The modern critic, even if he endorses the sharp indictment of Euripides, the poet of the most radical democracy,--that he destroyed the character of Attic tragedy by introducing into it elements from melodrama and the operatic concert, by perverting the grand style of its text and music by vulgar flippancies and incongruous measures, by substituting for artistic development of characters and plot disturbing discussions of the woman question and the latest sensations in philosophy and science, by turning the ancient gods and heroes into burlesque through having them argue and act like contemporary sycophants and sophists,--the modern critic, even Professor Shorey,[50] for example, in his spirited defense of the Sophoclean drama, would abandon Plato, I fancy, when he makes the drama the fundamental cause for the decline of Athenian greatness. In his _Laws_, Plato is dealing with what, chastened by age and experience, he regarded as correctible things. The lust for private possessions, for land and home, wife and children, he once placed in this category, but he does so no longer; and in other respects he makes wide concessions to human frailties. With greed for wealth, however, he concluded no truce. It is Greeks, mark you, of whom Plato[51] says: "Love of wealth wholly absorbs men, and never for a moment allows them to think of anything but their own private possessions; on this the soul of every citizen hangs suspended, and can attend to nothing but his daily gain. Mankind are ready to learn any branch of knowledge, and to follow any pursuit which tends to this end, and they laugh at every other.... From an insatiate love of gold and silver, every man will stoop to any art or contrivance, seemly or unseemly, in the hope of becoming rich; and will make no objection to performing any action, holy or unholy and utterly base, if only like a beast he have the power of eating and drinking all kinds of things, and procuring for himself in every sort of way the gratifications of his lusts."