Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/205

 ARISTOPHANES. 187 cliorus, and assist the liero in pulling Peace from the pit into which she had been thrown by the Damon of War. After this rescue is accomplished, the rest of the play is merely a series of cheerful sketches, which were doubtless very entertaining to the spectators, but do not afford much gratification to the modern reader, or furnish the best specimen of the genius of Aristophanes. In the year 414 B.C., Aristophanes produced two Comedies; the Amj>hia7'aus, which appeared at the Lenasa, under the name of Philonides; and the Birds, which came out at the great Dionysia, under the name of Callistratus. The objects of these two plays appear to have been the same. The former was named after one of the seven chiefs who led the Argive army against Thebes, and was always foretelling the misfortunes which attended that expedition. In this he corresponded to Nicias, who in the same manner foretold the disastrous termination of the expedition which had sailed for Syracuse the year before ; and Aristophanes no doubt took this oppor- tunity of warning his countrymen against the dangers into which their compliance with the wishes of Alcibiades Avould lead them^. The Birds, which is certainly one of the most wonderful compo- sitions in any language, was designed, we think, in conjunction with the Amjjluaraus, to parody and ridicule the Em'ipidean Tri- logy, which came out the year before^. The Athenians are repre- sented as a set of gaping foolish birds, persuaded by the extrava- gant promises of a couple of designing adventurers to set up a city in the clouds, and to declare war against the gods. In this carica- ture we easily recognize a ridicule of the extravagant schemes of universal rule which Alcibiades had formed, and which might well be called castle-building in the air ; and the termination of the play, in which the chief adventurer is represented as making a supper off his subjects, points clearly to what the Athenians had to expect from the success of an ambitious plan, conceived by an uncompro- mising aspirant after sovran power. According to Slivern's inge- nious explanation of the play, the names of the two heroes of the piece, Peisthetcerus and Euelj^ides, whom we have elsewhere angli- cized as Messrs. Agitator and Hopegood, point at once to the ob- jects of this satirical delineation. The former is a combination of the two great moving causes of the expedition to Syracuse, Gor- 1 Slivern's Essay on the Birds, p. 77, Engl. Tr. 2 See above, p. 147.