. The eastern nations and Greece. ed by those thathave been spared to us, were perfectworks of art. The central idea of his dramas isessentially the same as that whichcharacterizes those of ^schylus,namely, that self-will and insolentpride arouse the righteous indignation of the gods, and that no mortalcan contend successfully against the will of Zeus. The chief works ofSophocles are CEdipus the King, (Edipus at Colonus, and Antigone,all of which are founded upon old tales of the prehistoric royal lineof Thebes. Euripides (480-406 ) though unpopular at first became as timepassed more popul
. The eastern nations and Greece. ed by those thathave been spared to us, were perfectworks of art. The central idea of his dramas isessentially the same as that whichcharacterizes those of ^schylus,namely, that self-will and insolentpride arouse the righteous indignation of the gods, and that no mortalcan contend successfully against the will of Zeus. The chief works ofSophocles are CEdipus the King, (Edipus at Colonus, and Antigone,all of which are founded upon old tales of the prehistoric royal lineof Thebes. Euripides (480-406 ) though unpopular at first became as timepassed more popular than either yEschylus or Sophocles; ^schyluswas too lofty and severe, and Sophocles too old-fashioned and pious,to please the people, after the state of exalted religious feelingawakened by the tremendous experiences of the Persian Wars hadpassed away. Euripides was a better representative than either ofthe new age that opened with the Peloponnesian War — an age ofnew ideas and of growing disbelief in the ancestral Fig. 136. ) (Vatican, 3 TO GREEK LITERATURE [§344 The fame of Euripides passed far beyond the limits of Greece. Itis asserted that his verses were recited by the natives of the remotecountry of Gedrosia; and Plutarch says that the Sicilians were sofond of his lines that many of the Athenian prisoners, taken beforeSyracuse, bought their liberty by teaching their masters such of hisverses as they could repeat from memory. 344. Comedy: Aristophanes. Foremost among all writers ofcomedy must be placed Aristophanes (about 450-385 ). For ageneration — the generation, speaking broadly, of the PeloponnesianWar — his inimitable humor furnished the Athenians with a chiefpart of their entertainment in the theater.^ Nothing or no one wasimmune from the shafts of his caustic and often coarse wit. Thestatesman Pericles, whom he called the onion-headed Zeus fromthe peculiar shape of his head and his Olympian bearing, and thedemagogue Cleon were
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