Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/428

406 406 HISTORY OF THE brought the new piece before the public. The comic poets likewise retained for a longer period a custom, which Sophocles was the first to discontinue on the tragic stage, that the poet and chorus-teacher should also appear as the protagonist or chief actor in his own piece. This will explain what Aristophanes says in the parabasis of the Clouds, that his muse at first exposed her children, because, as a maiden, she dared not acknowledge their birth, and that another damsel had taken them up as her own ; while the public, which could not be long in recognizing the real author, had nobly brought up and educated the foundlings* Aristophanes handed over his earlier pieces, and some of the later ones too, either to Philonides or to Callistratus, two chorus teachers, with whom he was intimate, and who were at the same time poets and actors ; and these persons produced them on the stage. The ancient grammarians state that he transferred to Callistratus the political dramas, and to Philonides those which related to private life.f It was these persons who applied for the chorus from the archon, who pro- duced the piece on the stage, and, if it was successful, received the prize, of which we have several examples in the didascaliae ; in fact, every- thing was done as if they had been the real authors, although the dis- criminating public could not have failed to discover whether the real author of the piece Avas the newly-risen genius of Aristophanes or the well-known and hacknied Callistratus. § 2. The ancients themselves did not know whether Philonides or Callistratus brought out the Dsetaleis, the first of his plays, which was performed in 01. 88, 1. b. c. 427. % The Fcasters, who formed the chorus in this piece, were conceived as a company of revellers who had banqueted in a temple of Hercules, (in whose worship eating and drink- ing bore a prominent part,§) and were engaged in witnessing a contest between the old frugal and modest system of education and the frivolous and talkative education of modern times, in the persons of two young men, Temperate ( pwi') and Profligate (VuO-a7ruywi'.) Brother Profligate was represented, in a dialogue between him and his aged father, as a despiser of Homer, as accurately acquainted with legal ex- pressions, (in order, of course, to employ them in pettifogging quibbles,) and as a zealous partizan of the sophist Thrasymachus, and of Alcibiades the leader of the frivolous youth of the day. || In his riper years, ahstained from £» ? «v al-nTf xaff 1 avrov.. In the parabasis of the Wasps, he compares himself to a ventriloquist who had before spoken through others. t So the anonym, de comedia apud Kustcr. The Vita Avistop>hanis has the contrary statement, but merely from an error, as is shown by various examples. + Sc'hol. on the Clouds, 531. § Midler's Dorians, II. 12. § 10. which has been recently freed from some corruptions which disfigured it. See Dindorf Aristoph. Fraymenta. Da?t:J. I.
 * Compare the Knights, 513, where he says that many considered he had too long
 * In the important fragment preserved by Galen 'ifrvxgccrw; yZ<nrai Proeenihtm ,