Chapter LXVII (1)

THE DRAMA.—RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS.—THE SOPHISTS.

Respecting the political history of Athens during the few years immediately succeeding the restoration of the democracy, we have unfortunately little or no information. But in the spring of 399 B.C., between three and four years after the beginning of the archonship of Eukleidês, an event happened of paramount interest to the intellectual public of Greece as well as to philosophy generally, the trial, condemnation, and execution of Sokratês. Before I recount that memorable incident, it will be proper to say a few words on the literary and philosophical character of the age in which it happened. Though literature and philosophy are now becoming separate departments in Greece, each exercises a marked influence on the other, and the state of dramatic literature will be seen to be one of the causes directly contributing to the fate of Sokratês.

During the century of the Athenian democracy between Kleisthenês and Eukleidês, there had been produced a development of dramatic genius, tragic and comic, never paralleled before or afterwards. Æschylus, the creator of the tragic drama, or at least the first composer who rendered it illustrious, had been a combatant both at Marathon and Salamis; while Sophoklês and Euripidês, his two eminent followers, the former one of the generals of the Athenian armament against Samos in 440 B.C., expired both of them only a year before the battle of Ægospotami, just in time to escape the bitter humiliation and suffering of that mournful period. Out of the once numerous compositions of these poets we possess only a few, yet sufficient to enable us to appreciate in some degree the grandeur of Athenian tragedy; and when we learn that they were frequently beaten, even with the best of their dramas now remaining, in fair competition for the prize against other poets whose names only have reached us, we are warranted in presuming that the best productions of these successful competitors, if not intrinsically finer, could hardly have been inferior in merit to theirs.[508]

[508] The Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophoklês was surpassed by the rival
composition of Philoklês. The Medea of Euripidês stood only
third for the prize; Euphorion, son of Æschylus, being first,
Sophoklês second. Yet these two tragedies are the masterpieces
now remaining of Sophoklês and Euripidês.

The tragic drama belonged essentially to the festivals in honor of the god Dionysus; being originally a chorus sung in his honor, to which were successively superadded, first, an Iambic monologue; next, a dialogue with two actors; lastly, a regular plot with three actors, and the chorus itself interwoven into the scene. Its subjects were from the beginning, and always continued to be, persons either divine or heroic, above the level of historical life, and borrowed from what was called the mythical past: the Persæ of Æschylus forms a splendid exception; but the two analogous dramas of his contemporary, Phrynichus, the Phœnissæ and the capture of Milêtus, were not successful enough to invite subsequent tragedians to meddle with contemporary events. To three serious dramas, or a trilogy, at first connected together by sequence of subject more or less loose, but afterwards unconnected and on distinct subjects, through an innovation introduced by Sophoklês, if not before, the tragic poet added a fourth or satyrical drama; the characters of which were satyrs, the companions of the god Dionysus, and other heroic or mythical persons exhibited in farce. He thus made up a total of four dramas, or a tetralogy, which he got up and brought forward to contend for the prize at the festival. The expense of training the chorus and actors was chiefly furnished by the chorêgi, wealthy citizens, of whom one was named for each of the ten tribes, and whose honor and vanity were greatly interested in obtaining the prize. At first, these exhibitions took place on a temporary stage, with nothing but wooden supports and scaffolding; but shortly after the year 500 B.C., on an occasion when the poets Æschylus and Pratinas were contending for the prize, this stage gave way during the ceremony, and lamentable mischief was the result. After that misfortune, a permanent theatre of stone was provided. To what extent the project was realized before the invasion of Xerxes, we do not accurately know; but after his destructive occupation of Athens, the theatre, if any existed previously, would have to be rebuilt or renovated along with other injured portions of the city.

It was under that great development of the power of Athens which followed the expulsion of Xerxes, that the theatre with its appurtenances attained full magnitude and elaboration, and Attic tragedy its maximum of excellence. Sophoklês gained his first victory over Æschylus in 468 B.C.: the first exhibition of Euripidês was in 455 B.C. The names, though unhappily the names alone, of many other competitors have reached us: Philoklês, who gained the prize even over the Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophoklês; Euphorion son of Æschylus, Xenoklês, and Nikomachus, all known to have triumphed over Euripidês; Neophron, Achæus, Ion, Agathon, and many more. The continuous stream of new tragedy, poured out year after year, was something new in the history of the Greek mind. If we could suppose all the ten tribes contending for the prize every year, there would be ten tetralogies—or sets of four dramas each, three tragedies and one satyrical farce—at the Dionysiac festival, and as many at the Lenæan. So great a number as sixty new tragedies composed every year,[509] is not to be thought of; yet we do not know what was the usual number of competing tetralogies: it was at least three; since the first, second, and third are specified in the didaskalies, or theatrical records, and probably greater than three. It was rare to repeat the same drama a second time unless after considerable alterations; nor would it be creditable to the liberality of a chorêgus to decline the full cost of getting up a new tetralogy. Without pretending to determine with numerical accuracy how many dramas were composed in each year, the general fact of unexampled abundance in the productions of the tragic muse is both authentic and interesting.

[509] The careful examination of Welcker (Griech. Tragödie. vol.
i, p. 76) makes out the titles of eighty tragedies unquestionably
belonging to Sophoklês, over and above the satyrical dramas in
his tetralogies. Welcker has considerably cut down the number
admitted by previous authors, carried by Fabricius as high as one
hundred and seventy-eight, and even, by Boeckh, as high as one
hundred and nine (Welcker, _ut sup._ p. 62).

The number of dramas ascribed to Euripidês is sometimes
ninety-two, sometimes seventy-five. Elmsley, in his remarks on
the Argument to the Medea, p. 72, thinks that even the larger of
these numbers is smaller than what Euripidês probably composed;
since the poet continued composing for fifty years, from 455 to
405 B.C., and was likely during each year to have composed one,
if not two, tetralogies; if he could prevail upon the archon to
grant him a chorus, that is, the opportunity of representing.
The didaskalies took no account of any except such as gained the
first, second, or third prize. Welcker gives the titles, and an
approximative guess at the contents, of fifty-one lost tragedies
of the poet, besides the seventeen remaining (p. 443).

