Just as the thinkers were beginning to realise this principle, it happened that a very great change in the artistic canons did take place. Sophocles is succeeded by Euripides, Pheidias by Praxiteles: music suffers a similar transformation. Idealism gives way to realism: Sophocles and Pheidias had represented men as they ought to be, Euripides and Praxiteles represent them as they are. Poets and sculptors still pretend to be delineating deities, but in reality they are delineating contemporary life.[700] Their creations not only cease to be idealised, they cease to have only a single trait. The “Hermes” of Praxiteles is a dreamy but vigorous young Athenian who might have been met in the Akademeia or Lukeion; the “Herakles” of Euripides is now a homicidal maniac, now a reckless mercenary.[701] The characters become human by losing their divineness. In the next generation the divine names are dropped, and Menander can depict contemporary life without having to call his characters Orestes or Phaidra. Music also ceased to be so severely separated off into types. All manner of musical innovations arise, which it is very hard for a modern to grasp. But the result is clear enough. It became no longer possible to detect the ethical meaning of a tune: music was becoming complex, just as characters in drama and sculpture were becoming complex. It was also more homely in subject. It became daringly “mimetic” also, imitating all the sounds of nature. This was an age of daring experiments, and musicians shared the general movement. To the Conservative party in Hellas and to the educational theorists these changes naturally appeared ruinous. In their opinion, Euripides was practically parodying the Bible and making divine characters share all the follies and weaknesses, and use the homely language, of mere men. Boys, learning such poetry by heart, would cease to have ideals: everything would be commonplace to them. They would recite the most homely language, and act the most homely parts, under the idea that they were half-divine. Moreover, with the attack of the new school upon the old religion, the more immoral parts of Hellenic mythology were brought into undue prominence. Euripides seems to have chosen some questionable subjects; the dithyrambic poets were worse, and chose themes quite unsuitable for children to act or hear. And music ceased to have any ethical value; it was all trills and onomatopœia. Such changes meant a revolution in the results of education.