Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/202

 184 ARISTOPHANES. after the death of Cleon ; and it is conjectured that it did not appear till after the exhibition of the Lysistrata in 411 B. c.^ It will not be expected that we should here ennmerate the various opinions which have been entertained of the object of Aristophanes in writing this Comedy 2, or that we should enter upon a new and detailed examination of the piece. We must, on the present occa- sion, be content with stating briefly and generally, what we conceive to have been the design of the poet. In the Wasps, which was written the year after the first ill-success of the Clouds, he calls this Comedy an attack upon the prevailing vices of the young men of his day^. Now, if we turn to the Clouds, we shall see that he not only does this, but also inves- tigates the causes of the corrupt state of the Athenian youth ; and this he asserts to have arisen from the changes introduced into the national education by the sophists, by the substitution of sophis- tical for rhapsodical instruction. The hero of the piece is Socrates, who was, in the judgment of Aristophanes, a sophist to all intents and purposes. We do not think it necessary to deny that Socrates was a well-meaning man, and in many respects a good citizen ; we are disposed to believe that he was, not because Plato and Xenophon have represented him as such (in their justification of his character, each of them is but tarpon aWcov avro^ eXKeat ^pv(i)v), but because Aristophanes has brought no specific charges against him, as far as his intentions are concerned. But Socrates was an innovator in education ; he approved, perhaps assisted in the corruptions which Euripides introduced into Tragedy ; he was the pupil and the friend of several of the sophists ; it was in his character of dialectician that he was courted by the ambitious 1 Ranke, chapters xxviii. and XL. 2 We refer the reader who wishes to study this subject minutely and accurately to Hermann, Prcefat. ad Nubes, xxxii — liv ; Wolf's Introduction to his German translation of the play ; Reisig, Prcefat. ad Nubes, viii — xxx, and his Essay in the Klieinhches Museum for 1828, pp. 191 and 464; Mitchell's and Welcker's Introduc- tions to their Translations of Aristophanes ; Ranke, Comment, chapters XLi. — XLiv, ; SUvern's Essay ; and Miiller, Hist. Lit. Gr. ii, pp. 33, new ed. sqq. Rotscher has given a general statement of some of these opinions in his Aristophanes und sein Zeitalter, pp. -294 — 391, which he follows up with his own not very intelligible view of the question, 3 vv. 1037 f^l^- ' 'AXV vTT^p vixdv in koI vvvl TroXepie?. (prjffiu re ixer' avrov Tots Tj-maXois evLxet-pvcaL iripvcTLV koI rois TrvperoXaiv Ot Toi/s Trarepas r' 957x01' viJKTup Kol Toi>s irdTrirovs aireirvLyov, KaTaKip6fM€voi t' eVt rats Koirais eirl Totcnv dxpdyfMoaLU v/nQv 'Ai>Tix}fxocrLas Kal TrpoaKXrjaeLs /cat fxaprvplas auveKoWuv, k.t.X.