Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/23

 The Birds of Aristophanes. 13 We may observe that in these anecdotes literary men assume an importance which they by no means held in the estimation of their contemporaries. Literature magnifies its office unduly. That Gorgias was ever a prominent personage in the eyes of the Athenian people, we have no proof. The imrdcpios yos of which we read, was probably a rhetorical exercise never spoken at any real funeral. At Athens such an office was, so far as we know, never assigned to any but an illustrious citizen. Still less is there any ground for the supposition that it was spoken over the Athenians who fell at Orneae, 415 B.C.* It is not even proved that any Athenians fell at all (cf. Thuc. vi. 7). Gorgias is only twice mentioned in Aristophanes, both times in conjunction with one Philippus, of whom nothing more is known, once cursorily in the " Wasps" (421), and again in this play, to which I shall refer presently. He was, at all events, a foreigner, and Peisthetaerus and his companion expressly claim to be true Athenians, bred and born (33, 34) : rjiieis fie (pvXfj kcu yevei rifidfievot aoroi ixT du ov aoftovvTos ovdevos dv7rr6fMecrB' ck ttjs 7rarpi8os dfKpolv noBoiv. Again, in 1700 sqq., the chorus denounces in a parenthetic song, the teachers of rhetoric, who fill their belly with their tongue ; /3apj3apoi 8' elalv yevos Topyiai re /cat &L nroi, and imme- diately after, greets the triumphant Peisthetaerus with an enthu- siastic epithalamium. What more convincing proof could we have of the fact that Peisthetaerus and Gorgias are not at all connected in the idea of the poet, or meant to be connected in that of the spectators ? The whole question may be thus briefly summed up : Peis- thetaerus is an Athenian, therefore he is not Gorgias ; Peisthetae- rus is an elderly man, therefore he is not Alcibiades ; therefore he is neither one nor the other. " Therefore," says Siivern, " he is both:" a conclusion which common logic and common sense utterly repudiate. But Prof. Siivern will tell us, that Gorgias and Alcibiades had the sophistical element in common, which is reproduced in Peisthetaerus. words (Vit. Soph. 1. 9) eip-qraL yJkv iwl mentioned in the oration. roh iK tQp ToXifiup Treaovcnv seems
 * The vagueness of Philostratus's to shew that no particular battle was