Aristarchus the tragedian is affirmed by Suidas to have composed
seventy tragedies, of which only two gained the prize. As many
as a hundred and twenty compositions are ascribed to Neophron,
forty-four to Achæus, forty to Ion (Welcker, ib. p. 889).

Moreover, what is not less important to notice, all this abundance found its way to the minds of the great body of the citizens, not excepting even the poorest. For the theatre is said to have accommodated thirty thousand persons:[510] here again it is unsafe to rely upon numerical accuracy, but we cannot doubt that it was sufficiently capacious to give to most of the citizens, poor as well as rich, ample opportunity of profiting by these beautiful compositions. At first, the admission to the theatre was gratuitous; but as the crowd of strangers as well as freemen, was found both excessive and disorderly, the system was adopted of asking a price, seemingly at the time when the permanent theatre was put in complete order after the destruction caused by Xerxes. The theatre was let by contract to a manager, who engaged to defray, either in whole or part, the habitual cost incurred by the state in the representation, and who was allowed to sell tickets of admission. At first, it appears that the price of tickets was not fixed, so that the poor citizens were overbid, and could not get places. Accordingly, Periklês introduced a new system, fixing the price of places at three oboli, or half a drachma, for the better, and one obolus for the less good. As there were two days of representation, tickets covering both days were sold respectively for a drachma and two oboli. But in order that the poor citizens might be enabled to attend, two oboli were given out from the public treasure to each citizen—rich as well as poor, if they chose to receive it—on the occasion of the festival. A poor man was thus furnished with the means of purchasing his place and going to the theatre without cost, on both days, if he chose; or, if he preferred it, he might go on one day only; or might even stay away altogether, and spend both the two oboli in any other manner. The higher price obtained for the better seats purchased by the richer citizens, is here to be set against the sum disbursed to the poorer; but we have no data before us for striking the balance, nor can we tell how the finances of the state were affected by it.[511]

[510] Plato, Symposion, c. 3, p. 175.

[511] For these particulars, see chiefly a learned and valuable
compilation—G. C. Schneider, _Das Attische Theater-Wesen_,
Weimar, 1835—furnished with copious notes; though I do not fully
concur in all his details, and have differed from him on some
points. I cannot think that more than two oboli were given to
any one citizen at the same festival; at least, not until the
distribution became extended, in times posterior to the Thirty;
see M. Schneider’s book, p. 17; also Notes, 29-196.

Such was the original theôrikon, or festival-pay, introduced by Periklês at Athens; a system of distributing the public money, gradually extended to other festivals in which there was no theatrical representation, and which in later times reached a mischievous excess; having begun at a time when Athens was full of money from foreign tribute, and continuing, with increased demand at a subsequent time, when she was comparatively poor and without extraneous resources. It is to be remembered that all these festivals were portions of the ancient religion, and that, according to the feelings of that time, cheerful and multitudinous assemblages were essential to the satisfaction of the god in whose honor the festival was celebrated. Such disbursements were a portion of the religious, even more than of the civil establishment. Of the abusive excess which they afterwards reached, however, I shall speak in a future volume: at present, I deal with the theôrikon only in its primitive function and effect, of enabling all Athenians indiscriminately to witness the representation of the tragedies.

We cannot doubt that the effect of these compositions upon the public sympathies, as well as upon the public judgment and intelligence, must have been beneficial and moralizing in a high degree. Though the subjects and persons are legendary, the relations between them are all human and simple, exalted above the level of humanity only in such measure as to present a stronger claim to the hearer’s admiration or pity. So powerful a body of poetical influence has probably never been brought to act upon the emotions of any other population; and when we consider the extraordinary beauty of these immortal compositions, which first stamped tragedy as a separate department of poetry, and gave to it a dignity never since reached, we shall be satisfied that the tastes, the sentiments, and the intellectual standard, of the Athenian multitude, must have been sensibly improved and exalted by such lessons. The reception of such pleasures through the eye and the ear, as well as amidst a sympathizing crowd, was a fact of no small importance in the mental history of Athens. It contributed to exalt their imagination, like the grand edifices and ornaments added during the same period to their acropolis. Like them, too, and even more than they, tragedy was the monopoly of Athens; for while tragic composers came thither from other parts of Greece—Achæus from Eretria, and Ion from Chios, at a time when the Athenian empire comprised both those places—to exhibit their genius, nowhere else were original tragedies composed and acted, though hardly any considerable city was without a theatre.[512]

[512] See Plato, Lachês, c. 6, p. 183, B.; and Welcker, Griech.
Tragöd. p. 930.

The three great tragedians—Æschylus, Sophoklês, and Euripidês—distinguished above all their competitors, as well by contemporaries as by subsequent critics, are interesting to us, not merely from the positive beauties of each, but also from the differences between them in handling, style, and sentiment, and from the manner in which these differences illustrate the insensible modification of the Athenian mind. Though the subjects, persons, and events of tragedy always continued to be borrowed from the legendary world, and were thus kept above the level of contemporaneous life,[513] yet the dramatic manner of handling them is sensibly modified, even in Sophoklês as compared with Æschylus; and still more in Euripidês, by the atmosphere of democracy, political and judicial contention, and philosophy, encompassing and acting upon the poet.

[513] Upon the point, compare Welcker, Griech. Tragöd. vol. ii,
p. 1102.

In Æschylus, the ideality belongs to the handling not less than to the subjects: the passions appealed to are the masculine and violent, to the exclusion of Aphroditê and her inspirations:[514] the figures are vast and majestic, but exhibited only in half-light and in shadowy outline: the speech is replete with bold metaphor and abrupt transition, “grandiloquent even to a fault,” as Quintilian remarks, and often approaching nearer to Oriental vagueness than to Grecian perspicuity. In Sophoklês, there is evidently a closer approach to reality and common life: the range of emotions is more varied, the figures are more distinctly seen, and the action more fully and conspicuously worked out. Not only we have a more elaborate dramatic structure, but a more expanded dialogue, and a comparative simplicity of speech like that of living Greeks: and we find too a certain admixture of rhetorical declamation, amidst the greatest poetical beauty which the Grecian drama ever attained. But when we advance to Euripidês, this rhetorical element becomes still more prominent and developed. The ultra-natural sublimity of the legendary characters disappears: love and compassion are invoked to a degree which Æschylus would have deemed inconsistent with the dignity of the heroic person: moreover, there are appeals to the reason, and argumentative controversies, which that grandiloquent poet would have despised as petty and forensic cavils. And—what was worse still, judging from the Æschylean point of view—there was a certain novelty of speculation, an intimation of doubt on reigning opinions, and an air of scientific refinement, often spoiling the poetical effect.

