Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/432

410 410 HISTORY OF THE robust old fellows, hearts of oak, martial by their disposition, and espe- cially incensed against the Pelopohnesians, who had destroyed all the vineyards in their first invasion of Attica. These old Acharnians at first appear in pursuit of Amphitheus, who, they hear, has gone to Sparta to bring treaties of peace : in his stead, they fall in with Dicae- opolis, who is engaged in celebrating the festival of the country Dionysia, here represented as an abstract of every sort of rustic merri- ment and jollity, from which the Athenians at that time Avere debarred. The chorus no sooner learns from the phallus-song of Dicoeopolis, that he is the person who has sent for the treaties, than they fall upon him in the greatest rage, refuse to hear a word from him, and are going to stone him to death without the least compunction, when Dicseopolis seizes a charcoal-basket, and threatens to punish it as a hostage for all that the Acharnians do to himself. The charcoal-basket, which the Acharnians needed for their every-day occupations, is so dear to their hearts that they are willing, for its sake, to listen to Dicreopolis ; espe- cially as he has promised to speak with his head on a block, on condi- tion that he shall be beheaded at once if he fails in his defence. All this is amusing enough in itself, but becomes additionally ludicrous when we remember that the whole of Dicreopolis's behaviour is an imitation of one of the heroes of Euripides, the rhetorical and plaintive Telephus, who snatched the infant Orestes from his cradle and threatened to put him to death, unless Agamemnon would listen to him, and was exposed to the same danger when he spoke before the Achseans as Dicseopolis is when he argues with the Acharnians. Aristophanes pursues this parody still farther, as it furnishes him with the means of exaggerating the situation of Dicaeopolis in a very comic manner ; Dica?opolis applies to Euripides himself, (who is shown to the spectators by means of an eccyclema, in his garret, surrounded by masks and cos- tumes, such as he was fond of employing for his tragic heroes,) and begs of him the most piteous of his dresses, upon which he obtains the most deplorable of them all, that of Telephus. We pass over other mockeries of Euripides, in which Aristophanes indulges from pure wantonness, and turn to the following scene, one of the chief scenes in the piece, in which Dicfeopolis, in the character of a comic Telephus, and with his head over the block, pleads for peace with the Spartans. It is obvious, that however seriously Aristophanes embraced the cause of the peace-party, he does not on this occasion speak one word in serious earnest. He derives the whole Peloponnesian war from a bold frolic on the part of some drunken young men, who had carried off a harlot from Megara, in reprisal for which the Megarians had seized on some of the attendants of Aspasia. As this explanation is not satisfac- tory, and the chorus even summons to its assistance the warlike La- machus, avIio rushes from his house in extravagant military cos-