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THE KNIGHTS 
 
 ARISTOPHANES. 
 
 TBAKSLATED BT 
 
 T. MITCHELL, A. M. 
 
 tATJE FELIOW OF SIDNEY- SUSSEX COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 WASHINGTON CITY: 
 GARRET ANDERSON. 
 
 1S37. 
 
ft^nX 
 
 PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 9©0 
 
 If the American Editor of this little volume (which is sent 
 forth as a test of the character of American learning) deemed it 
 either expedient or necessary to expatiate upon the merits of an 
 author so celebrated and gifted as Aristophanes, he might extend 
 his eulogia beyond the patient perusal of the moderns. The 
 eloquent and erudite preliminary discourse by the accomplished 
 translator, however, anticipates the remarks which otherwise 
 would be expanded. No satirist, ancient or modern, ever enjoyed 
 the deserved reputation of Aristophanes, and no one ever depicted, 
 in colors so vivid and unfading, the essential and peculiar charac- 
 teristics of democracy. As he lived under the dominion of the 
 Universal People, he thoroughly understood the qualities of the 
 democrats whom he has ridiculed and immortalized; and he never 
 shrunk, when occasion demanded, from the exposure of flagrant 
 abuses. Therefore, we commend, earnestly commend the perusal 
 of this volume to our literary countrymen: and if the reception of 
 this limited edition of a single comedy shall justify the editor in 
 the more enlarged republication of all the works of Aristophanes, 
 he will rejoice in the opportunity, thus afforded, of instructing 
 and enlightening his countrymen. 
 
ORIGINAL PREFACE 
 
 The volume here submitted to the reader's attention, forms a 
 part of a work which was prepared for publication in the spring 
 of 1816. With the causes which have hitherto delayed its ap- 
 pearance it is not thought necessary to trouble the public. The 
 translator, however, has taken advantage of the interval thus 
 afforded, in endeavoring to make himself better acquainted with 
 subjects collaterally connected with his author; but the main ob- 
 ject, the translations, he has left nearly in their original condition, 
 under the impression that, if any of the spirit and raciness of the 
 original could be caught, it would be, generally speaking, in the 
 first transfusion; and that, in this particular instance of authorship, 
 a certain air of roughness would be preferable to an appearance 
 of too much intense labor and polish. 
 
 The general plan upon which it was proposed to conduct this 
 work having long been submitted to the public, the translator can 
 only allow himself to say that he is not aware of having hitherto 
 deviated from it. His great object has been to direct the reader's . 
 attention to the text, and to leave his judgment to infer such po- 
 litical lessons as seemed fairly dcduciblc from it. Whatever notes 
 have been added, have been subjoined with the view of rendering 
 the text more intelligible; and every endeavor has been used to 
 shorten and reduce them as much as possible. Some opinions 
 expressed in the course of this volume, on the moral character of 
 the Athenians, (and on them, collectively, it seemed more proper 
 to alhx reproach, in many instances, than on the dramatist, whose 
 busuiess it was to paint and to please his auditors according to 
 their own notions of amusement,) may, perhaps, appear unreason- 
 ably severe. But the reader must recollect that the complete 
 evidence on which these opinions have been founded is not before 
 him; and that the translator, in being obliged to wade through 
 some dirt himself, has been as careful as possible to let none fall 
 on the by-stander. Perhaps this reserve has been carried too far. 
 The old comedy of the Greeks approaches very nearly to history: 
 and "it is the business of history," says a writer frequently quoted 
 in the following pages, "to represent men, not such as they should 
 be, but such as they have been; and thus learning," adds Mr. 
 Mitford, "what they should be, through observation of what they 
 should not bo, far more vriluable instruction, both political and 
 
Yr ORIGINAL PREFACE. 
 
 moral, may be gathered, than from any visionary description of 
 perfection in human nature." The opinions thus forcibly ex- 
 pressed add weight to the suspicion which has sometimes crossed 
 the translator's mind, that in the execution of this work, an un- 
 willingness to uncover the nakedness of a people whose writers 
 have been our parents in almost every species of knowledge, has 
 influenced him too powerfully, and that a wider scope should have 
 been given to a species of humor, the chief merit of which lies in 
 its close and faithful delineation of popular feelings, popular habits, 
 and popular modes of speech. 
 
 For any warmth of expression which may have been used in 
 discussing the political character of the Athenians, this is certainly 
 not the time to apologize. Aware, as the writer is, that in a 
 constitution so nicely balanced as our own, any exclusive view of 
 politics ought carefully to be avoided, — yet, when an outrage 
 necessarily growing out of those studied attempts long made to 
 degrade the crown and aristocracy of England, and even to as- 
 similate her admirable constitution to that of the democracies of 
 Italy or Greece, is perpetrating in our streets — he may rather 
 doubt whether he has held up the inward hollowness and rotten- 
 ness of one of these democracies in a manner sufficiently striking, 
 than fear that he has exposed her corruptions and her crimes in 
 language too glowing. In the atrocious transaction which at 
 this moment fills every heart with indignation and horror, England 
 has, for the first time, witnessed one of those foul scenes which 
 so often stain the pages of Thucydides, and which make Dante 
 blacken at the name of Florence, in Hell, in Purgatory, in Heaven. 
 That "city of division," as he emphatically calls her, enjoyed no 
 monopoly of crime among her republican neighbors and prede- 
 cessors; and it was in the fullest sense of this feeling (a feeling 
 which we, alas ! can now better appreciate) that this sublimest of 
 her poets, in the full maturity of his intellect, and with such mon- 
 sters as the Eccelins and the Visconti before his eyes, deliberately 
 reserved the climax of retribution in his scale of guilt for the 
 betrayer* of his master, and the assassins of their ruler and king. 
 
 This volume is committed to the public with the certain know- 
 ledge, that whatever may be its deficiencies, they will soon be 
 detected; but with a confidence no less certain, that they who are 
 best able to point out those deficiencies, will be the foremost to 
 make all candid allowances for them. To an important part of it, 
 a degree of favor and indulgence has been extended in another 
 place, which the writer was wholly unprepared to expect. He can 
 only hope that that favor may not be forfeited by its present ap- 
 pearance. For any labor which the rest of the volume may have 
 cost him, he shall feel amply repaid if it occasionally wrest from 
 the reader the good-humored Frenchman's concession: — J^ai ri — 
 me voila desarme. 
 
 •Inferno, Canto XXXIV. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 
 The origin, technical construction and divisions of the Greek Comedy 
 have been sufficiently explained in the works of several popular writers : 
 the Lectures of Blair, the Observer of Cumberland, and Brumoy's The- 
 atre des Grecs affording satisfactory references for those readers, who 
 want information on any or all of these topics. The purport and bear- 
 ings of that particular branch of it, known by the name of Old Comedy, 
 with the views and character of the person wlio carried it to its greatest 
 height, have recently been discussed by two most distinguished scho- 
 lars and brothers, whose works are in the hands of every man of letters, 
 and whose critical opinions are now received with deference and respect 
 throughout Europe. The Messrs Schlegels have placed the great comic 
 poet of antiquity on a ground, high indeed, but on a ground, which 
 every scholar, intimately acquainted with his writings, will allow to be 
 no more than his due.* Had these two critics offered a clue for ascer- 
 
 * " If we would judge of Aristophanes as a writer and as a poet," says M. 
 F. Schlegel, (and his remarks, exclusively of their own merit, require insertion, 
 as forming the groundwork of what is here offered,) " we must transplant our- 
 selves freely and entirely into the age in which he lived. In the modern ages 
 of Europe it has often been made the subject of reproach against particular na- 
 tions or periods, that literature in general, but principally the poets and their 
 works, have too exclusively endeavoured to regulate themselves according to 
 the rules of polished society, and, above all, the prejudices of the female sex. 
 Even among those nations, and in those periods which have been most fre- 
 quently charged with this fault, there has been no want of authors who have 
 loudly lamented that it should be so, and asserted and maintained, with no in- 
 considerable zeal, that the introduction of this far-sought elegance and gallantry, 
 not only into the body of literature as a whole, but even into those departments of 
 it where their presence is most unsuitable, has an evident tendency to make lite- 
 rature tame, poor, uniform, and unmanly. It may be that there is some founda- 
 tion for this complaint : the whole literature of antiquity, but particularly that of 
 the Greeks, lies open to a reproach of an entirely opposite nature. If our lite- 
 rature has sometimes been too exclusively feminine, theirs was at all times uni- 
 formly and exclusively masculine, not unfrequently of a nature far more rough 
 and unpolished than might have been expected from the general intellectual 
 character and refinement of the ancients." 
 
 After a few brief remarks on the degraded state of female society in Greece, 
 and the baneful effect it had upon Grecian literature, M. Schlegel proceeds — 
 2 
 
10 PRELIMINARV DISCOURSE. 
 
 taining the reasons, by which this extraordinary writer came so rudely 
 into contact with a contemporary still more extraordinary, a volume 
 
 " Here, where we are treating of the decline of Grecian manners, and of the 
 writer who has painted that decline the most powerfully and the most clearly— 
 the consideration of this common defect of antiquity has, 1 imagine, been not 
 improperly introduced. But when this imperfection has once been distinctly 
 recognized as one the reproach of which affects in justice not the individual 
 writers, but rather the collective character, manners, and literature of antiquity; 
 it were absurd to allow ourselves to be any longer so much influenced by it, as 
 to disguise from ourselves the great qualities often found in combination with it 
 in writings which are altogether invaluable to us, both as specimens of poetical 
 art, and as representations of the spoken wit of a very highly refined state of 
 society; to refuse, in one word, to perceive in Aristophanes the great poetwhich 
 he really is. It is true that the species and form of his writing — if indeed that 
 can be said with propriety to belong to any precise species or form of composi- 
 tion — are things to which we have no parallel in modern letters. All the pecu- 
 liarities of the Old Comedy may be traced to those deifications of physical 
 powers, which were prevalent among the ancients. Among them, in the festi- 
 vals dedicated to Bacchus and other frolicsome deities, every sort of freedom, 
 even the wildest ebullitions of mirth and jollity were not only things permit- 
 ted, they were strictly in character, and formed, in truth, the consecrated cere- 
 monial of the season. The fancy, above all things, a power by its very nature 
 impatient of constraint, the birthright and peculiar possession of the poet, was 
 on these occasions permitted to attempt the most audacious heights, and revel 
 in the wildest world of dreams, loosened for a moment from all those fetters of 
 law,custom, and propriety, which at other times, and in other species of writing, 
 must ever regulate its exertion even in the hands of poets. The true poet, how- 
 ever, at whatever time this old privilege granted him a Saturnalian license for 
 the play of his fancy, was uniformly impressed with a sense of the obligation 
 under which he lay, not only by a rich and various display of his inventive 
 genius, but by the highest elegance of language and versification, to maintain 
 entire his poetical dignity and descent, and to show, in the midst of all his ex- 
 travagances,^ that he was not animated by prosaic petulance, nor personal spleen, 
 but inspired with the genuine audacity and fearlessness of a poet. Of this there 
 is the most perfect illustration in Aristophanes. In language and versification 
 his excellence is not barely acknowledged — it is such as to entitle him to take 
 his place among the first poets to whom Greece has given birth. In many pas- 
 sages of serious and earnest poetry, which (thanks to the boundless variety and 
 lawless formation of the popular comedy of Athens) he has here and there 
 introduced, Aristophanes shows himself to be a true poet, and capable, had he 
 so chosen, of reaching the highest eminence even in the more dignified depart- 
 ments of his art. 
 
 " This might be abundantly sufficient, not indeed to represent Aristophanes 
 as a fit subject of imitation, for that he can never be, but to set his merit as a 
 poet in its true light. But if we examine into the use which he has made as a 
 man, but more particularly as a citizen, of that liberty which was his poetical 
 birthright, both by the manners of antiquity, and by the constitution of his 
 country, we shall find many things which might be said still further in his vin- 
 
PU'EMMIKARY DISCOURSE. II 
 
 which attempts to give some faint idea of his works by ttanslalion, 
 might commence its labours without any additional demand on the 
 reader's patience. This however the Messrs Schlegels have not done, 
 and room is still left for discussing, how it happened that the wisest 
 and the wittiest men of Athens were made to jostle so roughly against 
 each other. At this distance of time it cannot be expected that materials 
 should be found for setting the subject completely at rest; and indeed, 
 when we consider how lately and with what difficulty one of the bright- 
 est ornaments of our own literature has been rescued from the calumnies 
 of ignorance, misrepresentation, and malevolence, we may demand to 
 be excused, if after all our researches, some disputed points of relation- 
 ship between a poet and philosopher of two thousand years back, remain 
 still unexplained. Disquisitions, however, of this kind are never with- 
 out their use; besides their own intrinsic importance, they often serve, 
 like Selden's straws, to show how the wind blows in some of the most 
 important topics, which belong to all ages and countries, and which can 
 never be brought under review too often. It will be taken then for 
 granted, that the reader is acquainted with some of the leading differ- 
 ences between the scenic representations of the Greeks and our own. 
 He will be supposed to know, that the dramas of that people grew out 
 of and formed part of their religious ceremonies — that they were ex- 
 
 dication, and which cannot indeed fail to raise him personally in our esteem. 
 His principal merit, as a patriot, consists in the fidelity with which he paints 
 all the corruptions of the state, and in the chastisement which he inflicts on the 
 pestilent demao-ogues who caused that corruption or profited by its effects. The 
 latter duty was attended with no inconsiderable danger in a state governed by 
 a democracy, and during a time of total anarcliy ; yet Aristophanes has performed 
 it with the most fearless resolution. It is true that he pursues and parodies 
 Euripides with unrelenting severity; but this is perfectly in character with the 
 old spirit of merciless enmity which animated all the comic poets against the 
 tragedians ; and it is impossible not to perceive that not only the more ancient 
 ^schylus, but even his contemporary Sophocles, is uniformly mentioned in a 
 tone altogether different, in a temper moderate and sparing; nay, very frequently, 
 with tiie profoundcst feelings of admiration and respect. // formr, another grie- 
 vous subject of reproach agninst Jlristophanes, that he has represented in colours so 
 odious, Socrates, the most wise and the most virtuous of all his fellowcitizens ; it is, 
 however, hy no means improbable that this was not the effect of mere poetical wan- 
 tonness,- butt/tat Aristophanes selected, without any bad intention, that first and 
 best of illustrious names, that he might, under if, render the Sophists as ridiculous 
 as they deserved to be, and as foolish and worthless in the eyes of the people as he 
 could make them. The poet, it is not unlikely, in his own mind, mingled and 
 cotifounded, even without wishing it, this inestimable sage with his enemies the So- 
 phists, whose schools he frequented in his maturer years, solely with the view of ma- 
 king himself master of that which he intended to refute and overthroir. Lectures 
 on the History of Literature, pp. 57 — G2. 
 
12 PRKLIMIXARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 hibited in theatres of a colossal size compared with ours — that the *time3 
 of exhibition were at distant intervals — that when those few intervals 
 did take place, the whole day was devoted to theatrical entertainments 
 — that a prize was conferred on the most successful competitor — and 
 that a piece once performed, was never, in the same shape at least, 
 represented a second time. He will further be supposed to have some 
 knowledge of the general principles of that peculiar part of the ancient 
 drama, the old comedy, as it is called, in contradistinction to what was 
 afterwards named the middle, and the new : — as that it stood in the 
 extreme relation of contrariety and parody to the tragedy of the Greeks 
 — that it was directed chiefly to the lowerf orders of society at Athens 
 — that it served in some measure the purposes of the modern Journal, 
 in which public measures and the topics of the day might be fully dis- 
 cussed ; and that in consequence the dramatis personse were generally 
 the poet's own contemporaries, speaking in their own names, and act- 
 ing in masks, which, as they bore only a caricature resemblance of 
 their faces, showed that the poet in his observations upon them did not 
 mean to be taken literally to his expression. Like tragedy, it consti- 
 tuted part of a religious ceremony ; and the character of the deity, to 
 whom it was more particularly dedicated, was stamped at times pretty 
 visibly upon the work which was composed in his honour. The JDi- 
 onysian festivals, in short, were the great Carnivals of antiquity — they 
 
 * It will be sufficient for the present purpose to mention the Spring and Au- 
 tumnal Festivals of Bacchus, as being the seasons most particularly devoted to 
 those amusements. Authors generally reserved their pieces for the former Fes- 
 tival, as Athens was at that time crowded with strangers, the allies or tributaries 
 of that imperious metropolis, and the theatres were not then confined, as at other 
 times, exclusively to the natives of Attica. 
 
 f Besides internal evidence, many expressions of Aristotle and Plato might 
 be quoted to this effect. The latter, indeed, goes so far, as to rank, in his 
 Treatise on Legislation, the performance of the comic theatre as only one degree 
 above jugglers' tricks. Puppet-shows and jugglers' tricks, he there observes, 
 are best adapted to the taste of boys — comedy to that of growing lads — and 
 tragedy to that of young men, and the better classes of women. Elder men 
 were to find their entertainment in the recitations of Rhapsodists. We are not 
 to take Plato's word too strictly in this occasion. Between the philosophers 
 and the comic writers there was always open war; and Plato, who at any rate 
 felt no scruple in borrowing pictures and images from Aristophanes, returned 
 the obligation by indulging in some open and a little more covert abuse of his 
 writings. 
 
 X A sort of Dionysian Festival still observed once every four years, in the 
 neighbourhood of Vevay — that scene of " Recollections" and of natural beauties 
 — to which the muse of Lord Byron alone could do justice. It was a great 
 mortification to the writer of these notes to be there about the time of its cele- 
 bration, and to find that the distresses of the times did not admit of its being 
 observed as usual. 
 
PRELIMINARY -DISCOURSE. 13 
 
 celebrated the returns of vernal festivity or the joyous vintage, and were 
 in consequence the great holidays of Athens — the seasons of universal 
 relaxation. The comic poet was the high priest of the festival ; and if 
 the orgies of his divinity (the God of Wine) sometimes demanded a 
 style of poetry, which a Father of our Church probably had in his eye, 
 when he called all poetry the deviVs wine, the organ of their utterance 
 (however strange it may seem to us) no doubt considered himself as 
 perfectly absolved from the censure which we should bestow on such 
 productions : in their composition he was discharging the same pious 
 office as the painter, whose duty it was to fill the temples of the same 
 deity with *pictures, which our imaginations would consider equally ill 
 
 * The indulgence granted to this abuse in the time of Aristotle may be seen in 
 the Seventh Book of his Politics, c. 17. As this Discourse has been almost 
 entirely confined to the precise period of the representation of the Clouds, this 
 reference to a later writer would not have been made, had not a curious passage 
 in the Hippolytus of Euripides (v. 1003,) justified us in taking it for granted, 
 that the custom was as prevalent in the days of Aristophanes as it was in the 
 time of Aristotle. Good taste, as well as other considerations, requires that this 
 part of our subject should be dismissed as hastily as possible; but the usages of 
 a large (and that too the most enlightened) portion of antiquity, cannot be alto- 
 gether passed over in silence ; and it is of importance to show, that the value, 
 so justly due to a great part of the Aristophanic writings, does not deserve to be 
 impugned from a mistaken supposition, that he stood single among his country- 
 men, in the use of such language, and allusions, as would be revolting in their 
 display to modern feelings, whatever excuse may be found for them in our 
 knowledge of the manners of antiquity. The Greek Comedy (according to the 
 express testimony of Aristotle,) grew out of the Phallic Hymn, as the Greek 
 Tragedy was merely an improvement upon the Dithyrambic Hymn ; and if the 
 tragedian could not wholly rescue his drama from the god of the vintage and 
 his fantastic attendants the Satyrs, (as many low scenes and much snappish 
 dialogue, clear proofs of the origin of Greek tragedy, sufficiently testify,) we 
 may be very sure, that an entire departure from the canons, which regulated the 
 construction of the Phallic Hymn, would not be tolerated in a comic poet. There 
 is authority, in fact, for asserting, that the consequences were fatal to one of the 
 Greek dramatists, who presumed to put his own good taste on this point too 
 violently in opposition with the taste of his audience. If Comedy too looked 
 to the Margeites of Homer for an example, on which to model herself, as her 
 sister muse did to his Iliad and Odyssey, enough of that poem remains in tradi- 
 tion to show what kind of humour would be required as the predominant article. 
 But the usages of common life among the Greeks form the completest apology 
 for the aberrations of the Greek stage. Let the reader open any of the volumes 
 of the " Antiquit6s d'Herculanum," and see what ohjects daily met the eyes of 
 men and women both at home and abroad, and he will have little reason to be 
 surprised at any freaks, which the gay Muse of Comedy might allow herself 
 during the permitted license of the Dionysian festivities. How much of this 
 proof of simplicity or depravity in the ancients (for vehement advocates have 
 been found for both opinions) is to be attributed to the sources from which the 
 Greek mythology was derived — to oriental traditions received through the me- 
 
14 rr.ELIMTXARV DI?COTJRSK. 
 
 suiled to the habitations of the tliviuity. What religion tliercfore forbids 
 among us, the religion of the Greeks did not merely tolerate, but enjoin. 
 Nor was the extreme and even profane gaiety of the old comedy with- 
 out its excuse. To unite extravagant mirth with a solemn seriousness 
 was enjoined by law, even in the sacred festival of Ceres. The feast 
 of Bacchus retained the license without the embarrassment of the re- 
 straint. While the philosophers, therefore, querulously maintained, 
 that man was the joke and plaything of the gods, the comic poet re- 
 versed the picture, and made the gods the plaything of men : in his 
 hands, indeed, everything was upon the broad grin ; the gods laughed, 
 men laughed, animals laughed. Nature was considered as a sort of 
 fantastic being, with a turn for the humorous, and the world was treated 
 as a sort of extended jest book, where the poet pointed out the bons- 
 mots, and acted in some degree as corrector of the press. If he dis- 
 charged this office sometimes in the sarcastic spirit of a *Mephistophi- 
 lus, this too was considered as a part of his fimctions : he was the 
 Terrae-Filius of the day, and lenity would have been considered, not as 
 an act of discretion, but as a cowardly dereliction of duty. 
 
 Of the species of comedy thus described, whoever was the inventor, 
 whether fEpicharmus or Phormis, Aristophanes was the great finisher 
 and perfecter. With an ear tuned to the nicest modulations of harmony, 
 and with a temperament apparently most joyous and jovial, he was just 
 fitted for the entertainment of a people, of whom Philip of Macedon, 
 
 dium of Egypt, we must leave to the antiquarians to decide. But it may be 
 thrown out as a fair conjecture, that the mysterious phallic emblem, which made 
 so important a part in the religious ceremonies of Greece, and the a-Kvrtvov ttioc, 
 which was in consequence so frequently introduced upon the stage, were mere 
 substitutions, according to the genius of the Greeks, for the lingam or passive 
 generating principle of the Hindoos. 
 
 * In the Faust of Goethe, and in that work only of all modern productions, 
 some idea may be formed of the rich harmonies and splendid versification of 
 Aristophanes. The power which the German language has of approximating 
 to the more simple of the Grecian metres, and of adding to that power the full- 
 est richness of modern rhyme, makes it doubtful to the ear, which of the two 
 writers ought to be preferred ; — were the Athenian read with his proper accen- 
 tuation, there would perhaps be no doubt on the subject. There are other points 
 of relation between these two writers, besides those of versification. To the 
 great and overwhelming tragic powers of Goethe, Aristophanes, of course, can 
 make no pretension : but in their preference of the arbitrary comic to the comic 
 of manners, the two writers come very close together; and both writers should 
 have lived, as Madame de Sta'el expresses it, when there was an intellectual 
 chaos, similar to the material chaos. Had Aristophanes written in modern 
 times, it is, perhaps, not impertinent to suggest, that the " Auerbach's Keller 
 in Leipzig," the Hexenhuche, the Walpurgisnach, and perhaps the quizzing 
 scene with the young student, just fresh from his university, are precisely the 
 sort of scenes which would have fallen from his pen. 
 
 f Arist. de Poet. hb. i. § 11. 
 
PRELIMINARY DlfeXOUKSE. 15 
 
 when he compared them to the Hermaic statues, so common in their 
 streets, drew in a few words one of the most happy and characteristic 
 descriptions of a people, which is upon record. That gaiety which is 
 so well adapted to a nation of quick natural parts, and which has so 
 few charms for persons of cultivated understandings, the gaiety which 
 consists* in painting pleasantly the dullness of the understanding {la 
 betise) and in inspiring buffoonery ; of that gaiety, which has been made 
 equally the basis of Italian and Grecian comedy, Aristophanes was pre- 
 eminently the master. Music, dancing, metre, decoration — all that 
 union of amusement, which the Greeks, a seeing and not a reading 
 public, (this fact cannot be too much in our minds, when we are talking 
 of their dramatic literature,) required of their writers for the stage, Aris- 
 tophanes seems to have improved;! the muse of Comedy herself he left 
 as he found her — a beautiful Titania, matchless in her outward propor- 
 tions, but with a spell upon her affections, and showering favours, which 
 should have been better bestowed — upon an ass's head, with Bottom, 
 the weaver, below it. An utter aversion to every species of affectation, 
 and a most splenetic hatred to Euripides, (derived from deeper views 
 of things, than people have generally given the comedian credit for,) 
 perhaps guided Aristophanes on this point. He found that poet, half- 
 pleader, and half-bard, as he contemptuously calls him, affecting to 
 rescue the sister muse of tragedy from the coarse hands of ^Eschylus, 
 under whom she had been pampered into a sort of cumbrous ostenta- 
 tious Amazon. A course of strait-lacing and cool diet was bringing her 
 a little more into compass : her appearance had already become more 
 genteel, and only a little more polish was necessary to fit her for the 
 society of the Sophists, to whose schools she continually resorted for 
 the little prettinesses, and affectations and delicacies of thought and ex- 
 pression, which were for ever in her mouth. A rough hand and a 
 good course of bark and steel were necessary to repair the spreading 
 mischief and infection. The puns of the Peiraeus,:^ and the proverbs 
 
 * Litterature du Midi, torn. ii. p. 367. 
 
 f He particularly reformed the Cordax or Danceof Comedy, which, however, 
 in the time of Thcophrastus, seems to have relapsed into its former state of rn- 
 decorousness. See the sixth of those inimitable Characters which he has left us. 
 
 -\. We are apt to forget that Athens was the greatest maritime power of anti- 
 quity ; but Aristophanes, a consummate politician amid all his buIToonery, knew 
 perfectly well where her real strength lay ; he therefore takes every occasion of 
 paying court to the naval part of his audience, the " nautic multitude," as Xeno- 
 phon calls them, and advocates their rights upon all occasions. How much 
 Plato and he were at variance upon this point, see the fourth book of his Legis- 
 lation. Aristotle coincides with the poet, De Rep. 1. vii. c. C. Tlie learned 
 reader will remember various passages of Xenophon and Isocrates, expressing 
 their respective opinions on this important topic. 
 
16 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 of the *Agora, and the coarse jokes of the Eeclesia and Heliaea were 
 therefore diliffcntly collected and culled, and showered from a full cor- 
 nucopia, in all their native richness and strength upon an audience, 
 who must have found in them a charm, of which we are wholly 
 unsusceptible. Perhaps, too, it added some charm to their value, in the 
 eyes of democratical pride and vanity, that it was a man of rank and 
 property (for Aristophanes was both) who thus condescended to amuse 
 his audience according to their own notions of pleasantry and humour. 
 
 Till the fatal exhibition therefore of the Clouds, the dramatic career of 
 Aristophanes had been short, but eminently successful. His first play, 
 (the Dsetaleis,) which was brought out before the author had reached 
 the age established by law,t we know to have been received with the 
 most flattering attention : his " Babylonians" could boast the triumph 
 of having at once excited and defeated the vengeance of that pestilent 
 demagogue, who seems, as the historian expresses it, to have been as 
 much born for the depression of Athens, as Miltiades, Themistocles, 
 Cymon and Pericles were for its elevation; while the prize of victory 
 had been awarded to his comedies of the Acharnians and the Knights. 
 Diffidence^ had thus been removed : exertion was stimulated ; and grati- 
 tude, success, emulation and hope, all urged the writer to press forward 
 in a career, which had commenced under such favourable auspices. 
 
 The first of the dramatic pieces of Aristophanes seems to have been 
 
 * The Agora was the public place of the Greeks, which, however, differed 
 very considerably from the Forum of the Romans, the substitute generally given 
 for it. This substitution of Roman terms for Grecian, has occasioned a great 
 deal of confusion in the minds of readers. Works of humour cannot safely dis- 
 pense with them : for humour must be excited by appealing to ideas already 
 resident in the mind, as there must be material ready to receive the sparks eli- 
 cited from flint in order to create a flame. Writers upon serious subjects are 
 not so tied by their subjects, and an appeal may be made to scholars, whether 
 it is not time, that the mythologies of the two great nations of antiquity should 
 be kept more distinct by the introduction of a Zeus, a Poseidon, and a Chronus, 
 as well as a Jupiter, a Neptune, and a Saturn. 
 
 I Wieland, in the notes to his translation of the " Clouds," quotes the autho- 
 rity of the Scholiast for saying, that there is an uncertainty whether the legal 
 age for exhibiting a dramatic piece, was twenty or thirty years of age. In the 
 former case, Aristophanes could have been little more than twenty-four or 
 twenty-five years old when he produced that elaborate composition. In Kuster's 
 edition, the Scholiast (apparently with good reason) places the established age 
 ten years later than Wieland does ; the office was one of serious national im- 
 portance, and therefore, not likely to be committed to a mere youth. 
 
 ^ Diffidence is'a quality not usually ascribed to this poet : but his well-known 
 repugnance to take a part in the performance of his own plays (the usual prac- 
 tice of the times) till he was forced into it by circumstances, (see the preface to 
 the Knights in this volume,) and the Parabases in the Knights and the Clouds, 
 fully establish the fact. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 17 
 
 directed against the state of private manners in Athens ;* in his Achar- 
 nians he endeavoured to moderate the insolence of national success, and 
 to infuse juster notions respecting a great public measure, which was 
 putting the existence of the Athenians as a people at stake ; while in 
 the knights, or, as it may more properly be termed, the Demagogues, 
 a mirror was held up to his fellow-citizens, where the ruler and the 
 ruled saw themselves reflected with equal fidelity, and by which pos- 
 terity has gained a complete knowledge of the greatest historical phae- 
 nomenon that ever appeared, the Athenian Demus. It remained for 
 the author to strike at the root of all these evils, private and public, 
 domestic and political — a mischievous and most pernicious system of 
 education. This was undoubtedly the origin and object of the Clouds; 
 and a brief outline of the progress of knowledge among the Greeks, 
 and more particularly of that branch of it, which was comprehended 
 under the name of " Philosophy," will at once tend to explain the aim 
 of the author, and throw some light upon the comedy itself. That 
 Aristophanes had not entered lightly or without reflection upon the 
 office of a public instructor, this mere arrangement of his subjects, at 
 an age when, if not youthful in years, he was at least young in his 
 career, sufficiently testifies ; and we may here see what might have been 
 expected from him in maturer years, if public favour had patronised 
 this attempt to raise the comedy of his country above its ordinary level, 
 and to make it something more than a scene of ebullition for the noisy 
 jollity and licentious revelry of the Dionysian festivals. 
 
 The proper epoch of Grecian literature begins with Solon. Before 
 his time, says Frederic Schlegel, the Greeks possessed no more than 
 commonly falls to the share of every people who are blessed with a 
 favourable corporeal organization, while they are animated with the 
 fresh impulses of a youthful society — traditions which hold the place 
 of histories, and songs and poems which are repeated and remembered 
 so as to serve instead of books. Such songs, as this excellent writer 
 proceeds to observe, calculated to arouse national feelings, to give ani- 
 mation in the hour of battle, or to be sung at the festivals of their reli 
 gion, the Greeks possessed, in the utmost variety, from the most early 
 period of their existence as a nation. They possessed also in abund- 
 ance those still more valuable songs of narrative, which express not the 
 feelings that seize and overpower an individual poet, but which embody 
 the recollection and the feelings of the people — the faint memory of an 
 almost fabulous antiquity — the achievements of heroes and of gods— 
 
 * The principal characters in this play, of which only a few fragments have 
 reached us, were two brothers : their names, Sophron and Catapygox, suffi- 
 ciently evince, that the object of the play was to establish a comparison between 
 the temperate virtues of the good old times (a favourite theme of Aristophanes) 
 and the unrestrained and unexampled dissoluteness of his own age. 
 3 
 
18 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 the origin of a nation, and the creation of the world. Among these 
 stood, highly preeminent, the Homeric poems, the still astonishing 
 works of the Iliad and the Odyssey. 
 
