phanes lived but a few years more.

The latest period

assumed as the date of his death is B. C. 380.

Aristophanes, very early in life, came into violent conflict with the demagogues, who had risen to power after the death of Pericles. One of the most noted popular favorites of the times was Cleon, who is known to us, not only by the witty exaggerations of the comic poets, but by the accurate historical delineation of Thucydides. For about six years of the Peloponnesian war, this brawler stood at the head of the party opposed to peace. He was a man of low origin, a tanner by trade, but well qualified by his natural shrewdness, his impudence, his power of coarse invective against better men, his violent and cruel disposition, his fluent speech and vulgar manners, to be the favorite of the populace. When Mitylene surrendered to the Athenian forces, B. C. 427, he was the author of a decree that all the adult males should be put to death, and the women and children sold into slavery; but the sober second thought of the people saved them from this great crime, and the decree was rescinded the next day. With this mighty representative of the worst portion of the Athenian democracy Aristophanes commenced a warfare, in which he put forth all the energies of his wit and his genius. At the Dionysiac festival of the following spring, B. C. 426, he brought out his Babylonians, in which he assailed Cleon, and boldly satirized the democracy. This was a daring attempt, and Cleon was not long in devising measures for vengeance. It seems that the father of Aristophanes possessed estates in Ægina and Rhodes, and that affairs of business frequently called him thither. Possibly,

therefore, the youth of the poet may have been passed away from Athens.* These circumstances were seized upon by Cleon, and made the basis of a prosecution

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cessful, would have silenced the

for ever.

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terrible wit of the poet

The comedy of The Knights was brought upon the stage B. C. 424. The corruptions of the ecclesia are exposed in this piece, and the character of Cleon, who appears as one of the persons of the drama, is drawn with wonderful power. He is again held up to ridicule in The Wasps (exhibited B. C. 422), a drama which gives a masterly and most amusing picture of the Athenian courts, and the passion of the people for litigation. These are the principal passages in the warfare between the poet and the demagogue.

Aristophanes is said to have written above sixty comedies, of which eleven are extant. Ten of these belong to the old comedy, and one, the Plutus, to the new.

Besides their poetical merits, the works of Aristophanes are of great historical value. He was a conservative, strongly opposed to the political, literary, and moral tendencies of his age. In the delineation of characters, he used the unscrupulous exaggerations which were common to all the writers of the ancient comedy. The names of prominent men, whether in politics, philosophy, or poetry, were brought forward with the most unhesitating freedom, and

*Bode thinks he may have been born abroad. Geschichte der Hellenischen Dichtkunst, Vol. III. Part II. p. 219.

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their conduct was handled with a severity that showed as little regard for individual rights and the claims of private character as is exhibited by the modern political press. To the credit of Aristophanes it must be said, that, with few exceptions, the individuals selected by him for attack were persons deserving the reprobation of honest men. The principal exceptions to this remark are Euripides and Socrates, especially the latter. upon Euripides were justified by the influence of some of that poet's writings upon the morals of the age, it is impossible now to determine with a satisfactory degree of probability.

How far the bitter sarcasms

The conflict waged by Aristophanes against the sophists was one of no less importance than that against the demagogues. The comedy of The Clouds, in which the main points of the contest are embodied, is, for many reasons, one of the most interesting remains of the theatrical literature of Athens. Though, like every other comedy, its wit turns upon local and temporary relations, it has, what is not common to every other comedy, a moral import of permanent value. It was written at a time of great changes in the national character of the Greeks, and bears marks of its author's determined opposition to the new ethical and philosophical views that were eating into the very heart of the national virtues. The Peloponnesian war had for eight years been desolating the fair fields of Greece; a war

*For a discussion of the relation between Aristophanes and the most eminent of his contemporaries, see Rötscher's Aristophanes und sein Zeitalter, pp. 212-294.

in which, whatever party gained the victory, the losses and the woes of defeat fell upon Greeks; let success alight where it would, its effects were disastrous to the Hellenic race. One public calamity usually accompanies another; and when the ancient virtue of Athens was unnerved, the sophists flocked from every side to batten on the vices of that giddy-paced capital. No class of men known to history have ever been so worthy of the execrations of the world as the Greek sophists of that age, except, perhaps, the philosophers - those birds of evil omen whose boding

cries foretold the storms of the French Revolution.

A clear-headed and honorable citizen must have looked upon the unprincipled teachings of these reprobates with abhorrence, and, if he were a man of genius, he would task his powers to the utmost for the purpose of putting down the moral nuisance. In modern times, such a man would resort to the press as the mightiest engine to aid him in waging the holy warfare. In ancient Attic days, he resorted to the comic stage. The freedom of the old comic theatre, before the bloody reign of the Thirty, was to the Athenians what the freedom of the press is to the modern constitutional states; and the restraints imposed upon the comic theatre by that formidable oligarchy were precisely the same thing as the censorship of the press is under modern despotisms. Aristophanes was the great master of ancient comedy, and, when he saw the progress the sophists were making towards the ruin of his country's morals and manners, let loose upon the offenders the gleaming shafts of his angry genius,

Δεινὴ δὲ κλαγγὴ γένετ' ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο.

Before the comedy of The Clouds was produced, Aristophanes had brought out The Revellers, The Babylonians, The Acharnians, and The Knights. Two of these, The Acharnians and The Knights had been honored with the first prize. B. c. 424, he appeared with The Clouds; but, notwithstanding the distinguished merits of the piece, — in the author's opinion it was the best he had ever written, the judges awarded the first prize to Cratinus, and the second to Ameipsias, and only the third honors were decreed to Aristophanes. The following year he brought forward the Second Clouds, in which he complains with humorous bitterness of the injustice that had been done him, and affirms, that, the sentence of the judges to the contrary, notwithstanding, this comedy was the most skilfully constructed of all his pieces. Besides the ingenious compliments he pays to the Attic audience, he makes his chorus utter various whimsical threats to deter the judges from committing a second blunder.*

Not only the base principles of the sophists are exposed, but their absurd and affected language is ridiculed with masterly effect. The oddities of manner by which they undertook to impose upon the popular credulity, and set

*Fritsche, however, is of opinion that the first Clouds was materially different from the play as we now have it; and that the latter, written to bring contempt upon Socrates, was never represented, in consequence of a reconciliation brought about between the poet and the philosopher. See Quæstiones Aristophaneæ (De Socrate Veterorum Comicorum Dissertatio, pp. 99, seqq.). The arguments for this opinion, though ingenious, are not conclusive.