He was doubtless a brilliantly able man and a popular dramatist with a notable talent for concocting plots. But all that we can now see in his remains is a feeble copy of Euripides, though he was, to be sure, audacious enough to place Philoctetes’ wound in the hand instead of the foot—for the sake of gracefulness, one may imagine. For the rest, we possess a curious speech made by some one ignorant of letters, who describes[106] as a picture the name “Theseus”—this idea is taken bodily from Euripides—and sundry sententious remarks, one of which surely deserves immortality as reaching the limit of pompous common-place:— Widely through Greece hath this tradition spread O aged man, and ancient is the saw: The hap of mortals is uncertain ever. Mention should be made of DIOGENES and CRATES the philosophers, who wrote plays not for production, but for the study, as propagandist pamphlets. They may none the less have been excellent plays, like the _Justice_ of Mr. Galsworthy. Very little remains on which an opinion can be founded. One vigorous line of Diogenes catches the attention: “I would rather have a drop of luck than a barrel of brains”.[107] A more remarkable dramatist was MOSCHION, whose precise importance it is hard to estimate, though he is deeply interesting to the historian of tragedy. For on the one hand, he was probably not popular—nothing is known of his life,[108] and Stobæus is practically the only writer who quotes him. On the other hand, he is the one Greek poet known to have practised definitely the historical type of drama. Moschion is of course not alone in selecting actual events for his theme. Long before his day Phrynichus had produced his _Phœnissæ_ and _The Capture of Miletus_, Æschylus his _Persæ_; and his contemporary Theodectes composed a tragedy _Mausolus_ in glorification of the deceased king of Caria. But all four were _pièces d’occasion_. Moschion alone practised genuine historical drama: he went according to custom into the past for his material, but chose great events of real history, not legend.[109] His _Themistocles_ dealt with the battle of Salamis; we possess one brief remnant thereof, in which (as it seems) a messenger compares the victory of the small Greek force to the devastation wrought by a small axe in a great pine-forest. _The Men of Pheræ_ appears[110] to have depicted the brutality of Alexander, prince of Pheræ, who refused burial to Polyphron.