Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/448

426 426 HISTORY OF THE of his fellow citizens than a mode of reasoning like that in Euripides, which brings all things before its tribunal, and, as it were, makes every- thing dependent on the doubtful issue of a trial. But Aristophanes is wrong in reproaching Euripides personally with a tendency which exer- cised such an irresistible influence on his age in general. If it was the aim of the comedian to bring back the Athenian public to that point of literary taste when TEschylus was fully sufficient for them, it would have been necessary for him to be able to lock the wheels of time, and to screw back the machinery which propelled the mind in its forward progress. We should not omit to mention the political references which occa- sionally appear by the side of the literary contents of this comedy. Aristophanes maintains his position of opponent to the violent demo- crats : he attacks the demagogue Cleophon, then in the height of his power : in the parabasis he recommends the people, covertly but sig- nificantly enough, to make peace with and be reconciled to the persecuted oligarchs, who had ruled over Athens during the time of the Four hundred ; recognizing, however, the inability of the people to save them- selves from the ruin which threatens them by their own power and pru- dence, he hints that they should submit to the mighty genius of Alcibi- ades, though he was certainly no old Athenian according to the ideal of Aristophanes : this suggestion is contained in two remarkable verses, which he puts into the mouth of ^Eschylus : — " 'Twere best to rear no Hon in the state, But when 'tis done, his will must not be thwarted ;" — a piece of advice which would have been more in season had it been delivered ten years earlier. § 11. Aristophanes is the only one of the great Athenian poets who survived the Peloponnesian war, in the course of which Sophocles and Euripides, Cratinus and Eupolis, had all died. We find him still writing for the stage for a series of years after the close of the war. His Ecclesiazuscv was probably brought out in 01. 96, 4. b. c, 392 : it is a piece of wild drollery, but based upon the same political creed which Aristophanes had professed for thirty years. Democracy had been restored in its worst features ; the public money was again expended for private purposes ; the demagogue Agyrrhius was catering for the people by furnishing them with pay for their at- tendance in the public assembly ; and the populace were following to- day one leader, and to-morrow another. In this state of affairs, ac- cording to the fiction of Aristophanes, the women resolve to take upon themselves the whole management of the city, and carry their point by appearing in the assembly in men's clothes, principally "because this was the only thing that had not yet been attempted at Athens ;"* and
 * Ecclcsiaz. y. 456. T&I-au yko tovto /uovov h t7i -xixa