RELIGION AND EDUCATION 279

Even acquaintance with a few comedies shows that, in the
intellectual sphere, public interest was focused not on abstract
thought, but on literary art, above all on the theatre, and
equally on tragedy and comedy. This, of course, is under-
standable, though our impression may be somewhat distorted
by the fact that it rests on the evidence of comedy. It is per-
haps harder to understand why the most artistic of all people
talked very little about sculpture and painting The Greeks
of the fifth century had not yet a theoretical, 'aesthetic*,
approach to art We shall see that it was different with
literature Sculptors and painters were to them m general
gifted craftsmen, and the questions they asked of a piece of
art were less sophisticated, or at least less 'artistic', than we
might expect. It is significant that m Euripides' Ion the
chorus, while admiring the sculptures of the temple, are
interested only in the subjects represented, and not in the
sculptor's art.1 When in the Hekabe the queen tells Agamem-
non fto stand back like a painter' and thus to view her woes,
we feel that the poet is at least interested in the work of the
painter, though again hardly in his art2
We turn to the people's attitude to thought and literature.
There are a few allusions to the 'present-day sky-philosophers'.3
Kratinos in his Panopfat, the 'All-Seers', attacks the philoso-
pher and physicist Hippon, inter aha by quoting the ideas of
memory and forgetfulness which play a part also in the Socratic
pedagogy in the Clouds 4 Anaxagoras, though he must have
been fairly well known after his trial and expulsion, is men-
tioned only once, as the alleged teacher of Euripides, and so is
Damon as the teacher of Penkles.5 Protagoras is derided as
the scoundrel who speaks solemnly about the celestial, but eats
with excellent appetite of the terrestrial,6 Prodikos is con-
sidered the most important of the sophists, but is called as
pernicious as any book or chatterbox.7 The 'foreign words'
1 Eur. Ion i82ff, cf 232f; similarly about the (3ocpfk5cpGav ufdcrpiaTa m the
temple treasure (ngSff), ypoccpf} in 271 is a book rather than a painting
*Em.HeL8oyL 3 C 360
4 Kratinos 15iff, especially 154. — C 4821?
5 frg 676 b (Kock, III, p 725), Plat 191
6 Enpolis 146 7 C 360!", 6.692 — frg 490.