Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/680

660 assuming the privileges of a satirist; he feels not the slightest hesitation in making use of Euripides's devices, even when he is holding up Euripides himself to ridicule. There must be irony in the proposal to turn over the management of the state to women because they managed their households so well; perhaps the poet thought that households were no better managed than the scheme of government which the women tried to institute. That women were easily led by passion (as in their attempt to get even with Euripides), that they were inclined to be visionary, that they found amusement in cheating their husbands in small matters, no doubt the poet would hold; it is very evident also that he can count on amusing his audience by treating the failings of women; still, if I read these comedies rightly, the ability of women in general to manage a home well was not discredited either by the poet or by his audience.

Thirdly, the relation of father and son is frequently treated in these plays. In the Clouds Pheidippides is brought up from childhood to feel that he is superior to his father. He treats his father's suggestions somewhat cavalierly; having the support of his mother and her aristocratic connections, he is not much moved by his father's threat to turn him out of the house; but by bribes, persuasions, and threats Strepsiades finally gains his point. It is only as the result of the new sophistic teaching that the respect of the son entirely disappears, so that he justifies himself in beating his father. In the Ecclesiazousæ (635 f.) one of the great objections to the communistic family is that fathers will not know their sons; to this Aristophanes replies, as Plato replied later, that all the young will reverence the older as fathers so much the more because the older will combine to enforce their rights. In the Birds (1351) the man who wants to treat his father as birds are said to treat their parents is advised to go and fight the Thracians instead. The plot of the Wasps turns on the difficulties which no doubt often did arise when the father was old and unreasonable; here and in the Clouds we have the Greek justification for this treatment of sons by parents, in that each man has his turn as father.