 In committing these poems to memory, numerous as we have seen 
 and while books were scarce and valuable, many of them perhaps to be 
 learned only by oral communication ; in understanding critically their 
 beauties and defects, and in attaining, through them, a perfect know- 
 ledge of that wonderful language, which, formed amid migrations and 
 revolutions of every kind, yet attained to such perfection, as to make 
 all subsequent languages appear nearly barbarous, consisted a great part, 
 and, from the effect it had in cultivating the imagination at the expense 
 of the understanding, many persons will think a very vicious part, of 
 Athenian education. But the principal development of the faculties 
 was left to be effected by the two opposite engines, at once producing 
 and evincing that love of contrast, which obtained so much among the 
 Athenians, and which forms the great key to ascertaining their character 
 — music and gymnastic exercises. What the music itself of the ancients 
 ever was, we have now, as a very competent observer remarks, little 
 means of judging, as none of it has been transmitted intelligible to us ; 
 but that the Grecian music, even from the earliest times, had extraordi- 
 nary merit, we have Plato's* testimony in very remarkable words ; and 
 Aristotle, who, according to Montesquieu, had two ruling motives to 
 guide his decisions, affection for Alexander, and a jealousy against 
 Plato, upon this subject coincides in judgment with his great master. 
 It appears indeed a solecism, as Mr Mitford observes, to suppose that 
 those elegant perceptions and nice organs which gave form to the most 
 harmonious language ever spoken among men, and guided invention to 
 the structure of that verse which, even under the gross disguise of mo- 
 dern pronunciation, is still universally charming, could have produced 
 or could have tolerated a vicious or inelegant style of music. As in- 
 struments of education, Plato delights to dwell upon these two powerful 
 engines : he paints, in the most earnest language, their ill effects, when 
 pursued separately and immoderately ; their admirable influence, when 
 conjointly and temperately. Naturally mystic and fanciful, it is not 
 
 * Minos, 46 (B). Convivium, 333 (B). The two grf^at founders of the Gre- 
 cian music, Marsyas and Olympus, seem, from the discoveries made at Hercu- 
 laneum, to have been very favourite objects of representation with the sculptors 
 and artists of Greece. Olympus is generally represented, as a young man of 
 exquisite beauty and the most graceful proportions, taking lessons on the pan- 
 pipe from Marsyas; the latter, from that love of contrast, which ran through the 
 Grecian arts, or from that idea of ridicule, which latterly attached among the 
 Athenians to the professors of wind music, is generally drawn as a Satyr, as 
 enormous in his proportions as Olympus is delicate. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. W 
 
 likely that this philosopher should be always clear or plain,* when 
 subjects which offered so much temptation to both his ruling propen- 
 sities, as harmony and the exercises of the palaestra, were under his 
 consideration ; what share they had in producing that physical perfec- 
 tion at least — that union of strength and elegance in the body, and that 
 capacity in the organs for receiving impressions from works of art and 
 
 * The difficulty consists, in a great degree, in the application of the same 
 words to music as it acted upon the senses and emotions, and to music as it 
 bore upon grammar, and language, and upon all that range of knowledge, which, 
 giving a complete polish to the mind, makes Plato call his perfect philosopher 
 a perfect musician. (De Rep. 1. ix.) Till we can ascertain from Aristotle more 
 clearly than we ever shall do, (see his Politica, lib. viii c. 5, 6, 7.) what were 
 the moral harmonies which the Greeks applied to the purposes of education — 
 the practical harmonies, the application of which is wholly uncertain — and the 
 sacred melodies which were directed to the purgation of enthusiasm, we must 
 be content to remain in ignorance of that revolution in music, of which Aristo- 
 phanes and Plato so much complain as taking place in their day, and which 
 the latter declares, was alone sufficient to shake all the establishments of state 
 to their centre. There is some obscurity even in the following passages, which 
 describe what we should call the practical effects of music and gymnastic ex 
 crcises ; but there is the hand of a master in the description. " When a man 
 allows music to pipe into him, and to make use of his ears, like funnels, for the 
 Infusion of soft, sweet and plaintive harmonies; when he passes his time in the 
 titillations of those soothing enjoyments, wliich song affords — what courage he 
 had in him becomes softened like iron ; and thus losing its hardness, it becomes 
 fitted for the commerce of life : but if this delight be pursued immoderately, if 
 this iron be put into a state of fusion, the courage gradually melts away, the 
 nerves of the soul are cut out, and a feeble warriour is the result of such a sys- 
 tem of conduct. In a person naturally feeble, this result would naturally be 
 more speedy in taking place : in one of a naturally courageous soul, nature being 
 weakened and rendered easy to be thrown off its balance, the least things irritate 
 and soothe him — and instead of being bold and resolute, such a person becomes 
 passionate, morose, full of fantasies and a troublesome fastidiousness. Again, 
 if a person give himself up to the labours of the gymnasium and to feasts, with- 
 out attention to music or philosophy, such a man becomes filled with high 
 thoughts and courage, and exceeds himself in bravery; but if he do nothing else, 
 if he have no communication with the Muses, even though there had been origi- 
 nally a love of learning in bis mind, yet without tasting of that instruction which 
 is gained by application, by inquiry and conversation, he becomes weak, and 
 deaf, and blind, like a man that is never awakened, nor nourished, nor that has 
 his feelings purified. Such a man becomes a hater of conversation and averse 
 from the Muses: in his language he uses no persuasion ; he docs everything, 
 like a beast, by force and ferocity; and he lives in ignorance and rudeness, with- 
 out any accompaniment of grace or politeness." — The Platonic Socrates therefore 
 concludes, that the gods had given music and gymnastic exercises to men, that 
 by blending the two properly together the soul might be made perfect in its two 
 greatest endowments, a temperate courage and a philosophic understanding. De 
 Rpp. lib. iii. 
 
»0 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 beauty — which has generally been conceded to the Greeks — we may 
 gather from the observations which he has left us, most unsparingly, 
 upon the subject. From the earliest periods, education among the 
 greater part of the Athenians seems to have embraced little more than 
 the circle here described : and till the age of Pericles, the three great 
 preceptors of Athenian youth remained as before ; — the grammarian, 
 the teacher of music, and the master of the gymnasium.* 
 
 But there \vere some minds of a higher cast and of more restless 
 energies than to be satisfied with this narrow range of instruction ; and 
 the same shore which had given birth to the great father of Grecian 
 poetry had, in the person of the Milesian Thales, provided a preceptor, 
 who was at once calculated to excite and, to a certain extent, to gratify 
 that love of research and deep and curious speculation, which seems to 
 have been at least inherent in the Grecian character, as a love of poetry 
 and the fine arts. How congenial these pursuits were with their na- 
 tional temperament may be inferred from the single remark, that the 
 fire which Thalesf lighted up, has never since been extinguished among 
 them. His own schoolj was followed in quick succession by the Ita- 
 lian, and Eleatic,§ where physical and metaphysical knowledge were 
 followed with equal success ; and the dialogues of Plato furnish the 
 most ample testimony of the zeal and fervour with which they were 
 pursued in Athens, as soon as a respite from revolution and wars gave 
 leisure for their introduction into that inquisitive town. The struggle 
 which the Greek philosophy maintained with the doctrines of Christi- 
 
 * Alcibiades, the nephew of the first man in Athens, confesses in the first of 
 those dialogues, which go by his name, that his education had not extended 
 beyond the three masters here mentioned. Alcibiades, lus. 26. D. E. In the 
 time of Aristotle we find painting added to the routine of education. The Sta- 
 geirite gives two reasons for the addition thus made to the old range of instruc- 
 tion — that men might acquire a more accurate tact in estimating the beauty of 
 the human body, and that they might not be cheated in the purchase or sale of those 
 domestic ornaments or necessaries, which came under the common name of a-mvit. 
 Arist. de Rep. 1. viii. c. 3. 
 
 f We believe we might go much farther than Thales to show the inherent 
 passion of the Greeks for physical pursuits. Many of their earliest mythical 
 fables — Orpheus with his seven-string'd lyre — the double character of Tiresias 
 — the golden ram of Phryxus — the Thyestean banquet, etc., are all perhaps 
 referable to astronomic researches. See the Treatise de Astrologia, generally 
 attributed to Lucian. v. 5. Bip. ed. 
 
 X The great leaders in the Ionian school (and it is clear from the writings of 
 Diogenes Laertius that the successions were very accurately observed) were, 
 from the time of its foundation by Thales, to the time of Socrates, Anaximander, 
 Anaximines, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, and Archelaus; the latter was 
 the preceptor of Socrates. 
 
 § The Eleatic, properly speaking, was a branch of the Italian or Pythagorean 
 school. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 21 
 
 anity, forms one of the great partitions between the old world and the 
 new ; and if the Greeks paved the way to the final destruction of their 
 country, by disputing instead of fighting, by trying to settle whether 
 the light upon Mount Tabor had been from all eternity, or had been 
 produced by God for the purpose of the Transfiguration, this has not 
 prevented them from soothing the disgrace of political degradation by 
 the subtle inquiries and neverending debates of polemical divinity. 
 Can we be altogether surprized at it in a nation, which, with organs the 
 most acute and perceptive, possessed a language that could express every 
 sensation ; a language, as the historian enthusiastically expresses it, so 
 musical and prolific, that it could give a soul to the objects of sense, and 
 a body to the abstractions of metaphysics ? — Those lofty but dangerous 
 speculations, therefore, in which the strongest minds sometimes be- 
 come entangled, and in which weak minds are sure to suffer shipwreck, 
 became very soon the favourite studies of such among the Greeks, as 
 were possessed of leisure and had a curiosity to satisfy ; and God, the 
 Universe and Man at once divided and engrossed the whole of their 
 attention. Their facts were few, but their disputes were long ; if they 
 could not convince, they could at least reason : one absurdity led them 
 to another ; but every absurdity furnished a disputation of words, and 
 words,* even without ideas, were as the breath of life to the loquacious 
 Athenians. The extravagant expression of Lessing would, with them, 
 have been strictly in place : If the Almighty held truth in one hand, and 
 in the other the investigation of truth, my choice would rest upon the 
 latter. What is God ? the philosophers therefore first asked. He is 
 the most ancient of all things, for he is without beginning, said Thales. 
 He is air, said Anaximenes. He is a pure mind, said Anaxagoras. He 
 is air and mind, said Archelaus. He is mind in a spherical form, said 
 Democritus. He is a monad and the principle of good, said Pythagoras, 
 He is an eternal circular fire, said Heraclitus. He is the finite and 
 immoveable principle in a spherical form, said Parmenides ; he is one 
 
 * What Plato says of the scholars of Heracleitus no doubt applied pretty well 
 to all the philosophers. " It is as easy to talk with madmen as it is w ith them. 
 Their writings have nothing steady in them : all are in a state of perpetual mo- 
 tion. As for a pause in disputation and interrogation, or a quiet question or 
 answer, it is a chance infinitely less than nothing, that you get such a thing 
 from them. For their minds are in a perpetual state of restlessness : and woe 
 to him that puts a question to them ! instantly comes a flight of enigmatical 
 little words, like arrows from a quiver; and if you ask a reason of this assault, 
 the result is another discharge, with merely a change of names. There is no 
 doing any thing with a single one of tliem ; their only concern being, as it 
 should seem, that nothing fixed or stable should appear either in their language 
 or in their minds." Thesetetus, p. 130. 
 
22 PRELIMINARY DISCOITRSE. 
 
 and every thing, said Melissus and Zenon — the only eternal and infinite. 
 These were subjects on which the profoundest mind might have disco- 
 vered the most ample exercise for itself; but to the Greek, a vacuity 
 was still left: Necessity, Fate and Fortune or Accident filled it up. 
 
 The Universe furnished another set of disputations. What is, has 
 ever been, and the world is eternal, said one party. The world is not 
 eternal, but the matter is eternal, argued another party. Was this matter 
 susceptible of forms ; of one or many ? was it water, or air, or fire ? 
 was it an assemblage of atoms, or an infinite number of incorruptible 
 elements ? Had this matter subsisted without movement in chaos, or 
 had it an irregular movement ? Did the world appear by Intelligence 
 communicating its action to it, or did God ordain it by penetrating it 
 with a part of his essence ? Did these atoms move in the void, and was 
 the universe the result of their fortuitous union ? Are there but two 
 elements in nature, earth and fire, and by these are all things formed 
 and produced; or are there four elements, whose parts are united by 
 Love and separated by Hatred ? Causes and essences, bodies, forms 
 and colours, production and dissolution, the great phaenomena of visible 
 nature ; the magnitudes, figures, eclipses and phases of the two hea- 
 venly luminaries ; the nature and division of the sky; the magnitude 
 and situation of the earth; the sea with its ebbs and flows; the causes 
 of thunder, lightning, winds and earthquakes — all these furnished dis- 
 quisitions, which were pursued with an eagerness of research and in- 
 tenseness of application, peculiar to the Greeks. Man, a compound of 
 matter and of mind — having relations to the universe by the former, and 
 to the Eternal Being by the latter — presented phaenomena and contra- 
 dictions, as puzzling to the old philosophers, as the universe of which 
 he was the abridgment. While all allowed him a soul and an intelli- 
 gence, all differed widely in their definition of this soul or intelligence. 
 It is always in motion and it moves by itself, said one party — it is a 
 number in motion — it is the liarmony of the four elements — it is air, it 
 is water, it is fire, it is blood — it is a fiery mixture of things perceptible 
 by the intellect, which have globose shapes and the force of fire — it is 
 a flame which emanates from the sun — it is an assemblage of fiery and 
 spherical atoms, like those subtle particles of matter, which are seen 
 agitated in the rays of the sun. 
 
 Such were a few of the speculations, which science had devised, for 
 employing the thoughts of active-minded men in Greece ; and if the 
 mere enumeration of them on paper (without entering into the thousand 
 shades and differences which had all their separate promulgators, advo- 
 cates and abettors) have excited either a smile or a sensation of weari- 
 someness in a reader, he may imagine what must have been their eflfects 
 upon a man of lively and mercurial temperament, like Aristophanes, 
 who found them crossing his path at every turn, and saw them opera- 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 23 
 
 ting with the most ridiculous effects upon the petulance of the lively,* 
 and the conduct of the more sedate ! 
 
 The hold which the philosophers properly so called according to our 
 nomenclature, acquired over the public mind at Athens was gradual, 
 and perhaps at all times partial ; that which a much more pernicious 
 class of men, known since by the name of Sophists, assumed, was 
 instantaneous, and almost universal ; the very causes which operated 
 against the introduction of philosophy, tending to encourage and give 
 entrance to the precepts of the sophists. The busy and stirring nature 
 of the times, the change from monarchical to republican governments, 
 the institution of popular assemblies, and still more the Persian contest, 
 by making the Greeks act in bodies, where feelings were to be conci- 
 
 * Plato, whose satirica] powers were not inferior to those of Aristophanes, 
 has described both these classes of persons with great effect. In the dialogue, 
 called Pliilebus, the Platonic Socrates is thus made to speak. " Our passion for 
 disputation upon subjects of this kind has something in it, which is beyond the 
 reach of decay or mortality. No sooner does one of our young men get a taste of 
 it, than he feels delighted, as if he had discovered a treasure of wisdom. Carried 
 away by a pleasure that amounts to madness, he finds a subject of dispute in every 
 thing that occurs. At one time both sides of the subject are considered, and re- 
 duced to one. At another, the subject is analysed and split into parts : himself 
 becomes the first and principal victim of his own doubts and difiiculties: his neigh- 
 bour, whether junior, senior, or equal, no matter, is the next suflerer; he spares 
 not father nor mother, nor any one who will give him the loan of his ears ; scarcely 
 animals escape him, and much less his fellow-creatures; even the foreigner has 
 no security but the want of an interpreter at hand to go between them." (Phile- 
 bus, p. 74.) The graver men are pursued with the same severity, and it is observ- 
 able that Socrates addresses them in the same strain of ridicule, and nearly in the 
 words, which twenty-three years before, the author of the Clouds had bestowed 
 upon himself. — " From their earliest days they knew not the way to the Agora, 
 nor can they tell where are the courts of justice, or the senatehouse, or any of the 
 places of public meeting in the city ; as for the laws and public decrees — whether 
 those proniulg?.ted by the voice, or those committed to writing — they have neither 
 eyes for the one, nor ears for the other. Clubs, and meetings, and suppers, 
 and jovial parties, where there are musicwomen, are things which never come 
 before them even in a dream. Whether things go well or ill in the city, whether 
 a man's ancestors, either on the male or female side, have been the cause of 
 any calamity to him, are matters of which they are as much in the dark, as they 
 are of the number of sands which lie by the seaside. They are even so far 
 gone, as not to know that they are ignorant of all this. Nor does this proceed 
 from any peculiar feeling or notion of vanity; but in fact, with a man of this 
 kind, it is the body only which is resident in the city : his mind holds matters 
 of this kind as trifles, or rather as things utterly without value, and is, as Pindar 
 terms it, for ever on the wing : to what is upon the earth and below the earth, 
 he applies the science of geometry; what is in the heavens he investigates by 
 astronomy; he scrutinises and searches the whole universe, and knows every 
 thing but that which is immcdidtely before him." Theaetetus, VZl. 
 
24 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 liated, prejudices consulted, and large sacrifices of private interest to be 
 demanded in favour of public, all conspired to bring into vogue a know- 
 ledge more adapted to the transaction of human business, than the study 
 of the heavens, and the properties of matter, the nature of God and the 
 soul. The successful termination of that most important struggle, the 
 temporary quiet which resulted from it, and the measures which were 
 taken to provide against the recurrence of a similar event, by bringing 
 the different states of Greece still more into contact with each other, 
 naturally assisted the progress of this desire for intellectual improve- 
 ment : political wisdom soon became the leading object of attainment ; 
 and the splendid eminence to which political eloquence led, made it 
 of essential importance to investigate and cultivate those rules which 
 were found most effectual for working upon large bodies of men. It 
 is impossible to peruse the interesting dialogues of Plato and Xeno- 
 phon, without receiving the most lively impression of the strong fer- 
 ment, which was then taking place in men's minds, and without re- 
 cognizing in them some of the marks of that agitated fermentation of 
 the intellect, which, whether for good or evil, is working in our own 
 days. To be able to distinguish themselves in the General Assem- 
 blies — to make a figure in the courts of justice — to be ingenious in 
 putting and ready in answering questions — and what, in the now 
 complicated affairs of Grecian politics, was becoming of still more 
 importance, to become men of business* was the ruling object of 
 every young man's ambition in Athens. The example of Pericles had 
 taught experimentally the advantage of a union of the deeper knowledge 
 of philosophyt with the rich gifts of nature ; and the splendid prize, 
 
 * What was required of a man of business in the management of Athenian 
 aflfairs, will be best learnt by perusing the fourth chapter of Aristotle's first book 
 of Rhetoric, the admirable little dialogue between Glaucon and Socrates in 
 Xenophon's Memorabilia, and the speech of Demosthenes de Corona. " Ha- 
 ranguing," as Lord Bolingbroke observes, in allusion to the immense variety of 
 business which passed through the hands of that acutest of statesmen, " was, at 
 this time, the least part of the business of Demosthenes ; and eloquence neither 
 the sole, nor the principal talent, as the style of writers would induce us to be- 
 lieve, on which his success depended. He must have been master of other arts, 
 subservient to which his eloquence was employed ; and must have had a thorough 
 knowledge of his own state, and of the other states of Greece; of their disposi- 
 tions, and of their interests, relatively to one another and relatively to their 
 neighbours : I say, he must have been master of many other arts, and have pos- 
 sessed an immense fund of knowledge, to make his eloquence in every case 
 successful, and even pertinent and seasonable in some, as well as to direct and 
 furnish it with matter, whenever he thought fit to employ that weapon." — Lord 
 Bolingbroke on the Spirit of Patriotism. 
 
 ] Pericles had been a scholar of Anaxagoras ; and from his intercourse with 
 that philosopher, to whom is attributed the first conception of one Eternal, Al- 
 mighty, and All-good Being, he is said by Plato (in Phaedro, 351 D.) to have 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. il5 
 
 which had for so many years been the reward of his profound accom- 
 plishments, seems to have stood before the eyes of his young and ad- 
 miring fellow-countrymen till it absolutely dazzled and blinded them. 
 All wished to be like Perich^s — all would be at the head of public affairs 
 — all would command men, and have their fame spread, like his fame, 
 and that of Themistocles, from their own city to Greece, and from 
 Greece to the remotest regions of barbarism. But how was this know- 
 ledge to be acquired ? — For those of 5'ounger years there was no defi- 
 ciency of masters in tliose branches, which formed the system of edu- 
 cation in Athens; but for young men of riper age, w!io had passed 
 through the hands of the grammarian and the music-master, and acquired 
 that limited knowledge of arithmetic,* geometry, history, and astrono- 
 my, whicli the then state of seicnce could supply, no establishments, 
 like our universities,! were in being, where fiirlhcr opportunities were 
 
 dorived that forcible and sublime spirit of oratory, which distinguislieJ him 
 above all his contemporaries. For an account of Anaxagoras sec Brueker's 
 chapter do Secta lonica, § xix. The learned German, who might have been 
 expected, from the bulk of his enormous tomes, to have thmig^:! away all feeling, 
 becomes almost affecting in his account of this real and most enthusiastic philo- 
 sopher. 
 
 * Plato insists very strongly upon the cullivalion of these branches of science 
 (his love for arithmetic, in particular, is well known) in the course of instruction 
 provided for his imaginary republic ;« but he does it less with any view to prac- 
 tical purposes, than as means of disciplining the mind and preparing it for the 
 power of contemplating things in their essences, the favourite object of the Pla- 
 tonic doctrine, See the 7th hook of the Republic; also the epinomis. 
 
 f Something like them did afterwards exist, in the Lyceum, the Academy, 
 and those other establishments for the " education chainpetre" of the Athenians, 
 of which M. de Pauw speaks in such rapturous terms. This gentleman, who 
 often makes his readers pay for the valuable knowledge he communicates by the 
 manner in which it is conveyed, or the remarks by which it is accompanied, has 
 made their establishment a vehicle for throwing out a most insulting taunt upon 
 one of our own academical institutions. M. de Pauw is not now living to know, 
 that Oxford has adopteil a course of education which will enable her nobly to 
 repel all such insinuations in future; and that tlie reproaches of former days are 
 but so many tributes of applause to the wisdom and energy by which the pi;r- 
 suits of that illustrious university are now directed and animated. — liec/ierches 
 riiilosop/iifjues siir ks Grccs. Discours Freliminuire, p. 11. 
 
 a The common term, by which readers call that work of Plato, the most bril- 
 liant effort of his genius, as his legislation was the most perfect of his mature 
 judgment, is here used ; but every scholar is aware, that a republic ranked in 
 Plato's mind only one degree above a perfect despotism ; the most perfeci go- 
 vernment, according to this great j)hilosrpher, was a monarchy, or aristocracy. 
 It was not very likely indeed, that a person, wlio ranked a capacity for politics 
 with poetry and prophecy, and considered all three as immediate inspirations 
 from heaven, (in Men. 24. D.) should have drawn bis ideas of a perfect go- 
 vernment from the fractional sovereigiis under whom it was his own miserable 
 fate to l)c born. 
 
 4 
 
26 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 held out to that dangerous age, when a course of instruction, fitted to 
 fill and enlarge the mind, to form the taste, and what is still more im- 
 portant, to perfect the morals, becomes so imperiously necessary. But 
 where a want is felt in society, it is not long before some one starts up 
 to supply it; and a race of men soon made their way into Athens, who, 
 under the name of Sophists, undertook to supply all deficiencies of 
 schools, halls, and colleges. The first person who actjuired distinction 
 in this profession, suflicient to make his name known to posterity, and 
 to have an influence upon the age in which he lived, was Protagoras 
 of Abdera. Originally a faggot-maker, his mode of tying up bundles 
 excited the attention of Democritus ; and the instructions of that philo- 
 sopher subsequently enabled him to quit a trade, in which he might 
 have been humbly useful, for a profession in which he unfortunately 
 became splendidly mischievous. Tlie human mind never losing alto- 
 gether the impression of its first employments, the inventor of the por- 
 ter's knot became also the discoverer of the knots of language ; and 
 accordingly, to Protagoras is ascribed the pernicious proclamation, 
 which announced, that with him might be acquired, for a proper com- 
 pensation, that species of knowledge, which was able to confound right 
 and wrong, and make the worse appear the better cause: a doctrine 
 which strikes us with amazement and confusion, but which was propa- 
 gated with such success, that in the days of Aristophanes and Plato it 
 appears to have excited little surprise in those who professed it, and to 
 have been rather expected than otherwise in such persons as set them- 
 selves up for teachers of wisdom. Bred in the school of philosophy, 
 (if Schelling will allow us to make use of so unphilosophical an ex- 
 pression,) which taught that tliere was nothing* fixed in nature, this 
 flagitious sophist carried the uncertain and dangerous language of phy- 
 sics into the business of human life, and thus poisoned the stream of 
 truth in its very fountain and source. The direct language of Thales, 
 Epicharmus, and Heraclcitus, and the allegorical genealogies of Homer 
 were brought to prove, that all things being in a state of continual mo- 
 tion, nothing actually is, and every thing is in a state of becoming : 
 that an object therefore, considered in itself, is not one thing more than 
 another; but that through motion, mixture, and the relation of one thing 
 to another, the same object both ivas and appeared one thing to one 
 person, and another thing to another. What are called heat and cold, 
 changed their situations, it was said, even in the time of pronouncing 
 the words; and before the enunciation was completed, heat ceased to 
 be heat, and cold ceased to be cold — nothing, therefore, it was inferred, 
 can be affirmed or even seen with certainty: heat is no more heat than 
 cold, white is not more white than its opposite, knowledge is nothing 
 
 * Panuenides and Melissus taught just the reverse. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 27 
 
 more than sensation, man is the measure of all things, of things existing, 
 existing as they are, and of things non-existing, as they are not, and all 
 thoughts are true. For every one thinks according to the impression 
 made upon him, impressions are made by what is in motion, motion is 
 created by agency, agency can proceed only from the things which are, 
 and the things which are, must be true. From these sentiments it natu- 
 rally followed, that not only what is wholesome and useful had no actual 
 substance in themselves ; but that honour and virtue, being the beginning 
 and aim of what is useful existed only in the opinions and habits of men. 
 
 To controvert these opinions was a task of no easy kind : for the 
 author of them maintained that it was not merely impossible to say 
 what was false, but even to think what was false. He gravely asserted 
 that there was no such thing as a false opinion, and that ignorance was a 
 thing physically impossible ; and he allowed that it being impossible for 
 a person to lie, or to hold a wrong opinion, or even to be ignorant, it fol- 
 lowed that there was no such tiling as aberration in word, thought, or 
 action. A puzzling question sometimes met the assertors of these opi- 
 nions ; viz. what, in such a state of perfection, remained for themselves 
 to teach : but this was got rid of by abuse, or by a piece of sophistry, 
 which put an end to all disputation in limine, They maintained that 
 there was no such thing as contradiction, or that a man could demonstrate 
 that he had ever heard tnc man contradicting another; for, said the au- 
 thor of these opinions, or his disciples for him, every existing thing has 
 its own proper definitions, and these definitions are, as every thing is, 
 and not as it is not: nobody therefore speaks the thing which is not, for 
 nobody can saj'- the thing whicli is not in existence. They further put 
 two cases : if each of us, said they, in defining the same thing coincide 
 in our definition, it is plain that we both agree in opinion ; but if our 
 definitions upon the same thing vary, it is so far from being a disagree- 
 ment of ideas upon a subject, that neither of us can properly be said to 
 have started the subject: since I, therefore, concluded the triumphant 
 sophist, define one thing, and you another, what contradiction is there 
 between us ? — May it not rather be asserted, that I speak of a tiling, 
 and that you advance nothing about it ? and how can he who says 
 nothing be said to contradict him who says something ? 
 
 In such a town as Athens, we may easily imagine that the small wits 
 and humbler* sophists eagerly fastened upon doctrines, so well suited 
 
 * Plato has left us a most amusing specimen in his dialogue called Euthyde- 
 mus, of the smaller craft of sophists, who confined themselves to this legerde- 
 main of language, and who contented themselves with offering that insult, 
 which the understanding feels at being confuted but not convicted; at finding 
 that words are against it, and things for it ; at feeling that it cannot yield to 
 conclusions apparently true, without violence to thai plain sense of right, which 
 is the voice of the Divinity within us, and worth all ihc systems of logic that 
 ever were invented. A brief analysis of this lively dialogue will contribute very 
 
28 rRELIWIXARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 to the meridian of their capacities, as those wliicli are here ascribed to 
 the philosopher of Abdera. When the great Belial himself first began 
 
 mucli to g-ive the reader a picture of the times and of tlie manner in which the 
 education of the young Athenians of family was conducted. The impudent 
 sophist from whom the dialogue derives its name, was one of two brothers who 
 had gained considerable reputation by giving lessons in tactics and other branches 
 of knowledge connected with a military life. They found it more profitable, 
 however, to change the war of weapons for that of words, and to prepare scho- 
 lars for the arena of the Ecclesia and courts of law, in preference to disciplining 
 them for the field of battle. Tlie dialogue commences with one of those natural 
 touches, wliieh give an air of reality to a picture, and which Plato, like all other 
 men of genius, is fond of u«ing. Socrates, meeting his first and most excellent 
 friend Criton, is questioned by him as to the person with whom he had been 
 seen holding a disputation in the Lyceum the day before. There was a great 
 crowd, says the worthy questionists ; so that though I advanced as closely as 
 possible, with an eager desire to hear what was passing, I was unable to under- 
 stand any thing distinctly. By raising my head above the rest, I got a view 
 indeed, and as far as I could discern, it was no native of the city with whom 
 you were disputing. This affords an opening to the dialogue : — the name of the 
 stranger (Euthydemus,) — of his brother, who assisted in the disputation (Dio- 
 nysodorus,) — their former profession and their present pursuits, are recorded in 
 due order. Socrates then proceeds to answer Criton's second question, which 
 implied a wish to know the subject of the disputation. " By the influence of 
 some god," says the philosopher, " it was my lot to be sitting where you saw 
 me, in the Apodyterium; (the place where the young Athenians, preparing for 
 the exercises of the palaestra, deposited their clothes;) I had the place entirely 
 to myself, and indeed I was just thinking of leaving it, when, as I rose up, the 
 usual signal from the daemon took place. (What the daemon of Socrates was, 
 whether a real spirit, a vision, a voice, an immediate inspiration from the Deity, 
 or that inward feeling, which by continued reflections upon the past and future 
 gives the wise man something like a prophetic sensation of what ought to be 
 done, this is not the place to inquire.) Attentive to this impulse," continues the 
 philosopher, "I immediately gave up my intention of going away:" — his com- 
 pliance was duly rewarded ; for it was followed by the almost immediate en- 
 trance of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, attended by a large crowd of scholars. 
 The sophists having taken two or three turns in the hypodrome, or covered 
 porch where the wrestlers practised their exercises in winter, Cleinias, a young 
 person in whose education Socrates took an interest, and a great deal of other 
 .company drop in. Greetings and salutations pass between the parties: a slight 
 skirmish of irony on the side of Socrates, and of contempluousness on the part 
 of the sophists, soon leads the way to a more direct engagement, and an assertion 
 made by the two sophists, that virtue could be made a subject of instruction, at 
 last brings the parties to close quarters. Cleinias is proposed as a pupil, on 
 whom the efficacy of this boasted annunciation may be tried, and the sophists, 
 with the usual confidence of their class, engage to make their words perfectly 
 good. A question accordingly is put to the young man by way of making trial 
 <of his abilities, and be is asked, which class of men are to be called learners, 
 .h.e wise or the unlearned'? At this important question, says the satirical nar- 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 29 
 
 to advance them, and more particularly those odious ones, which ought 
 to heap the curses of posterity upon his head ; viz. the doctrine of sen- 
 
 rator, the youncr ir.an blushed and turned his eyes to me in a state of hesitation . 
 The desired encouragement, however, was given by Socrates to his young friend; 
 Dionysodorus whispering the former with a smile on his countenance, that it 
 was immaterial which side of the question the youth took, as he would be 
 equally confuted on the spot. The reader will, after such an annunciation, 
 think it immaterial to know which side was first taken ; the result was as Dio- 
 nysodorus had predicted, and the conviction of Cleinias is followed by a fremitus 
 of applause from the two sophists and their friends. The question in its other 
 shape meets with the same ill success on the part of the young disputant, and 
 a roar of approbation and triumph again breaks forth from the opposing party; 
 resemblinsr, says the narrator, the laughter of a Chouus, whose leader has given 
 them the signal for most obstreperous mirth. Some other puzzling, or as the 
 original terms them in a sense which our language does not altogether convey, 
 *' inevitable" questions succeed this successful one ; the two brothers alternately 
 taking up the ball, till the young man finds himself utterly thrown by this new 
 species of wrestling. Socrates then comes to his help; he points out to him 
 the fallacies of the terms by which he has been thus ignominiously worsted, 
 and assures him that what had hitherto passed was but a little playfulness 
 on the part of the sophists, resembling the wantonness of those wags, who fake 
 a man's chair from under him when he is preparing to sit down, and then laugh 
 at the awkwardness to which it reduces him ; he assures him that the rest of 
 the disputation will be carried on with that seriousness and propriety, which 
 were due to the discussion of an inquiry so important, as that which endeavoured 
 to ascertain, by what methods a young man may best be led into the paths 
 of virtue and wisdom, and he proceeds to relieve the preceding impertinences 
 of the sophists by one of his own beautiful discourses. In this disquisition, 
 after defining happiness by the common notion, that it consists in living 
 agreeably, he proves that living agreeably must depend upon gaining the 
 objects of our wishes and using them rightly; and he concludes by a set of 
 inductions, the tendency of which is to show that as by wisdom alone such 
 wishes can be effected, and used rightly, the just inference is that nothing can 
 make us happy but wisdom. This impressive discourse ended, the dialogue 
 returns again to a display of sophistical skill on the part of Euthydemns and 
 Dionysodorus, and the spirit of the piece is kept up with the most unabated 
 animation to the end. By the help of certain fallacies, which our language does 
 not present adequate means of representing, the sophists prove to their own 
 satisfaction that if a man knew one thing be knew evcri/ thing: curriery, house- 
 building, stitching, shoemaking, dancing, sworddiving, whoelturning — nothing 
 was beyond his knowledge : they profess that themselves are proofs of the truth 
 of this assertion, and are only induced to abate their confidence by being made 
 to see that neither of them knew how many teeth the other had in his mouth. 
 As if this universal knowledge were insufficient, they prove to their fellow- 
 disputant, who was no other than Socrates, that he possessed all this knowledge 
 when a boy — at the moment of his birth — before his birth, nay, before the crea- 
 tion of the earth and heavens ; and they demonstrate that as this universal know- 
 ledge had belonged to him in all preceding times, so it rested merely upon their 
 
30 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 sation, and the offer to teach, how in disputation the worse cause might 
 be made to appear the better, we cannot say : but we find it declared 
 by Socrates that the hoary impostor had for a space of more than forty 
 years been advancing them, and that from the practice of this baneful 
 trade he had derived more gains than Pheidias and ten sculptors to boot. 
 — So much more agreeable to Athenian minds, it should seem, were 
 cunning trick, fallacy and deception, than those noble specimens of art, 
 which were then growing up among them, and on whose mutilated re- 
 mains, the more accomplished of our own countrymen are too happy 
 to fix their eyes in fervent *admiration ! 
 
