...This passage is tantalizing, not only because so much is lost of the text, and because the text is so corrupt, but chiefly because since the discovery of the Claremont fragments of Euripides’ we may perceive that this play, of whose ingenious plot we now know a good deal, colours the whole of the opening passage. In the play Phaëthon, declining to accept marriage with the goddess to whom his mother Clymene wished to marry him, speaks the first verse quoted; and there are probably further quotations from the play in the second sentence (πολλῆς διὰ τέφρας ἀλλὰ πυρκαϊᾶς τινος). It is quite possible that Phaëthon himself swears that he will go through heaps of cinders rather than marry the goddess; and in the play there is in fact a royal conflagration when the Sun’s treasure-house burns (see Nauck, p. 601). But it cannot be too strongly insisted that the text is very corrupt and that the restorations here adopted can claim only an approximation to the truth. He will not submit to (such a marriage)Conjecturally supplied. His body bartered for the dower’s sake, as EuripidesNauck, 2, p. 606, Frag. 775, from the ; cf. , 13 f; Plautus, , 87. says; but he has only a slight and precarious reason for being envied. For this man (it were better)Conjecturally supplied. to make his journey, not through heaps of hot cinders, but through a royal conflagration, as it were, and surrounded by flames, panting and full of terror and drenched with sweat, and so to perish, though (his mother)Conjecturally supplied. had offered to him such a wealth as Tantalus had, which he was too busy to enjoy. For while that Sicyonian horsebreeder was a wise man, who gave to the king of the Achaeans, Agamemnon, a swift mare as a gift, That he might not follow him to wind-swept Troy, But stay at home and take his pleasure,Adapted from Homer, , xxiii. 297-298; Echepolus is the Sicyonian referred to. cf. , 32 f. surrendering himself to the enjoyment of deep riches and to unmolested ease; yet modern courtiers who are looked upon as men of affairs, though no one summons them, of their own accord push their way headlong into courts and official escorts and toilsome bivouacs that they may get a horse or a brooch or some such piece of good fortune. His wife, rending both cheeks, was left behind In Phylace, and his half-finished home,Homer, , ii. 700-701. while he himself is swept about and wanders afar, worn out by one hope after another and constantly insulted; and even if he obtains any of his desires, yet, whirled about and made giddy by Fortune’s ropedance, he seeks to make his descent and considers happy those who live in obscurity and safety, whereas they so regard him as they look up at him soaring above their heads.