38
EURIPIDES.
[CHAP. II.
be cheered by opposite sides of the house, but make enemies everywhere, for never was party spirit more violent and uncompromising than among the people who thought, as Thucydides says, τὸ πρὸς ἅπαν συνετὸν, ἐπὶ πᾶν ἀργόν—to be clever at everything was to be good for nothing—in politics. When the decision came, quieter poets, who did not tamper with the questions of the day, or professed party-men, carried off the prize. But for all that Euripides was more discussed, and quoted, and quarrelled about in Athenian society than any of them. Thus the popular feeling of his age corroborates and justifies the portrait which scholars have derived from his works.
