Note H — EURIPIDES.

Among the taunting accusations which Aristophanes, in his Comedy of the Frogs, lavishes upon Euripides, through the medium of Æschylus, is that of having introduced female love upon the stage! Æschylus, indeed, is made, very inconsistently, considering his Clytemnestra (Ran. 1. 1042) to declare that he does not know that he ever represented a single woman in love. At a previous period of the comedy, Euripides is also ridiculed, through a boast ironically assigned to his own lips, for having debased Tragedy by the introduction of domestic interest—(household things, οικεΐα πράγματα). Upon these and similar charges have later critics, partly in England, especially in Germany, sought by duller diatribes to perpetuate a spirit of depreciation against the only ancient tragic poet who has vitally influenced the later stage. The true merit of Euripides is seen in the very ridicule of Aristophanes.