But now came another dramatist, in a different mood. This man looked at the Greek legends and decided that they were not true. He looked at Greek institutions, private property, and state patriotism, and the sovereignty of old men in family and tribe, and he decided that these were not necessarily wise and permanent arrangements. He set himself up as a propagandist of things that we call “modern,” and that the Greeks called blasphemy and infidelity. His name was Euripides, and he took the heroes and heroines of the old legends and turned them into plain human beings, suffering the cruelties of fate, but fighting back, voicing protests and doubts. So came a string of plays, jeering at militarism and false patriotism, denouncing slavery and the subjection of women in the home, rebuking religious bigotry, undermining the noble and wealthy classes. A play in which the women get together to rebel against war! A play in which a devoted wife gives her life to an angry god in order to save her husband’s life--but the husband is shown as an egotistical cad, not worthy of this dutiful and pious Greek sacrifice! Read a passage of the dramatic propaganda of Euripides, and realize how this must have sounded to hundred per cent Athenian patriots--and right in the midst of a war to the death with Sparta: Doth some one say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool, Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you. Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words No undue credence; for I say that kings Kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud, And doing thus are happier than those Who live calm pious lives day after day. How many little states that serve the gods Are subject to the godless but more strong, Made slaves by might of a superior army! CHAPTER XX THE FUNNY MAN OF REACTION Needless to say, the Bolshevik sentiments of Euripides were not proclaimed before the altar of Dionysus without protest on the part of the orthodox. There rose up another dramatist, this time a comedian, to champion the ancient and honorable traditions of Athens. Aristophanes was his name, and he was one of the world’s great masters of the comic line. He had infinite verve and wit and imagination; you can read him today and laugh out loud--even while his reactionary ideas make you cross.