Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/510

 488 HISTORY OF GREECE. security before strangers and allies. We have to recollect tba; Athens was then in the midst of an embarrassing war ; that th fidelity of her subject-allies was much doubted ; that Lesbos, the greatest of her allies, had been reconquered only in the preceding year, after a revolt both troublesome and perilous to the Athe- nians. Under such circumstances, Kleon had good reason for thinking that a political comedy of the Aristophanic vein and talent tended to degrade the city in the eyes of strangers, even granting that it was innocuous when confined to the citizens themselves. The poet complains l that Kleon summoned him before the senate, with terrible threats and calumny : but it does not appear that any penalty was inflicted. Nor, indeed, had the senate competence to find him guilty or punish him except to the extent of a small fine : they could only bring him to trial before the dikastery, which in this case plainly was not done. He himself, however, seems to have felt the justice of the warning : for we find that three out of his four next following plays, before the Peace of Nikias, the Acharnians, the Knights, and the Wasps, were represented at the Lenoean festival, 2 in the month of January, a season when no strangers nor allies were present. Kleon was doubtless much incensed with the play of the Knights, and seems to have annoyed the poet either by bringing an indict- ment against him for exercising freemen's rights without being duly qualified, since none but citizens were allowed to appear an.) 1 Aristoph. Acliara. 355-475. s See the Arguments prefixed to these three plays; and Acharn. 475 Equit. 881. It is not known whether the first comedy, entitled The Clouds (represented in the earlier part of B.C. 423, a year after the Knights, and a year beforo the Wasps), appeared at the Lenaean festival of January, or at the urban Dionysia in March. It was unsuccessful, and the poet partially altered it with the view to a second representation. If it be true that this second representation took place during the year immediately following (B.C. 422 sec Mr. Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 422), it must have been at thi urban Dionysia in March, just at the time when the truce for one year was coming to a close ; for the Wasps was represented in that year at the Lenoean fes- tival, and the same poet would hardly be likely to bring out two plays. The inference which Ranke draws from Nubes 310, that it was represented at the Dionysia, is not, however, very conclusive (Ranke, Commentut. da Aristoph. VitA, p. ccxxi, prelxed to his edition of the Plutus)