ray says:

"In the last plays dying Athens is not mentioned, but her death-
struggle and her sins are constantly haunting us; the Joy of
battle is mostly gone; the horror of war is left. Well might old
Aeschylus pray, 'God grant that I may sack no city!' if the
reality of conquest is what it appears in the last plays of
Euripides. The conquerors there are as miserable as the
conquered; only more cunning, and perhaps more wicked."

He died the year before Aegospotami, at the court of Archelaus of
Macedon. One is glad to think he found peace and honor at last.
Athens heard with a laugh that some courtier there had insulted
him; and with astonishment that the good barbarous Archelaus had
handed said courtier over to Euripides to be scourged for his
freshness. I don't imagine that Euripides scourged him though-to
amount to anything.

VI. SOCRATES AND PLATO

By this time you should have seen, rather than any picture of
Greece and Athens in their heyday, an indication of certain
universal historical laws. As thus (to go back a little): an
influx of the Spirit is approaching, and a cycle of high
activities is about to begin. A great war has cleared off what
karmic weight has been hanging over Athens;--Xerxes, you will
remember, burnt the town. Hence there is a clearness in the inner
atmosphere; through which a great spiritual voice may, and does,
speak a great spiritual message. But human activities proceed,
ever increasing their momentum, until the atmosphere is no longer
clear, but heavy with the effluvia of by no means righteous
thought and action. The Spirit is no more visibly present, but
must manifest if at all through a thicker medium; and who speaks
now, speaks as artist only,--not as poet--or artist-prophet. Time
goes on, and the inner air grows still thicker; till men live in
a cloud, through which truths are hardly to be seen. Then those
who search for the light are apt to cry out in despair; they
become realists struggling to break the terrible molds of
thought:--and if you can hear the Spiritual in them at all, it is
not in a positive message they have for men, but in the greatness
of their heart and compassion. They do not build; they seek only
to destroy. There seems nothing else for them to do.

So in England, Wordsworth opened this last cycle of poetry;
coming when there was a clear atmosphere, and speaking more or
less clearly through it his message from the Gods. You hear a
like radian