Anyone who follows out these two strands of instinct will understand much that might seem strange, much that gave offence, in his work. It will be well therefore to bring together the faults which have been found with him in ancient and in later times. Leaving on one side, since it is by no means certainly a reproach, the celebrated remark[823] of Sophocles, “I represent people as they should be, Euripides as they are,” we find our chief material in Aristophanes and Aristotle. The _Frogs_ contains an elaborate attack upon the tragedian which, whether fair or not, has a _prima facie_ reasonableness. Euripides is twitted with moral and literary offences. In the first place, his predilection for depicting the power of love, especially the adulterous or incestuous passions of women[824] and the sophistical restlessness of mind which he inculcates,[825] mark him as a corrupter of Athens. On the technical side, his music[826] is affected and decadent, the libretto[827] of his choruses is both elaborate and jejune, the style of his iambics[828] lacks weight and dignity, his prologues[829] are tiresome and written in a mechanical fashion. Aristotle in his turn objects to certain weaknesses of characterization: Menelaus in the _Orestes_ is particularly bad, the speech of Melanippe—no doubt that celebrated oration on miracles—is indecorous and out of character; in the Aulid _Iphigenia_ the heroine is inconsistent.[830] He gives two examples[831] of the irrational, Ægeus in the _Medea_ and Menelaus once more in the _Orestes_. Euripides’ use of the _deus ex machina_ is also often bad; he instances Medea’s miraculous chariot. Lastly there is the famous mixture[832] of praise and blame: “Euripides, faulty as he is in the general management of his subject, is yet felt to be the most tragic of the poets.” If we pass now to modern detractors, we find one fault overshadowing all the rest—bad construction, what Aristotle calls “episodic” plots, namely, plays the several scenes of which are more or less accidentally combined and form no organic whole.