No person was a sharper critic of all things of his age than the great radical and skeptic, the Athenian tragedian Euripides (c.480-406) . In the Orestes, under the guise of describing the public assembly convened at Argos to try the case of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon (accused of slaying his mother, who in turn had murdered his father, her husband), he draws an unsparing picture of assemblies in Athens. It has been said that Sophocles portrayed men as they might be while Euripides portrayed men as they are.
A Messenger [speaking to the waiting Electra, the sister of Orestes]
It chanced that I was entering the gates
Out of the country, fain to learn thy state,
And of Orestes: for unto thy sire
Aye was I loyal: thine house fostered me,
A poor man, yet true hearted to his friends.
Then throngs I saw to seats on yon height climb
Where first, as men say, Danaus, by Ægyptus
Impeached, in general session gathered us;
Marking the crowd, I asked a citizen
“What news in Argos? Hath a bruit of foes
Startled the city of the Danaïds?”
But he, “Dost thou not mark Orestes there
Draw near to run the race whose goal is death?”
Would I had ne’er seen that unlooked-for sight —
Pylades with thy brother moving on;
This, sickness-palsied, with down-drooping head;
That, as a brother, in his friend’s affliction
Affected, tended like a nurse the sick.
When now the Argive gathering was full,
A herald rose and cried “Who fain would speak
Whether Orestes ought to live or die
For matricide?” Talthybius thereupon
Rose, helper of thy sire when Troy was sacked,
He spake — subservient ever to the strong —
Half-heartedly, extolling high thy sire,
But praising not thy brother; intertwined
Fair words and foul — “that he laid down a law
Right ill for parents”; so was glancing still
With flattering eye upon Ægisthus’s friends.
Such is the herald tribe; — lightly they skip
To fortune’s minion’s side; their friend is he
Who in a state hath power and beareth rule.
Next after him Prince Diomedes spake.
Thee nor thy brother would he have them slay,
But exile you, of reverence to the Gods.
Then murmured some that good his counsel was;
Some praised it not.
Thereafter rose up one
Of tongue unbridled, stout in impudence,
An Argive, yet no Argive, thrust on us;
In bluster, and coarse-grained fluency confident,
Still plausible to trap the folk in mischief;
For when an evil heart with winning tongue
Persuades the crowd, ill is it for the state;
Whoso with understanding counsel well
Profit the state — ere long, if not straightway.
Thus ought we on each leader of men to look,
And so esteem; for both be in like case,
The speaker and [the hearers of the speech]. —
Thee and Orestes he bade stone to death.
But Tyndareus still prompted him with words
That best told, as he labored for your death.
To plead against him, then another rose,
No dainty presence, but a manful man,
In town and market circle seldom found,
A yeoman, — such as are the land’s one stay, —
Yet shrewd in grapple of words, when this [had need],
A stainless man who lived a blameless life,
He moved that they should crown Agamemnon’s son
Orestes, since he had dared avenge his sire,
Slaying the wicked and the godless wife
Who sapped our strength; — none would take shield on arm
Or would forsake his home to march to war,
If men’s house warders be seduced the while
By stayers at home, and [marriage] be defiled.
To honest men he seemed to speak right well;
And none spake after. Then thy brother rose
And said, “Lords of the land of Inachus, —
Of old Pelasgians, later Danaus’s sons, —
‘Twas in your cause, no less than in my sire’s
I slew my mother, for if their lord’s blood
Shall bring no guilt on wives, make haste to die;
Else must ye live in thraldom to your wives,
And transgress against all rightfulness.
For now the traitress to my father’s couch
Is dead; but if ye shall indeed slay me,
Law is annulled; better men died straightway;
Since for no crime shall wives be lacking now.”
They would not hear, though well he spake, meseemed.
That knave prevailed, who to the mob appealed,
Who called on them to slay thy brother and thee.
Hapless Orestes scarce could gain the boon
By stoning not to die. By his own hand
He pledged him to leave life on this same day
With thee. Now from the gathering Pylades
Bringeth him weeping; and his friends attend
Lamenting with strong crying. . . . Thy princely birth
Nought hath availed thee, nor the [oracle of] King
Apollo, tripod-throned; nay, [it] ruined thee!