Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/206

 188 ARISTOPHANES. gias, and Alcibiades^: the age of Master Agitator, his eloquence, his being a stranger, and his sophistical harangues, may remind us of Gorgias, and Callistratus may have worn a mask which was a portrait of the Leontine ambassador ; at the same time, the promi- nent part which Alcibiades took in the affair, and the notorious fact that he was the head of an extensive club {eratpia) at Athens, would point to him as also represented by Peisthetserus^; and Euelpides may have personified those confident citizens, who, full of hope for the future {eveKiriBe^^), willingly undertook the expedition*. This allegorical interpretation of the Comedy will hardly bear the test of a critical examination^; but there can be little doubt that it contains a great deal of truth, and the general reference of the Birds to the unfortunate Sicilian expedition may be regarded as more or less an admitted fact. In the Comedies, which have been considered up to this point, the genius of Aristophanes appears under all the advantages which it was certain to derive from the support of a vigorous democracy, and from the unimpaired opulence and prosperity of Athens. But the Sicilian expedition, which the Birds had taken for its theme, came to a disastrous issue in B.C. 413, and speedily produced its effect both on the democratic government and on the political power of the great Attic republic. Here we commence the second period in the literary history of Aristophanes, when his poetical powers were unimpaired, but when he had neither the same ma- terials to work upon, nor the same external support, on which he could rely. In this period he exhibited three plays, the Lysistrata, the Thesmophoriazusm^ and the Frogs. The first two were repre- sented in B.C. 411, when the democracy had been obliged to accept certain modifications in the form of TrpojBovKoi, and a council of 400. The third play of this period was acted in B. c. 405, in the interval between the battles of Arginus^e and ^gos-Potami. The Lysistrata, which appeared in the name of Callistratus, is a coarse and laughable recommendation of peace. The women of the ^ Siivern, pp. 31 fol. Engl. Tr. 2 Thucyd. vi. 13: comp. Goller's notes upon iii. 82; viii. 54; and Arnold's Thucyd. Vol. III. p. 414. 3 Thucyd. VI. 24 : ed^Xindes 6vt€s awd-qaeadai. ^ In addition to Suvern's Essay, we must refer tlie curious reader to Droysen's Essay on the Birds, in the Rhein. Mus. for 1835, pp. 161. fol. 5 The theory of Siivern is combated by Mr W. G. Clark, now Public Orator at Cambi'idge, in a very able paper which appeared in the Journal of Philology, Vol. I. pp. 1-20.