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The new comedy could now address itself to a prepared, enlightened crowd, for whom Euripides had served as choirmaster--only in this case it was the chorus of spectators who had to be trained.
现在，新喜剧就面对着这样有准备、有教育的平民大众，因此欧里庇德斯俨然成为新喜剧的歌队长，不过，在这一回，观众的歌队还有待于训练罢了。
As soon as this chorus had acquired a competence in the Euripidean key, the new comedy--that chesslike species of play--with its constant triumphs of cleverness and cunning, arose.
一旦这种歌队受过训练，能够唱欧里庇德斯的调子，一种棋逢敌手似的戏剧便兴盛起来，那是描写勾心斗角以智取胜的新喜剧。
Meanwhile choirmaster Euripides was the object of fulsome praise;
然而，歌队长欧里庇德斯还是不断博得称誉；
in fact, people would have killed themselves in order to learn more from him had they not known that the tragic poets were quite as dead as tragedy itself.
真的，为了要从他学得更多一点，甚至有人宁愿自杀，殊不知悲剧的诗人们，像悲剧那样，从此寂灭了。
With tragedy the Greeks had given up the belief in immortality:
然而，自从诗人之死，希腊人也抛弃了对不配的信仰，
not only the belief in an ideal past, but also the belief in an ideal future.
不但不信仰理想的过去，且亦不信仰理想的未来。
The words of the famous epitaph "Inconstant and frivolous in old age" apply equally well to the last phase of Hellenism.
那句有名的墓志“像老人那样轻浮任性”也适用于衰老的希腊化时代。
Its supreme deities are wit, whim, caprice, the pleasure of the moment.
片刻的享乐，机智，轻率，烦躁，是那个时代的至尊之神；
The fifth estate, that of the slaves, comes into its own, at least in point of attitude, and if it is possible at all now to speak of Greek serenity,
现在是第五等级，奴隶阶级，当权了，最低限度在精神状态上是如此；
then it must refer to the serenity of the slave, who has no difficult responsibilities, no high aims, and to whom nothing, past or future, is of greater value than the present.
假如现在还有甚么“希腊的乐观”可言，那就是奴隶的乐观而已；奴隶没有甚么重大的责任心，没有甚么伟大的憧憬，他们重视目前远甚于过去或未来。
It was this semblance of Greek serenity that so outraged the profound and powerful minds of the first four centuries after Christ.
正是这种虚伪的“希腊的乐观”，激怒了基督教时代最初四百年间那些深思而可畏的志士；
This womanish escape from all seriousness and awe, this smug embracing of easy pleasure, seemed to them not only contemptible but the truly antiChristian frame of mind.
在他们看来，这种女性似的逃避责任与困难，这种懦夫似的贪图安逸，不但是可鄙的，而且是尤其反基督教的精神状态的。
It was they who handed on to later generations a picture of Greek antiquity painted entirely in the pale rose hues of serenity
这种精神的影响由来已古：流传了数百年的希腊古代世界观，不屈不挠地始终保持着一些淡红的乐观色彩，
as though there had never been a sixth century with its birth of tragedy,
仿佛从来没有过公元前六世纪的文明，悲剧的诞生，
its Mysteries, its Pythagoras and Heracleitus, indeed as though the art works of the great period did not exist at all.
秘仪的崇拜，毕达哥拉斯和赫拉克里图的哲学，仿佛从未产生过那个伟大时代的艺术作品；
And yet none of the latter could, of course, have sprung from the soil of such a trivial ignoble cheer, pointing as they do to an entirely different philosophy as their raison d'etre.
固然，我们不能说这些现象每个都是从这种衰老的、奴性的贪生求乐之心理产生的；固然，它们显然另有一种完全不同的世界观为其存在的根据。