[514] See Aristophan. Ran. 1046. The Antigonê (780, _seq._) and
the Trachiniæ (498) are sufficient evidence that Sophoklês did
not agree with Æschylus in this renunciation of Aphroditê.

Such differences between these three great poets are doubtless referable to the working of Athenian politics and Athenian philosophy on the minds of the two later. In Sophoklês, we may trace the companion of Herodotus;[515] in Euripidês, the hearer of Anaxagoras, Sokratês, and Prodikus;[516] in both, the familiarity with that wide-spread popularity of speech, and real, serious debate of politicians and competitors before the dikastery, which both had ever before their eyes, but which the genius of Sophoklês knew how to keep in due subordination to his grand poetical purpose.

[515] The comparison of Herodot. iii, 119 with Soph. Antig. 905,
proves a community of thought which seems to me hardly explicable
in any other way. Which of the two obtained the thought from the
other, we cannot determine.

The reason given, by a woman whose father and mother were dead,
for preferring a brother either to husband or child,—that she
might find another husband and have another child, but could
not possibly have another brother,—is certainly not a little
far-fetched.

[516] See Valckenaer, Diatribe in Eurip. Frag. c. 23. Quintilian,
who had before him many more tragedies than those which we now
possess, remarks how much more useful was the study of Euripidês,
than that of Æschylus or Sophoklês, to a young man preparing
himself for forensic oratory:—

“Illud quidem nemo non fateatur, iis qui se ad agendum
comparaverint, utiliorem longe Euripidem fore. Namque is et vi
et sermone (quo ipsum reprehendunt quibus gravitas et cothurnus
et sonus Sophoclis videtur esse sublimior) magis accedit
oratorio generi: et sententiis densus, et rebus ipsis; et in iis
quæ a sapientibus tradita sunt, pæne ipsis par; et in dicendo
et respondendo cuilibet eorum, qui fuerunt in foro diserti,
comparandus. In affectibus vero tum omnibus mirus, tum in iis qui
miseratione constant, facile præcipuus.” (Quintil. Inst. Orat. x,
1.)

The transformation of the tragic muse from Æschylus to Euripidês is the more deserving of notice, as it shows us how Attic tragedy served as the natural prelude and encouragement to the rhetorical and dialectical age which was approaching. But the democracy, which thus insensibly modified the tragic drama, imparted a new life and ampler proportions to the comic; both the one and the other being stimulated by the increasing prosperity and power of Athens during the half century following 480 B.C. Not only was the affluence of strangers and visitors to Athens continually augmenting, but wealthy men were easily found to incur the expense of training the chorus and actors. There was no manner of employing wealth which seemed so appropriate to procure influence and popularity to its possessors, as that of contributing to enhance the magnificence of the national and religious festivals.[517] This was the general sentiment both among rich and among poor; nor is there any criticism more unfounded than that which represents such an obligation as hard and oppressive upon rich men. Most of them spent more than they were legally compelled to spend in this way, from the desire of exalting their popularity. The only real sufferers were the people, considered as interested in a just administration of law; since it was a practice which enabled many rich men to acquire importance who had no personal qualities to deserve it, and which provided them with a stock of factitious merits to be pleaded before the dikastery, as a set-off against substantive accusations.

[517] Aristophan. Plutus, 1160:—

Πλούτῳ γὰρ ἐστὶ τοῦτο συμφορώτατον,
Ποιεῖν ἀγῶνας γυμνικοὺς καὶ μουσικούς.

Compare the speech of Alkibiadês, Thuc. vi, 16, and Theophrastus
ap. Cic. de Officiis, ii, 16.

The full splendor of the comic muse was considerably later than that of the tragic. Even down to 460 B.C. (about the time when Periklês and Ephialtês introduced their constitutional reforms), there was not a single comic poet of eminence at Athens; nor was there apparently a single undisputed Athenian comedy before that date, which survived to the times of the Alexandrine critics. Magnês, Kratês, and Kratinus—probably also Chionidês and Ekphantidês[518]—all belong to the period beginning about (Olympiad 80 or) 460 B.C.; that is, the generation preceding Aristophanês, whose first composition dates in 427 B.C. The condition and growth of Attic comedy before this period seems to have been unknown even to Aristotle, who intimates that the archon did not begin to grant a chorus for comedy, or to number it among the authoritative solemnities of the festival, until long after the practice had been established for tragedy. Thus the comic chorus in that early time consisted of volunteers, without any chorêgus publicly assigned to bear the expense of teaching them or getting up the piece; so that there was little motive for authors to bestow care or genius in the preparation of their song, dance, and scurrilous monody, or dialogue. The exuberant revelry of the phallic festival and procession, with full license of scoffing at any one present, which the god Dionysus was supposed to enjoy, and with the most plain-spoken grossness as well in language as in ideas, formed the primitive germ, which under Athenian genius ripened into the old comedy.[519] It resembled in many respects the satyric drama of the tragedians, but was distinguished from it by dealing not merely with the ancient mythical stories and persons, but chiefly with contemporary men and subjects of common life; dealing with them often, too, under their real names, and with ridicule the most direct, poignant, and scornful. We see clearly how fair a field Athens would offer for this species of composition, at a time when the bitterness of political contention ran high,—when the city had become a centre for novelties from every part of Greece,—when tragedians, rhetors, and philosophers, were acquiring celebrity and incurring odium,—and when the democratical constitution laid open all the details of political and judicial business, as well as all the first men of the state, not merely to universal criticism, but also to unmeasured libel.

