Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/441

419 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 419 the eyes of any one who is unable to surrender himself to the delusion under which Aristophanes appears to have laboured. § 6. The following year (01. 89, 2. b.c. 422) brought the Wasps of Aristophanes on the stage. The Wasps is so connected with the Clouds, that it is impossible to mistake a similarity of design in the development of certain thoughts in each. The Clouds, especially in its original form, was directed against the young Athenians, who, as wrangling tricksters, vexed the simple inoffensive citizens of Athens by bringing them against their will into the law-courts. The Wasps is aimed at the old Athe- nians, who took their seats day after day in great masses as judges, and being compensated for their loss of time by the judicial fees established by Pericles, gave themselves up entirely to the decision of the causes, which had become infinitely multiplied by the obligation on the allies to try their suits at Athens, and by the party spirit in the state itself: whereby these old people had acquired far too surly and snarling a spirit, to the great damage of the accused. There are two persons opposed to one another in this piece ; the old Phi/ocleon, who has given up the management of his affairs to his son, and devoted himself entirely to his office of judge (in consequence of which he pays the profoundest respect to Cleon, the patron of the popular courts); and his son Bdelycleon, who has a horror of Cleon and of the severity of the courts in general. It is very remarkable how entirely the course of the action between these two characters corresponds to that in the Clouds, so that we can hardly mistake the intention of Aristophanes to make one piece the counterpart of the other. The irony of fate, which the aged Strepsiades experiences, when that which had been the greatest object of his wishes, namely, to have his son thoroughly imbued with the rhetorical fluency of the Sophists, soon turns out to be the greatest misfortune to him, — is precisely the same with the irony of which the young Bdelycleon is the object in the Wasps ; for, after having directed all his efforts towards curing his father of his mania for the profession of judge, and having actually suc- ceeded in doing so, (partly by establishing a private dicasterion at home, and partly by recommending to him the charms of a fashionable luxurious life, such, as the young Athenians of rank were attached to,) he soon bitterly repents of the metamorphosis which he has effected, since the old man, by a strange mixture of his old-fashioned rude manners with the luxury of the day, allows his dissoluteness to carry him much farther than Bdelycleon had either expected or desired. The Wasps is undoubtedly one of the most perfect of the plays of Aristophanes.* We have already remarked upon the happy invention is inferior to the other comedies of Aristophanes, and we entirely approve of the warm apology by Mr. Mitchell, in his edition of the Wasps, 1835, the object of which has unfortunately prevented the editor from giving the comedy in its full proportions. 2 e 2
 * AVc cannot by any means accept . W. von Schlegel's judgment, that this play