 The market was now successfully opened and adventurers of a simi- 
 
 good will to cause it to remain with him to all succeeding generations. They 
 proceed to show that a man could be silent and speak at the same time ; that it 
 was all one to them to prove that a man knew a thing or did not know a thing, 
 or that he both knew and did not know a thing at the same time; — they convince 
 their disputant that he had a father — that he had no father — that a dog was his 
 father — that his father was everybody's father — that his mother had an ofTspring 
 equally numerous, and that in this happy family, horses, pigs, and crabfish were 
 all common brethren, with the same rights and ties of consanguinity and affection. 
 Being told that the beautiful is created by the presence of beauty, they argue, 
 that by approximation to a hull, a man becomes a bull ; that Socrates is no more 
 Socrates than Cleinias, nor Cleinias than Socrates, and that Socrates and Clei- 
 nias are one and the same person. Laying hold upon those constructions of 
 language, which our more imperfect idioms do not admit, they prove that in 
 cutting up a butcher and boiling him there is no injury committed, and that it 
 is both decent and becoming to solder a brazier in his own brass, and to glue 
 up a potter in his own pottery. But it is felt that this trifling was more agree- 
 able to the original promulgators and auditors of it, than it Can be made to a 
 modern reader ; and, I fear, that a sense of weariness must be stealing over him 
 at these specimens of sophistry, which were delivered, as Plato informs us, 
 amid such peals of laughter and such exuberance of exultation, that the very 
 pillars of the Lyceum seemed to join in the triumphant jubilee. 
 
 * It may be noticed as somewhat remarkable, that the great contemporary 
 writers, who grew up among the very creation of these truly magnificent labours, 
 scarcely ever condescended to mention any thing more than the mere names of 
 the author of them. The great comic poet of his day refers to them as often as 
 anybody; and there is one passage in his works which, as characteristic of the 
 times, may deserve to be mentioned. Among the innumerable statues in Athens, 
 not one, it appears, was to be found dedicated to that allegorical divinity, which 
 the Greeks call 'AiJw, and for which our nearest, but very unequal term, is 
 Modesty. As no statue of this divinity was in being, the poet cautions his 
 young auditors to build up a statue to it in their own breasts. In Nub. Arist. 
 V. 995. Lucian, a very diligent reader of Aristophanes, and who only kept his 
 admirable and flowing wit in order by his extensive erudition, has left us some 
 delicate remarks, by which we see that he had as fine an eye for works of 
 art, as his mind's eye penetrated into every shade and minute separation of 
 manners. See among other his treatises, de Domo, de Imaginibus, de Amoribus, 
 de Balneo, de Herodoto vel Aetione, etc. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 81 
 
 lar cast soon flocked in abundance to Athens, who insinuated in terms 
 much more intelligible and in language much more palatable, the doc- 
 trines which Protagoras had delivered in the abstruse and often obscure 
 terms of physical or metaphysical science. Among a crowd of persons, 
 who now, under the name of sophists, took the public education of the 
 young Athenians into their hands, and had more or less a fatal influence 
 upon their intellects and manners, history has preserved the names of 
 Prodicus of Ceos, Gorgias of Leontium, Hippias of Elis, Euthydemus 
 and Dionysodorus of Chios, Theodorus of Byzantium, Evenus of Paros, 
 Polus of Arigentum, Calicles, Thrsymachus, Tisias, Licyranion, etc. ; 
 and before advefting to the doctrines which they taught, the state of 
 Athenian society will be traced more accurately by dwelling a little 
 longer upon the actual introduction of the sophists into it. The greater 
 part of these men, as the reader will see by their names, were strangers, 
 not natives of Attica ; but their abilities in their own country had point- 
 ed them out for distinction, and when business was to be transacted 
 with other states, and more particularly with the imperial town of 
 Athens, none seemed more fitted to conduct it to the advantasje of their 
 mother-country. Many of them therefore made their first appearance 
 at Athens in the capacity of public ambassadors; and their manner of 
 conducting public business, their ostentatious professions, the boasted 
 extent of their attainments, the charms of their language, and even their 
 personal appearance, all tended to captivate in an astonishing manner 
 the minds of a people naturally greedy of wliat was new ; and nothing 
 could be more calculated to fix it than these men. They appeared in 
 sumptuous robes, followed by a numerous escort of noble youths, who 
 accompanied them from town to town, and who thus acquired by oral 
 communication that knowledge which books could not supply, or 
 which, from the costliness of books, was difliciilt of attainment : — their 
 language was rich and artificial, full of splendid antitliescs and farsought 
 metaphors; they were subtle in argument, and where argument failed 
 they amused the imagination by the most fanciful tales : for the fancy 
 properly kept in play, these men were masters enough of their trade to 
 know that any proposition, however specious or false, might safely be 
 dropped upon a soil, so well fitted by its previous nature to multiply 
 the seed entrusted to it. Their language had also the additional charn» 
 of novelty to recommend it; for the knowledge of physics and almost 
 all other science had hitherto been communicated in verse, and the lan- 
 guage of prose, as far as artificial beauty was concerned, remained yet 
 to be discovered. 
 
 In terms thus persuasive, and with a confidence the most unlimited 
 in their powers, they professed themselves ready to answer every 
 question, leaving the choice of the manner to the will of the questionist. 
 Considering nothing as too high by its abstruseness nor too mean by 
 its lowncss, they profctsbcd lo have acijuircd, and they cii!.ragcd thcni- 
 
32 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 selves to leach, all knowledge. To make good this boast of universal 
 talent, one of them actually exhibited himself at the Olympic games, 
 not merely with what might be supposed the travelling stock of a person 
 of his profession, a set of epics, tragedies, dithyrambics and speeches, 
 but with the annunciation that every article about his person — his ring, 
 his seal, his bodycoat, his perfume-box, his upper and under mantle, 
 his girdle, and even his shoes, was the work of his own hands. Their 
 boast of what they could do for their pupils was as pompous as the ex- 
 aggerated declarations of their own attainments ; the first day was to 
 make an impression ; in the second, this progress was to be still more 
 visible ; in the course of a month or two they engaged to make them 
 everything that could be wished : neither age nor capacity was to be 
 any obstacle, and all tliis was to be done without let or hindrance of 
 business ; and business in the happy, innocent, polished and poetical 
 town of Athens, was proclaimed to be, what it is in most other towns — 
 moneygetting. The price of knowledge was indeed high : a single 
 lecture, or epideixis as it was called, sometimes cost fifty drachmae,* 
 and one of these instructors, from the rewards of his professional 
 labours, could afford to place a golden statue of himself in the temple 
 of Apollo at Delphi. But when a mania took place in Athens, whether 
 for cockfighting or speechmaking, for quailfeedingf or philosophy, it 
 was no slight obstacle that could oppose it ; and Philosophy had now 
 become the fashionable study. He therefore that had money, bought 
 knowledge : he that had no resources of his own, drew upon his friends ; 
 and he who had neither resources nor friends, was told to beg, borrow, 
 or steal, and at any rate not to be without some of the droppings, at 
 least, of this precious banquet. Luckily the poorest needed not be 
 hopeless ; for an Athenian was a garrulous animal ; and whoever had 
 an egg to lay, was, in general, only solicitous for a corner in which he 
 might deposit it. The manly diversions of the field| were accordingly 
 
 * The lectures of Prodicus were given at this sum. Arist. Rhet. lib. iii. 
 c. 14. p. 2-22. Protagoras used to pursue a more curious course with his scho- 
 lars. If the}^ were unwilling to give the price asked, he took them into a 
 temple, and there sivore them as to the price which they thought his instructions 
 worth. 
 
 j- Plato mentions (de Legibus, lib. vii.) that it was the fashion with the 
 young Athenians to carry their quails out on a regular airing every day in their 
 hands or under their arms. Lucian says (de Gymn. v. 7. p. 199.) that all adults 
 were obliged by law to be present at the cock and quail fights, and not to retire 
 till want of strength disabled the combatants from further contention. 
 
 ij: Arist. in Equit. 1382. Hunting was less an amusement than a branch of 
 education among the Athenians. Isocrates, accordingly, when stating the com- 
 pulsory objects of pursuit among his young countrymen in the better days of 
 the republic, classes together " horsemanship, the gymnastic exercises, hunting 
 and philosophy." In Orat. Areop. v. i. p. 297. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 33 
 
 left for the Schools — not to be a philosopher* was not to be a gentle- 
 man ; and the arrival of a new sophist, who could add to the stores 
 
 * In Erastis. In Theage. A brief analysis of the dialogue of Plato, called 
 Protagoras, will put this in a clearer light than any further remark which can be 
 made, and will, with the analysis of the Euthydemus, before given, put the reader 
 into possession of all that is necessary on this subject. The opening of the dia- 
 logue describes Socrates and a friend, whose name does not transpire in the 
 piec&, as meeting together; — accidentally the dialogue gives us to suppose, and 
 most probably in one of those public places where, after the midday siesta, it was 
 the fashion for the citizens of Athens, who did not prefer hunting, or the exercises 
 of the palaestra, to meet together for the purposes of discourse or disputation. 
 The unknown friend, who appears to have been in the secret of the great philo- 
 sopher's movements, begins a conversation by questioning him on the subject of 
 Alcibiades ; and the language in which these inquiries are made, will not alto- 
 gether surprise those who remember the coarse term by which Xenophon cha- 
 racterizes the effect produced on the ladies of Athens, by the extraordinary 
 beauty and exterior accomplishments of this dissipated young man. — Had So- 
 crates lately left this beautiful youth ; and did the uncommon attentions which 
 his great friend and preceptor was continually bestowing upon him, meet yet 
 with any adequate return ? — The first question is answered in the affirmative; 
 the latter in terms implying the highest satisfaction : Socrates had just left his 
 favourite pupil, and, what was better, he had experienced from him more une- 
 quivocal marks of good atfection, than this untoward youth had ever before ma- 
 nifested to him. The questionist is further told, to his apparent surprise and 
 almost utter disbelief, that the philosopher had actually been in the young man's 
 company a considerable time without perceiving that he was in possession of 
 that pleasure, which he so greedily coveted ; but all surprise ceases, when he 
 finds that it was the superior attractions of the sophist Protagoras, then newly 
 returned to Athens, which had caused this temporary alienation of mind, and 
 unusual abstraction from the merits of his young friend. Attention once excited 
 by the recent information, questions follow in rapid succession : — Had Socrates 
 and Protagoras met, and what had been the results of the conference 1 — Seats 
 were at hand — a lad, who occupied one, (Plato never loses sight of any little 
 particular which can give effect to his pictures,) is presently dispossessed, the two 
 friends are as quickly seated, and the philosopher, nothing loath, commences his 
 narration as follows. (The reader will here have a specimen of the plain, fami- 
 liar, and almost homely manner, which in Plato frequently leads to the discussion 
 of questions, trying the utmost extent of the human understanding.) 
 
 " Long before daylight, this morning, Hippocrates, the son of ApoUodorus 
 and the brother of Phason, beat violently at my gate with his walkingstick. As 
 soon as it was opened to him, he entered in violent haste, and, speaking in a 
 loud tone of voice, ' Socrates,' said he, ' are you asleep or awake ]' Knowing 
 his voice, ' What,' said I, ' have we Hippocrates here ? What news?' — 'None 
 but good news.' — ' So much the better; but what is your good news, or what 
 brings you here?' — ' Protagoras,' says he, ' is arrived, and lodges not far from 
 our house.' — ' Tut,' said I, ' have you just heard that? he arrived three days 
 ago.' — 'So help me, Jupiter, not till the evening,' said he: at the same time 
 feeling about for the bed, he seated himself at my feet, saying, ' I assnre you 
 5 
 
34 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 acquired, or recommend by any novelty of diction the knowledge al- 
 ready existing, was considered as a subject of national congratulation. 
 
 he came in the evening, and very late too, on his road from CEnoe. I had been 
 in pursuit of a runaway slave ; a circumstance which 1 meant to have imparted 
 to you; but something put it out of my head. On my return home — just after 
 supper, and as we were retiring for the night — my brother came to tell me, that 
 Protagoras was arrived. My first thought was to come to you, and I had actually 
 set about it; but the advanced state of the night made me give up the attempt. 
 No sooner, however, had my toils been refreshed, and my sleep relaxed, than I 
 rose up and set out to come here.' As I well knew the young man's courage, 
 and yet saw an evident agitation about him, I said, ' And what have you to do 
 with all this ; has Protagoras done you any injury'?' — 'A very serious one,' replied 
 he with a laugh, ' for I look upon him as the only wise man living, and he has not 
 made me like himself.' — ' Nay,' said I, ' with a present of money and a little per- 
 suasion, he may be prevailed upon to make you also a wise man.' — 'Ah! if it 
 depended only upon that, I would spare neither my own property nor that of my 
 friends ! and indeed the very object of my visit is to beg you to speak on my behalf 
 to him : for I am as yet but young, and I can neither boast of having seen nor 
 heard Protagoras, being but a mere boy when he was here on his former visit. 
 But, Socrates, his praise is in everybody's mouth, and all the world says, that in 
 wisdom of speech nobody excels him. Why not go then, and see if we can find 
 him at homel he is entertained, I understand, at Callias's, the son of Hipponi- 
 cus — pray let us begone.' — ' Stop a little, my good friend,' said I, ' the morning 
 is yet too early — let us quit this room, and retire into the hall ; we can walk 
 about there, and waste the time till it is light; it will then be time for us to go : 
 Protagoras is not much in the habit of going abroad and there is no fear, there- 
 fore, of not finding him at home.' — The philosopher and his young friend ac- 
 cordingly retire into the hall, and Socrates, never idle, begins to try his com- 
 panion's strength, by putting a few questions to him. ' If you were going,' 
 says he, ' to your namesake Hippocrates the physician with a fee in your hand, 
 and were to put yourself under his tuition, and anybody should ask the object 
 of your proceeding?' — The answer of the young man was ready: ' everybody 
 would know that I wished to become a physician.' — ' If in like manner you 
 went to Polycleitus the Argive, or to Pheidias the Athenian V — ' He should 
 have an answer to anybody's question by saying that he wished to become a 
 sculptor.' The question naturally followed, and what was his object in going 
 to Protagoras "? — what was Protagoras, and what did he profess to teach 1 The 
 question leads to a short inquiry wliat a sophist is; and the result is one of 
 those coarse, and contemptuous definitions which Socrates delighted to fasten 
 upon this dangerous body of men. He compares the sophist to the itinerant and 
 stationary dealers (sjUTropo/, uttvnxoi) whose wares were directed to the support of 
 the body, as those of the former resembled eatables which were intended to 
 support the soul: 'for the soul,' says the philosopher, 'is fed by knowledge, 
 and we must take care that the sophist, in pretending to administer food to it, 
 does not practise upon us the same deception as the dealers do ; for these men 
 bring their eatables without any knowledge whether what they sell be good or 
 bad for the body, and praise at the same time all they bring indiscriminately ; 
 the purchaser too is as ignorant as the vender, unless he happen to be a gym- 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 35 
 
 The houses of the great and the wealthy were immediately thrown open 
 to him — the young men crowded to hear and to admire — sleep itself 
 
 nastic man or a physician. So,' continues the philosopher, ' these men who 
 carry their knowledge about from city to city, praise all they sell ; without 
 knowing, it is possible, whether what they sell be good or bad for the soul, and 
 the purchaser is, perhaps, just as ignorant, unless he happen to be a mental 
 physician.' He concludes, therefore, with a strong caution to his young friend, 
 to beware lest, in purchasing the wares of Protagoras, or any other sophist, he 
 should put all that ought to be dear to a man to danger or hazard. ' For,' adds 
 this real philosopher, 'there is much greater danger in buying knowledge than 
 there is in buying food : for he who purchases eatables or drinkables, can carry 
 them home in another vessel, before he tastes of them ; and having deposited 
 them there, he can either examine them himself, or call in the judgment of a 
 skilful friend, and thus learn what is fit to be eaten or drunk, and when it should 
 be eaten and to what extent. In buying fond, therefore, there is no great danger; 
 but it is not so with knowledge : that cannot be transferred to another vessel ; 
 he who buys it must take it in his soul, and having paid the price, there it must 
 remain, for good or for evil, according to the nature of the article bought.' — By 
 the tiine this discourse was ended, day had broken, and the two friends were 
 presently upon their journey to Callias. The reader is little acquainted with the 
 manners of the times, if he supposes it was a quiet one : a knotty point is argued 
 during the walk, and as the dispute is not settled when they arrive at their 
 journey's end, they stand in a forecourt of the house, to argue the matter to an 
 end. Their loudness and vehemence here bring a little unpleasantness upon 
 the two disputants, which is told with the utmost good humour. Every man of 
 fashion in Athens (and Callias was a man of high fashion) kept a eunuch at his 
 gate, as a Swiss porter was formerly an appendage to the hall of every great 
 house in London. The great resort of sophists to the house of Callias made 
 this man's place no sinecure to him; and judging, from the loud tones of the 
 philosopher and his friend, that they must be two of the profession who worked 
 him so much discomfort, he meets their application for admission with the 
 utmost rudeness, throws the odious name of sophist in their teeth, insists upon 
 it that his master is not at home, and fairly flings the door in their faces. The 
 two friends make a second application ; they assure the angry porter that they 
 are no sophists, and they announce that their visit is to Protagoras and not to 
 Callias. The gate at this turns reluctantly upon its hinges, and they are admit- 
 ted into the presence. The grouping of the company is painted with the hand 
 of a master. In the prostoa was found Protagoras walking about, and a nume- 
 rous train of scholars accompanying his steps. On one side of him was Callias 
 the son of Hipponicus, (the common entertainer of all sophists,) his half-brother 
 by the mother's side, Paralus the son of Pericles, and Charmides the son of 
 Glaucon : on the other side he was supported by Xanthippus the other son of 
 Pericles, by Philippides the son of Philomelus, and by Anlimoerus the Mendsan, 
 of whom, as a future sophist, great expectations seem to have been formed. 
 These were the chosen, the elect : — behind followed a crowd of humble listeners, 
 partly natives of Athens, and partly strangers, who had followed Protagoras 
 from their own native cities; led by the charms of his voice, says the satirical 
 narrator, like the tribe on whom the voice of Orpheus worked a similar effect. 
 
35 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 was broken to attend his instructions ; and those honours, fetes, and 
 caresses which in the fashionable circles of London are now lavished 
 upon the great leaders of our poetry, were in those days reserved for 
 the successful promulgators of sophistry, or, as it began to be called, 
 philosophy. 
 
 We have hitherto traced the course of Athenian education, and the 
 masters under whom it was acquired ; it will now be necessary to take 
 a rapid glance at the effect of such a system of education upon manners, 
 and then proceed to the more serious part of our subject, its influence 
 upon tlie morals of the times. A little history (for the delightful works 
 of Herodotus had but just banished the marvellous prodigies of Cadmus 
 and Eugaeon, and the prosing narratives of Hecataeus and Hellanicus ;) 
 a little geometry (for the Delphic oracle had not even yet promulgated 
 the problem, whose solution was to carry geometrical science a step 
 farther than the measure of surfaces;) a little astronomy (for the Meto- 
 nic discoveries, respectable as they were, are to the Principia and the 
 mecanique Celeste as a rushlight to the full blaze of the meridian sun:) 
 — these, with whatever mass of poetry and music was laid as the sub- 
 strata, were the utmost limits to which Athenian education could possi- 
 bly reach ; and it is presumed that any young person in the higher order 
 of society among ourselves, who should be thrown upon the stream of 
 life with no more ballast than this, would not have himself only to 
 blame, if he suflfered shipwreck on the voyage ; and the more discern- 
 
 The order observed by these docile pupils more particularly pleased the observ- 
 ing philosopher. ' They took the utmost care,' says he, ' never to be in the 
 way of Protagoras, as he advanced ; but when he and his more select friends 
 turned, the retainers with the utmost propriety divided here and there, going 
 about in a circle, and ordering matters so as to be always in the rear of their 
 great teacher and model.' In an opposite prostoa was discerned Hippias of 
 Elis, seated on a throne, and a choice troop surrounding him on benches, who 
 put questions to him in physics, and the higher branches of astronomy ; — ' and 
 he, sitting on a throne, resolved and explained to them all their doubts.' — The 
 ' divine' Prodieus is described as stowed into a sort of pantry, (the number of 
 guests having left no other apartment unoccupied,) and he appears to have been 
 a less early riser than the other sophists, for he is represented as still tenant of 
 his bed, and covered up in a very comfortable assortment of coverlets and blan- 
 kets. Like a French lady, however, his bed is no obstacle to his receiving 
 visiters, and he too has his circle. Among the numerous body of scholars around 
 him, are particularized Pausanias and his friend the beautiful Agathon, the two 
 Adimanti, one the son of Cepis, the other the son of Leucolophides, and a few 
 others. What the subject of conversation was in this quarter, Socrates could 
 not learn ; for the voice of Prodieus was thick and indistinct, and thus baffled 
 the intense curiosity of his would be auditor. Soon after this, Alcibiades and 
 Critias enter : Socrates explains the object of his visit, and the business of the 
 day begins. — As the object in this note has been merely to explain the manners 
 of the times, we may here take leave of this very amusing dialogue. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 37 
 
 ing spirits of antiquity thought precisely of the attainments of their 
 countrymen as we do. It is impossible to read the works of Plato and 
 Aristophanes, the two great painters of the higher and lower classes of 
 society in Athens, without being struck with the incessant pains they 
 take, to root out of the minds of tlieir fellow-citizens the false notions 
 of superior wisdom, which, upon the strength of these small acquire- 
 ments, and the superficial lessons of the sophists, were growing up 
 among them. The serious powers of the former* and the unsparing 
 ridicule of the latter are exerted on all occasions, and with the happiest 
 success, to prove, that with all the pretensions of their countrymen, 
 their knowledge consisted in mere appearance and not in reality ; that 
 they were lovers of the knowledge which lay merely in opinion 
 {((iixcSo^u,) not lovers of the wisdom, which lay in the real science (?«xc«rc?o/. ) 
 To separate and define with the utmost precision these distinct species 
 of knowledge, the most gigantic powers are displayed by Plato : it was 
 with this view, no doubt, that he framed his theoryf of the two worlds, 
 the one visible, the other ideal ; the latter containing immutable essences 
 and real beings, the former containing only objects drawn from the 
 great archelypes| in the ideal world, and which, being subject to gene- 
 ration and corruption, to increase and diminution, are unfit to be called 
 beings. For the same purpose, he drew out his four species and degrees 
 of knowledge — intelligence, or the knowledge of pure essences (vo«<r/f;) 
 the knowledge where the reasoning powers and imagery act conjointly, 
 as in estimating the ideal of geometrical figures (^woiu;) the knowledge 
 into which belief entered, and by which bodies and their properties 
 were to be estimated ('^'w ;) and that more common knowledge which 
 lay only in conjecture, and whose food was, in Plato's contemptuous 
 classification, the knowledge of the images or shadows of bodies. Igno- 
 rance he divides with equal precision into two kinds : simple ignorance 
 (^nyvoiA ;) and the ignorance Avhich, mistaking itself for knowledge (a^a9-/a,) 
 is without hope of remedy, as long as this opinion attends it : and it is 
 
 * See among other of his dialogues that singular one called the Sophist. It 
 may safely be said, that the person who has not read this dialogue (utterly un- 
 susceptible of translation) and the Connedies of Aristophanes, can have no idea 
 of the powers of the Greek language. 
 
 f See the close of the Sixth Book of Plato's Republic ; a book, as Gray re- 
 marks, which can never be read too often. 
 
 :|: That things, both corruptible and incorruptible, are only emanations from 
 the archetypal idea residing in the Divine Mind, is an opinion also of Dante, 
 who, through the medium of Latin translations, seems to have been a great 
 reader of the Greek philosophers. 
 
 Cio cbe non muore, e cio che puo muorire, 
 Non e se non splendor di quella idea, 
 Che partorisce, amando, il nostro Sire. — Faradiso, Cant. XIII. 
 
38 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 certainly a strong incentive to the desire of attaining true knowledge 
 ourselves, and of being cautious what opinions we promulgate to others, 
 to find such a man as Plato, laying it down as a fundamental principle, 
 that the wicked man sins only through ignorance, and that the end of 
 his actions, like that of all other men, is good, but that he mistakes the 
 nature of it, and uses wrong means to attain it. The poet, with a 
 different, but no less powerful weapon, attacks his countrymen upon 
 the same score. Under cover of a few compliments, without which 
 the sovereign people of Athens were not very safely approached, he 
 tells them to their faces that they were a set of shallow, self-conceited, 
 assuming coxcombs ; that their distinguishing feature was ignorance, 
 and their pretended wisdom only the worst part of ignorance, excessive 
 cunning : he assures them that they are the dupes of every person, 
 native or stranger, who had only the talent to discover that their feelings 
 centred in their ears : he gives them to understand, that the great intel- 
 lects, which had sprung up suddenly among them, and among whom 
 he might have placed himself as not the least extraordinary, had only 
 made them a sort of parvenus in knowledge, as the miraculous and 
 almost incredible events of the Persian war had made them parvenus 
 in the history of nations : and, drawing an image from those foolish 
 birds whose mouths are always open, he tells them by a bold pun, the 
 deep sense of which excuses the conceit, that they were Cechenians, 
 and not Athenians. Such were the opinions of Plato and Aristophanes 
 respecting the state of knowledge in their own country. 
 
 That morality should have improved under such a system of educa- 
 tion as this, was not much to be expected; and, in fact, as intellect 
 advanced, if such a word is to be prostituted by application to such a 
 species of knowledge, the public morals became deteriorated with a 
 most alarming rapidity: how, indeed, could it be otherwise, under 
 preceptors, such as were allowed to direct the minds of the wealthy, 
 the young and the unsuspecting ! Like their great predecessor, Prota- 
 goras, they taught that the first and most important of all acquisitions 
 was eloquence ; not that simple and sublime eloquence which advocates 
 the cause of innocence and truth, but that specious eloquence which, in 
 the senate, the ecclesia, the courts of law, and the common intercourse 
 of society could steal, like the songs by which serpents were charmed, 
 upon the ears of their auditors, and sway their minds at the will of the 
 speaker. As the first step towards this important acquisition, the pupil 
 was carefully initiated in all the niceties of that language, whose mazes 
 and subtleties sometimes led from premises apparently simple, to con- 
 clusions which seemed more like legerdemain than the effects of sober 
 reasoning. He was then told that there were two sorts of persuasion ; 
 that by one an auditor's mind was imbued with actual knowledge; 
 by the other with a knowledge consisting only in belief and opinion : 
 and when he asked, which of these two persuasions rhetoric was meant 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 39 
 
 to create in the courts of law, and the public assemblies, on the subject 
 of justice and injustice, he was answered, belief of knowledge without 
 actuality ; for rhetoric was defined to be the art of enabling an ignorant 
 man to speak among the ignorant, with more appearance of knowledge, 
 than the man who was actually master of the subject under discussion. 
 By this art the pupil was further instructed, that it was in his power and 
 his duty, to make the same thing appear to the same person at one time 
 just, at another unjust : that he could, by this means, in a speech to the 
 people, make the same things appear, at this time good, at that time 
 the reverse ; nay, that if as clever as the Eleatic* Palamedes, he might 
 make the same things appear like and unlike, one and many, in a state 
 of quietude and in a state of motion. These lessons admirably prepared 
 the pupil for his next degree: viz. initiation into the mysteries of the 
 Great Beast, the Me>4 e^ifxfxn, as that populace was significantly and 
 contemptuously termed in private by those who did not scruple to pan- 
 der to its basest feelings in public. He was told, that this animal — 
 great and strong — had certain irascible and concupiscent passions, of 
 which it was necessary to make himself the master. He was accord- 
 ingly taught to know in what way it was most expedient to approach 
 this animal, and how to touch him — what made him difficult and what 
 easy of access — how to discriminate between the tones which the 
 Great Beast himself uttered, and the tones which, in others, either 
 soothed or provoked him. All this, the neophyte was told, had, 
 during a course of time, been collected into an art; in this art, he was 
 ' assured, lay true wisdom, and this wisdom was what they (the sophists) 
 undertook to teach. As to any discrimination of the passions of this 
 animal, or any separation of the honourable, the good and the just, from 
 the base, the bad and the unjust; it was what, they declared, they 
 neither laid claim to themselves, nor expected from others ; it was their 
 business to shape their judgments by the instincts of the animal ; calling 
 that good, in which he delighted ; that evil, with which he was dis- 
 pleased, and considering all as just and honourable which satisfied the 
 necessities of nature : and what essential difference there was between 
 that which is good in itself and good according to nature, they confessed 
 they did not know themselves, and consequently could not communicate 
 to others. 
 
 The higher pandects of the school were now laid open to him , and 
 it is at once curious and painful to see how early these sophists had 
 discovered all those dangerous doctrines, which, at subsequent periods, 
 have been made use of by bad and designing men for the subversion of 
 society. They asserted, on all occasions, that might makes right; that 
 
 * By the Eleatic Palamedes was meant Alcidamas, a pupil of Gorglas, not 
 Zenon, as Diogenes Laertius, quoting from Plato with his too common inaccu- 
 racy, supposes. 
 
40 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 the property of the weak belongs to the strong, and that, whatever the 
 law might say to the contrary, the voice of nature taught and justified 
 the doctrine. They proclaimed that the only wise persons were those 
 who aspired to the direction of public affairs, and who were slopped in 
 this attempt by no other consideration than the measure of their capa- 
 city; and they added, that those who, without any command over them- 
 selves, could acquire a command over others, had a right to have their 
 superiour talent rewarded by possessing more than otliers ; for tempe- 
 rance, self-restraint, and a dominion over the passions and desires, were 
 set down by them as marks of dulness and stupidity, only calculated 
 to excite mirth and derision. They asserted with confidence, that na- 
 ture itself made it both just and honourable, that he who wished to live 
 happil)', ought to permit his desires as large a sway as possible, and in 
 no way to restrain them : they bargained indeed for the possession of 
 courage and political wisdom in their scholars ; but once in possession 
 of these, a man, in their opinion, was at liberty to administer to his 
 passions in all other respects, and to leave nothing unindulged, which 
 could contribute to their gratification. They declared, that those who 
 attached disgrace to this doctrine, did it only from a sense of shame at 
 wanting the means to gratify their own passions : and their praises of 
 moderation they asserted to be mere hypocrisy; and to proceed solely 
 from the wish of enslaving better men than themselves. With the same 
 power of self-indulgence, said these flagitious liars, these assertors of 
 moderation would pursue the same path as those who were now the 
 objects of their animadversions : — they concluded, therefore, that it was 
 ridiculous in those who were above restraint, to lay a restraint upon 
 themselves, and they proclaimed in the most unqualified terms, that 
 luxury, intemperance and licentiousness, were alone virtue and happi- 
 ness, and that all other declarations were mere specious pretences — 
 compacts contrary to nature — the triflings of men, who deserved no 
 manner of consideration ! 
 