[518] See Meineke, Hist. Critic. Comicor. Græcor. vol. i, p. 26,
_seq._

Grysar and Mr. Clinton, following Suidas, place Chionidês
before the Persian invasion; but the words of Aristotle rather
countenance the later date (Poetic. c. 3).

[519] See respecting these licentious processions, in connection
with the iambus and Archilochus, vol. iv, of this History, ch.
xxix, p. 81.

Aristotle (Poetic, c. 4) tells us that these phallic processions,
with liberty to the leaders (οἱ ἐξάρχοντες) of scoffing at every
one, still continued in many cities of Greece in his time: see
Herod. v, 83, and Sêmus apud Athenæum, xiv, p. 622; also the
striking description of the rural Dionysia in the Acharneis of
Aristophanês, 235, 255, 1115. The scoffing was a part of the
festival, and supposed to be agreeable to Dionysus: ἐν τοῖς
Διονυσίοις ἐφειμένον αὐτὸ δρᾷν· καὶ τὸ σκῶμμα μέρος τι ἐδόκει
τῆς ἑορτῆς· καὶ ὁ θεὸς ἴσως χαίρει, φιλογέλως τις ὤν (Lucian,
Piscator. c. 25). Compare Aristophanês, Ranæ, 367, where the
poet seems to imply that no one has a right to complain of being
ridiculed in the πατρίοις τελεταῖς Διονύσου.

The Greek word for comedy—κωμῳδία, τὸ κωμῳδεῖν—at least in its
early sense, had reference to a bitter, insulting, criminative
ridicule: κωμῳδεῖν καὶ κακῶς λέγειν (Xenophon, Repub. Ath. ii,
23)—κακηγοροῦντάς τε καὶ κωμῳδοῦντας ἀλλήλους καὶ αἰσχρολογοῦντας
(Plato de Repub. iii, 8, p. 332). A remarkable definition of
κωμῳδία appears in Bekker’s Anecdota Græca, ii, 747, 10: Κωμῳδία
ἐστιν ἡ ἐν μέσῳ λάου κατηγορία, ἤγουν δημοσίευσις; “public
exposure to scorn before the assembled people:” and this idea of
it as a penal visitation of evil-doers is preserved in Platonius
and the anonymous writers on comedy, prefixed to Aristophanês.
The definition which Aristotle (Poetic. c. 11) gives of it,
is too mild for the primitive comedy: for he tells us himself
that Kratês, immediately preceding Aristophanês, was the first
author who departed from the ἰαμβικὴ ἰδέα: this “iambic vein”
was originally the common character. It doubtless included every
variety of ridicule, from innocent mirth to scornful contempt
and odium; but the predominant character tended decidedly to the
latter.

Compare Will. Schneider, Attisches Theater-Wesen, Notes, pp.
22-25; Bernhardy, Griechische Litteratur, sect. 67, p. 292.

Out of all the once abundant compositions of Attic comedy, nothing has reached us except eleven plays of Aristophanês. That poet himself singles out Magnês, Kratês, and Kratinus, among predecessors whom he describes as numerous, for honorable mention; as having been frequently, though not uniformly, successful. Kratinus appears to have been not only the most copious, but also the most distinguished, among all those who preceded Aristophanês, a list comprising Hermippus, Telekleidês, and the other bitter assailants of Periklês. It was Kratinus who first extended and systematized the license of the phallic festival, and the “careless laughter of the festive crowd,”[520] into a drama of regular structure, with actors three in number, according to the analogy of tragedy. Standing forward, against particular persons exhibited or denounced by their names, with a malignity of personal slander not inferior to the iambist Archilochus, and with an abrupt and dithyrambic style somewhat resembling Æschylus, Kratinus made an epoch in comedy as the latter had made in tragedy; but was surpassed by Aristophanês, as much as Æschylus had been surpassed by Sophoklês. We are told that his compositions were not only more rudely bitter and extensively libellous than those of Aristophanês,[521] but also destitute of that richness of illustration and felicity of expression which pervades all the wit of the latter, whether good-natured or malignant. In Kratinus, too, comedy first made herself felt as a substantive agent and partisan in the political warfare of Athens. He espoused the cause of Kimon against Periklês;[522] eulogizing the former, while he bitterly derided and vituperated the latter Hermippus, Telekleidês, and most of the contemporary comic writers followed the same political line in assailing that great man, together with those personally connected with him, Aspasia and Anaxagoras: indeed, Hermippus was the person who indicted Aspasia for impiety before the dikastery. But the testimony of Aristophanês[523] shows that no comic writer, of the time of Periklês, equalled Kratinus, either in vehemence of libel or in popularity.

[520]

Χαῖρ᾽, ὦ μέγ᾽ ἀρχειογέλως ὅμιλε ταῖς ἐπίβδαις,
Τῆς ἡμετέρας σοφίας κριτὴς ἄριστε πάντων, etc.

Kratini Fragm. Incert. 51; Meineke, Fr. Com. Græcor. ii, p. 193.

[521] Respecting Kratinus, see Platonius and the other writers on
the Attic comedy, prefixed to Aristophanês in Bekker’s edition,
pp. vi, ix, xi, xiii, etc.; also Meineke, Historia Comic. Græc.
vol. i, p. 50, _seq._

... Οὐ γὰρ, ὥσπερ Ἀριστοφάνης, ἐπιτρέχειν τὴν χάριν τοῖς σκώμμασι
ποιεῖ (Κρατῖνος), ἀλλ᾽ ~ἁπλῶς~, καὶ, κατὰ τὴν παροιμίαν, ~γυμνῇ
τῇ κεφαλῇ τίθησι τᾶς βλασφημίας~ κατὰ τῶν ἀμαρτανόντων.

[522] See Kratinus—Ἀρχίλοχοι—Frag. 1, and Plutarch, Kimon, 10, Ἡ
κωμῳδία πολιτεύεται ἐν τοῖς δράμασι καὶ φιλοσοφεῖ, ἡ τῶν περὶ τὸν
Κρατῖνον καὶ Ἀριστοφάνην καὶ Εὔπολιν, etc. (Dionys. Halikarn. Ars
Rhetoric. c. 11.)

