When the poet Martial regrets that he cannot express the name of his friend Ěărĭnus in Latin verse and suggests with some irony that a Greek poet, to whom nothing is impossible, would not have had the same difficulty, he illustrates his envious complaint by quoting the first two words of Iliad, v. 31—TAρεζ, xAρεζ, that is the name Ares with variant quantities:

dicunt ărĭnon tamen poetae,

sed Graeci, quibus est nihil negatum

et quos TAρεζ, xAρεζ, decet sonare.

But had Martial been able to cite in his hendecasyllables the whole of that line of Homer, namely

TAρεζ, xAρεζ, βρoτoλoγiγέ, μiαiϕνε, τεiχεσiπλῆτα,

he could have pointed to a much more formidable obstacle than mere quantitative incompatibility which lay in the path of every Latin poet who, almost without exception, turned for inspiration and guidance to Greek originals. The strength of this Homeric line lies in its memorable compounds, here chancing to increase in length as the line proceeds: the line is almost of the type called by the Greeks ‘rhopalic’, bludgeon-like, growing progressively in thickness towards the butt-end. Homer's music is not merely ‘winged'; it is ‘strong-wing'd’. The God of War is here called βρoτoλoιγóς, ‘mortal-plaguing’: μıαıøóνoς, ‘blood-polluted’: τειχεσιπλἡτης, ‘battlement-storming’—all these breathless mouthfuls within three-quarters of one hexameter line. Latin is usually regarded as a succinct language, a speech employing fewer words to express an organized idea than most tongues. But it would be futile to attempt to enclose within the compass of four and a half feet of a Latin hexameter the connotation of the three Greek compound adjectives, with their sixfold content—the notions of plague and mankind, pollution and murder, sacker and walled cities.

Euripides’ reputation has often suffered from a comparison of his works with those on similar subjects by Aeschylus and Sophocles. In such a comparison Euripides stands at a disadvantage, since it involves comparing what are acknowledged to be his lesser plays with the masterpieces of the two earlier tragedians, while no plays are extant by his predecessors on the same subjects as his greatest plays. To take as an example one of Euripides’ acknowledged masterpieces, the Medea, the only Greek works we still possess in which Medea is a prominent figure are one of Pindar's Odes and Apollonius Rhodius’ epic, the Argonautica, both of which deal with an earlier phase of the legend; while for plays dealing with the same incidents we must turn to those of a Roman dramatist, Seneca, and a French dramatist, Corneille. In comparing Euripides’ Médea with the plays of these two dramatists we give Euripides an advantage which is possibly greater than that which Aeschylus and Sophocles have in a comparison of their works with his; for tragic drama was not a branch of literature in which the Romans excelled and the Médée is admittedly not one of Corneille's successes. Nevertheless, even a hurried reading of their plays is of value in helping us to appreciate Euripides’ Medea, since salient points of that play stand out by contrast in bolder relief.

Such a comparison impresses upon us two important aspects of Euripides’ play: first, that he reduced the magical element, itself an essential part of the story, to the barest minimum, and second, that he alone feels sympathy with Medea herself.

The Corpus of Attic Orators is one of the richest legacies which has come down to us from antiquity. It is invaluable from many points of view. It provides us with unique material for tracing the evolution of Greek prose style; it illustrates the administration of public and private law at Athens; it supplies important evidence for Greek history; and, since the private orations deal with the personal affairs of ordinary citizens, it throws a flood of light on everyday life at Athens. It is with the last point that I shall attempt to deal.

The private orations were composed by professional speech-writers for delivery by clients who were obliged by law to plead their own causes in the courts. Being concerned with real or alleged crimes, they naturally do not show human nature at its best.

I propose to take as examples two speeches dealing with murders, one with an accusation of falsely claiming a dole, and one with a charge of assault and battery.

Two Murder Cases.

Antiphon, the earliest of the Attic Orators, who was also well known as a politician and took a prominent part in the establishment of the Four Hundred in 411 B.C., was head of a school of rhetoric which was attended by Thucydides. Fifteen of his speeches have survived, all of which deal with murder cases, three having been written for actual delivery and the rest as specimen speeches on fictitious themes.

The speech On the Murder of Herodes was composed for a certain Euxitheus and is concerned with an incident which took place on the island of Lesbos off the coast of Asia Minor.