Essays in the History of Religious Thought in the West
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EURIPIDES AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. A MONGr the services which Browning has rendered -"- to literature, not the least conspicuous is his interpretation of Euripides. In "Balaustion's Adventure" and "Aristophanes' Apology," he has not only given a poet's rendering of two characteristic plays, the "Alcestis" and the "Phrensied Hercules," but he has given the student sympathetic guidance to their deeper meaning. He has enabled English readers to estimate at their true worth the criticism of A. W. Schlegel, and at the same time he has opened a striking view of speculations and desires which found a place in the mind of a great Athenian when Athens was greatest. Euripides is indeed the true representative of democratic Athens. He was of honourable descent, and had enjoyed the discipline of most varied culture. Gy
...mnast, artist, and student, he had made trial of all that the city had to teach; and as holding a sacred office in the service of Apollo he had an inheritance from older religious feeling. It may almost be saidthat Euripides lived and died with the Athens which has moved the world. His lifetime included the highest development of Athenian art and literature, the rise and the fall of Athenian supremacy. He was born on the day of Salamis (480 B.c.). He produced his "Medea" in the first year of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.c.). His "Trojan Women" was exhibited in the year of the expedition to Sicily and the recall of Alcibiades (415 B.c.). He died in 406 B.c., the year before JEgospotamos. He belonged wholly to the new order which is represented by the age of Pericles. Though he was only a generation younger' than .ZEschylus, his works, when compared with those of his predecessor, represent the results of a revolution both in art and in thought. But however different .ZEschyl...
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