[523] Aristophan. Equit. 525. _seq._

It is remarkable that, in 440 B.C., a law was passed forbidding comic authors to ridicule any citizen by name in their compositions; which prohibition, however, was rescinded after two years, an interval marked by the rare phenomenon of a lenient comedy from Kratinus.[524] Such enactment denotes a struggle in the Athenian mind, even at that time, against the mischief of making the Dionysiac festival an occasion for unmeasured libel against citizens publicly named and probably themselves present. And there was another style of comedy taken up by Kratês, distinct from the iambic or Archilochian vein worked by Kratinus, in which comic incident was attached to fictitious characters and woven into a story, without recourse to real individual names or direct personality. This species of comedy, analogous to that which Epicharmus had before exhibited at Syracuse, was continued by Pherekratês as the successor of Kratês. Though for a long time less popular and successful than the poignant food served up by Kratinus and others, it became finally predominant after the close of the Peloponnesian war, by the gradual transition of what is called the Old Comedy into the Middle and New Comedy.

[524] A comedy called Ὀδυσσεῖς (plur. numb. corresponding to the
title of another of his comedies, Ἀρχίλοχοι). It had a chorus, as
one of the Fragments shows, but few or no choric songs; nor any
parabasis, or address by the chorus, assuming the person of the
poet, to the spectators.

See Bergk, De Reliquiis Comœd. Antiq. p. 142, _seq._; Meineke,
Frag. Cratini, vol. ii, p. 93, Ὀδυσσεῖς: compare also the first
volume of the same work, p. 43: also Runkel, Cratini Fragm. p. 38
(Leips. 1827).

But it is in Aristophanês that the genius of the old libellous comedy appears in its culminating perfection. At least we have before us enough of his works to enable us to appreciate his merits; though perhaps Eupolis, Ameipsias, Phrynichus, Plato (Comicus), and others, who contended against him at the festivals with alternate victory and defeat, would be found to deserve similar praise, if we possessed their compositions. Never probably will the full and unshackled force of comedy be so exhibited again. Without having Aristophanês actually before us, it would have been impossible to imagine the unmeasured and unsparing license of attack assumed by the old comedy upon the gods, the institutions, the politicians, philosophers, poets, private citizens specially named, and even the women, whose life was entirely domestic, of Athens. With this universal liberty in respect of subject, there is combined a poignancy of derision and satire, a fecundity of imagination and variety of turns, and a richness of poetical expression, such as cannot be surpassed, and such as fully explains the admiration expressed for him by the philosopher Plato, who in other respects must have regarded him with unquestionable disapprobation. His comedies are popular in the largest sense of the word, addressed to the entire body of male citizens on a day consecrated to festivity, and providing for them amusement or derision with a sort of drunken abundance, out of all persons or things standing in any way prominent before the public eye. The earliest comedy of Aristophanês was exhibited in 427 B.C., and his muse continued for a long time prolific, since two of the dramas now remaining belong to an epoch eleven years after the Thirty and the renovation of the democracy, about 392 B.C. After that renovation, however, as I have before remarked, the unmeasured sweep and libellous personality of the old comedy was gradually discontinued: the comic chorus was first cut down, and afterwards suppressed, so as to usher in what is commonly termed the Middle Comedy, without any chorus at all. The “Plutus” of Aristophanês indicates some approach to this new phase; but his earlier and more numerous comedies, from the “Acharneis,” in 425 B.C. to the “Frogs,” in 405 B.C., only a few months before the fatal battle of Ægospotami, exhibit the continuous, unexhausted, untempered flow of the stream first opened by Kratinus.

Such abundance both of tragic and comic poetry, each of first-rate excellence, formed one of the marked features of Athenian life, and became a powerful instrument in popularizing new combinations of thought with variety and elegance of expression. While the tragic muse presented the still higher advantage of inspiring elevated and benevolent sympathies, more was probably lost than gained by the lessons of the comic muse; not only bringing out keenly all that was really ludicrous or contemptible in the phenomena of the day, but manufacturing scornful laughter, quite as often, out of that which was innocent or even meritorious, as well as out of boundless private slander. The “Knights” and the “Wasps” of Aristophanês, however, not to mention other plays, are a standing evidence of one good point in the Athenian character; that they bore with good-natured indulgence the full outpouring of ridicule and even of calumny interwoven with it, upon those democratical institutions to which they were sincerely attached. The democracy was strong enough to tolerate unfriendly tongues either in earnest or in jest: the reputations of men who stood conspicuously forward in politics, on whatever side, might also be considered as a fair mark for attacks; inasmuch as that measure of aggressive criticism which is tutelary and indispensable, cannot be permitted without the accompanying evil, comparatively much smaller, of excess and injustice;[525] though even here we may remark that excess of bitter personality is among the most conspicuous sins of Athenian literature generally. But the warfare of comedy, in the persons of Aristophanês and other composers, against philosophy, literature, and eloquence, in the name of those good old times of ignorance, “when an Athenian seaman knew nothing more than how to call for his barley-cake, and cry, Yo-ho;”[526] and the retrograde spirit which induces them to exhibit moral turpitude as the natural consequence of the intellectual progress of the age, are circumstances going far to prove an unfavorable and degrading influence of comedy on the Athenian mind.

[525] Aristophanês boasts that _he_ was the first comic composer
who selected great and powerful men for his objects of attack:
his predecessors, he affirms, had meddled only with small
vermin and rags: ἐς τὰ ῥάκια σκώπτοντας ἀεὶ, καὶ τοῖς φθειρσὶν
πολεμοῦντας (Pac. 724-736; Vesp. 1030).

But this cannot be true in point of fact, since we know that no
man was more bitterly assailed by the comic authors of his day
than Periklês. It ought to be added, that though Aristophanês
doubtless attacked the powerful men, he did not leave the smaller
persons unmolested.

