Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/445

423 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 423 way.* Besides, it is very difficult to believe that Agitator and Hopegood were intended to represent any Athenian statesmen in particular; the chief rulers of the people at that time could not possibly have shown themselves diametrically opposed, as Agitator does, to the judicial and legislative system, and to the sycophancy of the Athenians. But accord- ing to the poet's express declaration, they are Athenians, the genuine off- spring of Athens, and it is clear, that in these two characters, he in- tended to give two perfect specimens of the Athenians of the day; the one is an intriguing projector, a restless, inventive genius, who knows how to give a plausible appearance to the most irrational schemes; the other is an honest, credulous fool, who enters into the follies of his companion with the utmost simplicity. t Consequently, the whole piece is a satire on Athenian frivolity and credulity, on that building of castles in the air, and that dreaming expectation of a life of luxury and ease to which the Athenian people gave themselves up in the mass : but the satire is so general, there is so little of anger and bitterness, so much of fantastic humour in it, that no comedy could make a more agreeable and harmless impression. We must, in this, dissent entirely from the opinion of the Athenian judges, who, though they crowned the Knights, awarded only the second prize to the Birds ; it seems that they were better able to appreciate the force of a violent personal attack than the creative fulness of comic originality. § 9. We have two plays of Aristophanes which came out in 01. 92, 1. b.c. 411, (if our chronological data are correct,) the Lysistrata and the Thesmophoriazusa. A didasealia, which has come down to us, assigns the Lysistrata to this year, in which, after the unfortunate issue of the Sicilian expedition, the occupation of Deceleia by the Spartans, and their subsidiary treaty with the king of Persia, the war began to press heavily upon the Athenians. At the same time the constitution of Athens had fallen into a fluctuating state, which ended in an oligarchy : a board of commissioners, (vpofltmhoi,) consisting of men of the greatest rank and consideration, superintended all the affairs of state; and, a few months after the representation of the Thesmophoriazusse, began the rule of the Four hundred. Aristophanes, who had all along been attached to the peace-party, which consisted of the thriving landed proprietors, now gave himself up entirely to his longing for peace, as if all civic rule and harmony in the state must necessarily be restored by a cessation from war. In the Lysistrata this longing for peace is exhibited in a farcical form, which is almost without a parallel for extravagant indecency ; the Acropolis, with the worship of Minerva Polias, the Pelasgian wall, &c.) provi a nothing but this, that the Athenians, wlm plan the city, made use of names common at home, as was always the custom in colonies. f We may remark that Euelpides oalj remains on the stage till the plan of Nephelococcygia is formed : after that, the poet has no further employment for him.
 * That several points applicable to Athens occur in the Cloudcookootown (the