Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/17

Rh become of Süvern's? His theory is then not only contrary to probability, and (as I have shewn) disproved by chronology, but absolutely prohibited by law. We have already convicted him of, We may now file a.

I proceed briefly to examine some of the principal details of Süvern's allegory.

1. "The Birds represent the Athenian people."

According to my view, the Birds represent the Birds, and nothing else. There is positively no reason for supposing that the scene represented the Athenian Pnyx, except the occurrence of the word ! In lines 10 and 11 we are expressly told that Attica was not even visible; Euelpides says (30 sqq.) that he an his companion have left Athens in search of a quiet life. When the Herald returns to announce the reception of his message by mankind, it is its effect at Athens on which he especially dwells (1277 sqq.)

Again, the Birds (as Süvern has himself remarked) are frequently proposed as models for men in genera and Athenians in particular.

These multiplied incongruities do not disturb the Professor. His is the most "headstrong" allegory" on record. The said incongruities were intended, it seems, "to throw a veil over the fundamental idea of the poem." Truly the veil is so thick that I am sure not one of the ten thousand spectators could see through it.

Whether is it more probably that Aristophanes, after constructing an elaborate allegory, intentionally and deliberately violated and falsified it in a hundred instances, or that he sketched a general plot, the scene of which being in fairy-land admitted all kinds of fantastic vagaries, and then gave full play to his imagination and allowed his fun to run riot? On the latter hypothesis, the inconsistencies are natural, on the former, unaccountable.

2. "The Gods represent the Spartans and Peloponnesians, together with the principal states in alliance with them."

Because, forsooth, "the balance of power was leaning to the Spartan side," and, "the political weight and credit of the Athenians was sunken by the defeats at Oropus and Delium, and by the advances made by the Spartans on the frontiers of Thrace."