 The sacred principles of justice were treated with a contempt equally 
 daring. They often began with the bold definition that justice itself 
 was nothing but the interest of the strongest ; that the masterpiece of 
 injustice was to appear a man of virtue without being really one : and 
 they proceeded to prove (and in a town like Athens, the demonstration 
 perhaps was not difficult) that on all occasions the just man came off 
 worse than the unjust. In the mutual compacts of private life, said 
 they, the just man is always a loser, and the unjust a gainer. In public 
 affairs, when a contribution is to be made, the one with equal property 
 always contributes less than the other; whereas, when a disbursement 
 is to be made, the former receives nothing, and the latter is a conside- 
 rable gainer. If both are in office, one mischief at least happens to the 
 just man; his private affairs go to ruin from being neglected, and the 
 public give him no redress, merely because he is a just man ; he becomes 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 41 
 
 odious besides to his relations and his friends, because he will not, for 
 their service, overstep the bounds of right; whereas, to the unjust man, 
 the very reverse, said they, is the case. To paint this more forcibly, 
 they drew the picture of a tyranny, where the unjust man was in the 
 highest state of felicity, the voluntarily just in the greatest state of de- 
 pression ; and they proved that the former, though outraging every rule 
 of humanity, was loaded with praises, not only those who were con- 
 scious of his crimes, but even those who had suffered by them, consi- 
 dering him a happy man : for if injustice, added they, is ever blamed, 
 the blame proceeds, not from the fear of committing it, but from the fear 
 of suffering by it. Improving upon these notions, they declared, that to 
 be able to commit an injury, was in itself a blessing, receive an injury 
 was in itself an evil ; but that there was more of ill in receiving, than 
 there was of good in committing, and that to set this right, was the 
 origin and object of legislation. Justice, therefore, they considered as 
 the medium between the greatest of blessings, that of committing wrong 
 with impunity, and the greatest evil, which consists in not being able to 
 revenge an injury received; and hence, according to them, was derived 
 the common attachment to justice, not as being a blessing in itself, but 
 because persons in a capacity to hurt others, oblige them to consider it as 
 such : for he, they continued, who has power in his hands, and is really 
 a man, would never submit to sucli a convention: — it would, indeed, be 
 complete folly to do it. Give the good man and the bad man, they trium- 
 phantly concluded, power to act as they please ; present them with rings 
 like that of Gyges, which should make them invisible, and what will 
 be the consequence ? The virtuous man would soon be found treading 
 the very same path as the villain, and if he should be so " adamantine" 
 as to act otherwise, he would be considered as the most pitiful and 
 stupid of his species : in public, indeed, every one would eulogize his 
 virtues ; but this would be done with a design of deceiving others, and 
 in the fear of risking fortune, if a contrary course were pursued. 
 
 Such were some of the doctrines which, advanced with all the powers 
 of dialectic skill, and dropping upon a soil too well fitted by an imper- 
 fect education for their reception, confused the intellects and perverted 
 the notions of the young Athenians. But the poisonous chalice was not 
 yet full. — As some compunctious visiting of nature might interfere, and 
 the dread of present or future retribution (that witness of himself, which 
 the Deity has left in all ages,) might hinder the pupil from giving due 
 effect to these pernicious precepts, the high doctors of this infernal 
 school now took him in hand ; and in this moment of wavering and 
 irresolution, they, with a hot iron, for ever seared the conscience, which 
 still retained some faint marks of tenderness and sensibility. The opi- 
 nions, which he had sucked in with his nurse's and his mother's milk, 
 the opinions which from the mouths of the same persons he had heard 
 conveyed in the shape of serious arguments, or amusing fables, the 
 
 6 
 
42 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 opinions, which he saw evinced in the numerous and imposing sacrificial 
 rites of his country, all these opinions he was told were false ; and he 
 was required to abjure them ; he, who had been witness to the victims 
 offered to the gods by his parents, and to the prayers and supplications 
 made to the same gods in behalf of themselves and their children, with 
 an earnestness and a warmth which showed the conviction of their own 
 minds that there was some superintending Power ; he, who in the pros- 
 trations and adorations of Greeks and barbarians, at the rising and set- 
 ting of the two great luminaries, had either seen or heard that this per- 
 suasion was common to all people — he was now told to give up all 
 these notions, fitted only for the capacities of dreaming ignorance and 
 anile superstition. He was assured, in broad open day, in the sight of 
 that sun which he saw rising every day to run his glorious course, and 
 in the face of that earth which he beheld covered with flowers as well 
 as fruit, that of three things he might console himself with one ; that 
 there were no gods, or that if there were, they took no cognizance 
 of human affairs, or that if they did, their connivance could be gained, 
 and their vengeance appeased, by returning to them some of the lowest 
 of their own gifts ; — a bull, an ox, a sheep, a little incense, or a few 
 grains of salt. By what arguments these doctrines were supported we 
 have neither time nor patience to mention ; and the arguments by which 
 they were refuted, it is not surely necessary, at this time of day, to 
 repeat ; but one argument, however uselessly it was urged, is too ho- 
 nourable to human nature to be altogether omitted ; and some among 
 ourselves, may, perhaps, mutatis mutandis, receive benefit from the 
 ideas of an unassisted and uninspired heathen. " My son," (this better 
 voice whispered to the unfortunate victim of superficial education and 
 devilish sophistry,) " you are yet young : time will make an alteration 
 in your opinions ; and of many, which you now strongly maintain, you 
 will hereafter advocate the very reverse : wait, therefore, till time has 
 made you a judge of matters, so deep and so important in their nature. 
 For that which you now think of no consequence, is, in fact, the con- 
 cern of the very highest importance ; viz. the direction of life to good 
 or bad purposes, by corresponding investigations into the nature of the 
 heavenly powers. One thing, and that not trivial, I can at least venture, 
 in all the confidence of truth, to assure you respecting them ; the opinions 
 which you now entertain are not solitary opinions, first originaed by 
 you or your friends ; they are opinions which, at all times, have found 
 advocates, more or less in number ; but I speak the language of experi- 
 ence when I say that not one of those who in their youth had been led 
 to think that there were no gods, has found his old age consistent in 
 opinion with that of his more juvenile years." Alas ! to many of these 
 persons such an old age never came : and if the natural consequences 
 of these damnable lessons sometimes brought moments of anguish and 
 remorse, the effect of such feelings, when the great doctrine of Repent- 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 43 
 
 ance had not yet been promulgated, was only to plunge the pupil into 
 deeper sins, that he might get rid of the terrors of an upbraiding con- 
 science ! 
 
 In laying open, at such length, the manners and the doctrines of the 
 sophists, the reader may seem to have been drawn from the purpose 
 for which these remarks were designed : but humour depends for its 
 relish very frequently upon knowledge — knowledge not acquired at the 
 moment, but knowledge fixed in the mind, and requiring little expla- 
 nation ; for nobody, says a French critic, laughs, when there is need of 
 an explanation to tell him why he ought to laugh. It is only an inti- 
 mate acquaintance with the state of manners, and the habits of society 
 in the upper classes of society in Athens, which can give the reader a 
 full idea of the Clouds of Aristophanes. It is then only that the full 
 force of many of his single happy words can be understood, or tliose 
 images raised in the mind which mere words are sometimes calculated 
 to light up. But this purpose must still lie by a little longer. Some 
 doubt has been thrown on tlie veracity of the author, from whose wri- 
 tings these remarks have chiefly been suggested or collected ; and an 
 agreeable* compiler, well known to scholars, would wish us to believe, 
 that the master of the Academy acted the same part by the sophists of 
 his day, as Aristophanes did by the great originator of the Grecian moral 
 philosophy. The Dialogues of Plato do, certainly, by the introduction 
 of living characters, speaking freely and unreservedly their most inti- 
 mate thoughts, approach nearest of anything which antiquity has left 
 us to the modern novel, that dangerous species of literature, which has 
 torn open all the recesses of the heart, and left none of those sanctuaries 
 unopened into which a person's own thoughts should fear to penetrate. 
 But the romance-novel, that elliptic figure, within whose circumference 
 any man's character may be drawn for the purposes of utter distortion, 
 because reality and fiction being its admitted generating axes, one line 
 must be made to augment, precisely as the other decreases, this was a 
 species of literary guilt, left for the invention of our own days; and it 
 is to be wished that it had begun with a sex, on whom it would have 
 been less ungracious to bestow the reprobation, which such an inroad 
 upon the peace and security of society deserves. Without adverting, 
 then, to the difference of manners between the Greeks and ourselves, 
 without showing that Athenaius, in attacking the character of Plato for 
 veracity, has left his own reputation for truth in a most awkward pre- 
 dicament ; after admitting, in its fullest extent, the literary jealousy of 
 Plato, which could bear no rival near his throne, it will be sufficient to 
 say that we possess other means of establishing the truth of his obser- 
 vations. If such dark and malignant spirits, as Plato describes, had 
 been at work with such doctrines as he details, their effects would be 
 
 * Athenaeus, lib. xi. 
 
44 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 pretty visible in the annals of the times ; for what is history but opinion 
 converted into fact ? and how read we ? what says the great, the match- 
 less contemporary chronicler ? "About this time," says Thucydides, 
 (and he is speaking of the period which immediately preceded the re- 
 presentation of the Clouds,) " about this time," says Thucydides, (and 
 his declarations may be given nearly in the words of a translator, to 
 whom something might be added on the side of elegance, but whose 
 closeness and fidelity few can hope to surpass) " the received value of 
 names imposed for signification of things, began to be changed into 
 arbitrary: for inconsiderate boldness was counted truehearted manliness ; 
 prudent deliberation, a handsome fear ; modesty, the cloak of cowardice ; 
 to be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything. A furious sudden- 
 ness was reputed a point of valour. To readvise for the better security, 
 was held for a fair pretext of tergiversation. He that was fierce, was 
 always trusty ; and he that contraried such a one, was suspected. He 
 that laid a snare, if it took, was a wise man ; but he whose forecast 
 discovered a snare laid, a more dangerous man than he : he that had 
 been so prudent, as not to need to do the one or the other, was said to 
 be a dissolver of society, and one that stood in fear of his adversary. 
 In brief, he that could outstrip another in the doing of an ill act, or that 
 could persuade another thereto, that never meant it, was commended. 
 To be kin to another, was less binding than to be of his Society or 
 Company; because these were ready to undertake the most hazardous 
 enterprizes, and that without any pretext. For Societies* were not 
 made upon prescribed laws of profit, but for rapine, contrary to the laws 
 established. And as for mutual trust amongst them, it was confirmed 
 not so much by oaths or divine law, as by the communication of guilt. 
 And what was well advised of their adversaries, they received with an 
 eye to their actions, to see whether they were too strong for them, or 
 not, and not ingenuously. To be revenged was in more request, than 
 never to have received injury. And for oaths (when any were) of re- 
 concilement, being administered in the present necessity, they were of 
 force to such as had otherwise no power : but upon opportunity, he 
 that first durst, thought his revenge sweeter by the trust, than if he had 
 taken the open way. For they did not only put to account the safeness 
 of that course, but having circumvented their adversary by fraud, they 
 assumed to themselves withal, a mastery in point of wit. And dishonest 
 men for the most part are sooner called able, than simple men honest. 
 And men are ashamed of this title, but take a pride in the other. The 
 cause of all this is desire to rule, out of avarice and ambition, and the 
 zeal of contention from those two proceeding. Thus was wickedness 
 
 * By societies are here meant companies united under certain laws for the 
 more profitable management of their trades or arts. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 45 
 
 on foot in every kind, throughout all Greece, and sincerity (whereof 
 there is much in a generous nature) was laughed down."* 
 
 A Tragedy of manners, thus fearful, wanted a Gracioso to relieve 
 some of its more sombre scenes, and the character was supplied in 
 Aristophanes. 
 
 To dispel by the powerful weapon of ridicule these mists of errour — 
 to give a finished picture of a plain unlettered man as he was likely to 
 come from the handsf of the sophists — to rescue the young men of 
 family from the hands of such flagitious preceptors, and restore them to 
 that noble simplicity of manners, which had prevailed in Greece in the 
 time of Homer, and which had not entirely disappeared even in the days 
 of Herodotus, was unquestionably the object of the Clouds ; — it was a 
 task of no ordinary kind, but the author has accomplished his purpose 
 in one of those immortal dialogues, which, wrapped up in his own rich, 
 mellifluous and inimitable versification, remains, to the moderns, like 
 so many of the other great works of antiquity, at once an object of ad- 
 miration| and despair. If the mode§ in which this admirable dialogue 
 was conveyed, be such as to detract in our eyes, at least in some degree, 
 from its merits, it must be remembered, that the persons for whose 
 service it was intended, were not likely to be present at the recital of 
 it, and that the reproof could only be dealt at second hand through the 
 medium of a clever, but noisy, conceited, and riotous mob, who required 
 some compensation for having the merriment of their bacchanalian anni- 
 versary disturbed by satires upon the system of public education. — It 
 now remained for the author to give a central figure to his piece ; and 
 the same regard to the quality of his audience seems to have guided 
 him also in this stage of his progress. 
 
 * Hobbes's Trans, of Thucydides, lib. iii. 188. 
 
 I A picture of this kind is admirably furnished in the Clouds, commencino- in 
 the original, at v. 438. 
 
 \. Wieland enthusiastically observes (and the author of Oberon has a right to 
 be heard on a matter of taste, notwithstanding his mad inconsistencies on matters 
 of opinion) that the imaginations of Lucian, Rabelais, Cervantes, Lopez de 
 Vega, Sterne and Swift united, could not have produced a happier scene than 
 this one, in which the embodied Loga', the representatives of the two struggling 
 and opposing sets of opinions in Athens, on the subjects of religion, manners, 
 morals, music, etc., are introduced upon the stage. 
 
 § There can be no doubt, from the words of the scholiast, that the Log«, of 
 which Mr Cumberland's terms Dicaeus and Adieus, give so very inadequate a 
 representation, were exhibited to the audience as two fighting cocks, in large 
 wicker cages. Spurs of course would he provided them; and if the apologue of 
 Prodicus, which Xenophon has so beautifully dressed up, and of which Lowth 
 has given so manly and nervous a version, was then in being, the humour was 
 heightened by that spirit of parody, which seems to have been so agreeable to 
 the Athenians. See on both these subjects the German Attic Museum. Zwey- 
 ter Band. Erlauterung II. 
 
46 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 About the time when the play called the Clouds was brought before 
 a public audience, a person was seen in all the streets and public places 
 of Athens, whose appearance, manners and doctrines equally tended to 
 excite observation. If not a sophist himself, he was at least seen con- 
 tinually in the company of the sophists ; and, as he made no scruple to 
 practise upon them the arts which they practised upon others, it is no 
 wonder that an almost general opinion should have considered him as 
 one of the profession ; as a sophist more honest indeed than the rest, 
 but in talent, in vanity and selfconceit surpassing them all. Like the 
 sophists and philosophers, he had given himself deeply and unremittedly 
 to physical researches : and in a temperament naturally melancholy, it 
 had produced such an effect upon his countenance and manners, that by 
 the gayer part of his fellow citizens, who wanted opportunities of know- 
 ing him more intimately, an introduction to his society was considered 
 as something like venturing into the sombre cavern of Trophonius. And 
 certainly there were not wanting reasons for forming such an opinion. 
 Wrapt up in profound reveries, the ordinary functions of nature seemed 
 sometimes suspended in him — the vicissitudes of day and night passed 
 unobserved, the necessary refections of rest and food were neglected, 
 and he seemed to have derived from his own experience the reproach 
 which he sometimes cast upon the other philosophers, that their native 
 town had only possession of their bodies, but that the air was the 
 chosen habitation of their minds. The pride of knowledge communi- 
 cated a consequence which contrasted rather ridiculously with the hu- 
 mility of his external appearance ; his air was stern, his step was lofty, 
 and his eyes, if not fixed upon the heavens, were thrown around with 
 an appearance of conscious importance. He was rather ostentatious in 
 proclaiming that his father had been a statuary, his mother a midwife ; 
 and he explained, in language highly ingenious, but rather more at 
 length, perhaps, than was consistent with good taste, and certainly in 
 terms which only a degraded state of female estimation would allow to 
 be called decent, that the profession, which his mother had practised, 
 was that which he also pursued ; with this difference, that he performed 
 for the intellect, what she had done for the body ; and that while she 
 confined her attention to the female sex, his obstetric services had been 
 devoted exclusively to the male. In his more convivial moments he 
 had a term by which he chose to characterize his pursuit, that requires 
 still more circumlocution in mentioning ; it will be sufficient to say, that 
 it came nearest to that office, which is considered the most degrading 
 that one man can perform for another ; and he who had accidentally 
 seen the author of it, coquetting with a graybearded brother in philoso- 
 phy, and aping the manners of a courtezan who denies, only to be 
 courted to do, what she wishes, might have been justified in thinking, 
 till circumstances had better informed him, that the pretended office 
 was not merely assumed for the purposes of momentary pleasantry. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 47 
 
 By whatever name, however, he chose to term his vocation, certain it 
 was, that no man could be more assiduous in the prosecution of it. 
 "Whoever was the disputant, or Avhaiever the subject of conversation, 
 the discourse finally fell upon the head of the person with whom he 
 was conversing. Armed with a divine commission, as he pretended, 
 for that purpose, and himself under the immediate direction of a super- 
 natural being, not perfectly naturalized in the theology of his country, 
 every man was questioned by him in turn, and found no respite, till he 
 gave a complete account of himself: — what was his present and what 
 had been his past mode of life — and once upon this topic, said one who 
 knew him well, there is no hope of escape, till you have been put to 
 the touchstone torture, and your Avhole life sifted to the bottom. So 
 strong was this passion, that the attachment to rural scenes, Avhich pre- 
 vailed so strongly in most of his fellow-citizens, in him seemed a feeling 
 almost extinct — he was a stranger to the environs of Athens, and was 
 scarcely ever seen outside the walls. He could gain no instruction, he 
 declared, from fields and trees, and nothing but a book could entice him 
 to the banks of the Ilyssus, or that more beautiful stream, where Venus 
 quenched her thirst, and in return blew over it the sweetest breath of the 
 Zephyrs, and sent the Loves to be the companions of wisdom. Man was 
 his game ; and from man he never wished to be absent ; but the passion 
 was by no means reciprocal : a catechist so inquisitorial was not always 
 agreeable, and the presence of the philosopher either created a solitude 
 where he went, or if he collected an audience, it was among the idle young 
 men, who took a malicious pleasure in his cutting remarks, and who im- 
 mediately left him to practise upon others the lessons which they had just 
 received. In a town where the personal appearance of the male sex ex- 
 cited more comments and observation than the female, even the exterior 
 of this person was calculated to fix the attention of many, who were not 
 disposed to penetrate beyond it; and whatever merriment was excited on 
 this subject, it must be owned that himself was ever the first to set the 
 joke afloat. His eyes (to use the words in which he was accustomed to 
 draw his own figure, and in which it will be necessary to follow him, for 
 purposes that will appear hereafter) stood so forward in his head, that 
 they enabled him not only to see straight before him, but even to look 
 sideways ; and he used in consequence to boast, that himself and a crab 
 were, of all other animals, the two best adapted for vision. As his eyes 
 took in a larger field of vision, so his nostrils, from standing wide open, 
 were formed to embrace a larger compass of smell. His nose, too, from 
 its extreme depression, had in like manner its advantages; for, had it been 
 aquiline, instead of what it was, it might have stood like a wall of separa- 
 tion between his eyes, and thus have obstructed their vision. His mouth 
 and his lips were equally subjects of pleasantry with him, and the latter, 
 with reference to subjects, to which the decorousness of modern manners 
 does not admit much allusion. With a view to reduce the periphery 
 
48 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 of his body, which certainly was not very exact in its proportions, he 
 practised dancing, and that down to a very advanced period of life ; not 
 merely to the occasional discomfiture of serious reflection in his pupils, 
 but even to the excitement of a doubt in them, whether their master 
 was quite correct in his senses : — to close this, not very agreeable part 
 of the subject: — when these pupils likened his whole exterior to that 
 of the Sileni, no doubt of the truth was ever expressed, and no umbrage 
 taken as at a supposed afl'ront. Though little distinguished for beauty 
 himself, some of the handsomest young men of Athens were seen con- 
 tinually in his train : and while they did not scruple to take the utmost 
 liberty in expressing their opinion upon his deformity, he did not per- 
 haps altogether find his advantage in gazing upon their beauty; for it 
 led to the objection, which the warmest of his admirers either did not 
 attempt to deny, or found it necessary to palliate, that it led him some- 
 times to clothe the noblest operations and aspirations of the mind in the 
 language of the senses, that it engaged him to arrive at mental through 
 corporeal excellence, and made it appear, that the presence of the beau- 
 tiful Agathon, or the interesting Autolycus was necessary, before the 
 philosopher could arrive at the essential beauty, the *wto x^y mto, his 
 reveries about which must have become sometimes a little fatiguing to 
 the most admiring of his auditors. With these persons, who were never 
 many in number, of whom the more ambitious deserted their master as 
 soon as they had gained the object which brought them into his society, 
 and others of whom left him to form schools, whose names have since 
 been synonymous with sophistry,* the coarsest effrontery,! and the 
 most undisguised voluptuousness,! the greatest part of his time was 
 spent; for the civil duties which occupied the hours of others were 
 avocations which he chose wholly to decline : he never made part of 
 the General Assembly; he never frequented the Courts of Law; and 
 the awkward manner in which he performed the externals of a senator, 
 when necessity or accident brought him into the situation, showed that 
 neither practice nor reflection had made him acquainted with the duties 
 of the office. Even that duty which seemed peculiarly connected with 
 his office of a public teacher, that of committing to writing the result of 
 his studies, or giving a lasting habitation to those important disputations 
 in which he was continually engaged, was a task which he declined, 
 and for which he had framed reasons, which, however satisfactory to 
 himself, have by no means been equally so to those who have lived 
 after him. To himself, however, one very satisfactory consequence 
 resulted from these derelictions, as some did not hesitate to call them, 
 of the duties of a citizen : it left him the most unlimited leisure for 
 
 * The Megarian school under Eucleid. 
 I The Cynic school under Antisthenes. 
 ^ The Cyrenaic school under Aristippus. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 4^ 
 
 frequenting, what seemed his pieculiar delight, the scliools of the sophists, 
 and engaging in disputation with those fallacious pretenders to universal 
 knowledge. If there were some points in which the sophists and him- 
 self had a certain similarity, there were many of a trifling, and still mor6 
 of a serious nature, in which tliey were diametrically opposite. While 
 the sophists went clad in magnificent garments, he appeared in the most 
 plain and simple apparel. The same coat served him for winter and 
 summer, and he preserved the oldfashioned manner of his country in 
 going always barefooted : he frequented the baths* but rarely, and never 
 indulged in the usual luxury of perfumes. While the sophists confined 
 themselves to thie sons of the wealthy and the gi'eat, and were therefore 
 known to them and them only, he did not disdain to frequent the mean- 
 est of the artisans, to converse with tliem in their own language, and 
 on topics with which they were most familiar. There was even a class 
 in society still more degraded, which he did not scruple occasionally 
 to visit, and to evince, by his instructions, that there was no class of 
 Society whose pursuits had Avliolly escaped his scrutinizing eye. The 
 effect of these visits was very evident in his language, arid those who 
 felt themselves annoyed by his raillery, or pressed by his acutencss, 
 did not fail to throw into his face tlie shipwrights, the cobblers, the 
 carpenters and weavers, with whom his habits of intercourse were not 
 unfrequent, and from whom he was so fond of drawing those maxims 
 and comparisons, which confounded the class of persons, to whosd 
 annoyance and discomfiture he seems to hiive devoted the greatest por- 
 tion of his time. It is the language of the chivali-ous ages, which would 
 best do justice to this part of his character: and the knight, locked up 
 in complete armour, and ready to run a-tilt with the first person he met, 
 is the completest image of tliis philosopher, pi-eparirig to encounter the 
 sophists, at once apparently his enemies and his rivals. 
 
 Every age, however, has expressions and images in which it cail 
 stamp any strong feeling ; and the sophists, without the power of recur* 
 ring to the language of knighthood, had many significant terms, by 
 which they could express the Quixotism of this redoubted opponent. 
 They compared him at first to the Spartans, Avho, if any one approached 
 their palestrae or places of public exercise, obliged the intruder to make 
 choice between immediately retiring or joining in the exercises of which 
 he was a spectator. But they recollected that this was conceding too 
 much, and they corrected their position by placing their rival in the 
 same rank with the Scirons and Antaeusses, who let no passer-by escape 
 them without a previous encounter. To ask questions or to answer 
 
 * Arrian. p]pict. do Mundit. accounts for this abstinence, by a reason, which 
 might have justified Cujas the celebrated lawyer, Alexander the Great, and Lord 
 Herbert of Clicrl)ury, in a similar j)icco of abstinence : viz. a peculiar sweetness 
 of body, which rendered ablution unnecessary, and perfumes superfluous. 
 
 7 
 
50 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 tliem — to convict or to be convicted — were, in his own words, the great 
 purposes for which men should meet together ; and a person, who had 
 decreed that his life should be a complete logomachy, could not have 
 come to the contest better prepared ; nor, where words were to be the 
 weapons of warfare, could any man draw them from a better-provided 
 armoury. That a person possessed of so powerful a weapon should 
 sometimes have been a little too much delighted with the use of it, is 
 no subject of wonder. His hearers described the effect of it upon them- 
 selves as resembling the effects of witchery and enchantment : they 
 compared it to the touch of the torpedo, which causes a numbness in 
 the faculties. Much was affirmed by him, and little proved — both sides 
 of a question were alternately taken, and the result left upon his hearers' 
 minds was, that he himself was in doubt, and only excited doubts in 
 others. The sophists, indeed, by the manner in which they were 
 handled, were made, especially in hot weather, to perspire more copi- 
 ously than, perhaps, was agreeable ; for their subtleties were met with 
 niceties still more acute than their own, and they were entrapped into 
 admissions of which they did not foresee the consequence ; but their 
 falsehoods were also combated with positions which he who advanced 
 them would have been unwilling to have had considered as decidedly 
 his own, and in pursuing them into their dark recesses his own gigantic 
 powers could not altogether save him from the reproach which he cast 
 upon another : " the best divers only should venture to plunge into a 
 sea of such prodigious depth." Such was the person whom Aristo- 
 phanes selected to be the hero of his Clouds. Those who are acquaint- 
 ed with Grecian affairs only through the medium of history, will not, 
 perhaps, recognize in this picture the celebrated son of Sophroniscus ; 
 and, were no other traits added to the above portrait, men of deeper 
 research might justly complain that it showed no reluctance to exhibit 
 the darker shades, and much inability to describe the brighter parts of 
 a philosopher, whose virtues and whose intellect, in spite of some 
 drawbacks still more serious* than any which have hitherto been men- 
 
 * See nearly the whole of the fifth book of the Republic. It was not possible 
 to allude to this part of the writings of Plato and not immediately drop the mask, 
 which, perhaps, has been worn too long in the preceding description of the son 
 of Sophroniscus ; but whoever rises from the perusal of this stain upon a work, 
 otherwise almost faultless, will feel it necessary to relieve his own feelings by 
 an indignant protest against this portion of its contents. In this lying book it 
 is announced that a woman's virtue will serve her instead of a robe, that the 
 useful is the measure of the honourable, and that there is nothing shameful but 
 what is hurtful ; and upon these flimsy pretences the same outrage upon the 
 feelings, by the exhibition of the sex in the exercises of the palaestra, as obtained 
 in Sparta, is recommended for practice in a Utopian form of government. In 
 this absurd book man is considered as an animal, whose actions, on the tenderest 
 points, are to be determined by the pleasure of the law ; as a physical agent, 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 51 
 
 tioned, have been justly allowed to form an epoch in the history of 
 man. 
 
 Having thus got his central figure, the attention of the author was 
 next turned to that most peculiar part of the ancient drama, the Chorus. 
 It has been remarked by W. Schlegel as one of the peculiarities of 
 Aristophanes, that he is fond of adopting a metaphor literally, and ex- 
 hibiting it in this way before the eyes of the spectators.* As a person 
 given to abstraction and solitary speculation is proverbially said to have 
 his head in the clouds, it was but another step, therefore, in the poet's 
 creative mind to make the clouds the chorus of his piece ; as of the 
 person, whose abstractions and reveries seemed to make him most 
 conversant with them, he had formed the hero of the piece. By this 
 contrivance the author wove into his performance the mob (no incon- 
 siderable body in Athens) who assisted the sophists in the perversion 
 of the public mind — 
 
 whose proceedings in those contracts, where nature tells us our own will ought 
 to have the greatest share, are made to depend solely upon the will of the ma- 
 gistrate. In this most unfeeling book all the great ties of our condition — paren- 
 tal, filial, and connubial — are proposed to be severed at a blow; nature, it 
 appears, having made a mistake in investing us with such feelings ; or the phi- 
 losopher forgetting that our feelings become enfeebled in proportion as they are 
 carried beyond their limits, and that they may be carried so far as to become less 
 than nothing. In this g'lH/i/ book lying is made a statutable, constitutional 
 branch of duty in the first magistrates of the state — the promiscuous concubinage 
 of the sexes is established as a fundamental law of society, and exposition of 
 children, suppression and abortion, are set down, not among things permitted, 
 but among things enjoined. There is a respect due to the pul)Hc ear, and it 
 becomes us to proceed no farther: the feelings of sickness and of loathing, 
 which some further matter in the book would infallibly excite, may well be 
 spared. And all this is to take place in a state which is set up as a model of 
 perfection ! And, as if to add mockery to insult, the propositions are made with 
 pleasantry and en badinanf; and the promulgator of them charitably demands, 
 that, if they cannot be reduced to practice, their author may be put upon a foot- 
 ing with those idle persons who entertain themselves agreeably with their reve- 
 ries, and feed upon them merely for the purpose of dissipating the ennui of 
 solitude ! Upon whom ti\e guilt of them rests — upon the teacher or the scholar 
 — it is not now possible to say ; they are put into the mouth of Socrates by 
 Plato, and we should hardly think that he could have ventured upon ascribing 
 such opinions to his master, if there had not been some authority for such a 
 proceeding. 
 
 * All early literature, in fact, is fond of these associations. We may turn 
 to every page almost of the Inferno of Dante for examples. The schismatics, 
 in the 28th Canto, who walk " Fessi nel volto dal mento al ciuffetto," and the 
 headless trunk, which bears its head in the hand, " Perch' i' parti' cosi giunie 
 persone," occur instantly. 
 
52 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 The fortunetellers, 
 Quacks, medicinemongers, bards bombastlcal, 
 Chorusprojectors, starinterpreters, 
 And wonderworking cheats. 
 
 The effect of this personification in the original theatre was no doubt 
 very striking. A solemn invocation calls down the Clouds from their 
 ethereal abode — their approach is announced by thunder — they chaunt 
 a lyric ode as they descend to the earth, and, after wakening attention 
 by a well managed delay, they are brought personally on the stage as a 
 troop of females, " habited," says Mr Cumberland, " no doubt in cha- 
 racter, and floating cloudlike in the dance." All this we can easily 
 conceive ; but a more curious part of their duty must be left to be sup- 
 plied (and that but very imperfectly) by the imagination. Recitation 
 was not the only part which the chorus had to perform ; a great 
 share of their office lay in their feet, as well as in their tongue, and 
 both author and actor were expected to be great proficients, the former 
 in the composition, the latter in the practice, of those movements and 
 evolutions which, as we find Aristotle classing them with poetry, music 
 and painting, and Lucian terming them a science of imitation and 
 exhibition, which explained the conceptions of the mind, and certified 
 to the organs of sense things naturally beyond their reach, we may 
 easily conceive to have consisted of something more than the elegant 
 movements which now go under the name of dancing. Had the trea- 
 tises of Sophocles and Aristocles on the subject of the chorus come 
 down to us, or had those statues not been lost from which ideas of the 
 attitudes of the ancient dancers might have been collected, (for every 
 movement of the body, we are given to understand by Athenaeus, was 
 observed, in order to collect those gestures which might afford a concert 
 for the eye, modulated upon that which was at the same time presented 
 to the ear,) we might have spoken with more confidence on what must 
 now remain a subject full of perplexity and obscurity. As all dancing, 
 however, among the Greeks was of the mimetic kind, whatever was the 
 nature of the tragic dance, we may be sure that the comic dance stood 
 in the same relation of parody to it, as the comedy itself of the ancients 
 did to their tragedy ; and to have enjoyed the mimetic movements of 
 the cordax, or dance of comedy, we ought to have witnessed in the 
 tragic* chorus those movements, whose general name (emmeleia) im- 
 
 * The author understood this best from witnessing, in the beautiful theatre at 
 Stutgard, a representation of Schiller's Bride of Messina. It was substituting, 
 indeed, the ear for the eye, and sound in the place of motion ; but the senses 
 easily transfer their feelings from one to another. In that rnost splendid testi- 
 mony of Schiller's genius, modelled, I need scarcely observe, upon the drama 
 of the ancients, and which might, in many of its parts, be mistaken for a reco- 
 vered piece of antiquity, the Chorus makes a very distinguished figure, and, on 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 53 
 
 plies accordance and a modulated harmony in the play of the characters. 
 How far this mimetic province of the dance was called into action by 
 the CHORUS of the Clouds, what steps were used in their parabases to 
 give effect to the rhythm,* what pauses in the metre* were supplied by 
 action, what gestures at once aided and gave life to the music, and in 
 what manner the metaphysical speculations of the sophists, which, 
 resting on no ground of experience, floated about in the kingdom of 
 possibilities without any definite shape or body — how far all this was 
 ridiculed by appropriate movements and evolutions, must now be left 
 to the fancy: we may be sure, however, that the fruitful mind of the 
 poet who invented one of the most powerful and graceful metresf in the 
 Greek language, would not be deficient in giving effect to his mental 
 creations by all the effects of scenic decoration, and all the additions of 
 costume, music, and dancing.l In this union of talents lay the great 
 
 a person conversant vvitl\ the writings of antiquity, it cannot fail to make a most 
 powerful impression. The effect of a number of human voices iijitonating the 
 same sentiments, in the same words, the same tone, the same inflection of voice, 
 and in the same modulated cadences, is something which, to be well understood, 
 must have been heard. The prophetic forebodings of the chorus, towards the 
 close of the piece — their IVeh .' Wehe .' Wche .' IVehe.' have not yet departed 
 from my ears ; and I have never since read a chorus or parabasis of Aristophanes 
 without feeling the humour increased tenfold, by the reflection, that on the Greek 
 stage its native wit would have been heightened by the triple parody of diction, 
 sound and motion. 
 
