Page:Acharnians and two other plays (1909).djvu/19



, whose name may be interpreted as conveying the idea of honest policy, is the principal character in the play. He is represented as a humorous, shrewd countryman (a sort of Athenian Sancho), who (in consequence of the war, and the invasion of Attica by the Peloponnesian Army) had been driven from his house and property to take shelter in the city. Here his whole thoughts are occupied with regret for the comforts he has lost, and with wishes for a speedy peace. The soliloquy in which he appears in the first scene represents him seated alone in the place of Assembly, having risen early to secure a good place, his constant practice (he says), in order "to bawl, to abuse and interrupt the speakers," with the exception of those, and those only, who are arguing in favour of an immediate peace. But the Magistrates and men of business, not having so much leisure on their hands as the worthy countryman, are less punctual in their attendance, and he is kept waiting, to his great discomfort; their seats are empty, and the citizens in the market-place are talking and idling, or shifting about to avoid a most notable instrument of democratic coercion—namely, a cord coloured with ochre, which the officers stretch across the market-place in order to drive the loiterers to the place of Assembly; those that are overtaken by the rope, being marked by the ochre, besides the damage to their dress, becoming liable to a nominal fine. To avoid the sense of weariness, he is in the habit (as he tells us), upon such occasions, of giving a forced direction to his thoughts; and he gives a sample of his mode of employing this expedient in the very first lines: he is tasking himself to recollect and sum up all the things that had occurred of late either to gratify or to annoy him. At length, however, he is relieved from the pursuit of this unsatisfactory pastime. The Magistrates arrive and take their seats—the place of Assembly is filled, and silence is proclaimed—when a new personage enters hastily. Here we have an instance of the peculiar character of