[526] Aristoph. Ran. 1067; also Vesp. 1095. Æschylus reproaches
Euripidês:—

Εἶτ᾽ αὖ λαλίαν ἐπιτηδεῦσαι καὶ στωμυλίαν ἐδίδαξας,
Ἣ ᾽ξεκένωσεν τάς τε παλαίστρας, καὶ τὰς πυγὰς ἐνέτριψε
Τῶν μειρακίων στωμυλλομένων, καὶ τοὺς παράλους ἀνέπεισεν
Ἀνταγορεύειν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν. Καίτοι τότε γ᾽, ἡνίκ᾽ ἐγὼ ᾽ζων,
~Οὐκ ἠπίσταντ᾽ ἀλλ᾽ ἢ μᾶζαν καλέσαι καὶ ῥυππαπαὶ εἰπεῖν~.

Τὸ ~ῥυππαπαὶ~ seems to have been the peculiar cry or chorus of
the seamen on shipboard, probably when some joint pull or effort
of force was required: compare Vespæ, 909.

In reference to individual men, and to Sokratês[527] especially, the Athenians seem to have been unfavorably biased by the misapplied wit and genius of Aristophanês, in “The Clouds,” aided by other comedies of Eupolis, and Ameipsias and Eupolis; but on the general march of politics, philosophy, or letters, these composers had little influence. Nor were they ever regarded at Athens in the light in which they are presented to us by modern criticism; as men of exalted morality, stern patriotism, and genuine discernment of the true interests of their country; as animated by large and steady views of improving their fellow-citizens, but compelled, in consequence of prejudice or opposition, to disguise a far-sighted political philosophy under the veil of satire; as good judges of the most debatable questions, such as the prudence of making war or peace, and excellent authority to guide us in appreciating the merits or demerits of their contemporaries, insomuch that the victims of their lampoons are habitually set down as worthless men.[528] There cannot be a greater misconception of the old comedy than to regard it in this point of view; yet it is astonishing how many subsequent writers, from Diodorus and Plutarch down to the present day, have thought themselves entitled to deduce their facts of Grecian history, and their estimate of Grecian men, events, and institutions, from the comedies of Aristophanês. Standing pre-eminent as the latter does in comic genius, his point of view is only so much the more determined by the ludicrous associations suggested to his fancy, so that he thus departs the more widely from the conditions of a faithful witness or candid critic. He presents himself to provoke the laugh, mirthful or spiteful, of the festival crowd, assembled for the gratification of these emotions, and not with any expectation of serious or reasonable impressions.[529] Nor does he at all conceal how much he is mortified by failure; like the professional jester, or “laughter-maker,” at the banquets of rich Athenian citizens;[530] the parallel of Aristophanês as to purpose, however unworthy of comparison in every other respect.

[527] See about the effect on the estimation of Sokratês, Ranke,
Commentat. de Vitâ Aristophanis, p. cdxli.

Compare also the remarks of Cicero (De Repub. iv, 11; vol.
iv, p. 476, ed. Orell.) upon the old Athenian comedy and its
unrestrained license. The laws of the Twelve Tables at Rome
condemned to death any one who composed and published libellous
verses against the reputation of another citizen.

Among the constant butts of Aristophanês and the other comic
composers, was the dithyrambic poet Kinesias, upon whom they
discharged their wit and bitterness, not simply as an indifferent
poet, but also on the ground of his alleged impiety, his thin
and feeble bodily frame, and his wretched health. We see the
effect of such denunciations in a speech of the orator Lysias;
composed on behalf of Phanias, against whom Kinesias had brought
an indictment, or graphê paranomôn. Phanias treats these abundant
lampoons as if they were good evidence against the character of
Kinesias: Θαυμάζω δ᾽ εἰ μὴ βαρέως φέρετε ὅτι Κινησίας ἐστιν ὁ
τοῖς νόμοις βοηθὸς, ὃν ὑμεῖς πάντες ἐπίστασθε ἀσεβέστατον ἁπάντων
καὶ παρανομώτατον γεγονέναι. Οὐχ οὖτός ἐστὶν ὁ τοιαῦτα περὶ θεοὺς
ἐξαμαρτάνων, ἃ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις αἰσχρόν ἐστι καὶ λέγειν, τῶν
~κωμῳδιδασκάλον δ᾽ ἀκούετε καθ᾽ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν~; see Lysias,
Fragm. 31, ed. Bekker; Athenæus, xii, p. 551.

Dr. Thirlwall estimates more lightly than I do the effect of
these abundant libels of the old comedy: see his review of the
Attic tragedy and comedy, in a very excellent chapter of his
History of Greece, ch. xviii, vol. iii, p. 42.

[528] The view which I am here combating, is very general among
the German writers; in proof of which, I may point to three of
the ablest recent critics on the old comedy, Bergk, Meineke,
and Ranke; all most useful writers for the understanding of
Aristophanês.

Respecting Kratinus, Bergk observes: “Erat enim Cratinus,
_pariter atque ceteri principes antiquæ comœdiæ, vir egregie
moratus_, idemque antiqui moris tenax.... Cum Cratinus _quasi
divinitus videret_ ex hac libertate mox tanquam ex stirpe aliquâ
nimiam licentiam existere et nasci, statim his initiis graviter
adversatus est, videturque Cimonem tanquam exemplum boni et
honesti civis proposuisse,” etc.

“Nam Cratinus cum esset magno ingenio et _eximiâ morum
gravitate_, ægerrime tulit rem publicam præceps in perniciem
ruere: omnem igitur operam atque omne studium eo contulit, ut
_imagine ipsius vitæ ante oculos positâ omnes et res divinæ et
humanæ emendarentur, hominumque animi ad honestatem colendam
incenderentur_. Hoc sibi primus et proposuit Cratinus, et
propositum strenue persecutus est. _Sed si ipsam Veritatem,
cujus imago oculis obversabatur, oculis subjecisset, verendum
erat ne tædio obrueret eos qui spectarent_, nihilque prorsus
eorum, quæ summo studio persequebatur, obtineret. Quare eximiâ
quâdam arte pulchram effigiem hilaremque formam finxit, ita
tamen ut ad veritatem sublimemque ejus speciem referret omnia:
sic cum ludicris miscet seria, ut et vulgus haberet quî
delectaretur; et qui plus ingenio valerent, ipsam veritatem, quæ
ex omnibus fabularum partibus perluceret, mente et cogitatione
comprehenderent.” ... “Jam vero Cratinum in fabulis componendis
id _unice spectavisse quod esset verum_, ne veteres quidem
latuit.... Aristophanes autem _idem et secutus semper est_ et
sæpe professus.” (Bergk, De Reliquiis Comœd. Antiq. pp. 1, 10,
20, 233, etc.)