 * As mistakes are apt to occur in the use of these two words, the following 
 definitions of them, from the acute author of " Philological Inquiries" are sub- 
 joined. 
 
 Rhythm difiors from metre in as much as rhythm is proportion, applied fto 
 any motion whatever : metre is proportion, applied to the motion of words 
 spoken. Thus in the drumming of a march or the dancing of a hornpipe, there 
 is rhythm, though no metre ; in Dryden's celebrated ode there is metre as well 
 as rhythm, because the poet with the rhythm has associated certain words. 
 And hence it follows, that though all metre is rhythm, yet all rhythm is not 
 metre. 
 
 f The Aristophanic tetrameter. In its happy mixture of anapestic and spon- 
 daic feet, this metre combines a degree of strength and playfulness which no 
 other language can hope to reach. It is the want of a metre of this kind, which 
 makes every scholar feel a sensible deficiency in Mr Cumberland's translation 
 of the Clouds, where it not only tends to destroy the poetical effect, but assists 
 in giving a wrong idea of the feelings under which the original play was prima- 
 rily composed. 
 
 X Those who are conversant with the works of antiquity (and more particu- 
 larly with the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Lucian) are well aware, that each 
 of these subjects might afford matter for a treatise and not for the scanty notices 
 which the limits of this publication allow. On the subject of the latter more 
 particularly, even the graceful dancer (Dcshayes,) whose retirement has, now 
 for some years, made as great a void in tlie attractions of the Operatic ballet, as 
 
54 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 merit and difficulty of the ancient dramatists ; and in this lies the de- 
 pressing part of those who endeavovir to give the public an idea of their 
 works by translation. Conscious of what ought to be done, and what 
 they know never can be done, the unfinished appearance of their 
 labours throws a damp upon their toils, and they relinquish a work in 
 despair, where they feel that their happiest efforts can only be a species 
 of galvanism, giving motion to a muscle, to a leg, to an arm, but im- 
 potent and powerless to breathe the breath of life into the whole. 
 
 We have now gone through what appears to have been the object of 
 this very singular drama, the Clouds, and the process by which it was 
 moulded into the form it now bears. The author might surely be par- 
 doned for supposing that a piece thus carefully and laboriously con- 
 structed would have met with a reception far more flattering than had 
 attended any of his former plays. We know, however, from his own 
 confession, which is certainly more valid than Madame Dacier's conjec- 
 tures, that this was not the case ; that the prize of victory was assigned 
 to the Wine Flask of Cratinus, (that Cratinus who collected his declin- 
 ing powers to show a youthful and not altogether forbearing rival, that 
 he could still contest the palm with him,) and to the Connus of the 
 cold and spiritless Ameipsias. This was sufficiently mortifying ; and 
 the author, by his frequent complaints, showed that he felt it to be so. 
 Had Aristophanes been aware that the loss of his reputation with a 
 great portion of posterity would also be the price of the exhibition, we 
 must suppose him to have been without the feelings of a man, if we 
 imagine that the temporary defeat at Athens could have been anything 
 in the balance to him, compared with the severe judgment which mo- 
 dern writers in general have passed upon the author of the Clouds. 
 Upon what ground these decisions took place, and whether the poet's 
 contemporaries acted towards him with candour, or posterity with a 
 just knowledge of the subject, it now remains for us to consider. It 
 may, upon investigation, appear that the wit of the Clouds may be 
 relished without diminishing any of the respect justly due to Socrates, 
 and that Aristophanes, for this piece, as well as others, is more entitled 
 to our gratitude than common readers are at all aware of. It will be as 
 well to begin with the failure of the piece at the time of its exhibition. 
 When we talk of a piece failing in our own country, everybody 
 knows what is meant ; the taste of the writer and the taste of the audi- 
 ence, it is immediately understood, were at variance, and the sentiments 
 of the latter, pretty unequivocally expressed, obliged the former to 
 withdraw the obnoxious object from further obtrusion upon public 
 
 that of the most accomplished of actors has done in the classic and more dignified 
 departments of the drama, even he would be startled were we to mention the 
 twentieth part of what was expected by the ancients from a perfect dancer and 
 mime. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 55 
 
 notice. This does not altogether answer to the case of a dramatic 
 failure among the Greeks. With them, a contributor to tlieir scenic 
 exhibitions (and we shall betray an entire ignorance of the manners of 
 antiquity, if our imaginations place him, altogether, in the same scale 
 of estimation with those who devote their talents to the same difficult 
 pursuit in modern times) had two or three distinct sets of enemies to 
 encounter- — the archon, with whom lay the power of rejecting his piece 
 in the first instance ; the audience, to whom, after permission obtained 
 from the ruling magistrate, it was presented ; and thirdly, the critical 
 overseers ("S't*'.) whose business it was, under the restrictions of a so- 
 lemn oath, to adjudge the prize of victory, (a victory* sought with an 
 eagerness of competition of which we can scarcely form a conception,) 
 to what they thought the most distinguished of the competing pieces. 
 The audience and the umpires, it will easily be imagined, were not 
 always unanimous in their opinion ; the judges sometimes favouring, 
 and the spectators condemning, or the latter applauding and the former 
 disapproving. Which party favoured the Clouds? If we listen to 
 iElian, whose testimony however stands amid such a tissue of false- 
 hoods, that his opinion is scarcely worth a reference, the Clouds ap- 
 peared so delicious to the ears of the audience, that they applauded as 
 no audience ever applauded before ; they cricdf out tiiat the victory 
 belonged to Aristophanes, and they ordered the judges to inscribe his 
 name accordingly. If this story be true, the fall of the piece, which 
 consisted in not gaining the dramatic crown, must be ascribed to the 
 presiding critics, and we should have to account why they were at 
 variance with the audience : and this would be no very difficult task. 
 How many:|: the judges were on these occasions, and how they were 
 
 * The more serious excitements to victory are inserted in a note, in the co- 
 medy of the Knights, which describes the office of Choregus; a superb banquet, 
 given by the triumphant tribe to their successful poet, it may be presumed had 
 also its effect. We find the great comic poet alluding to this custom in more 
 than one of his plays. 
 
 t The lunuilt of an Athenian audience at the theatres is described with great 
 spirit in the French Anacharsis. The facts are collected from various ancient 
 authors; and thej'- form the best comment on what Plato somewhere calls the 
 Theatrocracy of Athens. " On le voit par degres murmurer sourdement, rire 
 avec eclat, pousser des cris tumultueux contra I'acteur, I'accabler de sifflets, 
 frapper des pieds pour I'obliger de quitter la seine, lui f aire oter son masque pour 
 jnuir de sa fionte, ordonner au heraut d'appeler un autre acteur qui est mis a 
 I'amende s'il n'est pas present, quelquefois me me demander qu'on inflige au 
 premier des peines dcshonorantes. Ni I'age, la celebrite, ni de longs services 
 ne sauraient le garantir de ces rigoureux traitemens. De nouvoaux succes peu- 
 vent seuls Pen dcdommager ; car dans I'occasion on bat des mains, et I'on ap- 
 plaudit avec le meme plaisir et la meme fureur. Le Jeuna Anach. t. vi. p. 92. 
 
 X Barthelemy, speaking on this subject, (and he cannot be accused of want- 
 ing diligence in his researches,) says, " II ne m'a pas etc possible de fixer le 
 
56 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 appointed, ancient authors have not left us any very satisfactory intel- 
 ligence ; but that they were not always correct in their critical opinions, 
 ihe wellknown anecdotes of Philemon and Menander, among many 
 others, sufficiently testify; and that this incorrectness did not always 
 proceed from mere errour in judgment, we find Aristophanes pretty 
 clearly hinting,* and Xenophon, in his Symposium, very plainly de- 
 claring. Now if the judge in the theatre was, like the dicast in the 
 courts of law, not inaccessible to a bribe, we may easily believe, that 
 the sophists and their friends, among whom must be classed the sons 
 and relatives of all the richest men in Athens, and who had possessed 
 interest enough but three or four years before to shut up the comic 
 theatre altogether, would not be idle in taking every means to quash an 
 opponent, who had already given proofs that he could deal blows, if 
 Hot harder, at least more effective, than even those which the strong- 
 handed Cratinus had administered. If that intimacy too subsisted be- 
 tween Socrates and Alcibiades, which Plato would make us believe, 
 but which XenOphon, so often at variance with liis great fellow pupil of 
 the Socratic school, almost denies, we may believe that this young 
 person, the most intemperate, insolent, and violent, according to the 
 latter, of all the young men of rank in Athens, would bestir himself in 
 favour of a preceptor, who, if he could not gain his affections by his 
 lessons of virtue and wisdom, had at least a claim upon his gratitude 
 for having the preceding year saved his life in battle. But there are 
 reasons to make us disagree with ^lian, and oblige us to think that it 
 was the audience, and not the judges, to whom must be ascribed the ill 
 success of the piece. There can be no doubt that the Clouds failed, 
 and there is as little doubt that the author recast his piece with the in- 
 tention of bringing it before the audience a second time ; — that it was 
 so brought, the acutest modern critics seem to doubt. By some curious 
 accident, it so happens that the play originally condemned has come 
 down to us Avith fpart of a parabasis (or address to the audience) evi- 
 
 nombre des juges ; j'en ai compte quelquefois cinq, quelquefois sept, et d'autres 
 fois davantage," t. vi. p. 75. De Paiiw speaks with the same uncertainty as to 
 the number of judges appointed for these solemn decisions. Recherches Philo- 
 sopliiqucs, t. i. p. 184. 
 
 * In Avibus, 1102. "Jamais on nevit," says the author last quoted, " des 
 decisions comparables aux decisions de ce tribunal-la : souvent il rejetoit avec 
 mepris les plus grands chef-d'ceuvres d'Euripide en de Menandre, et couronnoit 
 les pieces les plus absurdes et les plus ridicules. II faut, dit Elien, que de deux 
 choses il en soit necessairement arrive une : ou les juges du theatre d'Athenes 
 se laissoient aveugler par une grand partialite, ou ils se laissoient corrompre par 
 une grande somme de drachmes antiques. Mais il me paroit, qu'ils n'etoient 
 pas aussi souvent frappes de vertigo qu'eblouis par I'eclat de I'argent, malgre le 
 vain appareil de leur serment." 
 
 f Mr Cumberland, who was not aware of this circumstance, has been led 
 into some errours by it in his translation of the Clouds. The learned Madame 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 57 
 
 dently intended for the second. The author here complains pretty- 
 bitterly (for Aristophanes was clearly a man of warm feelings) of the 
 injustice which had been done to this most elaborate of all his perform- 
 ances ; but he no where hints at the judicial overseers as the occasion 
 of its failure ; on the contrary, the reproach is directed against the 
 spectators, and from the epithet he attaches to them, we may see that 
 it was a class of spectators not usually found in the comic theatre. Tlie 
 nature of the poet's subject, and the unusual labour, which, as he inti- 
 mates more than once, he had bestowed upon the composition of it, had 
 evidently led him to reckon upon an audience of a somewhat higher 
 description than usual ; and as the keenest amateur of the Theatre 
 Francois sometimes deserts the sublime acting of Talma for the inimi- 
 table buffooneries of Totier and Brunet, so Aristophanes seems to have 
 thought that he might reasonably calculate upon having, for once at 
 least, the gentlemen of Athens (tlie x.aKoiKa.ya^oi'^ among his hearers. 
 That they did attend, and that they assisted in the demolition of the 
 piece with the less enlightened of the audience, is pretty clearly inti- 
 mated in the poet's own words. 
 
 tolvt' hv Vfxn fxtjupo/umt 
 ton s^opo/f, eel hhk* iyce tclvt' iTr^ay/ua.TtuofjLHV 
 
 In his play of the succeeding year, the Wasps, Aristophanes again 
 complains of the failure of his Clouds, and mentions the direct reason 
 of its failure, viz. a novelty of invention, which the audience had not 
 the merit to appreciate. Had we not this direct testimony of the author, 
 our researches would have led us to this very conclusion. The subject 
 of the Clouds turned upon one of the most serious and important con- 
 siderations in human affairs, the science of education : and what con- 
 nection was there between this and the Dionysian Festival, where every 
 one came to be amused ; where he who laughed loudest was the mer- 
 riest, and he that laughed longest was the wisest ? Why were the 
 Athenian rabble to be cheated of their Bacchanalian festivity, and to be 
 passed off with a lecture, which, though conveyed through the medium 
 of two fighting cocks, had yet something too serious in it, to be suffi- 
 ciently piquant for an Athenian audience just ripe for all the nonsense 
 of holiday revelry ? What was it to them how the education of the 
 higher classes was conducted ; or what did they care for the opinions 
 of Protagoras or Polus, of Prodicus or Gorgias ? The persons and the 
 sentiments of these fashionable sophists would be equally unknown, it 
 is most probable, to the greater part of such an audience as generally 
 
 Dacier, whose enthusiastic admiration of Aristophanes led her, if I remember 
 right, to peruse his " Clouds" no less than two hundred times, (being precisely 
 the same number of lections as Al-farabi is said to have given to the rhetoric of 
 Aristotle,) has fallen into the same mistake. 
 
 8 
 
58 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 filled the comic theatres at Athens. To add to this unfortunate choice 
 of subject, Aristophanes added another errour, viz. an unfortunate choice 
 of time ; for he selected for his representation of the Clouds that parti- 
 cular festival, when strangers as well as natives were admitted to the 
 theatrical entertainments, and when of the thirty thousand spectators 
 who were present, half, at least, were probably strangers. And what 
 was Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, the statuary,* and Phaenaret, 
 the midwife, to them ? Pericles and Cleon were names familiar to their 
 ears, and any hint upon the subject of politics, obtained through the 
 introduction of them upon the stage, was abundantly grateful ; but what 
 had they to do with an obscure philosopher, whose name was hardly 
 known in his own native town, and the introduction of whom upon the 
 stage, as the hero of a piece, was an honour which had perhaps never 
 before been conferred upon a person of his rank in life, and which his 
 envious and jealous peers were not likely to see bestowed without ex- 
 treme jealousy and ill will? Strangers would naturally ask, as we 
 learn from iElian they actually did — Who is this Socrates t and if, as 
 that same author relates, Socrates stood up in the theatre to gratify the 
 curiosity thus excited, it will be no uncharitable remark to impute it, 
 partly, to his sense of the opportunity thus offered for gaining a name 
 in society, an advantage which, to a person of his pursuits in life, was 
 of incalculable importance. This is, perhaps, sufficient to show upon 
 what general grounds the Clouds fell ; but there are also some particular 
 ones, which might not be without a share in its rejection. In his play 
 of the preceding year, (the Demagogues,) Aristophanes had passed some 
 severe sarcasms upon his countrymen for their general ingratitude to 
 their comic poets ; and though the extraordinary merit of the perform- 
 ance had carried the poet successfully through at the time, the Athenians, 
 when their enthusiasm was over, were not a people likely to forget the 
 affront, nor to let it pass with impunity. A rival bard, whose name 
 had been introduced into that performance, furnished them, on the fol- 
 lowing year, with the triple means of indemnifying themselves, of re- 
 warding an old favourite, and reducing the pride of a young competitor. 
 Cratinus, in short, whom Aristophanes had considered as a man past 
 his labours, resented the affronts put upon him ; and in return for a 
 train of somewhat suspicious compliment, not without a hint or two at 
 infirmities which intemperance had created, he brought forward a co- 
 medy called the Wine Flask, the subject of which was founded on his 
 young rival's allusions ; and to this piece, more suited in its nature and 
 
 * Sophroniscus is somewhere mentioned by Lucian as an hermoglyphist ; a 
 person whose business it was to engrave inscriptions on marble, or rather on the 
 Hermaic statues. The profession of the father of Socrates would, according to 
 this, rank between the sculptor and the common stonemason. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 59 
 
 its allusions to a Bacchanalian festival than discussions upon education, 
 the prize of victory, as we learn by the Didascaliae, was adjudged. 
 
 With candid and discerning readers, the present writer feels no doubt 
 that the way has already been paved for the justification of Aristophanes 
 by the preceding remarks, and that many errours, which might have 
 arisen in their minds from confounding the ancient drama witli the 
 modern, (than which no two things can be more dissimilar,) have been 
 altogether removed. It is not for him to tell them what inferences are 
 to be drawn from the circumstances which have been incidentally men- 
 tioned — that Aristophanes did not invent the Old Comedy, but found 
 it ready made to his hands — that in his satirical* and even his indecentf 
 vein he acted upon established principles ; principles which, however 
 inconsistent with our notions upon such subjects, found sanction in tlie 
 very religion of the times. The information given respecting the masks 
 has apprised them, that the audience came to the exhibition with a 
 previous knowledge that they were to consider what they saw merely 
 as a harmless! caricature ; the comic poet being to them, something like 
 
 * The Athenians were, in fact, at all times, (independently of their Baccha- 
 nalian festivals,) a race of scoffers. Their comic poets exceed their tragic in a 
 very large ratio; and a nation must have been far gone in mirth, which thought 
 it necessary to exact an oath of the grave Archon, that he had not written a 
 comedy. They, who trace the wars of Louis XIV. to an illconstructed window, 
 and the politics of Queen Anne's court to a cup of tea thrown over Mrs Masham's 
 gown, will not fail to see the Greek propensity to slander rather than panegyric, 
 even in the metrical canons of their dramas. It was sufficient for the most ele- 
 vated person to have an unfortunate combination of syllables in his name, to 
 prevent him from furnishing matter for the delicate mouth of the Tragic Muse; 
 but comedy boulted him, under every species of refractory appellation. In the 
 trochaic tetrameter, he could be introduced as a dactyl, and even in the place of 
 the regular dipodia, he was served up as a choriambns, or an Ionic ^ minore. 
 The persecuted anapest, which was so cautiously admitted into the iambic sena- 
 rius, found a city of refuge with the comic poets ; ;md when vituperation was to 
 be dealt, it did not of necessity follow witii ihcm, that the catalectic dipodia or 
 K*Ttui\u( of the iambic tetrameter, should be a bacchius. 
 
 f In addition to the works referred to on a former occasion, may be added the 
 treatises of Joannes Nicolaus and Petrus Castellanus in the valuable Thesaurus 
 of Gronovius, tom. vii. It was not supposed that the chastest mind was injured 
 by Joining in these Bacchanalian revels. Diog. Laert. lib. ii. § 78. See also 
 Lucian in Amor. v. 5. p. 317. Plato, in one of the gravest of his works, consi- 
 ders drunkenness as not only allowable, but even as a sort of duty on the 
 Dionysian Festivals. De Leg. lib. vi. p. 623. B. 
 
 ^ Wieland has written an essay of considerable length on the subject of the 
 differences between Socrates and Aristophanes. As his view of the subject is 
 entirely different from the one here taken up, his line of argument is, of course, 
 as different; he fully agrees with the present writer, hovveve'r, in thinking that 
 no consequences ever resulted from the exhibitions of the comic theatre, and that 
 
60 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 what a Gilray was to us ; with this difference, that the former drew 
 entirely from his own resources, while that ingenious caricaturist often 
 acted upon the suggestions of wiser heads than his own. As these plays 
 were acted only once, the reader will tell himself, that it became a ne- 
 cessity that the impression made should be a strong one ; and this 
 necessity will be further enforced to his mind by the reflection, that 
 the audience could only carry away, what they retained in their me- 
 mories ; — what they lost in the recitation was not likely to be recalled 
 by books ; for these were few and scarce, and the Athenians were, as 
 we have already observed, a seeing and hearing, but not a reading pub- 
 lic. For these and a few other remarks the penetration of the reader 
 may be trusted. In this place also, were it necessary, we might enter 
 at some length into the state of parties, which in some shape or other 
 always divided Athens. A war party and a peace party — a party which 
 favoured aristocratical, and a party which in like manner leaned to de- 
 mocratical principles, are terms which we easily understand ; and we 
 can guess, by the influence they have upon ourselves, what would be 
 their effects upon the fiery, disputatious, and idle citizens of Athens. 
 To their literary* parties, however, and more particularly to that war 
 of opinion, Avhich existed between the philosophers and the writers for 
 the comic stage, we have nothing analogous ; but it was as keen, as 
 bitter, and as unremitting as any opposition of politics between the 
 Whig and Tory of this country : even the subordinate animosities be- 
 tween the comedian and the fluteplayer, who was employed to regulate 
 the steps of the choral movements, give occasion to remarks in the 
 plays of Aristophanes, (who certainly did not want for the esprit de 
 corps) which to this day are highly amusing. Now though nobody 
 questions the general sincerity of those who advocate Whig and Tory 
 principles among ourselves, yet we believe the warmest arguers on 
 either side would not always like to be taken to the letter in the opinions 
 of each other, which the heat of argument sometimes elicits : strong 
 expressions on one side are and must be met by strong expressions on 
 the other ; opinion must be combated by opinion, and the public are 
 the real gainers by the warmth of the controversy — they form silently 
 their judgment from the conflicting parties, and often set right those 
 who are ostensibly their preceptors. And in free states it is right that 
 
 therefore every reader may, with a safe conscience, relish the wit and farcical 
 humour of the " Clouds," without making himself uneasy in ascribing malevo- 
 lent motives to the author of the piece. See his Versuch iiber die Frage : ob 
 und wie fern Aristofanes, etc. 
 
 * Their extreme violence may be best judged of, by referring to some of the 
 literary contests of Italy. The separate pretensions of Tassoni and Biacciolini 
 to the invention of the comic Epopeia, were almost contested at the sword's 
 point. The Ariostisti and Tassisti form two warm factions even at this day. — 
 LUterature du Midi, t. ii. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. . 61 
 
 all this should be so. The atmosphere which we breathe is purged 
 and cleansed in the same manner : the explosion takes place above, and 
 the quiet fields below are only made sensible of the storm by the show- 
 ers which are elicited from the concussion, and which fall to gladden, 
 to fatten, and to fertilize. In this sense, Socrates, as a philosopher, 
 was fair game for Aristophanes, as a comedian ; and the good sense of 
 the former (perhaps the most predominant feature in his wonderful 
 mind) would lead him to be the first to laugh at the absurdity, and 
 would teach him that in a free slate it was better that many things 
 should evaporate in a laugh than in a more serious way. Many other 
 points might here be insisted upon, and particularly such as would tend 
 to remove those prejudices, which lead readers to suppose, that Socrates 
 was, at the time of the exhibition of the Clouds, the same important 
 personage to his contemporaries, which his doctrines and his death have 
 since made him to posterity ; and that therefore any attack upon him 
 must have been the efiect of envy and malevolence. Independently of 
 the privileged license of a poet, whose opinions are always considered 
 with a certain degree of indulgence, it would be easy to prove, from 
 the long note attached to the translated parabasis in the Knights, that 
 Socrates, an obscure philosopher just commencing his career, could be 
 no great object of envy to Aristophanes, already high in fame, and 
 shining in a branch of that particular profession* where it was so pecu- 
 liarly the object of ambition in Athens to excel. The relationships of 
 rank — those relations which all are so ready to deny as influencing 
 their conduct, but which, in fact, operate so strongly (and with good 
 reason) upon all — might here also be mentioned with effect ; and it 
 would be no difficult matter to show, that though a mistaken contempt 
 might thus be generated, there would be small grounds for supposing a 
 decided malevolence, in a man of rank and property, to the son of Phae- 
 naret the midwife, who valued his house with all its contents at five 
 minae. Even the opposition of personal character, as well as of pro- 
 fession, between the philosopher and the poet; — the one gay, jovial, 
 lighthearted, and a man of the world ; the other serious, thoughtful, 
 and contemplative ; witty perhaps, but from the vivacity which lies in 
 the intellect, and not that more sociable one which lies in the tempera- 
 ment, might not have been undeserving of remark, and still more might 
 we insist upon the circumstance, that the personal! appearance of So- 
 
 * The possession of talents for the drama were, according to Plato, the surest 
 road to honour and promotion in Athens, as military endowments were in 
 Sparta. 
 
 \ The enthusiastic admiration, which the character of Socrates has justly 
 excited, has led some men to question the fact of his deformity, and even to 
 assert the very contrary. Epictetus, among the ancients, originated, I beheve, 
 this opinion ; and it appears from Brucker, that there have been some modern 
 writers, hardy enough to follow his steps, in spite of the express testimonies of 
 
62 PRELIMINARV DISCOURSE. 
 
 crates (which was described more at length than persons of good taste 
 might think warrantable, on purpose to give effect to this remark) was 
 a consideraiion to a poet, part of whose entertainment consisted in the 
 ridiculousness* of his masks, and who in giving the masks of Prodicus 
 or Hippias, would have given what tbe greater part of the spectators 
 would neither have knowledge of, nor relish for: — but it is time to 
 hasten to remarks of a more important tendency, and these will be dis- 
 cussed as freely, but as candidly as every other part of the subject. 
 
 The name of Socrates is known to most readers only, by the page of 
 history, where nothing appears in its undress ; and even in persons 
 tolerably conversant with the learned languages, the knowledge of this 
 singular man is often confined to that beautiful little work of Xenophon, 
 which indeed deserves the classical appellation of " golden," and to 
 that immortal Trilogyt of Plato, which has been embalmed by the tearsf 
 of all ages. When we read the admirable system of ethics (some few 
 blots excepted) which is laid open in the former, and the simple nar- 
 rations which conduct the author of them to the close of his mortal 
 career in the latter, it is not simply a burst of admiration, or grief, or 
 horrour, which breaks from us, but a union of all three, so profound, and 
 so involved, that the mind must be strong indeed, which can prevent 
 the feelings, for a time, from mastering the judgment. Few readers, it 
 is believed, even make the attempt : the prison scene is an agony of 
 suffering, to which the mind gives way that it may not be torn by op- 
 posing it; Socrates drinking the poison shocks the imagination — we 
 feel, such is the merit of the sufferer, or such the consummate§ skill of 
 
 Plato and Xenophon to the contrary. Epicteti vestigiis insistunt celeberrimi 
 viri I. A. Fabricius et C. H. Heumannus, qui de forma Socratis non deformi et 
 fceda quemadmodum vulgo traditur, docte commentatus est, putatque ex male 
 intellecto Zopyri, insulsi hotninls et ab Alcibiade derisi, judlcio, et ex confuse 
 Cratete, deformi specie noto, cum Socrate, fabulam fuisse natam. De Schola 
 Socratica. Brucker, v. i. p. 542. 
 
 * A ridiculous face was, according to Aristotle, a legitimate point of attack 
 in comedy, and fell precisely under the Greek definition of the yiKom. 
 
 f The works of Plato are usually divided into tetralogues ; and considering 
 their dramatic nature, the idea of thus dividing them is not an unhappy one. In 
 this manner the Euthypron is generally coupled with the apologia, the Criton, 
 and the Phaedon, but I think, not very fortunately. The Euthypron has in it 
 the fault, which may be ascribed to so many of the dialogues of Plato ; it refutes 
 and removes opinions quite sufficient for the good conduct of ordinary life, and 
 substitutes nothing better in their place. 
 
 X One of the greatest, wisest, and best men of antiquity, and whose little infir- 
 mities only made him the more amiable, confesses that he never read the Phaedon 
 without an agony of tears. Quid dicam de Socrate ? cujus morti tVlachrymare 
 soleo Platonem legens. — Clc. de Nat. Deor. lib. viii. 
 
 § The following remark, by a most discerning judge of conduct, deserves in- 
 sertion here. , "The magnanimity of Socrates surely deserves admiration ; yet 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 63 ' 
 
 his biographer, as if a sin had been committed against human nature — 
 we think for a moment that a chasm has been left in society which can 
 never again be filled up, and we feel as if we could stop nature herself 
 in her course, to protest against a transaction, the guilt of which seems 
 to belong to all ages. It is an invidious task to interrupt the current of 
 such feelings, even if there be any thing illegitimate in their source : 
 fortunately for the honour of our species these feelings are mostly right 
 in their application, and what deductions are made can be supplied from 
 higher sources ; we should spurn ourselves if we otherwise attempted 
 to do them away. What these deductions are must now be explained, 
 and the writer of this discourse feels assured, that the minds and the 
 authorities of persons infinitely more learned than himself, will go with 
 him in the explanation. 
 
 Two books have been referred to, (forming but a small portion of 
 the Chartae Socraticx, or those writings by which the manners, life 
 and doctrines of Socrates may be made familiar to us) as including 
 almost all that is known of this extraordinary man by the generality of 
 readers. These books form part of the system of education in most of 
 our great schools : they are read at an age, when the feelings are warm, 
 the impressions vivid and lively, and when the pride of learning is 
 beginning to operate very strongly. This course of study necessarily 
 brings two names into contact, which are often afterwards connected 
 merely for the purpose of making dangerous and unworthy comparisons. 
 Youthful and inquisitive minds see that system of ethics, which they 
 are told, more particularly, forms the internal evidence for the divine 
 authority of the Scriptures, in some measure laid open by the hand of 
 Xenophon ; they see the immortality of the soul intimated in the dia- 
 logues of Plato, and did their researches extend farther into the Socratic 
 philosophy, they might see dark suggestions of many of the other great 
 Scriptural doctrines — the nature of moral evil, the originally happy state 
 of man, the deluge, the doctrine of free will, and a future state of re- 
 wards and punishments. The much greater doctrines of Repentance 
 and the Atonement they do not see displayed ; but neither the voices 
 of their own conscience nor a commerce with the world, have taught 
 them the truly divine hand manifested in the former, and the incomplete 
 development of their faculties renders them utterly incapable of duly 
 estimating the latter. We know that we speak from higher authority 
 than our own, when we say that the consequences of these early im- 
 pressions are often fatal ; that men are thus made half-wise in human 
 
 it is not that in which he most outshone other men. The circumstances of 
 Lord Russell's fate were far more trying. Socrates, we may easily suppose, 
 would have borne Lord Russell's trial ; but with Bishop Burnet for his eulogist, 
 instead of Plato and Xenophon, he would not have had his present splendid 
 fame." Mit. Hist, of Greece, y. p. 155. 
 
64 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 learning and utterly ignorant in that better wisdom, which makes wise 
 unto salvation. A deeper research into the writings of the Socratic 
 school might lead them to appreciate somewhat better that profound 
 maxim, which does so much honour to the most thoughtful and philo- 
 sophic people in Europe, that there is no philosophy so deep as the 
 philosophy of Christianity: but time, opportunity, and it may be added, 
 a more competent share of scholarship than sometimes falls to the lot 
 of such persons, are necessary to the task ; and the consequence is, that 
 they are left a prey to doubts and disquietudes, from which even the 
 consciousness of an upright and unblemished life does not at all times 
 remove the sting. 
 
 We have for this reason felt less compunction than we should other- 
 wise have done in removing any prop to virtue, however misplaced, by 
 displaying some proofs in the preceding part of these remarks, that the 
 character of Socrates was a little more open to remark, than some ad- 
 mirers in their ignorance are aware of, and more than some in their 
 knowledge, are willing to bring into notice. Learned and ijnpartial 
 men, well acquainted with the subject, will do the present writer the 
 justice to say, that some points are not pressed so closely as they might 
 have been, and that had he not confined himself to the two authors, 
 from whom he has very rarely deviated, his remarks might have been 
 conveyed in a higher tone of censure. His object, however, has been, 
 not to depreciate Socrates, but to do justice to a man, whose motives 
 have been much mistaken, and whose character, in consequence, has 
 been unduly depreciated. In pursuing our remarks upon Xenophon 
 and Plato, the two highest and most genuine authorities to which we 
 can apply for the character of Socrates, a little more may turn up for 
 the justification of Aristophanes. 
 
