Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/443

421 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 421 nians is a specimen of the youthful vigour of Aristophanes, it appears in the Birds displayed in all its splendour, and with a style, in which a proud flight of imagination is united with the coarsest jocularity and most genial humour. The Birds belongs to a period when the power and dominion of Athens had attained to an extent and splendour which can only be compared to the time about 01. 81, 1. b. c. 456, before the military power of Athens was overthrown in Egypt. Athens had, by the very favourable peace of Nicias, strengthened her authority on the sea and in the coasts of Asia Minor ; had shaken the policy of the Peloponnese by skilful intrigues ; had brought her revenues to the highest point they ever attained ; and finally had formed the plan of extending her authority by sea and on the coasts, over the western part of the Mediterranean, by the expedition to Sicily, which had commenced under the most favourable, auspices. The disposition of the Athenians at this period is known to us from Thucydides : they allowed their demagogues and soothsayers to conjure up before them the most brilliant visionary prospects ; hence- forth nothing appeared unattainable; people gave themselves up, in general, to the intoxication of extravagant hopes. The hero of the day was Alcibiades, with his frivolity, his presumption, and that union of a calculating understanding with a bold, unfettered imagination, for which he was so distinguished ; and even when he was lost to Athens by the unfortunate prosecution of the Hermocopidfe, the disposition which he had excited still survived for a considerable time. It was at this time that Aristophanes composed his Birds. In order ■"to comprehend this comedy in its connexion with the events of the day, and, on the other hand, not to attribute to it more than it really con- tains, it is especially necessary to take a rigorous and exact view of the action of the piece. Two Athenians, Peisthetarus and Euelfddes t (whom we may call Agitator and Hope-good,) are sick and tired of the restless life at Athens, and the number of law-suits there, and have wandered out into the wide world in search of Hoopoo, an old mytho- logical kinsman of the Athenians* They soon find him in a rocky desert, where the whole host of birds assemble at the call of Hoopoo : for some time they are disposed to treat the two strangers of human race as national enemies ; but are at last induced, on the recommendation of Hoopoo, to give them a hearing. Upon this, Agitator lays before them his grand ideas about the primeval sovereignty of the birds, the important rights and privileges they have lost, and how they ought to win them all back again by founding a great city for the whole race of birds : and this would remind the spectators of the plan of centralization, (irvvoi- Pandiou's daughter Procne, and was turned into a hoopoo, his wife being meta- morphosed into a nightingale.
 * It is said to have been, in fact, the Thracian king Tereus, who had married