The Historians' History of the World 04

There is no room for doubt as to the existence of the evils and vices we have been describing, though the most copious information we possess on the subject is drawn not from purely historical sources, but from the dramatic satires of Aristophanes. But there may still be a question as to the measure of allowance to be made for comic exaggeration, or political prejudices, in the poet; and it seems probable that the colours in which he has painted his countrymen are in some respects too dark. That the mass of the people had not sunk to this degree of depravity, may we think be inferred from the grief and indignation which it is recorded to have shown on some occasions, where it had been misled into an unjust sentence, by which it stained itself with innocent blood: as Callixenus, who however was not worse than other sycophants, though he was among those who returned after the expulsion of the Thirty, and enjoyed the benefit of the amnesty, died, universally hated, of hunger.

ARISTOPHANES

[ca. 425-400 B.C.]

The patriotism of Aristophanes was honest, bold, and generally wise. He was still below the age at which the law permitted a poet to contend for a dramatic prize, and was therefore compelled to use a borrowed name, when, in the year after the death of Pericles, he produced his first work, in which his chief aim seems to have been to exhibit the contrast between the ancient and the modern manners. In his next, his ridicule was pointed more at the defects or the perversion of political institutions, and perhaps at the democratical system of filling public offices by lot. In both, however, he had probably assailed many of the most conspicuous persons of the day, and either by personal satire, or by attacks on the abuses by which the demagogues throve, he provoked the hostility of Cleon, who endeavoured to crush him by a prosecution. Its nominal ground was, it seems, the allegation, that the poet, who in fact according to some accounts was of Dorian origin, was not legally entitled to the franchise. But the real charge was that in his recent comedy he had exposed the Athenian magistracy to the derision of the foreign spectators. Cleon, however, was baffled; and though the attempt was once or twice renewed, perhaps by other enemies of Aristophanes, it failed so entirely, that he seems to have been soon left in the unmolested enjoyment of public favour; and he not only was encouraged to revenge himself on Cleon by a new piece, in which the demagogue was exhibited in person, and was represented by the poet himself,—who it is said could not find an actor to undertake the part, nor even get a suitable mask made for it,—but he at the same time ventured on an experiment which it seems had never been tried before on the comic stage.

Aristophanes

The people had been accustomed to see the most eminent Athenian statesmen and generals brought forward there and placed in a ludicrous light; but it had never yet beheld its own image set before its eyes as in a mirror, which reflected the principal features of its character, not indeed without the exaggeration which belonged to the occasion, but yet with a truth which could not be mistaken or evaded. This was done in the same play which exposed Cleon’s impudence and rapacity; and the follies and faults of the assembled multitude, which appears under its proper name of Demos, as an old dotard, not void of cunning, though incapable of governing himself, are placed in the strongest relief by the presence of its unworthy favourite, who is introduced, not indeed by name, but so as to be immediately recognised, as a lying, thievish, greedy, fawning, Paphlagonian slave. The poet’s boldness was so far successful, that instead of offending the audience he gained the first prize: but in every other respect he failed of attaining his object; for Cleon, as we have seen, maintained his influence unimpaired to the end of his life, and the people showed as little disposition to reform its habits, and change its measures, as if the portrait it had seen of itself had been no less amiable than diverting. But the issue of this attempt did not deter him from another, which, but for the applause which had crowned the first, might have appeared equally dangerous. As in the Knights he had levelled his satire against the sovereign assembly; in the Wasps, which he exhibited in the year before Cleon’s death, he attacked the other stronghold of his power, the courts of justice, with still keener ridicule.