 Dates and periods make no great figure in literary discussions ; but 
 they are often of the utmost importance in settling the real truth of 
 things. Our opinions of Socrates are derived entirely from the writings 
 of Xenophon, Plato and Aristophanes ; and we believe many readers 
 class all these persons in their minds as immediate contemporaries, 
 and perhaps, from a passage in Plato's Banquet, as living in habits of 
 society together. This was so far from being the case, that the two 
 great biographers of Socrates were actually children in the nursery, at 
 the time the Clouds were brought upon the stage ; the future master of 
 the Academy being then but six years old, and Xenophon within a year 
 of the same age. Had these difficulties rested only on the testimony 
 of such a man as Diogenes Laertius, whose sins of forgetfulness are 
 almost proverbial, they need not have demanded much investigation ; 
 but when we find the mistake originating with a writer in general so 
 accurateas Strabo, it becomes us to state the grounds of our dissent from 
 them. In the battle of Delium, which took place one year before the 
 representation of the Clouds, Socrates is represented by both these 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 66 
 
 Writers as saving the life of Xenophon, during the retreat which follow- 
 ed that celebrated engagement. No one acquainted with chronology 
 will hesitate to say, that this is a ridiculous fiction. The first important 
 event in the very eventful life of Xenophon was his joining the expe- 
 dition of Cyrus, a prince certainly not without errours, but whose cha- 
 racter, like that of many of the other Persian princes and nobles, con- 
 trasts very favourably with the rude republicans, with whom they were 
 brought so much into contact. This expedition is settled by chronolo- 
 gists as taking place just twentyone years after the battle of Delium ; 
 and Xenophon, who has left us so matchless an account of that inte- 
 resting expedition, calls himself at the time a young man, and gives us 
 to understand that his close pursuit of philosophy, coupled with his 
 early years, excited the mirth of his fellow soldiers, till circumstances 
 taught them to appreciate the practical effects which often result from 
 such theoretical pursuits. The English historian of Greece, who to 
 the utmost boldness and originality of opinion, unites the greatest 
 patience and minuteness of research, settles the age of Xenophon at the 
 time of his first connection with Cyrus at six or seven and twenty. 
 What Socrates, therefore, really was at the time of the representation of 
 the Clouds, and how far the poet was justified in his attack, neither of 
 the two persons, from whom alone any autlientic accounts respecting him 
 have come down to us, could possibly tell : their intercourse with their 
 great master must have commenced long after the period in question, 
 and apparently the whole of Xenophon's work, and, no doubt, many of 
 the dialogues of Plato were written at a time,* when for their own 
 personal safety it became them to communicate rather what they wished 
 to be made known respecting their great leader, than what they could 
 make known. These writers, besides, difier considerably in their ac- 
 counts of their master: in some points they are almost diametrically 
 opposite to each other, in others they evidently write at each other ; 
 and perhaps the same remark may have struck the reader, which has 
 often occurred to the present writer, that as the most excellent of Xeno- 
 phon's compositions is that which he derives entirel} from Socrates, 
 so the most noble and the most perfect workf of Plato is that into 
 
 * The death of Socrates was a signal for Plato and other philosophers to leave 
 Athens. They retired, says Herinodorus, to Eucleid at Megara, " fearing the 
 cruelty of the tyrants," i. e. the mob of Athens. The accounts of the speedy 
 remorse of the Athenians for the atrocity they had committed seem to deserve 
 very little credit. Vid. Le Jeune Anach. l. v. 558. Mitford Hist, of Greece, 
 vi. p. 407. 
 
 j- His work on Legislation. As exclusive praise is worth but little, it will be 
 proper to except the encomiums on drunkenness, contained in the first book, the 
 community of goods enforced in the fifth book, the subjection of women to 
 public meals and gymnastic exercises, and some absurdities on the subject of 
 marriage, and the evident tendency to Manicheean principles in the tenth. With 
 
 9 
 
66 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 which even the name of Socrates does not enter. Now when an enemy 
 and a friend give something like the same account of a person ; and 
 especially when the favouring parly has had previously a warning voice 
 to caution him as to the line he might take in his delineation, a strong 
 presumption arises, that the joint opinion of two such persons comes 
 nearer the truth, than that of a single individual, however respectable 
 in character, or gifted with talent. Now it may confidently be affirmed 
 that the single fact of Socrates receiving pay for his instructions ex- 
 cepted, (the great charge of making the worse appear the better cause, 
 has been already disposed of,) the mysticism, the garrulity, the hair- 
 splitting* niceties of language, the contempt for exteriour appearance, 
 
 these exceptions, this work may perhaps be termed the most noble of all that 
 antiquity has left us. If the irnKatot Aoyot to which Plato so continually refers 
 in it were nothing more nor less than accounts received, in his travels, from the 
 Egyptian priests, and derived by them, through the two Hermae, from the Old 
 Testament, the wonder excited by its excellence will soon cease. There is 
 something so sublime in the language, and so nearly prophetic in the application 
 of the following passage, that though not immediately to the present subject, 
 the reader, I think, will not object to its insertion. It is an address to the ima- 
 ginary persons, for whom the writer is legislating — " Citizens, we will say to 
 them, God, according to an old tradition, (that God, in whose hands are the 
 beginning, the end and the middle of all things,) finishes in a right line, con- 
 formably to his nature, even when his motions appear to be circuitous. Behind 
 him follows Justice, the punisher of all aberrations from the divine law. He 
 that would be happy, lays hold upon her, and follows, clothed in the garment 
 of humility; but he that is elated by pride, or finds cause of exaltation in his 
 riches, his honours or his personal beauty; he that in the union of youth and 
 madness, has his soul fired by insolence, as if he required neither ruler, nor 
 guide, but was himself competent to guide others ; that person is abandoned by 
 God and left to himself. Thus abandoned, this person joins to him others as 
 wicked as himself, and in the wantonness of his exultation, he overturns and 
 confounds everything. And to the many and the vulgar for a time he appears 
 to be somebody : but vengeance after a time comes upon him : and subjected to 
 a punishment, which none can blame, the end of that man is, that he consigns 
 to utter destruction, himself, his family and his country." De Leg. 1. iv. p. 
 600 G. 
 
 * An example taken almost at hazard from a dialogue, where perhaps Kant, 
 and certainly Locke, might have found a great part of their theories ready traced 
 for them, will fully justify this expression. The philosopher is explaining 
 various cases, where a false opinion is impossible ; and if Aristophanes had 
 been one of the auditors, it is conceived, that he would have found more than 
 one passage in the dialogue, where it would have puzzled him to draw the line 
 between the philosopher and the sophist. Socrates leaving just supposed a 
 large sensorium of wax to be in everybody's brain, produces a variety of cases 
 of impossible false opinion, by reasoning as follows. 
 
 "That which any one knows, and has a remembrance of in the soul, but 
 whi^h he does not feel; it is impossible that he should mistake this for some- 
 thing else which he knows, and of which he has also the impress, but not the 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 67 
 
 the *melancholy temperament, the strong addiction to tphysical pursuits, 
 the belief in a supernatural agency, to an extent not precisely recognized 
 by the religion of his country, every single trait of the Aristophanic 
 
 sensation. Again, that what he knows, is another thing which he does not 
 know, nor has the impress of: or, that what he does not know, is another thing 
 which he also does not know; or that what he does not know, is another thing 
 which he does know, as also that what he feels, is another thing which he also 
 feels ; or that what he feels, is some other thing which he does not feel ; or that 
 what he does not feel, is some other thing, which he does not feel, or what he 
 does not feel is some other of the things which he does feel, on all these it is 
 impossible to entertain a false opinion. Again, of the things, which a man both 
 knows and A^els, having the impress of sensation, that a man should think any 
 one of these some other ihing which he feels and knows, having the signof tliat 
 also by sensation, is, if possible, still more impossible than those former things. 
 It is equally impossible that what a person knows and feels, and keeps a type 
 of in the niemory, should be imagined by him to be some other thing which he 
 knows; or again that what he knows and feels, and preserves a remembrance 
 of, is another thing which he feels; or that what he neither knows nor feels, is 
 another thing which he does not know ; or that what he does not know nor feel 
 is another thing which he does not feel." — In all these and many more such 
 cases, the philosopher pronounces it to be utterly impossible that a man should 
 think wrong. If the reader have patience to read this passage through, or to 
 cast his eyes over the Lysis, the Cratylus, the Philebus, or the Parmenides 
 of Plato, (dialogues in which it is sometimes difficult to separate the burlesque 
 from the serious.) he will, I think, come to the conclusion, that the scenes in 
 the Clouds, representing the boltingtub and the cock and hen pullet, etc., absurd 
 as they may appear to us, were derived from actual conversations of Socrates, 
 twisted perhaps a little from their original purport, and reported by some friend, 
 who in such a gossipping town as Athens, might know what Aristophanes 
 wanted in his hero for the Clouds. 
 
 * The melancholy temperament of Socrates has been noticed by Aristotle ; 
 that Aristophanes considered him as a man eaten up, with what Goethe some- 
 where calls the " kribscrabs von imagination," may be seen from the nickname 
 the poet applies to his house. An explanation of the Socratic fhiiontistehium 
 is given in a note attached to the translation of the Clouds. 
 
 t Had there been no other confirmation of this trait in the Aristophanic 
 Socrates, than the little parenthetical concessions, so cautiously admitted by 
 Xenophon in his Memorabilia, (p. 3G1, 3. 3G'3, 5.) and the remarks on natural 
 causes made by Socrates in his Banquet (p. 8G.) I should feel that this was 
 quite sufficient for establishing the fact. In Plato's Phaedon, however, (p. 392, 
 G. H. etc.) the fact is admitted at great length, that Socrates in his younger 
 days had been vehemently addicted to physical inquiries; and indeed on com- 
 paring the whole of the admissions by his two bioorraphers, it seems no unfair 
 inference to assert, that the intellect of Socrates, like that of An;ixagoras, had, 
 at one time, very nearly sunk under the intensity of his researciies into these 
 dangerous speculations. It is singular, and shows how cautious we ought to 
 be in our judgments formed from the writings of antiquity, that what Socrates 
 in the Phaedon so unreservedly admits, in the Apologia he, with as little reser" 
 ration, denies. 
 
68 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 Socrates may be traced in the Platonic, and in some cases with aggra- 
 vating circumstances, which, if the poet had been ill disposed towards 
 the piiilosopher, or had even had any more personal knowledge of him, 
 than what necessarily happened in a town, not of very considerable 
 population, and whose customs and manners brought all persons more 
 into contact than the habits of modern society do, would certainly not 
 have been suppressed in a picture, supposed to be drawn from wilful 
 perversion and malevolent misrepresentation. What are we to conclude 
 from all this ? The fair inference seems to be, that the Clouds was not 
 written for the purpose of exposing Socrates, but that Socrates was 
 selected (and for reasons previously mentioned) for the purpose of giving 
 more effect to the Clouds, as an ingenious satire directed against the 
 sophists and the pernicious system of public education at Athens : so 
 far from its being a wilful misrepresentation, dictated by envy or jea- 
 lousy, it seems very probable, that the parties were very little known 
 to each other ; that the character of Socrates made much that sort of 
 impression on the poet, which it was designed the preceding portrait of 
 him should make upon the reader; and finally it is affirmed, that it is a 
 much more difficult problem to solve, why Aristophanes should be sin- 
 gularly right in his representation of others, and singularly wrong in his 
 representation of Socrates ; than it is to take the plain case, that the 
 poet drew the philosopher, such as he knew him at the time to be, 
 (which is not improbable,) or such, as he judged him, from a very im- 
 perfect knowledge, to be, which appears to be more than probable. If 
 the reader concur with the present writer, he will go one step farther ; 
 so far from blaming the poet for the course he pursued in consequence 
 of his real or mistaken knowledge, he will think him entitled to the 
 gratitude of posterity for the assumption and the execution of the task. 
 We are all fond of the expression that Socrates brought down philoso- 
 phy from the clouds (and certainly till his time the clouds had been her 
 principal residence) to live among men. If the poet found him on his 
 journey for that purpose, he was not to know the nature of the philoso- 
 pher's errand, and the wholesome reproof, that was dealt him on the oc- 
 casion, (for our virtues and our vices, our merits and our demerits are 
 often the children of circumstances,) had perhaps the power of direct- 
 ing his mind to better pursuits. We conclude therefore, with saying, 
 that as we possibly owe to the severity of a Review the poet of our own 
 days, who has left all his contemporaries behind him, and made the 
 proudest of his predecessors, in all ages and countries, tremble for their 
 supremacy; so we owe to the ridicule of the Old Comedy the philosopher, 
 whose name (with certain deductions) no man mentions without feeling 
 himself exalted for a time in the scale of creation. 
 
 The idle story of iElian, that Socrates was put to death in conse- 
 quence of the representation of the Clouds, (two events between which, 
 it is almost needless to observe, an interval of more than twenty years 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. -- tJ? 
 
 occurred,) has been refuted with too much spirit by Mr Cumberland, 
 in the Observer, to require any further notice ; the apparent support* 
 given to such an opinion by Plato, being easily accounted for. But if 
 this idle notion about the immediate cause of the death of Socrates orig- 
 inated with iElian, it must also be remembered, that thisf amusing but 
 credulous writer, has, in the exercise of his vocation, 
 
 "Compiler, compiler, compiler," — 
 
 evidently struck upon the true cause of Socrates' death ; namely, his politi- 
 cal opinions. "Socrates," says iElian, "disliked the Athenian consti- 
 tution, as he saw that democracy has in it all the evils of tyranny and 
 absolute monarchy." With that natural good sense, which lay at the 
 bottom of all the real or pretended inequalities of Socrates, this extraor- 
 dinary man seems to have determined within himself, that the vocation 
 to which he had devoted himself, (and a more high and lofty one has 
 seldom been conceived,) should not be disturbed by tlie officious inter- 
 position and misguided zeal of such an imperious and ignorant rabble 
 as the mass of the Athenian people were. In his religious practices, 
 therefore, he at least made every decent sacrifice to the opinions of his 
 country; and his political opinions, a still more delicate point in the sus- 
 picious and irritable town of Athens, he seems to have kept as closely as 
 possible to himself. It was with a view to the latter object, as he him- 
 self plainly intimates in his defence, that he had abstained from the Gen- 
 eral Assemblies ; wishing neither to give offence by declaring his senti- 
 ments, nor to compromise his character (a character not less marked by 
 inflexible integrity, than the most determined courage) by withholding 
 them. The same good sense appears to have determined him in re- 
 fraining from being initiated in the Mysteries, the only part of the 
 
 *In Apologia, 359. Plato, of course, is not guilty of the same chronological 
 errour as j^-^lian. He merely makes his Socrates observe to the dicasts, that the 
 accusations then advanced against him by Melitus were the same as those which 
 in their younger days, they had seen brought forward against him by Aristo- 
 phanes on the stage. Vexation, at the inconvenience occasioned to the Socratic 
 school by the death of their master, — literary jealousy, proverbially inherent in 
 Plato, and evidently not least directed against Aristophanes, — and perhaps re- 
 venge for an attack, much more light and goodhumoured than the offence war- 
 ranted, (see Ecclesiazusae of Aristophanes, and the note on the fifth book of his 
 Republic,) assisted, no doubt, in provoking this attack upon the comic poet. 
 
 f Rabelais, a man of too much imagination not to be delighted with a gossip- 
 ing book of legends and prodigies, like iKlian's Varia Historia; and a man of 
 too much sense not to despise the narrator of them, among other rubs gives him 
 the following in his description of the land of Satin : Si croyez ceux qui disent 
 le oontraire, vous en trouverez mal, voire fust ce Elian fiercekt de menitrie ,■ — 
 *'j1<]lian, that long-bow man," as the English translator renders it, "who lies as 
 fast as a dogr can trot." 
 
70 FRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 Greek worship, as a writer observes, who brings the most profound 
 erudition to whatever opinion he chooses to advocate, which seems to 
 have possessed any energy, and the ricHcule or violation of which alone 
 seems to have been visited with any severe vengeance. But however 
 cautious Socrates might be of touching upon these points in public, the 
 same caution was ill observed perhaps in private ; and the writings of 
 Xenophon and Plato (for in this point there is no discrepancy between 
 them) prove that the ridicule of Socrates against the constitution of his 
 country was not pointed merely at its mode of choosing its magistrates 
 by the fortuitous direction of pebbles or beans. This discourse would 
 exceed all bounds, if it detailed one half of the bitter invectives against 
 democracy, with which the writings of these two most distinguished 
 scholars of Socrates are filled. Besides more direct attacks, Plato evin- 
 ces his contempt at all times for the constitutions of his own country, 
 by deriving almost all the regulations of his Utopian states from the 
 maxims of her bitter enemy, the Lacedaemonians. Even that regard, 
 which a painter and an author, like Plato, might be expected to enter- 
 tain for a mode of government, proverbially affording the greatest varie- 
 ty of characters, and consequently multiplying his materials of occupa- 
 tion, even this has little influence in mitigating that contempt for demo- 
 cracy, which the master of the Academy everywhere expresses ; — he 
 adverts indeed to the advantage, (in Rep. lib. viii.) but it is to treat it 
 with derision, and to compare it with that predilection, which leads wo- 
 men and children to select the robes that have most variety of colours 
 in them. Xenophon, living more out of the reach of the tyranny of 
 the Athenian mob, observes still less limits in his expressions of indig- 
 nation : and whatever of the clearsightedness and personal virtue can 
 give effect to the expression of opinions, both will be found contributing 
 to give influence to the declarations of this excellent man ; the soldier- 
 philosopher-author, as the English historian of Greece, by a bold com- 
 bination, enthusiastically calls him. He talks bitterly of the numbers of 
 his fellow countrymen, who, " not worth a drachma, were ready to 
 sell their country, with all in it, that they might have a drachma :" he 
 inveighs with the most emphatic indignation against that imperious 
 " crowd of fullers, shoemakers, carpenters, braziers, husbandmen, and 
 dealers," who composed the general assemblies in Athens, and " whose 
 great object in life," he says, " was to buy cheap, and to sell dear:" 
 he intimates that all the world through, democracy and virtue are ever 
 at variance ; and he concludes one of those bitterly contemptuous chap- 
 ters against the Athenian constitution, which, by their decided variation 
 with the general equability of his style, show how warmly he felt on 
 the subject, with words, which have been quoted in another part of this 
 volume, and which would not have been uttered with impunity within 
 the walls of Athens : — " That the populace should be partial to a demo- 
 cracy, I can easily excuse ; for it is pardonable that every person should 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 71 
 
 try to benefit himself; but if any one, not immediately in the rank of 
 the people, prefer living in a democratical rather than in an *oligarchi- 
 cal government, that man is a villain by anticipation, and acts upon the 
 consciousness, that it is easier for a scoundrel to escape detection in a 
 state where the government is in the hands of many, than it is in a 
 state where the government is in the hands of a few." 
 
 What Plato and Xenophon expressed in their writings, Alcibiades 
 and Critias, the two most conspicuous disciples of Socrates, evinced 
 still more decidedly by their actions. Never had democracy two such 
 clever, active, and insatiable foes ; and when we read in the articles of 
 accusation against the son of Sophroniscus, that he corrupted the young 
 men of Athens, we have only to open the writings of Xenophon, and to 
 reflect upon the conduct of Crilias and Alcibiades, to know what that 
 charge was meant to convey. So mighty, however, is truth, that even 
 with the awkward fact of great disasters brouglit upon the common- 
 wealth by two men, the formation of whose characters, or of one at 
 least, was ascribed wholly to Socrates, all the charges against him were 
 easily refuted: a strong murmur, indeed, of disapprobation attended the 
 annunciation, that this object of popular resentment acted under the im- 
 mediate impulse and guidance of a particular divinity ; but even this, 
 new as it might be, and countenancing, as it strongly did, the opinions 
 advanced, that the defendant rejected the popular theology, even this 
 was heard rather with a feeling of envy at his enjoying a greater ad- 
 vantage than his judges, than with a doubt of its truth. What, then, was 
 wanting to the full acquittal of Socrates? Nothing but that which he 
 disdained to give: a shew of submission to the dicasis who tried him, 
 a little supplication to that crowd of fullers, carpenters and braziers, 
 who composed the courtsj of law, as they also formed the ecclesise or 
 
 * By an oligarchy, Xenophon most probably meant his favourite government, 
 the Lacedaemonian ; which the Athenian writers seem to have called an oligar- 
 chy, a monarchy or a democracy, according as the executive power seemed to 
 them most virtually to reside in the senate (jepovTSf,) the two kings, or the ephori. 
 Arist. in Politicis, 1. ii. c. 7. 
 
 ■j" The judicial system of Athens will come more properly under consideration 
 in our author's comedy of the Wasps ; but a note or two on the subject will be 
 necessary to give effect to the present argument. 
 
 Nearly onelhird of the population of Athens were, in part, supported by their 
 attendance upon tlie courts of law in the quality of dicasts, an office something 
 between the judge and juryman of modern times. In the constitution of these 
 judicial tribunals, from which there was no appeal, and which were not account- 
 able for their decisions, Aristotle considers the whole power of the Athenian 
 democracy to consist; and from them he derives that disposition to tyranny 
 which, in conformity with Plato, Xenoplion, and Aristophanes, he ascribes to 
 his countrymen. In Polit. lib. ii. c. 12. If Socrates was tried in the court of 
 Heliaea, which, in spite of the dogmatical assertion of de Pauw to the contrary, 
 rests upon most respectable authority, six thousand dicasts might have sat in 
 
72 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 legislative assemblies. The accounts of Plato and Xenophon are too 
 decisive on this point to admit of any doubt; the charge of impiety, it 
 is clear, would have been abandoned, and the gods left to avenge their 
 own cause, had Thearion the baker, and Simon the currier, and Theo- 
 phrastus the maker of lyres and the rest of the dicasts stood uncurtailed 
 of their usual allowance of submission,* tears, supplication and prostra- 
 
 judgment upon him. That there was a very full attendance on the occasion, we 
 have Plato's express testimony. A very large portion of the population of 
 Athens thus becomes involved in the guilt of the murder of Socrates : and if 
 cities suffer for crimes as well as individuals, (an opinion not unknown to the 
 ancients. Isocrates in Orat. de Pace, 381.) there is nothing ridiculous surely in 
 ascribing the subsequent and still continuing degradation of Greece, to the di- 
 vine vengeance which marked that unholy deed. 
 
 * This trait in the character of the Athenian dicast is painted, with much hu- 
 mour, in the play just referred to; the weakest, according to W. Schlegel, of all 
 the writings of Aristophanes, and which, after the reception of his play of the 
 preceding year, could not be expected to be the strongest. In fact, after the re- 
 jection of the Clouds, a visible alteration takes place in the Aristophanic come- 
 dies : the author, as if hopeless of effecting his better purpose, almost abandons 
 the office of serious instruction, and many of his plays are mere jeux d'esprit ; 
 giving, certainly, a high idea of the wit and humour of an Athenian mob, but 
 never commanding that regard, and even respect, which the lower orders of so- 
 ciety in our own and other countries so often command. As the character of 
 common Athenians is not treated with any great lenity in the course of this work, 
 it is but fair that they should have all the benefit of the good humour, with 
 which they allowed their failings to be reproved in their own days. This can- 
 not be better done than by two or three extracts from the play just mentioned. 
 The best scene in it is where a father and son consider the merits and demerits 
 of the judicial system of Athens; thefather being a tough dicast of the old school, 
 the son an improved gentlemen of the later day. 
 
 Father. At your word, offi go, and at starting Pll show, 
 
 convincing the stiffest opinion ; 
 That regalia and throne, sceptre, kingdom and crown 
 
 are but dirt to judicial dominion. 
 First in pleasure and glee, who abound more than we; 
 
 who with luxury nearer are wedded 1 
 Then for panic and frights, the world through none excites, 
 
 what your dicast does, e'en tho' grayheaded. 
 Soon as ever I creep from my bed and break sleep, 
 
 through the courts runs a warning sensation ; 
 There the mighty — the sly — men of four cubits high, 
 
 wait my coming in hot trepidation. 
 First a hand soft as wool — entre nous, lately full 
 
 from the public exchequer and treasure, 
 Fast upon me is laid ; and my knees captive made, 
 
 supplications pour in without measure— 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 73 
 
 tions. The soul of Socrates — that Socrates, who, with every qualifi- 
 cation requisite to carry him to the highest dignities of state, remained, 
 for the sake of higher employments, nobly poor, disdained the compro- 
 
 " Father — neighbour and friend — help and mercy extend — 
 
 mayhap when in ofiice and station. 
 Or when serving the mess, you took care to f.rpress, 
 
 in private, a small compensation." 
 Knave and hang-dog ! my care, from a swing in the air, 
 
 sav'd his heels on a former occasion. 
 Or the rogue, and be curst! had not known — 
 
 Son, {writing on his fallcts.) Item first: — 
 
 suit . . . petition . . . and warm supplication. 
 Father. Loaded large thus with prayer, in the court I take chair, 
 
 from my brow wrath and choler clean clearing ; 
 As for promises made out of doors of my aid — 
 
 with the four winds of heaven their veering. 
 Then a thousand tones drop, all attun'd to one stop — 
 
 mercy — pardon — release — liberation; 
 Of the whole race of men, like a dicast who then 
 
 receives compliment, court, adoration 1 
 His pawns and his pledges one defendant alleges; 
 
 and his poverty's ills all detailing, 
 The items are thrown with such skill, that my own 
 
 in the balance to nothing are failing. 
 With mythical tales one my fancy regales, 
 
 t'other dips into jEsop and fable; 
 While a third slily throws out his squibs and bon-mots, 
 
 my passion and wrath to disable. 
 Turn I still a deaf ear 1 better suitors are near : — 
 
 led by hand and in court quick appearing. 
 The accus'd to his aid calls his imps — boy and maid ; — 
 
 I bend gracious and deign them a hearing. 
 With bent heads ... in tones sweet . . . pretty lambkins ! they bleat: — 
 
 the father, submissively falling, 
 Does me suit, as a god, for he knows, at my nod, 
 
 his accounts pass without overhauling. 
 (miWcs,) " If the tones of a lamb sooth your ear, sure I am, 
 
 that this boy's, my lord, will not be hateful ; 
 If beauty more warms — sir, this girl hath her charms, 
 
 and sure she would not be ungrateful." 
 Downward straight goes my ire, like the tones of a lyre, 
 
 when the pins and the pegs are unscrewing : — 
 (turning to his Son) Speak, explain, what dost say, call you this rule 
 and sway, 
 
 when the rich to your scoffs are thus suing 1 — In Vespis, 548. 
 
 The author's opinion on the regulations, which made the dicasteria courts of 
 appeal in the last instance, and exempted the members of them, on all occasions, 
 10 
 
74 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 raise. It was not of such persons that he chose to supplicate permis- 
 sion to add a few more years to a life already far enough advanced to 
 make it a matter of choice rather than of repugnance, to lay down the 
 burden : he openly avowed the determination, and he boldly paid the 
 penalty. — But the guilt of his death lay not the less on those who caused 
 it : on that populace, with whom democracy, as the honest Isocrates 
 observes, was only another name for intemperance, as liberty was for 
 lawlessness : with whom equality of laws O^rovo/xw; implied the right 
 of saying what they pleased ; on that populace, whose singular consti- 
 tution gave them some of the advantages, and all the insolence of wealth, 
 without its responsibility, and which subjected them to the real ills of 
 
 from the euthyne, it is of more importance to state, than this description of the 
 triumphant chucklings of a dicast over the official terrors of his situation. 
 
 Father. Crowded house, warm debate, mark some pris'ner of state : — 
 
 doubts ensue — hesitation — adjournment : 
 To prevent further stir. Lords and Commons refer 
 
 the case to judicial discernment. 
 Then some pleader stands forth, and that scoundrel, whose worth 
 
 show his synonyms, "fawner" — "shield-dropper" — 
 And their note is the same, " While / live," both exclaim, 
 
 " the Commons have no interloper." 
 But the votes most he wins there, his speech who begins, 
 
 "Mr Speaker, I move with submission. 
 After one single turn, that the courts all adjourn, 
 
 nor labour a second decision." 
 Even he whose voice stills thunder, hammers and mills, 
 
 Cleon, dares not devour, jeer, or scoff us. 
 But with flyflap in hand, taking humbly his stand, 
 
 beats and brushes the vermin clean off us. — In iisdem, 590. 
 
 Among other instances of roguery, practised under cover of this judicial ex- 
 emption from the account, to which all other official situations were subjected, 
 the following may be selected, as most easy to be appreciated by modern feelings. 
 
 Some father is gone dead, defunct — well anon? 
 
 leaves a girl, good ; — an heiress, much better; — 
 The old put would confer a bedfellow on her, 
 
 and his Will leaves him drawn to the letter. 
 Lords of locks, seals, and keys, straight the parchments we seize, 
 
 while a codicil neatly appended 
 Cheats the wary and wise, and the girl's made a prize 
 
 to some youngster who 's better befriended. 
 And the deed boldly done, further mark me, there's none 
 
 dare report or inquiry request on't; 
 "While another thus doing, there'd be forthwith ensuing 
 
 Board, Commission, Report, and the rest on't. — In iisdem. 583'. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 75 
 
 poverty, without enforcing its peculiar virtues. To that populace — in 
 whom an English mob might witness much of their own easy credu- 
 lity, without their unsuspecting honesty ; and in whom France might 
 trace her frivolity without her good breeding, and her fair exteriour with 
 more than her innate corruption: — to that populace, and not to the le- 
 gitimate ridicule of a Dionysian festival, must be ascribed the death of 
 Socrates. It was but one crime more thrown into a cup already over- 
 flowing with guilt; and they who had but just seen a reverse of fortune 
 pass Over without its fulness of expected retribution — when for remem- 
 brance of national guilt and deserved punishment no eye in Athens 
 slept — these persons probably thought, that it woidd not add much to 
 the horrours of such another night, when to many a former bloody tra- 
 gedy — the deaths of Paches and Milliades, — tlie fate of *Hestiaca, — the 
 hard lot of Scione, — the cruel fortunes of Torone, Melos, and iEgina, 
 should be added the murder of an old man, whom a Delpliicf oracle pro- 
 nounced to be the wisest, and two afiectionate and devoted pupils de- 
 clared to be the best and must virtuous of men. 
 
 It is felt that these remarks ought now to close, and that any further 
 observations may, perhaps, have the effect of weakening the preceding 
 arguments. But he, who has been lingering over the delightful pages 
 of Xenophon and Plato, willingly deceives himself by supposing, that 
 a few remarks on the personal history of the two great biographers of 
 Socrates, the friend of Agcsilaus and Cyrus, and tlie master of the Aca- 
 demy, may yet be allowed Iiim, and that in perusing them, the relations 
 between their great master and the comic poet may be still further elu- 
 cidated. Early in life, Xenophon had been thrown into those situations, 
 which make a man think and act for himself; which teach him practi- 
 cally how much more important it is, that there should be fixed princi- 
 ples of right and wrong in the minds of men in general, than that there 
 should be a knowledge of letters or a feeling of their elegance in the 
 minds of a icw. The writer, who has thrown equal interest into the 
 
 ♦ Thucydidos, 1. i. 114. ii. 27. iv. 57. v. 11(5. Tlie bitter recriminations made 
 by Isocrates, in his speech called the Panegyrical upon the Spartan decemviri, 
 form no justification of the atrocities committed by his own countrymen, and 
 only add to the horrour and disgust which Grecian history is too often calculated 
 to inspire. 
 
 j" To the deductions made in this discourse on the subject of Socrates' virtue, 
 must also be added some deductions as to the authenticity of this celebrated 
 oracle. Van Dale, in his celebrated treatise de Oraculis (Dissert. Secunda, p. 
 195.) considers it as a sheer imposition. A much stronger argument than either 
 Van Dale, or Athenaeus has urged, seems to lie in the character of the original 
 promulgator of it; the shatter-brain Chaerephon, in Avhom a sort of crazy de- 
 votion to Socrates appears to have swallowed up the nearer affections, which 
 ought to have belonged to him. Lucian, (and the utmost confidence may be 
 placed in the tact of that most shrewd observer) appears, by a little parenthetical 
 expression, to have thought on this subject nearly as the present writer does. 
 