The criticism of Ranke (Commentatio de Vitâ Aristophanis, pp.
ccxli, cccxiv, cccxlii, ccclxix, ccclxxiii, cdxxxiv, etc.) adopts
the same strain of eulogy as to the lofty and virtuous purposes
of Aristophanês. Compare also the eulogy bestowed by Meineke on
the monitorial value of the old comedy (Historia Comic. Græc. pp.
39, 50, 165, etc.), and similar praises by Westermann; Geschichte
der Beredsamkeit in Griechenland und Rom. sect. 36.

In one of the arguments prefixed to the “Pax” of Aristophanês,
the author is so full of the conception of these poets as public
instructors or advisers, that he tells us, absurdly enough, they
were for that reason called ~διδάσκαλοι~: οὐδὲν γὰρ συμβούλων
διέφερον· ὅθεν αὐτοὺς καὶ ~διδασκάλους~ ὠνόμαζον· ὅτι πάντα τὰ
~πρόσφορα διὰ δραμάτων αὐτοὺς ἐδίδασκον~ (p. 244, ed. Bekk.).

“Eupolis, atque Cratinus, Aristophanesque poetæ,
Atque alii, quorum Comœdia prisca virorum est,
Si quis erat dignus describi, quod malus, aut fur,
Aut mœchus foret, aut sicarius, aut alioqui
Famosus, multâ cum libertate notabant.”

This is the early judgment of Horace (Serm. i, 4, 1): his
later opinion on the _Fescennina licentia_, which was the same
in spirit as the old Grecian comedy, is much more judicious
(Epistol. ii, 1, 145): compare Art. Poetic. 224. To assume that
the persons derided or vilified by these comic authors must
always have deserved what was said of them, is indeed a striking
evidence of the value of the maxim: “Fortiter calumniare;
semper aliquid restat.” Without doubt, their indiscriminate
libel sometimes wounded a suitable subject; in what proportion
of cases, we have no means of determining: but the perusal of
Aristophanês tends to justify the epithets which Lucian puts into
the mouth of _Dialogus_ respecting Aristophanês and Eupolis—not
to favor the opinions of the authors whom I have cited above
(Lucian, Jov. Accus. vol. ii, p. 832). He calls Eupolis and
Aristophanês δεινοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπικερτομῆσαι τὰ σεμνὰ καὶ χλευάσαι
τὰ καλῶς ἔχοντα.

When we notice what Aristophanês himself says respecting the
other comic poets, his predecessors and contemporaries, we shall
find it far from countenancing the exalted censorial function
which Bergk and others ascribe to them (see the Parabasis in the
Nubes, 530, _seq._, and in the Pax, 723). It seems especially
preposterous to conceive Kratinus in that character; of whom what
we chiefly know, is his habit of drunkenness, and the downright,
unadorned vituperation in which he indulged: see the Fragments
and story of his last play, Πυτίνη (in Meineke, vol. ii, p. 116;
also Meineke, vol. i, p. 48, _seq._).

Meineke copies (p. 46) from Suidas a statement (v. Ἐπείου
δειλότερος) to the effect that Kratinus was ~ταξίαρχος τῆς
Οἰνηΐδος φυλῆς~. He construes this as a real fact: but there can
hardly be a doubt that it is only a joke made by his contemporary
comedians upon his fondness for wine; and not one of the worst
among the many such jests which seem to have been then current.
Runkel also, another editor of the Fragments of Kratinus (Cratini
Fragment., Leips. 1827, p. 2, M. M. Runkel), construes this
ταξίαρχος τῆς Οἰνηΐδος φυλῆς, as if it were a serious function;
though he tells us about the general character of Kratinus: “De
vitâ ipsâ et moribus pæne nihil dicere possumus: _hoc solum
constat, Cratinum poculis et puerorum amori valde deditum
fuisse_.”

Great numbers of Aristophanic jests have been transcribed as
serious matter-of-fact, and have found their way into Grecian
history. Whoever follows chapter vii of K. F. Hermann’s
Griechische Staats-Alterthümer, containing the _Innere
Geschichte_ of the Athenian democracy, will see the most sweeping
assertions made against the democratical institutions, on the
authority of passages of Aristophanês: the same is the case with
several of the other most learned German manuals of Grecian
affairs.

[529] Horat. de Art. Poetic. 212-224.

“Indoctus quid enim saperet, liberque laborum,
Rusticus urbano confusus, turpis honesto?...
Illecebris erat et gratâ novitate morandus
Spectator, functusque sacris, et potus, et exlex.”

[530] See the Parabasis of Aristophanês in the Nubes (535,
_seq._) and in the Vespæ (1015-1045).

Compare also the description of Philippus the γελωτοποῖος, or
Jester, in the Symposion of Xenophon; most of which is extremely
Aristophanic, ii, 10, 14. The comic point of view is assumed
throughout that piece; and Sokratês is introduced on one occasion
as apologizing for the intrusion of a serious reflection (τὸ
σπουδαιολογεῖν, viii, 41). The same is the case throughout much
of the Symposion of Plato; though the scheme and purpose of this
latter are very difficult to follow.

This rise and development of dramatic poetry in Greece—so abundant, so varied, and so rich in genius—belongs to the fifth century B.C. It had been in the preceding century nothing more than an unpretending graft upon the primitive chorus, and was then even denounced by Solon, or in the dictum ascribed to Solon, as a vicious novelty, tending—by its simulation of a false character, and by its effusion of sentiments not genuine or sincere—to corrupt the integrity of human dealings;[531] a charge of corruption, not unlike that which Aristophanês worked up, a century afterwards, in his “Clouds,” against physics, rhetoric, and dialectics, in the person of Sokratês. But the properties of the graft had overpowered and subordinated those of the original stem; so that dramatic poetry was now a distinct form, subject to laws of its own, and shining with splendor equal, if not superior, to the elegiac, choric, lyric, and epic poetry which constituted the previous stock of the Grecian world.

