Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/199

 fore, to reject the latter altogether, and take the former as the only means we have of approximating to the birth-year of Aristophanes, which, if he was or nearly seventeen in 427 B.C., must have been about the year 444 The Banqueters, which was acted in the name of Philonides , was an exposition of the corruptions which had crept into the Athenian system of education. A father was introduced with two sons, one of them educated in the old-fashioned way, the other brought up in all the new-fangled and pernicious refinements of sophistry; and by drawing a comparison between the two young- men to the disadvantage of the latter, the poet hoped to attract the attention of his countrymen to the dangers and inconveniences of the new system>. The second prize was awarded to Philonides, and the play was much admired. In 426 he brought out the Babylonians, and, in the following spring, the Acharmans, both under the name of his actor Callistratus. The latter gained the first prize, the second and third being adjudged to Cratinus and Eupolis. The chorus of the Balylonians consisted of barbarian slaves employed in the mills : this is all that we know of the plot of the piece. It appears to have been acted at the great Dionysia, and to have been an attack upon the demagogues; for Cleon, who was then (Pericles having recently died) at the head of afiiars , brought an before the senate against Callistratus, on the grounds that he had satirized the public functionaries in the presence of their allies, who were then at Athens to pay the tribute.