Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/201

 ARISTOPHANES. 183 custom of smearing the face with wine-lees^; and, as Cleon is represented in the pLiy as a great drunkard, the substitute was probably adequate to the occasion. The Comedy is an allegorical caricature of the broadest kind, showing how the eminent generals and statesmen, ^icias and Demosthenes, with the aid of the koXoI KayaOoL among the citizens, delivered the Athenian John Bull from the clutches of the son of Cleasnetus, and effected a marvellous change in the temper and external appearance of their doting master. This is expressed in a wonderfully ingenious manner. The instrument they use is one Agoracritus, who is called a sausage-seller {dWavToirooXrjs:) . Now there lived, at this time, a celebrated sculptor of that name, who, having made for the Athe- nians a most beautiful statue of Venus which they could not buy, transformed it into a representation of Xemesis, and sold it to the Rhamnusians^. It is this Agoracritus, who, by a play upon the words oKkciG-creiv and dWd^, is called a transformation-monger in regard to the People : he changes the easy good-tempered old man into a punisher of the guilty — a laughing Venus into a frowning Xemesis ; — he metamorphoses tlie ill-clad unseemly Demus of the Pnyx into a likeness of the beautiful Demus, the son of Pyrilampes the Rhamnusian, just as Agoracritus transferred to Rhamnus a statue destined for Athens. It seems to have been in consequence of this attack that Cleon made the unsuccessful attempt (to which we have already alluded) to deprive Aristophanes of his civic rights. The next recorded Comedy of Aristophanes is the Clouds, the most celebrated and perhaps the most elaborately finished, as it is certainly the most serious, of his remaining plays. When he first submitted it to the judges, the plays of Cratinus and Ameip- sias, who were his competitors, were honoured with the first and second prizes. This was in the year 423 B. c. ; and it is probable that Aristophanes, indignant at his unexpected ill-success, with- drew the play, and did not bring it out till some years afterwards, when he added something to the parahasis, and perhaps made a few other alterations. The author of the argument and the Scho- liast refer the second edition to the year 422 B. c. ; but it has been shown from the mention of the Maricas of Eupolis, and other internal evidences, that it could not have been acted till some years ^ Schol. Eqq. 230. See ubovo, p. 73. ^ riin. IL N. xxxvi. 4.