Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/203

 ARISTOPHANES. 185 young men ; he was the tutor of Alciblades ; his shiguh^r manners and affected slovenliness had every appearance of quackery ; and, if we add, that he was the only one of the eminent sophists who was an Athenian-born, we shall not wonder that Aristophanes selected him as the representative of the class. The other two principal characters are a father and son. The latter is a general personification of the young profligates of the day, and only wants a little sophistical education to enable him to throw aside every moral restraint. His silly father supplies this defect, and is the first to suffer from the weapon which he has placed in his son's hand. The name of the father, Strepsiades, shows that he is intended as a representative of the class who advocated the change in education^ It does not appear of whom his mask was a por- trait. It is likely that the son, Pheidippides, came forward in the character of Alcibiades, who had the same love for horses, and bore a similar relation to Socrates^: at the same time, the promi- nent part which Alcibiades was beginning to take in public affairs, and the influence he possessed over the young men of his own age, pointed him out as their most adequate representative. With these actors, then, the Clouds was merely a general exhibition of the corrupt state of education at Athens, and of its causes ; it was a loudly uttered protest, on the part of Aristophanes, against the useless and pernicious speculations of the sophists^, and was not intended to pave the way for the accusation which was many years afterwards brought against Socrates as a corrupter of youth, whatever may have been its effect upon the verdict of the Dicasts at the trial. The Clouds appears to have been acted at the great Dionysia^. The Wasps was brought out in the name of Philonides, and performed at the Lena^a, in 422 B.C. As the object of the Clouds was to attack the prevailing vices of the young men of the day, and to stigmatize the love of disputation, which was so prevalent at Athens, and which the sophists did so much to foster, so it was the intention of the Wasps to inveigh against a predominant fault 1 Nuh. 88, 434, 1455. ^ Siivern, uber die WolTcen, p. 33. ^ Siivern has conjectured very ingeniously, that the Xbyo^ ddiKos wore a mask representing Thrasymachus, because his opponent addresses him in v. 890, Kairrep dpaai/i uv, and in v. 915, 6pa<rvs el ttoWov; and that the yos diKULos was Aris- tophanes himself. Uber die Wolken, p. 12, note (3). ^ See Nubes, 311.