[4] At times, I say pointedly, the _Athenian_ rather than the _Grecian_ tragedy, in order to keep the reader's attention awake to a remark made by Paterculus,--viz. That although Greece coquettishly welcomed homage to herself, as generally concerned in the Greek literature, in reality Athens only had any original share in the drama, or in the oratory of Greece. [5] '_The supreme artist_:'--It is chiefly by comparison with Euripides, that Sophocles is usually crowned with the laurels of _art_. But there is some danger of doing wrong to the truth in too blindly adhering to these old rulings of critical courts. The judgments would sometimes be reversed, if the pleadings were before us. There were blockheads in those days. Undoubtedly it is past denying that Euripides at times betrays marks of carelessness in the structure of his plots, as if writing too much in a hurry: the original cast of the fable is sometimes not happy, and the evolution or disentangling is too precipitate. It is easy to see that he would have remoulded them in a revised edition, or _diaskeue [Greek.]_ On the other hand, I remember nothing in the Greek drama more worthy of a great artist than parts in his Phoenissae. Neither is he the effeminately tender, or merely pathetic poet that some people imagine. He was able to sweep _all_ the chords of the impassioned spirit. But the whole of this subject is in arrear: it is in fact _res integra_, almost unbroken ground. [6] I see a possible screw loose at this point: if _you_ see it, reader, have the goodness to hold your tongue. [7] '_Athenian Theatre_:'--Many corrections remain to be made. Athens, in her bloom, was about as big as Calcutta, which contained, forty years ago, more than half a million of people; or as Naples, which (being long rated at three hundred thousand), is now known to contain at least two hundred thousand more. The well known census of Demetrius Phalereus gave twenty- one thousand citizens. Multiply this by 5, or 4-3/4, and you have their families. Add ten thousand, multiplied by 4-1/2, for the _Inquilini_. Then add four hundred thousand for the slaves: total, about five hundred and fifty thousand. But upon the fluctuations of the Athenian population there is much room for speculation. And, quaere, was not the population of Athens greater two centuries before Demetrius, in the days of Pericles? [8] Having no Sophocles at hand, I quote from memory, not pretending therefore to exactness: but the sense is what I state.