virtues, thus throwing his baseness into higher relief, and makes him finally realize and repent of his own vileness, when Alkestis is dead. Love and jealousy are strong passions enough, but maternal affection has depths no less profound, and three years after the Hippolytus Euripides studied, in a magnificent but singularly painful play, the Hecuba, the transformation of a rather pathetic old lady into a vengeful devil. The Tennes was a spurious play. The Telephos was one of Euripides most popular works.
