evertheless, it cannot be said that he uses it
in a contentious spirit against popular belief; on the contrary, he is
inclined in agreement with the old philosophers to identify the gods of
popular belief with the elements. Towards sophistic he takes a similar,
but less sympathetic attitude. Sophistic was not in vogue till he was a
man of mature age; he made acquaintance with it, and he made use of
it--there are reflections in his dramas which carry distinct evidence of
sophistic influence; but in his treatment of religious problems he is not
a disciple of the sophists, and on this subject, as on others, he
occasionally attacked them.

It is against this background that we must set the reflections with an
atheistic tone that we find in Euripides. They are, as already mentioned,
rare; indeed, strictly speaking there is only one case in which a
character openly denies the existence of the gods. The passage is a
fragment of the drama _Bellerophon_; it is, despite its isolation, so
typical of the manner of Euripides that it deserves to be quoted in full.

"And then to say that there are gods in the heavens! Nay, there are none
there; if you are not foolish enough to be seduced by the old talk. Think
for yourselves about the matter, and do not be influenced by my words. I
contend that the tyrants kill the people wholesale, take their money and
destroy cities in spite of their oaths; and although they do all this they
are happier than people who, in peace and quietness, lead god-fearing
lives. And I know small states which honour the gods, but must obey
greater states, which are less pious, because their spearmen are fewer in
number. And I believe that you, if a slothful man just prayed to the gods
and did not earn his bread by the work of his hands--" Here the sense is
interrupted; but there remains one more line: "That which builds the
castle of the gods is in part the unfortunate happenings ..." The
continuation is missing.

The argumentation here is characteristic of Euripides. From the injustice
of life he infers the non-existence of the gods. The conclusion evidently
only holds good on the assumption that the gods must be just; and this is
precisely one of the postulates of popular belief. The reasoning is not
sophistic; on the contrary, in their attacks the sophists took up a
position outside the foundation of popular belief and attacked the
foundation itself. This reasoning, on the other hand, is closely allied to
t