[531] Plutarch, Solon, c. 29. See the previous volumes of this
History, ch. xxi, vol. ii, p. 145; ch. xxix, vol. iv, pp. 83, 84.

Such transformations in the poetry, or, to speak more justly, in the literature—for before the year 500 B.C. the two expressions were equivalent—of Greece, were at once products, marks, and auxiliaries, in the expansion of the national mind. Our minds have now become familiar with dramatic combinations, which have ceased to be peculiar to any special form or conditions of political society. But if we compare the fifth century B.C. with that which preceded it, the recently born drama will be seen to have been a most important and impressive novelty: and so assuredly it would have been regarded by Solon, the largest mind of his own age, if he could have risen again, a century and a quarter after his death, to witness the Antigonê of Sophoklês, the Medea of Euripidês, or the Acharneis of Aristophanês.

Its novelty does not consist merely in the high order of imagination and judgment required for the construction of a drama at once regular and effective. This, indeed, is no small addition to Grecian poetical celebrity as it stood in the days of Solon, Alkæus, Sappho, and Stesichorus: but we must remember that the epical structure of the Odyssey, so ancient and long acquired to the Hellenic world, implies a reach of architectonic talent quite equal to that exhibited in the most symmetrical drama of Sophoklês. The great innovation of the dramatists consisted in the rhetorical, the dialectical, and the ethical spirit which they breathed into their poetry. Of all this, the undeveloped germ doubtless existed in the previous epic, lyric, and gnomic composition; but the drama stood distinguished from all three by bringing it out into conspicuous amplitude, and making it the substantive means of effect. Instead of recounting exploits achieved, or sufferings undergone by the heroes,—instead of pouring out his own single-minded impressions in reference to some given event or juncture,—the tragic poet produces the mythical persons themselves to talk, discuss, accuse, defend, confute, lament, threaten, advise, persuade, or appease; among one another, but before the audience. In the _drama_, a singular misnomer, nothing is actually done: all is talk; assuming what is done, as passing, or as having passed, elsewhere. The dramatic poet, speaking continually, but at each moment through a different character, carries on the purpose of each of his characters by words calculated to influence the other characters, and appropriate to each successive juncture. Here are rhetorical exigencies from beginning to end:[532] while, since the whole interest of the piece turns upon some contention or struggle carried on by speech; since debate, consultation, and retort, never cease; since every character, good or evil, temperate or violent, must be supplied with suitable language to defend his proceedings, to attack or repel opponents, and generally to make good the relative importance assigned to him, here again dialectical skill in no small degree is indispensable.

[532] Respecting the rhetorical cast of tragedy, see Plato,
Gorgias, c. 57, p. 502, D.

Plato disapproves of tragedy on the same grounds as of rhetoric.

Lastly, the strength and variety of ethical sentiment infused into the Grecian tragedy, is among the most remarkable characteristics which distinguish it from the anterior forms of poetry. “To do or suffer terrible things,” is pronounced by Aristotle to be its proper subject-matter; and the internal mind and motives of the doer or sufferer, on which the ethical interest fastens, are laid open by the Greek tragedians with an impressive minuteness which neither the epic nor the lyric could possibly parallel. Moreover, the appropriate subject-matter of tragedy is pregnant not only with ethical sympathy, but also with ethical debate and speculation. Characters of mixed good and evil; distinct rules of duty, one conflicting with the other; wrong done, and justified to the conscience of the doer, if not to that of the spectator, by previous wrong suffered, all these are the favorite themes of Æschylus and his two great successors. Klytæmnestra kills her husband Agamemnôn on his return from Troy: her defence is, that he had deserved this treatment at her hands for having sacrificed his own and her daughter, Iphigeneia. Her son Orestês kills her, under a full conviction of the duty of avenging his father, and even under the sanction of Apollo. The retributive Eumenides pursue him for the deed, and Æschylus brings all the parties before the court of Areopagus, with Athênê as president, where the case is fairly argued, with the Eumenides as accusers, and Apollo as counsel for the prisoner, and ends by an equality of votes in the court: upon which Athênê gives her casting-vote to absolve Orestês. Again; let any man note the conflicting obligations which Sophoklês so forcibly brings out in his beautiful drama of the Antigonê. Kreon directs that the body of Polyneikês, as a traitor and recent invader of the country, shall remain unburied: Antigonê, sister of Polyneikês, denounces such interdict as impious, and violates it, under an overruling persuasion of fraternal duty. Kreon having ordered her to be buried alive, his youthful son Hæmon, her betrothed lover, is plunged into a heart-rending conflict between abhorrence of such cruelty on the one side, and submission to his father on the other. Sophoklês sets forth both these contending rules of duty in an elaborate scene of dialogue between the father and the son. Here are two rules both sacred and respectable, but the one of which cannot be observed without violating the other. Since a choice must be made, which of the two ought a good man to obey? This is a point which the great poet is well pleased to leave undetermined. But if there be any among the audience in whom the least impulse of intellectual speculation is alive, he will by no means leave it so, without some mental effort to solve the problem, and to discover some grand and comprehensive principle from whence all the moral rules emanate; a principle such as may instruct his conscience in those cases generally, of not unfrequent occurrence, wherein two obligations conflict with each other. The tragedian not only appeals more powerfully to the ethical sentiment than poetry had ever done before, but also, by raising these grave and touching questions, addresses a stimulus and challenge to the intellect, spurring it on to ethical speculation.

Putting all these points together, we see how much wider was the intellectual range of tragedy, and how considerable is the mental progress which it betokens, as compared with the lyric and gnomic poetry, or with the Seven Wise Men and their authoritative aphorisms, which formed the glory, and marked the limit, of the preceding century. In place of unexpanded results, or the mere communication of single-minded sentiment, we have even in Æschylus, the earliest of the great tragedians, a large latitude of dissent and debate, a shifting point of view, a case better or worse, made out for distinct and contending parties, and a divination of the future advent of sovereign and instructed reason. It was through the intermediate stage of tragedy that Grecian literature passed into the rhetoric, dialectics, and ethical speculation, which marked the fifth century B.C.