76 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 account of a retreating army, and the description of a scene of coursing ; 
 who has described with the same fidelity a common groom, and a per- 
 fect pattern of conjugal fidelity, such a man had seen life under aspects, 
 which taught him to know that there were things of infinitely more im- 
 portance than the turn of a phrase, the music of a cadence, and the other 
 niceties, which are wanted by a luxurious and opulent metropolis. — He 
 did not write, like his fellow-disciple, for the suppers and the symposiac 
 meetings of Athens — he had no eye, like Plato, to the jokers by pro- 
 fession (rsxaiTOToicj) whose business it wasto despatch books and authors 
 between the courses, and to fill up those intervals, when guests look 
 round to see who is guilty of the last pause in conversation — his Socra- 
 tes was not to be exhibited, as we believe the real Socrates often exhibit- 
 ed himself, a sort of " bon enfant," a boon companion for the petits 
 maitres of the Ilyssus ; who sought to win, by dropping even the 
 decent gravity of a preceptor, and who endeavoured to reclaim by affect- 
 ing a show of what in his heart he must have loathed and detested. Es- 
 tranged from his own country, at first by choice, and very soon after- 
 wards by necessity, Xenophon became, almost before the age of man- 
 hood, a citizen of the world ; and the virtuous feelings, which were ne- 
 cessary in a mind constituted as his was, let loose from the channels of 
 mere patriotism, took into their comprehensive bosom the welfare of 
 the world. Life, which had commenced with him in a manner singu- 
 larly active and romantically perilous, was very soon exchanged for 
 that quiet solitude, which either finds men good or makes them such. 
 In his delightful retirement at Scillus,* amid those enchanting rural 
 scenes, where a bad man finds himself an anomaly in the beautiful and 
 harmonious works of nature around him, Xenophon had ample leisure 
 to meditate on all that he had seen or heard. The " digito monstrarier," 
 that great stumblingblock of weak heads, and of those who do not know 
 how trifling the applause of the world is to him who appeals only to 
 his own breast for the motives of his actions, could not here apply to 
 Xenophon : to him the present time was as nothing ; he lived only to 
 the past and for the future. In such a situation, the lessons of morality 
 received from Socrates would rise up in his mind — how much aided by 
 early intimacy with Cyrus, and by the knowledge thereby acquired of 
 the sentiments of chivalry and honour, inherent in monarchical govern- 
 ments, and how much improved by subsequent connexion with the most 
 virtuous state of Greece, and with Agesilaus, the most distinguished 
 man in that state — his own beautiful writings suiFiciendy testify. His 
 own high talents, aided by such experience and such connexions, would 
 
 *It is difficult to imagine a more rational or a more delightful life, than a few 
 words of Diogenes Laertius describe Xenophon as leading in that "loop-hole of 
 retreat :" Books — study — composition; — the healthy sports of the field, and the 
 enjoyments of social recreation ; — nothing seems wanting to the picture, which 
 our imaginations are accustomed to draw of an accomplished heathen philosopher. 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 77 
 
 teach him what to omit, and what to press in a work, not intended mere- 
 ly for the wits and savants of Athens, but meant to be one of those 
 eternal possessions, those x-THf^uTx k ««, which great minds generate and 
 perfect in solitude and retirement. It is the Ethics, therefore, of Socrates, 
 that are chiefly unfolded in the admirable Memorabilia of Xenophon; 
 and after admitting that many of the higher doctrines of antiquity are 
 but negatives* of the Christian precepts, he must be dead to the moral 
 sense, who does not feel a burst of exultation within him, at seeing how 
 much even unassisted nature is able to produce. But the intellect, (and, 
 from the extraordinary mimetic powers of the narrator, it may be sur- 
 mised,) the manners of the real Socrates were left to be displayed by a 
 
 * How much this is the caso in the great Christian precept of" doing as we 
 would be done by," and the maxim of antiquity, which approaches nearest to 
 it, has been well shown in Mitford's History of Greece, (vol. v. p. 137.) A de- 
 duction equally important must be made from the annunciation which, in lan- 
 guage the most eloquent, tells us that it is belter to suffer injustice than to com- 
 mit it; that he, who commits injustice, increases his misery by escaping, and 
 not by submitting to punishment — and that the real end and proper object of 
 eloquence is to denounce and convict such as have been criminal, even though 
 ourselves, or our dearest connexions be involved in the guilt. The same per- 
 son, who delivers these admirable maxims, declares, on the contrary, that we 
 ought to avenge ourselves on our enemies by endeavouring to hinder them from 
 wiping off, by self-accusation, the torments of the conscience. " If our enemy," 
 says Socrates in the same dialogue, " have committed an injury against any one, 
 we ought to take every precaution, both by word and action, that he may not 
 suffer for his injustice, nor be brought before the dicast. If he do come before 
 the judge, it is our business to plot and scheme, that he may escape, without 
 suffering for his delinquency. Does his crime consist in the robbery of much 
 gold ? it is incumbent on us to try that he be not obliged to refund ; on the con- 
 trary, we should endeavour that he may retain it, and spend it upon himself and 
 his friends, unjustly and impiously. If he have committed crimes worthy of 
 death, we ought to take care that his life be spared ; we should try, if possible, 
 that he may be made to live for ever, immortal in wretchedness ; and if this be 
 out of the case, we should see that he be made to live in this state as long as is 
 possible." It is surely necessary to contrast with such maxims the doctrine, 
 which teaches us how to treat even those who curse us. One comparison more 
 might be made ; but in such a work as this, it becomes us only to make a dis- 
 tant reference to the counterpart. In reading the Phaedon of Plato, it must strike 
 every reader, I think, that the parting scene between Socrates and his children 
 in prison is but barely decent ; that the show part of the drama is brought for- 
 ward with a little precipitation, and that a little more tenderness on the part of 
 the philosopher would have added still more effect to the magnanimity with 
 which the fatal cup is taken and drunk. We have no right to expect that the 
 death of Socrates should be perfect. The simple verses, which shew the best 
 affections of the soul, triumphing amid the severest and most intense sufferings 
 of body, arise, in our minds, without the necessity of bringing them more imme- 
 diately under the reader's eye. 
 
78 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 man, to whom, when it is said that Xenophon can bear no comparison 
 in point of genius, an inferiority is ascribed to him, which he shares in 
 common with all mankind ; the Stageirite alone excepted, whose En- 
 telecheia may perhaps be put on a par with the Erus, or inspiration of 
 the great master of the academy. We leave him who has not yielded 
 to the arguments here brought forward for the justification of Aristo- 
 phanes, to have his indignation neutralized by the Dialogues of Plato. 
 Let him peruse these and he will see that Socrates might very easily 
 dismiss the Clouds of Aristophanes, as the best-natured of men dimiss- 
 ed the fly, which had buzzed about him and annoyed hira : — " Go, lit- 
 tle creature, there is room enough in the world for you and for me." 
 
 A grasp and a capacity of mind the most astonishing — a spirit inqui- 
 sitive and scrutinizing — a subtlety painfully acute — a comprehensive- 
 ness which could embrace with equal ease the smallest and most lofty 
 knowledge — a suppleness which, with almost incredible facility, could 
 descend from the deepest abstraction to the commonest topics of the 
 world — a temper which, in the heat of disputation, could preserve the 
 most perfect self-possession, and throw into disquisitions, which must 
 have been the result of long study, solitude and profound meditation, 
 all the graces of society and the qualifying embellishments of the most 
 perfect goodbreeding ; — these are qualities which seem to have been 
 inherent in the mind of Plato, and with these he has accordingly en- 
 dowed the person whom he in general selected for the organ of con- 
 veying their joint sentiments to the world. In this union of opposite 
 qualities, Plato may be said to resemble the Homeric chain of gold: if 
 one end rested on earth, the other had its termination in heaven. 
 
 A residence in courts (and the court of the Dionysii seems to have 
 been no ordinary one) adds to his attractions some of those charms so 
 rarely to be found in republican writers: that tone of good society, which 
 sifts without exhausting, and plays upon the surface as if to take breath 
 from having sounded the bottom; — that correctness of observation which, 
 acting rather as the annalist than the spy in society, gives to raillery it- 
 self the character of wit, and to scandal a half tone of biography ; — that 
 tact, rapid as light and as unerring as instinct, which, charitable as it 
 may be to unassuming and natural manners, seizes instantly upon pre- 
 tension, and lays it bare with pitiless severity ; — that delicate intuition, 
 which in manners, and in authorship watches with jealousy that nice 
 point, where self-condemnation beginning, the commendation of others 
 is sure to cease : all this may be seen in Plato, and if less perfectly than 
 in some modern writers, it was only because that sex, in whose society 
 it is best learnt, had not yet been able to throw off the shackles of de- 
 mocratical tyranny, or to attain the accomplishments of a liberal educa- 
 tion, without forfeiting wliat ought to be dearer to them than any accom- 
 plishments. At once a geometrician and a poet,t he understanding and 
 the fancy find in Plato a purveyor equally bountiful : for the one he 
 
PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 79 
 
 supplies solid food, and he captivates the other by the most beautiful 
 fables and tales. To his treasures the east and the south equally con- 
 tributed ; he pours forth the one in all the pomp of oriental richness 
 and profusion, with the lavish hand of youthful extravagance ; and his 
 intercourse with Egypt enables him to cast over his writings the impo- 
 sing reserve of that mysterious eld, who has surrounded the impotence 
 of her old age with a solemn reverence, by affecting the possession of 
 treasures, of which she mysteriously withholds the key. To Plato the 
 past, the present, and the future seem alike ; he has amassed in him- 
 self all the knowledge of the first ; he paints the present to the life, and 
 by some wonderful instinct, he has given dark hints, as if the most im- 
 portant events, which were to happen after his time, had not been wholly 
 hidden from his sight. Less scientific in the arrangement of his mate- 
 rials than his great scholar the Slageirite, he has infinitely more variety, 
 more spirit, more beauty ; evincing, at every step, that it was in his own 
 choice to become the most profound of philosophers, the most pointed 
 of satirists, the greatest of orators, or the most sublime of poets ; or, by 
 a skilful combination of all, to form such a character as the world had 
 never yet seen, nor was ever after to witness. Nor is the language in 
 which his thoughts are conveyed less remarkable than the thoughts 
 themselves. In his more elevated passages, he rises, like his own Pro- 
 metheus, to heaven, and brings down from thence the noblest of all 
 thefts — Wisdom with Fire: but, in general, calm, pure, and unaffected, 
 his style flows like a stream which gurgles its own music as it runs :* 
 and his works rise like the great fabric of Grecian literature, of which 
 they are the best model, in calm and noiseless majesty, like the palace 
 of Aladdin rearing itself from an ethereal base, or like that temple, equal- 
 ly gorgeous and more real, in which 
 
 "No workman's steel, no pond'rous axes rung; 
 Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung." 
 
 That Socrates could have so commanded the spirits of two men so 
 gifted as Xenophon and Plato, that they may be said to have devoted 
 their lives to the delineation of his character and sentiments, is a proof 
 of ascendancy which gives us the most astonishing opinion of his pow- 
 ers. It cannot, however, be sufficiently regretted that he did not take 
 the task upon himself; the most interesting book, perhaps, that ever 
 could have been written, would have been that which traced gradually 
 and minutely the progress of thought in the mind of Socrates, and through 
 what changes and circumstances he arrived at that system of opinions 
 which, if they sometimes remind us of what unassisted nature must be, 
 more often recal to us, " how glorious a piece of work man is ! how 
 noble is reason 1 how infinite in faculties ! in apprehension how like a 
 god!" This, however, has not been done ; and Socrates must now be 
 
80 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 taken as we find him : by thus leaving the task to others, he has per- 
 haps gained something in reputation on the score of intellect, but it can 
 neither be concealed nor denied, that on the side of manners and morals, 
 he has lost much both in purity and dignity. 
 
 In offering these remarks, the writer is aware, that he shall come 
 across many prejudices and prepossessions ; but they are the result of 
 considerable labour, and, he may say, of anxious investigation ; in 
 making them he has been conscious of no undue bias on his own mind, 
 and he confidently trusts to the truth and to the utility of them for his 
 
 apology. 
 
 " Se lo voce sard molesta 
 
 Nel primo gusto, vital niitrimento 
 
 Lascera poi quando sara digesta." 
 
THE KNIGHTS: 
 
 THE DEMAGOGUES.* 
 
 TiiK Comedy of the Kniglits carries vis two years forward into that 
 most interesting period of Grecian history, the Pcloponnesian war. In 
 this Comedy, as in a glass, may be seen the effects of that fatal policy, 
 pursued by Pericles at tlie commencement of the war, and to which the 
 reader's attention has already more than once been directed. Never 
 had corruption made more rapid progress in a state than under the in- 
 fluence of that unfortunate measure, which had broken the simple habits 
 of rustic life, and converted the whole body of Athenians into inhabit- 
 ants of a town. The professed object of this singular composition is 
 the overthrow of tliat powerful demagogue, whom the author had pro- 
 fessed in his Acharnians (Act II,) that it was his intention at some future 
 day "to cut into shoe-leather;" and his assistants on the occasion are 
 the very persons, for whose service the exploit was to take place, — the 
 rich proprietors, who among the Athenians constituted the class of Horse- 
 men or Knights. t 
 
 For this purpose Athens is here represented as a house : Demus (a 
 personification of the whole Athenian people) is the master of it, Nicias 
 and Demosthenes, names too familiar to the reader of history to need 
 explanation, are his slaves, and Cleon is his confidential servant and 
 slavedriver. The levelling disposition of tlie Athenians could not have 
 been presented with a more agreeable picture. If the dramatis per- 
 sonae are few, the plot of the piece is still more meagre ; it consists merely 
 of a series of humiliating pictures of Cleon, and a succession of proofs 
 to Demus, that this favourite servant is wholly unworthy of the trust 
 
 * The former of tliese is the title given in the Didascalia;, and is that by which 
 the piece is most generally known; but it was a title very likely to mislead the 
 English reader, and the first impressions of a reader are those which are least 
 easily eradicated. The celebrated Wieland, who has translated this and other 
 plays of Aiistophanes into his native tongue, and whose extensive erudition and 
 extreme impartiality make him a most invaluable assistant to a person engaged 
 in a similar labour, uniformly calls it the Demao-ogues. 
 
 f In the Athenian state, the Knights ranked next to those of the highest 
 quality and fortune. They were not a very numerous body ; consisting of such 
 only as possessed estates equal to the furnishing a horse at the rider's own ex- 
 pense; and this in the rocky and barren country of Attica was by no means in- 
 considerable. 
 
 U 
 
82 THE knights; 
 
 and confidence reposed in him. The manners are strictly confined to 
 Athens and might ahuost be thought to belong to a people, who imagined 
 ■with the Indian that liis own little valley comprehended 'the whole 
 world; and that the sun rose on one side of it, only to set again on the 
 other. 
 
 Of all the comedies of Aristophanes, scarcely one can be said to ex- 
 ceed the Knights in value ; not so much as a specimen of the dramatic 
 art, as an historical document, giving a strong, full, and faithful picture 
 of the most singular people that ever existed. We are here admitted 
 literally into the interior of Attica; — into the house of the allegorical 
 Demus ; and certainly the master of the habitation is such as we 
 should wish to contemplate at a very respectful distance. Irritable, 
 jealous, and suspicious — eaten up with oracles, and a prey to the most 
 miserable superstition — fickle in his feelings, and inconstant in his 
 pursuits — a greedy devourer of his own praises, and on some occasions, 
 it must be confessed, equally patient of abuse — with a curious mixture 
 of sense and imbecility, of acuteness and blindness, of insolence and 
 servility, if the Demus of Aristophanes somtimes reminds us of the John 
 Bull of our own country,* it is certainly only for the purpose of making 
 us dwell with more satisfaction upon that representative of our national 
 character. The eccentric and mirthful muse of Aristophanes throws a 
 gaiety over the most unpromising subject; but, cruel and capricious — 
 alternately tyrants and slaves, — at once sharpers and dupes — devoted 
 to the lowest of their appetites — gluttonous and intemperate — idle amid 
 all their activity, and sensual amid privation and poverty, the life of 
 the common Athenians cannot but fill us with contempt and disgust; — 
 without object and without plan, without real activity or true enjoyment, 
 it exliibitsa picture at once ridiculous, loathsome, and fearful, and shews 
 the extreme corruption to which a state may be rapidly conducted by 
 the united influence of republicanism and demagogues. f 
 
 Whatever may be tjiought of the line of conduct by which Pericles 
 paved the way to the possession of supreme power in Athens, and 
 Avhatever diflTerence of opinion may exist as to the motives which hurried 
 him into the Peloponnesian war, this play affords sufficient evidence 
 that he alone was able to have conducted it with honour, and that none 
 
 * Or the Brother Jonathan of ours. 
 
 t That a state, constituted as is represented in this play, could have existed 
 for a week, seems hardly possible; but Wieland has justly observed, that the 
 earlier events of the French revolution are a convincing proof that the author 
 might have written all that he has, without giving reason to imagine that he 
 has drawn merely a fancy-picture. In that singular revolution, says the same 
 writer, the Demus of Aristophanes became a reeil person, and ihe parts of the 
 Paphlagonian and the Sausage-vender were played witii an easiness and sup- 
 pleness which secure the comic writer from all suspicion of having overstepped 
 the boundaries of what is possible in human nature. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 83 
 
 but lie could be safely entrusted with that fulness of power, which, in 
 the hands of the leading ^minister of Athens, put at his disposal the 
 Athenian commonwealth with all its appurtenances, " its revenues," as 
 the contemporary historians describe it, " its armies, fleets, islands, the 
 sea, friendships and alliances with kings and various potentates, and 
 influence that commanded several Grecian states, and many barbarous 
 nations." By the death of this accomplished politician, which happened 
 at a time singularly unfortunate for his country, this ricli prize had 
 again become a subject for competition ; and the two parties, which 
 prevailed more or less in every Grecian city, and wliicli his all-com- 
 manding talents had kept in repose, had already iilled Athens with all 
 those conflicting passions by which human nature is agitated. At the 
 head of the aristocratic interest appeared Nicias, the son of Niceratus ; 
 a man rich, amiable, and generous ; with considerable talents, both mi- 
 litary and political, but unequal to the times and to the particular peo- 
 ple among whom he was born ; while Democracy, after veering some 
 time between Lysicles and Eucrates, the one, according to Aristophanes, 
 a seller of tow, and the other a dealer in cattle, had at last taken repose 
 by showering the whole tide of her afl'ections upon the noisy, turbulent, 
 and worthless Cleon. The son of a tanner, and himself bred to the 
 trade ; without those generous feelings which seem inherent in high 
 birth ; and without that regard for character, which it is the purpose of 
 education to inspire, Cleon possessed those corporeal powers which, in 
 the eyes of a mob, often supply the place of both : — with a bulky body, 
 a voice potent even beyond the extreme extent of fvalue attached to such 
 a qualification among the Greeks, with a most republican indiflerence 
 to all exterior decorations of person, and a face bearing on it the marks 
 of vulgar intemperance. Nature herself seems to have formed Cleon for 
 a demagogue. His interior qualifications were just what his exterior 
 promised ; he being, as Mr Mitford observes, of extraordinary impu- 
 dence and little courage ; as slack in the field as he was forward and 
 
 * The ofTico, wliich conferred this extensive power, was that of -ra^/^tc, or 
 the public treasurer. It was generally given for a term of five years ; but if the 
 holder of it conducted himself to the satisfaction of the people, he was generally 
 reinvested with it. 
 
 ■f" Among the Greeks, where civil hnsiness was transacted before large num- 
 bers, and where in war little was communicated hy signals, a loud voice was a 
 very important endowment. The name of Stcntor has even grown into a pro- 
 verb. The service which Thrasybulus of Styra rendered to Alcibiades by the 
 loudness of his voice on a very trying occasion, is recorded by Plutarch in his 
 life of that extraordinary man. See, also, Herod. 1. iv. c. 141. 7. c. 117. Cleon 
 appears to have possessed lungs of astonishing strength. Aristophanes fre- 
 quently compares his voice with tlic Cycloboras, one of those torrents which 
 precipitated themselves with an overpowering noise from the rocks in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Athens. 
 
84 THE KNIGHTS ; 
 
 noisy in the assembly, and as base in practice as he was corrupt in 
 principle. That such a man should ever have stood in the situation of 
 head of a party seems to us almost incredible : but he possessed one re- 
 deeming qualification in an eminent degree ; and among a nation which 
 pardoned everything to the pleasure of indulging its ears,* the coarse 
 but ready eloquencef of Cleon, exerted in those ways which were most 
 calculated to please an Athenian audience — in boasts of his own integ- 
 rity, and accusations| of all the respectable men of rank — this formed 
 a splendid addition to his character, which threw into the shade all his 
 other defects. 
 
 To qualifications such as these, the amiable diffidence of Nicias 
 formed but a very weak opposition ; and Demosthenes, with little pow- 
 ers of oratory, and even in his own profession more fitted to act upon 
 the suggestions of others than to devise anything original of his own, 
 was ill calculated to supply the deficiencies of his colleague. All op- 
 position, therefore, in the General Assembly, to the low and petulant 
 Cleon, seems gradually to have declined, and graver men saw with grief 
 and indignation that the ample power, which had once been vested in 
 the hands of a Miltiades, a Themistocles, an Aristides, and a Cyraon, 
 was now concentrating fast in the worthless and ignoble Cleon. It was 
 in this exigency that a poet stepped forward to support their declining 
 cause, and to effect upon the stage what had been without avail atempted 
 in the assembly. That personal hatred was one of the motives which 
 led to the bold and dangerous attempt, there can be no doubt; but that 
 Aristophanes was in the pay of Nicias's party, or that he was instigated 
 by mercenary views, as Wieland suggests, there seems no good ground 
 for affirming. He had evidently formed a high idea of the profession 
 to which he had given himself; he had devoted much time and indus- 
 try to the developement of those extraodinary talents with which he was 
 endowed ; and the keen sensibility, with which, it is evident, amid all 
 
 * The spirit of a man, says the Xerxes of Herodotus, (and the strong con- 
 trasts in that monarch's character seem to show the people for whom the his- 
 torian had most adapted,) resides in his ears ; when he hears what is agreeable 
 to him, pleasure spreads itself over every part of his body; when the contrary 
 happens, he is filled with pain and exacerbation of mind. Lib. vii. c. 39. 
 
 ■j- The history of the Italian states oflFers proofs no less remarkable than the 
 Grecian, of the powers which eloquence possesses over the susceptible minds 
 of the inhabitants of warm climates. The eloquence of a poor fisherman (Mas 
 Aniello) could quell a sedition ; the oratory of an innkeeper's son (Cola di 
 Rienzi) could restore for a time the fallen dignities of Rome. The preaching 
 of a single monk (Jacob des Bussolari) baffled the whole power of Milan ; and 
 while the plain of Paquara witnessed twelve nations as the audience of Jean de 
 Vicence ; John of Bohemia, without the power of being able to read, saw thrones 
 and sceptres offered to him in abundance as the reward of his powers of per- 
 suasion. Histoire des Republiques Italiennes, tomes ii. v. vi. 
 
 jf. See the speech of Diodotus, Thuc. lib. iii. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 85 
 
 his apparent thoughtlessness and extravagance, that he felt the triumph 
 of success and the mortilicatiou of failure, shews that to be the first 
 comic poet of his day was the great and ruling object of his ambition. 
 Where a warm and ardent love of fame is felt, the meaner passions are 
 seldom found to exist. That Aristophanes reckoned upon the assist- 
 ance of the aristocratic party is evident from his own declaration ; 
 but his best security, he knew, rested in the display of those talents, 
 which had already gained him much attention, and which by their ex- 
 traordinary mixture of elegance and coarseness, of wit and buffoonery, 
 of apparent simplicity and real acumen, seemed peculiarly adapted to 
 catch the tastes and fascinate the minds of his countrymen. The at- 
 tack itself, the manner in which it was conducted, and the consequences 
 which resulted from it, will all demand a few words. 
 
 Accustomed as we are in England* to see the most exalted charac- 
 ters subjected with impunity to the lash of the pencil and the press, it 
 may be thought that the danger of attacking a demagogue like Cleon, 
 especially when the privileged licence of the Okl Comedy is considered, 
 was by no means very appalling. An incident mentioned in the piece 
 itself will shew that this was far from being the case. It was the privi- 
 lege of the Old Comedy to attack persons not merely by their names, 
 but by means of masks to give an exact representation of the person 
 satirized. It was thus that Lamachus and Euripides had been served 
 up to the public ridicule in the comedy of the Acharnians; it was thus 
 that Nicias and Demosthenes were no doubt exhibited in the present 
 play ; and in the same manner a faithful pourtraiture was afterwards given 
 of the son of Sophroniscus. In drawing the character of Demus, the 
 author had already ventured upon what few others would have dared to 
 attempt; for though the sovereign multitude encouraged personal satire, 
 it was always understood that their own sacred person was to be excepted. 
 Satire against the people collectively, says Xenophon,t the people do 
 not allow. What the courage of Aristophanes, however, had dared to 
 describe, the artists did not want courage to pourtray, nor the actors to 
 represent ; and a Demus was brought before the audience, in such cos- 
 tume, no doubt, and with such features as the fruitful mind of the origi- 
 nal creator of the character might suggest. But though the mob itself, 
 it was thought, might thus be treated with impunity, the idol of the mob 
 created a more reverential terrour. No artist would venture to give a 
 representation of Cleon's face, and no actor would expose himself to 
 the resentment of the all-powerful demagogue by playing him off be- 
 fore that audience, who were at once his servant and his master. The 
 same person, tlierefore, who had delineated the character in his closet, 
 was obliged himself to sustain it on the stage; and the lees of wine 
 
 * And more particularly in America, 
 t De Rep. Athen. c. 2. s. 18, 
 
86 THE KNIGHTS ; 
 
 rubbed upon his face served to convey some idea of the flushed and 
 bloated countenance which the maskniaUer had not dared to represent. 
 The poet, in the character of Cleon, and his dramatic opponent, 
 (through the medium of whom the ricHcule was to be administered,) 
 once face to face upon the stage, a combat of the most extraordinary 
 kind ensued ; and those who have been accustomed to hear of Athenian 
 urbanity and politeness will recoil with astonishment, perhaps, from 
 scenes, which were received with enthusiasm by the countrymen and 
 fellow citizens of Plato, Xenophon and Thucydides. Whatever were 
 tlie acuteness, ingenuity and natural taste of an Athenian audience, 
 (and that they possessed all these in a wonderful degree cannot be doubt- 
 ed,) we want no other evidence than this play to prove that they had 
 yet to learn that art, at once so diflicult and so sublime, as an acute* 
 observer has termed it, by which men are rendered mutually satisfied 
 with each other and with themselves; and that the bienseance, which 
 leads to the belief that a man respects himself, and the politeness which 
 leads to the belief that he respects others, were qualities either unknown 
 or little practised among the lower Athenians. Never very scrupulous 
 in his ideas, nor in the language in which they are clothed, Aristophanes 
 seems to consider an attack, upon Cleon as an apology for overstepping 
 all bounds of decorum ; to assail him was, in his own words, to stir up 
 the effluvia of a tanyard, and by the very act of rousing him the whole 
 atmosphere becomes tainted and poisoned. Cleon appears to have been 
 in his imagination as the centre of a circle, into which all that society 
 exhibits of the mean and the ridiculous, all that folly contains of the 
 weak and the imbecile, and all that vice displays of the odious and dis- 
 gusting, was as a matter of course, to be drawn. That good hu- 
 mour, which, in spite of the opposite opinion generally entertain- 
 ed of him, formed, I think, a conspicuous part of the character of 
 Aristophanes, displays itself here but rarely ; — he had set his all 
 upon a cast, and the danger he was running evidently sits heavy upon 
 his mind. His Chorus, who are generally to his plays what the 
 female faces have been observed to be to the pieces of Hogarth, a means 
 of keeping the acrimonious feelings within the limits of legitimately 
 pleasurable sensation, here assume a ferocity of character — the poet has 
 Avritten their parts with gall, and armed their hands with a dagger. The 
 German critics, whose feelings are as correct as their learning is pro- 
 found, have observed the difference between the Knights «f Aristophanes 
 and his other plays. It is a struggle for life and death, says Wieland; 
 it is a true dramatic philippic, says Schlegel. 
 
 In attacking Cleon so continually upon the point where he seemed 
 least assailable, viz. the affair at Pylus, the poet has shown that deep 
 knowledge of the people collectively, which forms the most consider- 
 
 * De Pauw. 
 
OK THE DEMAGOGUKS 87 
 
 able feature in his literary character. He knew that the exploit per- 
 formed at Pylus, however it might command the acclamations of the 
 mob at first, was, in fact, a line of demarcation between them and their 
 favourite. For though with a little examination, (a trouble which the 
 giddy citizens of Athens were not likely to give themselves,) Cleon's 
 share in tliis achievement would have been found to amount to nothing, 
 yet, taken in a general view, it conferred a sort of respectability upon 
 his character ; and respect is the last feeling which the mob wish to be 
 demanded of them by the candidate for their favour. To be in full 
 possession of their affections, he must be as vile and worthless as them- 
 selves. It is for this reason that Cleon's achievement is so continually 
 served up to the audience. Of two consequences one was likely to re- 
 sult. If no accession to Cleon's popularity had been gained by this 
 boasted exploit, to treat the exj)loil itself with ridicule was one of the 
 surest means of preventing an increase of favour with the mob : if, on 
 the contrary, an opinion of Cleon's capacity had gained ground, it was 
 politic to nauseate llie audience with a continual recitation of the only 
 event upon which any real notion of his capacity could be grounded. 
 The peasant, who signed the vote for the banishment of Aristides, had 
 no other reason for it but that he was tired of hearing him continually 
 styled the Just. 
 
 The consequences which resulted from this singular exhibition may 
 be told in a few words ; but those few words supply ample materials for 
 thought : the piece was applauded in the most enthusiastic manner, the 
 satire on the sovereign multitude was forgiven, the poet was crowned with 
 the prize of victory, and — Cleon remained in as great favour as ever. 
 Nothing can testify more amply to Athenian love of wit, to Athenian 
 penetration; but while much must be conceded to the good humour 
 which could so patiently endure the detail of its faults : that good hu- 
 mour itself is a p.oof how fixed was tlie determination of the audience 
 to abide in all the errours of their national character : for those who 
 laugh at the exposure of their faults are least likely ever to amend them. 
 
 The Knights, even as a drama, has always held a very high rank, 
 and not undeservedly. The character of Demus is an immortal proof 
 of rich *invention, discrimination, and acuteness ; and the sausage-seller 
 is the very triumph of vulgarity. That bold and spirited morality which 
 displays itself in all the works of Aristophanes, not unaccompanied, it 
 must be owned, with the most perverse depravity, is nowhere more 
 conspicuous than in his Knights. Where the author is bad, he leaves 
 
 * After the exhibition of the Knights, an allegorical Domus seems to have 
 become a favourite subject with the painters and sculptors of Athens. (See 
 Meursius de Peir c. 4. Pausan, 1. i. c. 3.) That of Parrhasius was particu- 
 larly distinguished, as displaying in an adndrable manner the various inconsist- 
 encies of the Athenian character. Plin. lib. xxxv. § 3G. 
 
88 THE knights; 
 
 all competition at a distance ; but where he is good, the most delicate 
 taste can hardly wish for a finer banquet. The fulness of this enjoy- 
 ment, however, must be left to those wlio can read him in the original 
 Greek : to fight the battles of the poet in any other language than liis 
 own is like sending the steed of the great Cid to battle with the lifeless 
 body of his master upon his back : if any victory be gained, their success 
 must be set down to the credit of the reader's imagination. As a piece 
 of mere language, indeed, the Knights is, perhaps, without parallel ; the 
 figures in the piece may be those of Teniers and Ostade, but the colour- 
 ing in the original has all the richness of Reubens. The diction of 
 Aristophanes is to his ideas what the best accompaniments of Mozart 
 are to his worst melodies ; it resembles the liberality of a man whose 
 present of a silver coin is wrapped up in a note of many times its value ; 
 like Algebraic language, it may be said to be rather the creation than 
 the conveyance of thought. Even the low terms, of which so unspar- 
 ing a use is made in this comedy, had a charm, perhaps, for Athenian 
 ears, of which we are not susceptible. The Italians, who in the pecu- 
 liar cast of their gaiety and vivacity, approach very nearly to the Athe- 
 nians, are enthusiastically attached to the low Florentine ; they find in 
 it an expressible grace, and many of their critics to this day think* no- 
 thing written with purity which is not formed upon the language of the 
 lower orders of Florence of the fourteenth century. It is at once con- 
 solatory and mortifying to the translator of Aristophanes to make these 
 observations : consoling, because the impossibility of transplanting the 
 beauties of the original diminishes the temerity of attempting to con- 
 vey an idea of some of the more common passages ; and mortifying, 
 because he feels the injustice done to his author by thus presenting a 
 succession of coarse pictures, unredeemed by that spirit and those graces 
 of language, with which they are clothed in the original ; but powerful 
 as the English language is, it may be doubted whether the strongest 
 hand could raise it to such a height as to meet the original of the 
 Knights. 
 
