he earlier religious thinking of the Greeks; it only proceeds further
than the latter, where it results in rank denial.

The drama of _Bellerophon_ is lost, and reconstruction is out of the
question; if only for that reason it is unwarrantable to draw any
conclusions from the detached fragment as to the poet's personal attitude
towards the existence of the gods. But, nevertheless, the fragment is of
interest in this connexion. It would never have occurred to Sophocles or
Aeschylus to put such a speech in the mouth of one of his characters. When
Euripides does that it is a proof that the question of the existence of
the gods has begun to present itself to the popular consciousness at this
time. Viewed in this light other statements of his which are not in
themselves atheistic become significant. When it is said: "If the gods act
in a shameful way, they are not gods"--that indeed is not atheism in our
sense, but it is very near to it. Interesting is also the introduction to
the drama _Melanippe_: "Zeus, whoever Zeus may be; for of that I only know
what is told." Aeschylus begins a strophe in one of his most famous choral
odes with almost the same words: "Zeus, whoe'er he be; for if he desire so
to be called, I will address him by this name." In him it is an expression
of genuine antique piety, which excludes all human impertinence towards
the gods to such a degree that it even forgoes knowing their real names.
In Euripides the same idea becomes an expression of doubt; but in this
case also the doubt is raised on the foundation of popular belief.

It is not surprising that so prominent and sustained a criticism of
popular belief as that of Euripides, produced, moreover, on the stage,
called forth a reaction from the defenders of the established faith, and
that charges of impiety were not wanting. It is more to be wondered at
that these charges on the whole are so few and slight, and that Euripides
did not become the object of any actual prosecution. We know of a private
trial in which the accuser incidentally charged Euripides with impiety on
the strength of a quotation from one of his tragedies, Euripides's answer
being a protest against dragging his poetry into the affair; the verdict
on that belonged to another court. Aristophanes, who is always severe on
Euripides, has only one passage directly charging him with being a
propagator of atheism; but the accusation is hardly meant to be taken
seriously. In _The Frogs_, wher