Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/437

415 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 415 come before Demus himself, who takes his seat on the Pnyx, and sue for the favour of the childish old man. Combined with serious re- proaches directed against Cleon's whole system of policy, we have a number of joking contrivances, as when the sausage-seller places a cushion under the Demus, in order that he may not gall that which sat by the oar at Salamis.* The contest at last turns upon the oracles, to which Clcon used to appeal in his public speeches, (and we know from Thucydides f how much the people were influenced throughout the Pelo- ponnesian war by the oracles and predictions attributed to the ancient prophets ;) in this department, too, the sausage-seller outbids his rival by producing announcements of the greatest comfort to the Demus, and ruin to his opponent. As a merry supplement to these long-spun transactions, we have a scene which must have been highly entertaining to eye and ear alike : the Paphlagonian and the sausage-seller sit down as eating-house keepers (kcj7tjjo0 at two tables, on which a number of hampers and eat- ables are set out, and bring one article after the other to the Demus with ludicrous recommendations of their excellences ; in this, too, the sausage- seller of course pays his court to the Demus more successfully than his rival. After a second parabasis we see the Demus — whom the sausage- seller has restored to youth by boiling him in his kettle, as Medea did ./Eson — in youthful beauty, but attired in the old-fashioned splendid cos- tume, shining with peace and contentment, and in his new state of mind heartily ashamed of his former absurdities. § 5. In the following year we find Aristophanes (after a fresh suit § in which Cleon had involved him) bringing out the Clouds, and so entering upon an entirely new field of comedy. He had himself made up his mind to take a new and peculiar flight with this piece. The public and the judges, however, determined otherwise; it was not Aris- tophanes but the aged Cratinus who obtained the first prize. The young poet, who had believed himself secure against such a slight, uttered some warm reproaches against the public in his next play ; he was in- duced, however, by this decision to revise his piece, and it is tin's rifarcimento (which deviates considerably from the original form) that has come down to us.|| There, is hardly any work of antiquity which it is so difficult to J The two eating houses are represented by an eceyclema, us is clear from the conclusion of the scene. $ See the Wasps, V. 1284. According to the Vita Aristoph. the poet had to stand three suits from Clcon touching his rights as a citizen. it wanted the contest of the VtK'uo; and uiir.o; xiyas, and the burning of the school at the end. It is also probable, from Diog. Laert. ii. 18, (notwithstanding all 'he confusions which he lias made.) that, in the iirst Clouds, Socrates was brought into connexion with Euripides, and was declared to have had a share in the tragedies of the latter.
 * "'la. ( //3*)$ <rh h ZccXapTvi. v. 785. f Jhucyd. ii. 54. viii. 1.
 * The first Clouds had) according to a definite tradition, a different parabasis ;