Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/16

6 collected and arrive in Sicily immediately after the resumption of active hostilities,. The winter therefore cannot well have commenced later than the beginning of November.

Again, the summer was not ended when Alcibiades was sent for home. Thucydides, after recounting summarily the flight of Alcibiades and has subsequent condemnation as events which succeeded each other at no long interval, proceeds in the 62nd chapter to relate the operations of the two remaining generals, (, the division of the forces into two parts, the expedition to Egesta, the fruitless attempt upon Himera, and capture of Hykkara, the return of Catana, the sale of the captives, the failure before Hybla, &c. for which we must at least allow four or five weeks. And then the summer ended—.

From this I conclude that the Salaminia arrived at Catana with the summons for Alcibiades not later than the beginning of October. The intelligence of his flight would be reported at Athens by that swift-sailing trireme perhaps before the end of the month. His speech at Sparta was probably delivered before the end of January, (vid. Thuc. 88 sqq.)

So far, then, from Aristophanes having any occasion in the middle of March to warn his countrymen against the growing power of Alcibiades at Athens, he had been for five months an exile, had been condemned to death for what appeared to the people in their then temper the most revolting of crimes, and was known to be most zealous in the service of the enemy.

That there should be no further reference throughout the play to an event which must have profoundly affected the Athenian mind, need not surprise us.

It was a subject too dangerous for a jest, and the number of those implicated in the same accusation was too great to admit of its being a fit topic for the buffooneries of comedy in the presence of a miscellaneous audience. I think that the Poet's regard for the success of his piece, and for his own personal safety, would be quite sufficient to deter him from jesting on this subject, therefore I hesitate to accept Droysen's notion (Mus. Rhen. p. 60) that the mention of it was specialy prohibited by the enactment moved by Syracosius, although Meineke ( p. 948) gives in his adhesion. If Droysen's opinion be correct, what