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The translation is in Latin verse such as the ancient tragic writers used. In the preface Grotius enters into an examination of Euripides's tragedy. He shews that the time of twenty-four hours has been exactly kept to; that the unity of place is observed; that the manners are good; that it contains many useful maxims, and is upon the whole very well written. Ep. 57. p. 771.
Now, in as much as assaying which is no more than the power of distinguishing between false and true coin is a recognized profession, you will hardly refuse the same status to that which distinguishes between false and true men; the genuineness of men is more obscure than that of coins; this indeed is the gist of the wise Euripides's complaint: But among men how tell the base apart?
Watson's Absolon and Buchanan's Iephthe he considers the best tragedies of his age because only they can "abide the trew touch" of Aristotle's precepts and Euripides's example. They were good because they were according to rule, and in imitation of good models. Watson he especially praises for his refusal to publish Absolon because in several places an anapest was substituted for an iambus.
But that which is most wonderful, and which everybody knows, is this, the bodies of those that are killed by thunderbolt never putrefy. For many neither burn nor bury such bodies, but let them lie above ground with a fence about them, so that every one may see the they remain uncorrupted, confuted by this Euripides's Clymene, who says thus of Phaeton,
And once seeing a tragedian act Euripides's Troades, he left the theater; but sending for the actor, bade him not to be concerned at his departure, but act as he had been used to do, as it was not in contempt of him that he departed, but because he was ashamed that his citizens should see him, who never pitied any man that he murdered, weep at the sufferings of Hecuba and Andromache.
Nor need this be any wonder, for it is told that a ship of Caunus fleeing into one of their harbors for protection, pursued by pirates, was not received, but forced back, till one asked if they knew any of Euripides's verses, and on their saying they did, they were admitted, and their ship brought into harbor.
One of his earliest experiments in translation had been with Euripides's choral description of the "blest children of Erechtheus going on their way, daintily enfolded in the bright, bright air." His student life in the old home of learning had also proved to be more charming than he could have anticipated.
"Really," returned the robber, "I have no time to convince you that the brigand's life is the only one worth living. You do not care to join our illustrious brotherhood? No? Well, I must put these trinkets and fat little wallet in my own wagon. I leave you your cloak out of old friendship's sake. Really you must not blame me. Remember Euripides's line: "'Money can warp the judgment of a God.
Clitus still refusing to yield, was with much trouble forced by his friends out of the room. But he came in again immediately at another door, very irreverently and confidently singing the verses out of Euripides's Andromache, In Greece, alas! how ill things ordered are!
The general for so his dress proclaimed him was playing with a stylus and a waxen tablet, while the young Greek read. Now and then he would bid the latter pause while he made a few notes. The book was Euripides's "Troades." "Read those lines again," interrupted the general. The voice was marvellously flexile, powerful, and melodious. And the freedman repeated:
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