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 THE GENIUS OF SOPHOCLES.

The most brilliantly joyous of all comedies were brought out in a city vexed during the years that gave them birth by every kind of misery in turn; by want and pestilence, by faction and the mutual distrust of citizens, by defeat on land and sea, by the sense of abasement and the presage of ruin. During more than twenty years of war Aristophanes was the best public teacher of Athens; but there were times when distraction was more needed than advice. One of the best of his plays belongs to the number of those which were meant simply to amuse the town at a time when it would have been useless to lash it. The comedy of the "Frogs" came out in a season of gloomy suspense—just after Athens had made a last effort in equipping a fleet, and was waiting for decisive news from the seat of war; in January of 405 B.C., eight months before Ægospotami and about fifteen months before the taking of Athens by Lysander. A succession of disasters and seditions had worn out the political life of the city;