Excerpt from The Medea To give vivid pictures of human passion is Euripides' chief aim, and in this his strength lies. He is in no sympathy with the mythical spirit the myths he uses only as the vehicle of his own conceptions. The notion of an all-controlling Fate and of a hereditary family curse are much less prominent than with Aes chylus and Sophocles. There is less lofty ideality in his concep tions his characters are more like those of every-(lay life, their passions less removed from common experience. This accords in general with modern taste; indeed, it has often been observed that Euripides stands nearer to the modern dramatists than do his predecessors. He excites often a livelier sympathy; hence Aristotle calls him the most tragic of the poets. I - lut Eurip ides has sometimes gone too far in this direction, and introduced characters too commonplace and incidents altogether trivial. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.