Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/207

 ARISTOPHAXES. 189 belligerent nations, woni out by tlie miseries of the protracted war- fare, combine against the men, seize the acropolis of Athens, and starve the nobler sex into mutual reconciliation by cutting them off from domestic life and connubial felicity. The play is full of talent, and is replete with wit and humour. But its grossness is offensive. The political ingredient is greatly diminished in extent and importance. And the ^yarahasis, or direct appeal to the audi- ence, is for the first time omitted. If the men of Athens had any reason to be offended by the pro- minent part which the Lysistrata had assigned to their help-mates, they were avenged in the Thesmophoriazusce^ which appeared in the same year. This play, which begins with a satirical caricature of the effeminate Agathon and the woman-hater Euripides, and exhibits throughout an extravagant humour worthy of the best Comedies of the first period, is mainly occupied with an exposure of the moral corruption and depravity of the Athenian women. The chorus has very little to do, and there is no parahasis. Politics are almost ex- cluded, and with the exception of the ridicule thrown on Em'ipides and Agathon, there is no personal satire. There was a second ver- sion of the Thesmophoriazusce {QeafjLocpopLa^ovaac Sevrepai), which appears from the fragments to have had much the same subject as the extant play. The Frogs was exhibited at the Lena?a in B.C. 405, under the name of Philonides, and won the first piize from the Muses of Phrynichus, and the CleopJion of Plato. The leading object of this admirable play is dramatic criticism, but the political element is by no means excluded. The demagogue Cleophon, who gave his name to the rival Comedy of Plato, and who was then in great power at Athens, is directly and violently attacked^; the play has a parahasis, in which the poet recommends his audience to make peace with the discarded faction of the Four Hundred^ ; and he even goes so far as to hint the propriety of their recalling Alcibiades, and submitting to his capricious genius 3. The plot of the Comedy is very striking. Dionysus, the god of the Athenian drama, being ^ vv. 679 — 685, 1504, 532. 2 689 : Kd TLS 7Jfjt.apT€ cr0aXets rt ^pvpix^^ TraXatafxaaLV iyyeviadaL (pTj/J.i XPW°'-'- ''"O'S oXiadovaLv roTe airiav iKdeifft Xvaai ras Trpbrepov ap-aprias. '^ V. 1432 : fxaXiara p-h Xiovra p.T] V TroXei rpecpetv, TjV 5' eKTp€(pT] T(S, TOtS TpOTTOlS VTnjpcTeiv.