Other teachers also are represented as having influenced Euripides; Archelaus, who tried to conceive Anaxagoras's "Mind" in some material form, as air or spirit--for _spiritus_, of course, means "breath"; Prodicus, who, besides his discoveries in grammar, is the author of a popular and edifying fable which has served in many schoolrooms for many centuries. It tells how Heracles once came to some cross roads, one road open, broad, and smooth and leading a little downhill, the other narrow and uphill and rough: and on the first you gradually became a worse and worse man, on the second a better one. There was Diogenes of Apollonia, whose theories about air seem to have had some effect on Euripides' writings; and of course there was, among the younger men, Socrates. Socrates is too great and too enigmatic a teacher to be summed up in a few sentences, and though a verse of ancient comedy has come down to us, saying, "Socrates piles the faggots for Euripides' fire," his influence on his older friend is not very conspicuous. Euripides must have caught something from his scepticism, his indifference to worldly standards, his strong purpose, and something also from his resolute rejection of all philosophy except that which was concerned with the doings and feelings of men. "The fields and trees will not talk to me; it is only the human beings in the city that will." That saying of Socrates might be the motto of many a dramatist. The greatness of these philosophers or sophists of the fifth century does not, of course, lie in the correctness of their scientific results. The dullest and most unilluminated text-book produced at the present day is far more correct than Anaxagoras. Their greatness lies partly in the pioneer quality of their work. They first struck out the roads by which later workers could advance further. Partly in the daring and felicity with which they hit upon great and fruitful ideas, ideas which have brought light and freedom with them whenever they have recurred to men's minds, and which, as we have seen, are to a great extent still, after more than two thousand years, living issues in philosophic thought. Partly it lies in the mere freedom of spirit with which they set to work, unhampered by fears and taboos, to seek the truth, to create beauty, and to improve human life. The difference of atmosphere between the sophists of the Periclean circle and the ordinary backward Attic farmer must have been visible to every observer. If more evidence of the great gulf was needed, it was supplied emphatically enough in the experience of Euripides. He was himself prosecuted by Cleon, the demagogue, for "impiety." The same charge had been levelled even against his far less destructive predecessor, Aeschylus. Of these three special friends whom we have mentioned, Euripides did not live to see Socrates condemned to death and executed. But he saw Anaxagoras, in spite of the protection of Pericles, accused of "impiety" and compelled to fly for