Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/568

Rh 508 ARISTOPHANES Eupolis, and Aristophanes. The Middle Comedy covers a period of about 70 years (390-320 B.C.), its chief poets being Antiphanes, Alexis, Plato Comicus, Theopom- pus, and Strattis. The New Comedy was in vigour for about 70 years (320-250 B.C.), having for its foremost representatives Menander Philemon, and Diphilus. The Old Comedy was possible only for a thorough democracy. Its essence was a satirical censorship, unsparing in person alities, of public and of private life of morality, of statesmanship, of education, of literature, of social usage in a word, of everything which had an interest for the city or which could amuse the citizens. Preserving all the freedom of banter and of riotous fun to which its origin gave it an historical right, it aimed at associating with this a strong practical purpose the expression of a democratic public opinion in such a form that no miscon duct or folly could altogether disregard it. That licen tiousness, that grossness of allusion which too often disfigures it, was, it should be remembered, exacted by the sentiment of the Dionysiac festivals, as much as a decorous cheerfulness is expected at the holiday times of other worships. This was the popular element. Without this the entertainment would have been found flat and unsea sonable. But for a comic poet of the higher calibre the consciousness of a recognised power which he could exert, and the desire to use this power for the good of the city, must always have been the uppermost feelings. At Athens the poet of the Old Comedy had an influence analogous, perhaps, rather to that of the journalist than to that of the modern dramatist. But the established type of Dionysiac Comedy gave him an instrument such as no public satirist has ever wielded. When Moliere wished to brand hypocrisy he could only make his Tartuffe the central figure of a regular drama, developed by a regular process to a just catastrophe. He had no choice between touching too lightly, and using sustained force to make a profound impression. The Athenian dramatist of the Old Comedy worked under no such limitations of form. The wildest flights of extravagance were permitted to him. Nothing bound him to a dangerous emphasis or a wearisome insistence. He could deal the keenest thrust, or make the most earnest appeal, and at the next moment if his instinct told him that it was time to change the subject vary the serious strain by burlesque. He had, in short, an incomparable scope for trenchant satire directed by sure tact. Aristophanes is for us the representative of the Old Comedy. But it is important to notice that his genius, while it includes, also transcends the genius of the Old Comedy. He can denounce the frauds of a Cleon, he can vindicate the duty of Athens to herself and to her allies, with a stinging scorn and a force of patriotic indignation which make the poet almost forgotten in the citizen. He can banter Euripides with an ingenuity of light mockery which makes it seem for the time as if the leading Aristo- phanic trait was the art of seeing all things from their prosaic side. Yet it is neither in the denunciation nor in the mockery that he is most individual. His truest and highest faculty is revealed by those wonderful bits of lyric writing in which he soars above everything that can move laughter or tears, and makes the clear air thrill with the notes of a song as free, aa musical, and as wild as that of the nightingale invoked by his own chorus in the Birds. The speech of Dikaios Logos in the Clouds, the praises of country life in the Peace, the serenade in the Eccleziazusce, the songs of the Spartan and Athenian maidens in the Lysistrata, above all, perhaps, the chorus in the Frogs, the beautiful chant of the Initiated, these passages, and such as these, are the true glories of Aristophanes They are the strains, not of an artist, but of one who warbles for pure gladness of heart in some place made bright by the presence of a god. Nothing else in Greek poetry has quite this wild sweetness of the woods. Of modern poets Shakespeare alone, perhaps, has it in combination with a like richness and fertility of fancy. Fifty-four comedies were ascribed to Aristophanes. Forty-three of these are allowed as genuine by Bergk. Eleven only are extant. These eleven form a running commentary on the outer and the inner life of Athens during 36 years. We will notice them briefly in the order of their dates. They may be ranged under three periods. The first of these periods, extending to 420 B.C., includes those plays in which Aristophanes uses an absolutely unrestrained freedom of political satire. The second period ends with the year 405. Its productions are distinguished from those of the earlier time by a certain degree of reticence and caution. The third period, down to 388 B.C., comprises two plays in which the transition to the character of the Middle Comedy is well marked, not merely by disuse of the parabasis, but by general self-restraint. I. First Period. (1.) 425 B.C. The Acharnians. Since the defeat in Boeotia the peace party at Athens had gained ground, and in this play Aristophanes seeks to strengthen their hands. Dicseo- polis, an honest countryman, is determined to make peace with Sparta on his own account, not deterred by the angry men of Acharnse, who crave vengeance for the devastation of their vineyards. He sends to Sparta for samples of peace ; and he is so much pleased with the flavour of the Thirty Years sample that he at once concludes a treaty for himself and his family. All the blessings of life descend on him; while Lamachus, the leader of the war party, is smarting from cold, snow, and wounds. (2.) 424 B.C. The Knights. Three years before, in his Babylonians, Aristophanes had assailed Cleon as the typical demagogue. In this play he continues the attack. The Demos, or State, is represented by an old man who has put himself and his household into the hands of a rascally Paphlagonian steward. Nicias and Demosthenes, slaves of Demos, contrive that the Paphlagonian shall be supplanted in their master s favour by a sausage-seller. No sooner has Demos been thus rescued than his youth- fulness and his good sense return together. (3.) 423 B.C. The Clouds (the first edition ; a second edition was brought out in 422 B.C.) This play would be correctly described as an attack on the new spirit of intel lectual inquiry and culture rather than on a school or class. Two classes of thinkers or teachers are, however, specially satirised under the general name of &quot;Sophist&quot; (v. 331) 1. The Physical Philosophers indicated by allusions to the doctrines of Anaxagoras, Heracleitus, and Diogenes of Apollonia. 2. The professed teachers of rhetoric, belles lettres, &c., such as Protagoras and Prodicus. Socrates is taken as the type of the entire tendency. A youth named Pheidippides obviously meant for Alcibiades is sent by his father to Socrates to be cured of his dissolute propen sities. Under the discipline of Socrates the youth becomes accomplished in dishonesty and impiety. The conclusion of the play shows the indignant father preparing to burn up the philosopher and his hall of contemplation. (4.) 422.B.C. The Wasps. This comedy, which suggested Les Plaideurs to Racine, is a satire on the Athenian love of litigation. The strength of demagogy, while it lay chiefly in the ecclesia, lay partly also in the paid dica- steries. From this point of view the Wasps may be regarded as supplementing the Knights. Philocleon (admirer of Cleon), an old man, has a passion for lawsuits, a passion which his son, Bdelucleon (detester of Cleon) fails to check, until he hits upon the device of turning the house into a law-court, and paying his father for absence