Euripidis Tragoediae (Nauck 3rd ed.)

The training or habitual association with these men [had] such great force in cultivating the character of Euripides and his entire poetry...

regarding the Socratic wisdom, [men] elated by arrogance, or [men] "boasting" in the manner of Euripides and Socrates. Aulus Gellius (15, 20, 4) writes: "Soon, having moved from the care of the body to the study of cultivating the mind, he became a hearer of the natural philosopher Anaxagoras and the rhetorician Prodicus, and in moral philosophy, of Socrates." Euripides undoubtedly owed the most to Anaxagoras, whose discipline and, in a way, character he expressed to such a degree that he was not undeservedly called a foster-son of the Clazomenian philosopher by Aristophanes (Gellius 15, 20, 8): "He is the foster-son of the Anaxagorean..." original: "ὁ δ᾽ Ἀναξαγόρου τρόφιμος κτέ." And so, again and again, he transferred the philosophies of Anaxagoras to the stage, about which matter more will be said below. It is less certain to what extent Prodicus and Protagoras contributed to forming the poet's genius. The reports of Diogenes Laertius (9, 55) seem to be due to error: "Philochorus says that while he [Anaxagoras] was sailing to Sicily, the ship was sunk, and that Euripides hints at this in his Ixion a lost tragedy." cf. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici Chronological Tables of Greek History vol. 2, p. 377, ed. Krüger. And it is manifestly false what Diogenes Laertius (2, 44) narrates, that in the Palamedes a tragedy there existed an allusion to the condemned Socrates; I have spoken of this in Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Fragments of Greek Tragedians, p. 363. Nevertheless, a certain report mentioned by Diogenes Laertius (9, 54) betrays an acquaintance between Protagoras and Euripides: "Protagoras was the first to read his own discourse 'On the Gods'—and he read it at Athens in the house of Euripides, or, as some say, in that of Megaclides; others [say] in the Lyceum." Protagoras taught that there are two arguments concerning every thing, opposed to one another (Diogenes Laertius 9, 51 and Stephanus of Byzantium, v. Abdera). Likewise, for Euripides: "From every matter, one could set up a contest of twin arguments, if one were wise in speaking" original: "ἐκ παντὸς ἄν τις πράγματος δισσῶν λόγων ἀγῶνα θεῖτ᾽ ἄν, εἰ λέγειν εἴη σοφός" (fr. 189), and almost every tragedy bears witness to how much the poet loved to present his characters contending in speech. We hold nothing certain about the familiarity of Socrates and Euripides. Callias also makes Socrates a companion in tragedies Comedy, vol. 2, p. 739, to which jokes of the comic poets no one will give credence. We easily believe Aelian (Various History 2, 13) that Socrates was an admirer of Euripides: "Socrates rarely visited the theaters; but if ever Euripides, the poet of tragedy, was competing with new tragedies, then he would indeed arrive. And when Euripides was competing at the Piraeus, he would go down there too; for he clearly took pleasure in the man, both because of his wisdom and his excellence in metrics." More subject to doubt is the little story handed down by Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 4, 29, 63): "When Euripides was producing the play Orestes, Socrates is said to have requested the first three verses be repeated." Completely incredible are the things that Diogenes Laertius (3, 6) invents about the journey of Plato and Euripides to Egypt: "Thence he [Plato] set out to Egypt to the prophets; where they say Euripides also followed him, and having fallen ill there, was cured by the priests by means of the sea; whence also he said [Iphigenia in Tauris 1193]: 'The sea washes away all the evils of men'."