 An event in Grecian history, to which allusion has already been made, 
 forms so prominent a part in the ensuing comedy, that without some 
 explanation of it, the piece itself will scarcely be intelligible : a mere 
 outline must suffice here ; the reader who wishes for more intelligence 
 will find his curiosity amply gratified in the pages of Mr Mitford. A 
 squadron of the Athenians, at the instigation and under the direction of 
 
 * The Malmantile racquistato of Lorenzo Lippi, and the Torrachione deso- 
 late of Paolo Minucci, (the former of which has been illustrated by more com- 
 mentators than any Italian poem except the Divina Commedia) are said to owe 
 most of that high celebrity, which they enjoy among the cultivators of the Tus- 
 can language, to the great portion which they contain of this favourite dialect. 
 Sismondi, Litleralure du Midi, torn. ii. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 89 
 
 Demosthenes, had constructed a small fort at Pylus, on the Messenian 
 coast, with a view of securing a point of attack upon the territories of 
 their opponents, the Lacedaemonians. The latter naturally became 
 alarmed, and made speedy preparations for dispossessing their antago- 
 nists of this advantageous post. Many contests took place between the 
 contending parlies to effect their different purposes. The peculiar na- 
 ture of the harbour at Pylus, and the Island of Sphacteria, which faced 
 it, seemed, at length, to put a few hundreds of the Spartans, who had 
 been landed on the island, into the power of their enemies ; and it re- 
 quires but little acquaintance with the history, organization, and pecu- 
 liar institutions of that singular people, to know that the loss of a few 
 hundred Spartans was equivalent to the loss of a whole army. Alarmed 
 at an event, which was likely to bring disgrace on many of their prin- 
 cipal families, the heads of their government made instant overtures to 
 the Athenians for peace. Tlieir offers were rejected by the General 
 Assembly at the instigation of Cleon : but when the prospect of suc- 
 cess, which had been held out at Pylus, began to wear a less flattering 
 aspect, the Athenians became alarmed in their turn for their own fort 
 and the fleet which supported it ; and it seemed doubtful whether the 
 party of Spartans, which a sanguine imagination had put into their 
 hands, might not yet escape them. The sequel of the story will be 
 best related in the words of the historian, to whom reference has al- 
 ready been made. " Public indignation was rising fast against Cleon, 
 as the evil counsellor of the commonwealth and author of the evils felt 
 or apprehended. He found it necessary, for obviating popular clamour 
 and disgust, to exert himself in the Assembly, and in a very extraor- 
 dinary train of circumstances that followed, his impudence and his for- 
 tune (if in the want of another we may use that term) wonderfully fa- 
 voured him. He began by boldly insisting ' that the circumstances of 
 their fleet and army at Pylus were not so adverse as they were reported ;' 
 this assertion called forward the officers who brought the intelligence ; 
 they desired, that if they were thought unworthy of belief, proper per- 
 sons might be sent to examine into the state of things.' The Assembly 
 assented to this request, and Cleon himself was named among those to 
 be commissioned for the purpose. Pressed by this proposal, which 
 he was aware would not answer his end, and anxious anyhow to throw 
 the weight of the business upon others, he seems, in the moment, to 
 have lost his guard. 'It were idle waste of time,' he said, 'to send 
 commissioners to inquire, when they should rather send generals to 
 execute. If those who directed the military affairs of the Common- 
 wealth were men, it would be easy with the force which they could at 
 all times command to subdue the little band of Spartans in Sphacteria J 
 were he in that station he would engage to effect it.' The unenterpri- 
 sing Nicias, at tiiis time commander-in-chief, being thus called upon, in 
 his anxiety to obviate crimination, miserably betrayed the dignity of hw 
 12 
 
90 THE KNIGHT, &C. 
 
 high office. ' As far as depended upon him,' he said, ' Cleon might 
 take what force he pleased, and make the attempt.' Cleon immediate- 
 ly accepted the offer, thinking it not seriously made ; but Nicias per- 
 sisting, Cleon would have retracted, saying 'Nicias, not he, was gene- 
 ral of the Republic' ISicias, however, observing that his proposal had 
 not displeased the Assembly, declared solemnly before the Assembly that 
 for the business of Pylus he waived his right to command. The more, 
 then, < leon appeared still anxious to withdraw, the more the people, 
 as the historian observes, in the usual temper of mobs, insisted that he 
 should make his words good, with clamour requiring that Nicias should 
 resign the command and that Cleon should take it. Thus appoint- 
 ed general, Cleon, though alarmed with the danger, was elated with 
 the extravagant honour; and in the next Assembly held on the 
 business, he resumed his arrogant manner: 'He did not fear 
 the Lacedaemonians, he said, and for the expedition to Pylus, he 
 would desire no Athenian forces: he would only take the Lemnian 
 and Imbrian heavy-armed, at that time in Attica, with the middle-armed 
 of CEnus and four hundred bowmen of the allies; and with that small 
 addition to the armament then at Pylus, he would, within twenty days, 
 either bring the Lacedaemonians in Sphacteria prisoners to Athens, or 
 put them to the sword upon the spot.' Amid the many very serious 
 considerations involved with the business, this pompous boast excited 
 a general laugh in the Assembly : yet even the graver men, says the 
 historian, were, upon the whole, pleased with the event, upon con- 
 sidering that of two good things one must result ; either an important 
 advantaL'e must be gained over the Lacedaemonians, or, what they rather 
 expected, they should be finally delivered from the importunity of 
 Cleon. It soon, however, appeared, that though for a man like Cleon, 
 unversed in military command, the undertaking was rash, and the brag- 
 ging promise abundantly ruliculous, yet the business was not so despe- 
 rate as it was in the moment generally imagined; and, in fact, the 
 folly of the Athenian people, in committing such a trust to such a man, 
 far exceeded that of the man himself, whose impudence seldom carried 
 him beyond the contrnul of his cunning.** Those who wish to pur- 
 sue the story will find their curiosity amply gratified by the pages of 
 the historian, from whom the preceding account is taken. It will be 
 sufficient lo observe here, that by the exertion of a little prudence, and 
 by some fortunate* coincidences, Cleon completely fulfilled his en- 
 gagement, and actually entered the Peiraeus within twenty days after 
 he had quitted it. 
 
 * Demosthenes bad been principally deterred from attempting a landing upon 
 the island, from the circumstance of its being very thickly wooded : his former 
 campaicrn in /Etolia having snfficienlly apprised him of the use which might be 
 made of such an advantage. An accidental fire, which happened just before the 
 arrival of Cleon, destroyed most of the trees on the island, and removed the 
 main obstacle to a successful attack upon the occupiers of it. Thuc. lib. iv. c. 30. 
 
DRAMATIS PERSONiE. 
 
 Demus, an old Citizen of Jlthens, and in whom the Athenian People are 
 
 iypijied. 
 Demosthenes, l^^^^^^^p^^^^g^ 
 
 NiCIAS, 3 
 
 The Paphlagonian, (Cleon,) Steward to Demus. 
 Sausage-Seller, {afterwards Agoracritus.) 
 Chorus of Knights. 
 
 SCENE — Space before Demus's House, 
 
THE KNIGHTS; 
 
 OR 
 
 THE DEMAGOGUES. 
 
 ACT 1. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 Demosthenes. Nicias. 
 
 The two illustrious generals, whose names stand at the head of the scene, 
 enter the stage, dressed in their proper costume of slaves, and complain bitterly 
 of the hardships they suffer since the introduction of an execrable Paphlagonian 
 into the house of their common master, Demus. After a ridiculous concert of 
 lamentation, derived from the elegies of *01ympus, the celebrated musician > 
 the two slaves being to consider that they have power to quit this mansion, the 
 scene of so much misery lo them. Neither, however, ventures to suggest, in 
 direct terms, the proposal of so heinous a scheme. The ftimid character of 
 Nicias is properly discriminated here, as well as that of the blunt soldier De- 
 mosthenes, who was more fitted for executing the plans of others than devising 
 any of his own, A proposal, which required art and a certain equivoque in the 
 expression, does not pass without a blow at Euripides, whose dangerous sen- 
 timents the poet delighted to expose. It is Nicias who wishes to cover his 
 own want of confidence by clothing his diction in that tragedian's " neat and 
 clever" manner; but Demosthenes will not hear of it : "if you love me, if you 
 have any regard, any bowels of compassion, spare me the mortification of a 
 :t:potherb." But though averse to any dealing with the great tragedian, De- 
 mosthenes is still urgent upon his fellow-slave to exert his invention, and ena- 
 ble them to chant the song of deliverance {apodnum) from their servitude. 
 Nicias at last falls upon a method for expressing a word, which seems to cost 
 the parties as much difficulty in the avowal as the confession which is so deli- 
 cately wrung from Phaedra in the beautiful tragedy of Hippolitus. The colder 
 
 * Olympus, the Phrj gian, lived in the time of Midas, before the Trojan war, yet his 
 compositions or vsmo/, as ■well the music as the verses, were extant even in Plutarch's 
 days. Plato bestows the highest encomiums upon his compositions, as well as those of 
 Marsyas, calling them most divine. Gray's Notes on Arist. Plato, Minos. It was the 
 delight of the comic poets, from causes which have been already explained, to throw ri- 
 dicule upon the musicians. 
 
 t This part of Nicias's character has been well caught and pourtrayed in the Lettres 
 Atheniennes of Crebillon ; a work, which gives a vei-y interesting picture of the politics 
 of this period, but mixt up with so much exceptionable matter as scarcely to pay the 
 trouble of consulting it An acute and goodhumoured view of the whole play as a dra- 
 matic work, may be found in the English Athenian Letters, written by the members of a 
 noble family, who have distinguished themselves equally in literature and politics. 
 
 % This blow at the parentage of Euripides has been already explained. 
 
THE KNIGHTS, &C. 93 
 
 inflexions of our * language will not allow us to show the facility and pleasantry 
 with which Demosthenes is made finally to slip into the criminal word: and 
 the purity of our manners fortunately forbids all explanation of the action, by 
 which the dialogue was made more piquant to the dissolute and worthless au- 
 dience. The word, thus ingeniously compounded, implied a resolution to desert 
 their old master and take refuge with another; and desertion, uncountenanced 
 as yet by the example of the unprincipled Alcibiades, was held in strong and 
 merited abhorrence. While the general, therefore, admits the gratefulness of the 
 proposal, he suggests that their skins may suffer, if they venture to put it into 
 execution. Nicias then, consistently with those religious feelings which made 
 part of his character, proposes that they should betake themselves as suppliants 
 to the statue of some god. " Statue !" says the rough soldier, " and of some 
 god ! why, prithee, man, dost thou believe that there are such beings as jgods?" 
 I t'^o," replies Nicias. " Your reasons!" "The sufferings I bear, and the 
 little justice with which they are put upon me." The general, no logician, 
 yields implicitly to this argument, and has no other resource to offer but that of 
 laying their case before the spectators ; Nicias assents, but, with his usual dis- 
 trust, begs the audience to give some token first whether the subject was ao-ree- 
 able. A clapping of hands most probably expressed the approbation of the audi- 
 ence, and the task of the narrative falls upon Demosthenes — probably in compli- 
 ment to the actor who performed the part, — it paints ' the sovereign people' with 
 admirable §force and humour. 
 
 With reverence to your worships, 't is our fate 
 To have a testy, cross-grain'd, bilious, sour 
 Old fellow for our master; one much giv'n 
 
 * The separable preposition of the German language has enabled Wieland to come 
 something near the original, but the inferiority of the translation is still very percep- 
 tible. 
 
 JVihias. So sprich denn — Imifen ivir — heraus damit? 
 
 Demos. Gut! also — Imiffeii luii'— 
 
 JVikias. Nun hang'an " laiiffen wir" 
 
 Das wort " davon" — 
 
 Demos. Davon. 
 
 JVilcias. Votreflich! nun 
 
 Sprich erst ganz langsam, langsam, " laufferi wir''' 
 Dann immer haufFiger, und schneller das davon — 
 Du weisstja was ich meyne!— 
 
 Demos. Laufen — laufen wir 
 
 Davon, davon, davon. 
 
 t The question here put into the mouth of Demosthenes was probably congenial with 
 that soldier's sentiments. After making all allowances for dramatic licence and cos- 
 tume, the question of Wieland will occur to every person, who reflects upon the charges 
 which the writer afterwards brought against Socrates : Und eine solclie fi-age durfte 
 der Dichter seinem Demosthenes auf ofientlichem schauplass ungestraft in den mund 
 legen, und das in eben der stadt, wo Sokrates in der folge den Giftbecher trinken musste, 
 weil cr beschuldigt wurder dass er die Gtitter der Athener nicht fiir Gotter halte? 
 
 :t:Tl>e piety of Nicias appears to have excited the scoffs of his hardier countrymen ; it 
 yet remained for adversity to shew to what sublimity this feeling could raise a mind na- 
 turally feeble and despondent. History presents nothing grander to us than the addresses 
 of Nicias to his soldiers after the reverses in Sicily. 
 
 § Plato had very probably his eye upon this picture of Aristophanes, in that curious 
 
94 THE KNIGHTS ; 
 
 To a *bean-diet ; somewliat hard of hearing ; 
 
 Demus his name, sirs, of the parish f Pnyx here. 
 
 Some three weeks back or so, this lord of ours 
 
 Brought home a lusty slave from Paphlagonia, 
 
 Fresh from the tanyard, tight and yare, and with 
 
 As nimble fingers and as foul a mouth 
 
 As ever yet paid tribute to the gallows. 
 
 This tanner-Paphlagonian (for the fellow 
 
 Wanted not penetration) bow'd and scrap'd, 
 
 And fawn'd and wagg'd his ears and tail, dog-fashion : 
 
 And thus soon slipp'd into the old man's graces. 
 
 Occasional douceurs of leather-parings. 
 
 With speeches to this tune, made all his own. 
 
 " Good sir, the court is up, — you 've judg'd one cause, 
 
 'T is time to take the bath ; allow me, sir, — 
 
 This cake is excellent — pray suj) this broth — 
 
 This soup will not offend you, though cropfuU — 
 
 You love an obolus ; pray take these :J:three — 
 
 Honour me, sir, with your commands for supper." 
 
 Sad times meanwhile for us ! — with prying looks, 
 
 Round comes my man of hides, and if he finds us 
 
 Cooking a little something for our master. 
 
 Incontinently lays his paw upon it. 
 
 And modestly in his own name presents it ! 
 
 It was but th' other day these hands had mixt 
 
 A Spartan pudding for him; there — at §Pylus : 
 
 Slily and craftily the knave stole on me, 
 
 allegorical description which he puts into the mouth of his great master, when pressed 
 to give his reasons why philosophers are not more frequently seen directing the higher 
 departments of state. See his Republic, v. ii. p. 15. Massey. 
 
 * In giving their suffrages, the Athenian dicasts, or judges, made use of seashells, or 
 pebbles, or beans. The latter was the more common and the more modern practice. 
 Hence the allusion in the text. 
 
 tor the Pnyx, that scene of so many historical recollections, some account has already 
 been given in the preceding play. As the General Assemblies were usually held on the 
 Pnyx hill, it is very properly made the parish of the allegorical Demus. The fondness 
 of the Athenians for these adjuncts, derived from their tribe or ward, has also been no- 
 ticed in the Acharnians ; a curious proof of its known efficacy upon them occurs in the 
 funeral oration ascribed to Demosthenes, as delivered after the fatal battle of Chseronea. 
 The speech, where so many topics were to be avoided and so many to be touched with a 
 delicate hand, artfully concludes with a catalogue of the wards of Attica, and a separate 
 panegyric upon the heroes, the supposed founders of them. One powerful source of this 
 feeling must have originated in a custom mentioned by the French Anacharsis. Par une 
 institution admiration, ceux d'une tribu, d'un canton, sont enrol is dans la meme cohorte, 
 dans le mcme escadron ; ils marchent, ils combattent a cjts de leurs parents, de leurs 
 amis, de leurs voisins, de leurs rivaux. Quel soldat oserait commettre une lachete en 
 presence de tfemoins si redoutables! Voyage d'Anach. torn. ii. p. 214. 
 
 % Every person who attended the courts of law, or the General Assembly, received 
 three obols for his labour. 
 
 ^ It has been explained very largely in the preface to this play what this allusion 
 tends to. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 95 
 
 Ravish'd the feast and to my master bore it. 
 
 Then none but he, forsooth, must wait at table : 
 
 (We dare not come in sight) but there he stands 
 
 All supper-time, and with a leathern flytlap 
 
 Whisks off the *advocates ; anon the knave 
 
 Chants out his |oracles, and when he sees 
 
 The old man plung'd in mysteries to the ears, 
 
 And scar'd from his few senses, marks his time, 
 
 And enters on his tricks. False accusations 
 
 Now come in troops; and at their heels the whip. 
 
 Meanwhile the rascal siiuffles in nmong us, 
 
 And begs of one, — browbeats another, — cheats 
 
 A third, and frightens all. "My honest friends, 
 
 These cords cut deep, you Ml find it — I say nothing, — 
 
 .Tudge you between your purses and your backs ; 
 
 I could, perhaps" — We take the gentle hint, 
 
 And give him all ; if not, the old man's foot 
 
 Plays such a tune upon our hinder parts, 
 
 That flogging is a jest to 't, a mere fleabite — 
 
 Wherefore, {turning to Niciai) befits it that wo think what course 
 
 To take, or where to look for help. 
 
 iVJc. No course 
 
 So good as that I just advanced you : — flight — 
 Immediate flight. 
 
 Dcm. Marry, but how avoid 
 
 The Paphlagonian ? he hath ubiquity 
 As 'twere about him; one leg rests on Pylus, 
 The other takes firm footing in ih' Assembly ; 
 
 * The advocates, or public orators, performed so important a part in the common- 
 wealth of Alliens, that the reader cannot have some account of them submhled to him 
 too soon. Tliey were ten in number, and were elected by lots, to plead public causes in 
 the Senate and the General Assembly. Indeed, the princi|)al business of those two meet- 
 ings, though it was free to every member to deliver his sentiments in them, was conduct- 
 ed by the public orators. For every cause in which they were retained, they received a 
 (IracJvn f'd. or ^d.) out of the public exchequer. They generallv made trial of their 
 powers first in the courts of justice : when practice had confirmed their talents, they en- 
 tered upon a nobler career, that of enlightening; the senate, and guiding the people. 
 This was a task of peculiar delicacy and the highest importance. No man, therefore, 
 was admitted to the ofiice of a public orator under the age of forty years : nor then till 
 after a strict examination, in which the points most insisted on were — valour in war, 
 piety to parents, prudence in the management of afl^airs, frugality and temperance. There 
 were two or three laws by which any malversation in this most important office was 
 guarded against. Corruption and venality, in spite of these provisions, prevailed among 
 these men ; and their cunning and their eloquence enabled them to evade the punish- 
 ments they amply deserved ; one of them, named Aristophon, could boast that no less 
 than sevcntyfive accusations had been brought against him, and that he had triumphantly 
 repelh (1 all of them. 
 
 t Oracular responses and predictions, always abounding in Greece, seem to have been 
 circulated in unusual numbers towards the commencement of the Peloponnesian war. 
 Thucydides, lib. ii. c. 8. The oracles in the te.\t are the versified oracles [-^^fiwixu): the 
 prose oracles were called hoyix- 
 
95 THE knights; 
 
 With either hand the varlet grasps ^tolia! 
 
 And for his mind — it hath fit habitation 
 
 In *Clopidae : — how shun a man so various 1 
 
 Nic. 'T were better then to give our cares the slip, 
 And end our sorrows and our lives at once : 
 One onlv thought remains, to die as most 
 Befits brave men. 
 
 Dem. How best may that be done ? 
 
 Nic. Nought better than a draught of bullock's blood : 
 It was the dose that gave fThemistocles 
 A grave : who dies like him must needs die bravely. 
 
 Dem. (^contemptuously) A draught of bullock's blood!— a draught of jiure 
 And genuine :j:vvine might serve the turn much better. 
 Nouoht genders thoughts so brilliant as a flask. 
 
 Nic. A flask ! thy soul is ever in ihy cups ; 
 What thoughts can habit in a toper's brain ? 
 
 Dem. Harkye, thou trifling, bubbling water-drinker. 
 Who darest speak treason thus against good liquor ! 
 Resolve me — speak — What stirs the §wit most nimbly? 
 What makes the purse feel heaviest, or gives 
 Most life to business ? — wine ! What masters all 
 Disputes'? — a merry cup ! What gives the spirits 
 Their briskest flow ? — good liquor ! What most sets 
 The soul afloat in love and friendly benefits 1 — 
 A mantling bowl ! — hand me a pitcher then : — 
 Quick, quick, nay quick ! I' 11 bathe my very mind 
 And soul therein, and then see who can hit 
 Upon a trim device. 
 
 Nic. Alack a day ! 
 
 What will that drunkenness of thine engender! {Goes in doors.) 
 
 * In this colossal picture, Aristophanes follows his usual metliod of punning upon 
 actual or fabricated names of places. The province JEtolia is selected because derived 
 from a Greek word, which signifies to beg ; and Clopidie, in like manner, because it was 
 at once an Attic borough, and implied the act of stealing. Boccaccio is fond of fabri- 
 catinsj fictitious names of countries in the same manner : see among others the exquisite 
 tales of Frate Cipolla (La sesta Giornata. Nov. 10.) and maestro Simone (lottava Gior, 
 
 Nov. 9.) 
 
 t The poet fellows a popular tradition, current in Atliens, in ascribing the death of 
 Themistocles to a draught of bullock's blood. 
 
 i At the Greek festivals a large cup, called the cup of Good Genius, and full of UJi- 
 mixed wine was carried round the tables, which all the guests were accustomed to taste. 
 For the ori'Mn of the custom, see Athen. lib. xv. p. 675. Demosthenes, an experienced 
 drinker was no friend to that dilution of wine which the custom was intended to com- 
 memorate. 
 
 5> The poet it is to be believed, speaks his own sentiments here, as well as those of 
 Demosthenes. Aristophanes is said, like ^scliylus, to liave composed many of his plays 
 under the influence of wine. In Plato's celebrated banquet (which is anything but a feast 
 of san-es) the wine circulates very freely ; and Aristophanes, and, I blush to say it, So- 
 crates, are left drinking together till daylight. The reader will perhaps smile to see 
 Tasso bringing forward the same teacher of wisdom as an excuse for a little intemper- 
 ance. See Black's Life of that unfortunate poet, vol. ii. p. 21. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 37 
 
 Dem. Much good, believe me : quick, and bring the wine then. 
 I '11 lay me down, — let but the generous fumes 
 Once mount into my head, and they will gender 
 Such dainty little schemes — such titbit thoughts — 
 Such trim devices ! — 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 Demosthenes. Nicias returninsr tcith Wine. 
 
 JVic. ^'ng '^^'6 jubilate ! 
 
 I have purloined the wine and 'scap'd observance. 
 
 Bern. How fares the Paphlagonian, lad ? deliver me. 
 
 Nic. The rogue hath made of confiscation-sales 
 A sorry meal, and fill'd his skin with liquor. 
 Now stretch'd at fnll upon a heap of hides 
 The sorcerer sleeps sound. 
 
 Bern. Then pour me out 
 
 A cup of wine — no stint — a bumper, look ye, 
 And let the echo smack her lips in unison. 
 
 JVic. (pours out tvirie.) Now make libation to the Better Genius — 
 If the name of *Pramnian suit him more — to him 
 Be made the offering 
 
 IJeiti. To the Better fJenius ! {DrinJi-s, and seems to meditate.') 
 
 A happy inspiration comes across mo. 
 Thine be the credit of this bright invention ! {Looking at his pitcher toith an 
 
 affectation of devotion.') 
 Quick, {to Nicias) quick ; and while the Paphlagonian sleeps. 
 Bring forth those foracles he hoards within. 
 
 * Pramnian wine was not in great repute among the Greeks ; it was neither luscious 
 nor thick, two qualities which the ancients seem to have very mucli regarded in wine. 
 We have tlie testimony of Aristophanes (Ath. lib. i. p. 30.) that harsli poets and rough 
 wine like the Pramnian, were cquallj' repugnant to the taste of the Athenians. Tlie 
 poet, with dramatic propriety', has given it to the slaves in the text. 
 
 t The Athenian taste for oracles and predictions is best learnt by a pcnisal of Hero- 
 dotus. Those ascribed to the Sybil, AIusxus, and other inspired persons of the fabidous 
 and heroic times, seem to have been in great request. A still more particular credit was 
 ascribed to those whicii bore on them the name of Bacis, a Bceotian, Mho was supposed 
 to have received the gift of pro])hccy from tbe Nymphs, vhose temple stood in the older 
 times on Mount Cithxron. There appear to have been individuals or families at Athens 
 who, possessing large collections of oracles ascribed to this Bacis, thought themselves 
 masters of a great treasure, and thus became the prey of more cunning persons, who pre- 
 tended to decypher these mysteries, which were enveloped in strange and enigmatical 
 characters. That Cleon was not without belief in predictions of this kind seems reason- 
 able to conclude from this and the following scene : and it is the more likely as neither 
 in extraction, education, nor modes of thinking, was he at all elevated above the loM'est 
 of the people- Wieland, Die Demagogen des Aristofanes, s. 13. These prophecies of 
 Bacis are not to be confounded, s,ays M. de Pauw, torn. ii. p. 206. with those contained 
 in the mysterious volume called the Testament, over which such a veil of impenetrable 
 secrecy was thrown that no part of it has transpired to gratify the curiosity of modern 
 times. Dinarchus (the only author among the ancients who mentions this prophetic 
 book) accuses Demosthenes of having failed in respect to this mysterious volume, on 
 which, according to him, the fate of Alliens was suspended. 
 
 13 
 
98 THE knights; 
 
 Nic. Is this the scheme the Better Genius promptsi 
 I fear me much that your divinity 
 Will lose his name, and only cross your ends. {Enters the house.') 
 
 Dem. Meantime I put this pitcher to my mouth, 
 That I may wet my drought-parch'd mind and hit 
 Upon some neat device. {Drinks.') 
 
 Nic. {returning,') The rogue sleeps soundly, 
 Or I had not come off so clean : here is 
 The oracle. 'Tis that he prizes most: 
 Hoarding with care, as if 't were somewhat sacred, 
 
 Dem. Thou art a clever fellow ; reach it here — 
 My eyes must take account of this ; and, friend, 
 Put speed into your hand and fill a cup. 
 I'll see what stuff these oracles are made of. 
 {Reads) Anan ; some liquor, quick ! 
 
 Nic. 'T is here. How runs 
 
 The oracle ? 
 
 Dem. {drinks and reads. ) More liquor. 
 
 Nic. Call you that 
 
 The wording on't ? 
 
 Dem. {reading.) O *Bacis ! 
 
 Nic. Why, what now ? 
 
 Dem. {reading.) Wine, wine, more wine. 
 
 Nic. {pouring out wine.) This Bacis was no flincher. 
 
 Dem. {reading.) So so ; thou varlet of a Paphlagonian 1 
 'T was this bred such distrust in thee, and taught 
 To hoard these prophecies. 
 
 Nic. Say you % 
 
 Dem. I say 
 
 Here is a prophecy, which tells the time 
 And manner of this fellow's death. 
 
 Nic. Out with it. 
 
 Dem. {reading.) The words are clear enough : first says my oracle — 
 There shall arise within our state a flint-seller. 
 And to his hands the state shall be committed. 
 
 Nic. One seller note we : — good — proceed — what follows ? 
 
 Dem. {reading.) Him shall a sheep-seller succeed. 
 
 Nic. A brace 
 
 Of sellers ! good — What shall befall this worthy ? 
 
 * It is after reconling an oracle of Bacis, that Herodotus makes his wellknown decla- 
 ration, that he should never afterwards dare to question the authority of oracles himself, 
 nor submit to such doubts in others. Urania, c. 77. 
 
 t The whole of the dialogue here is a bitter satire upon the deterioration of the Athe- 
 nian democracy since the death of Pericles ; whose successors in administration had been 
 a lint-seller, Eucrates, a sheep seller, Lysicles, and a leather-seller, Cleon. It is al- 
 most unnecessary to add, that the language of satire is not to be construed too literally ; 
 and that the same extension, perhaps, is to be allowed here as in the language applied 
 by Juvenal to the father of Demosthenes, who instead of being a mere blacksmith, was 
 the proprietor of a large establishment for the manufacture of swords, carried on by a 
 numerous body of those unfortunate slaves, who abounded so much in every Grecian 
 state. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 99 
 
 Dem. {reading.) 'T is fixt that he bear sway till one arise 
 More wicked than himself — that moment seals him : 
 Then comes the Paphlagonian, — the hide-seller, — 
 The man of claws, whose voice outroars *Cycloborus. 
 
 Nic. The man of sheep then falls beneath the lord 
 Of hides! 
 
 Dem. Even so: — thus runs the oracle. 
 
 Nie. Another and another still succeeds, 
 Anj all are sellers ! — sure the race must be 
 Extinct!— 
 
 Dem. One yet is left, whose craft may stir 
 Your wonder. 
 
 Nic. What his name ? 
 
 Dem. Wouldst learn 1 
 
 Nic. Aye, marry. 
 
 Dem. I give it to thee then : — {with emphasis) the man that ruins 
 The Paphlagonian is — a f sausage-seller. 
 
 Nic. You jest. A sausage-seller! — 'tis a craft 
 Indeed ! and where may such a man be found 1 
 
 Dem, The task remains with us to search him out. 
 
 Nic. Why yonder see, he moves into the forum. {SausagC'Vender is seen at a 
 distance.) 
 The hand of providence is sure in this ! 
 
 Dem. Hither, thou happiest of sausage-sellers ! 
 I give you hail ! — this way, dearest of men! — 
 Mount up, thou saviour of our town and us. 
 Thy humble servants ! 
 
 SCENE III. 
 
 Sausage-vender, Demosthenes, Nicias. 
 
 Satts. Prithee now, what wouldst thou 
 
 With me"? 
 
 Dem, This way, this way: list, friend, and learn. 
 The happy and the blessed man you are. 
 
 Nic. First rid him of his chopping-block : then pour 
 Into his ears how runs the oracle, 
 And what the blessed fortune that awaits him — 
 I '11 turn an eye upon the Paphlagonian 
 'W\Xh\n.{Enters the house.) 
 
 Dem, {to the sausage-vender.) First please to laj' those implements 
 Upon the ground — then do all courtesies 
 And sets of adoration to the gods 
 And mother Earth.:|: 
 
 • A river of Attica. 
 
 + The satire here is coarse, but bitter : the whole turn of the comedy, as will easily 
 be seen, is to put Cleon in the most contemptible light possible. 
 
 % There appears to have been a piece of superstition among the lower orders at Athens, 
 which consisted in kissing the spot of ground on which they stood, when any piece of 
 good luck happened to them. 
 
1 00 THE KNIGHTS ; 
 
 Saus. Allan ! 
 
 Lem. Happiest cf men! 
 
 What wealth awaits thee ! thou to-day art nothing; 
 Yet shall to-morrow see thee top of all, 
 And blessed Athens own thee her prime minister ! 
 
 Saus. {coldly.) Good man, I fain would wash me these intestines: 
 Why should you put a hindrance in my way, 
 And make a flout at me? 
 
 Dem. {contemptuously.) Intestines, say you 1 
 Simplest of men I — your eyes this way awhile — 
 Seest thou yon companies of men ? {Points to the audience.) 
 
 Saus. I do : 
 
 What then 1 
 
 Dem. Of all these thou shalt be the lord 
 
 And sovereign — the pnyx, the ports, the forum, — 
 Not one but waits thy ruling nod. The senate 
 Thy feet shall trample on : the generals 
 Shall fall like chips before thee : lord of stocks 
 And sovereign of dungeons, thou shalt lock. 
 
 And bind — nay, further, {lowering his voice) in the Hall shalt have — 
 A *wellspread bed, — nor want companion in it. 
 
 Saus. All this for me 1 
 
 Dem. Aye, and much more, believe me — 
 
 But mount thy block, good friend, and cast thy eyes 
 On yonder f isles — dost see them ? 
 
 Saus. Yes. 
 
 Dem. Nay, but 
 
 The marts, the merchantmen — 
 
 Saus. I mark them all. 
 
 Dem. O thou art Fortune's very favourite ! 
 The child of happiness ! — your right eye, sir, 
 
 * A pleasantry by surprise, directed to the coarser appetites of the person in the text. 
 It was usual with the Athenians to grant those citizens, ■whose services, talents, or vir- 
 tues had ennobled their country, an honourable provision for life in the Prytaneum, or 
 hall of public entertainments. The poet appears to be providing a similar daily banquet 
 for his sausage dealer, but by a single word he changes the sense expected and expresses, 
 what I have been obliged to substitute a whole line for, and miss tiie play of words besides. 
 These difficulties occur in almost every ten lines of Aristophanes. 
 
 + Almost all the islands in the iEgean sea, as well as the numerous Grecian cities of 
 Asia Minor, of the Hellespont and of Thrace, were tributary subjects of the Athenian 
 people : they were not allowed, says Mr Mitford,to possess ships of war, but were de- 
 pendent upon Athens for protection, and liable to every kind and degree of controul 
 from that imperial state. The following extract from Isocrates will show in what manner 
 this haughty people could indulge in all the pride and ostentation of tj'ranny. The pas- 
 sage is thus translated by the historian, whom 1 have just quoted. "So diligent were 
 the Athenians to discover how they might most earn the detestation of mankind, that by 
 a decree they directed the tribute money to be exhibited at the Dionysian festival, on the 
 stage of the theatre, divided into talents ; thus making parade before the allies, numbers 
 of whom would be present, of the property wrested from them to paj' that very mer- 
 cenary force by which they were held in so degrading a subjection ; and setting the other 
 Greeks, of whom also many would be present, upon reckoning what orphans had been 
 made, what calamities brought upon Grecian states, to collect that object of pride for the 
 Athenian people." 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 101 
 
 On Caria, — your left upon Clialcedon.* 
 
 Saus. And call you this the top of happiness — 
 To have my eyes distorted 1 — cry your mercy. 
 
 Bern. Nay, you mistake — a whisper in your ear — 
 All these are so mucli money in your purse — 
 For thou wilt be — or there 's no faith, be sure, 
 In oracles — a most prodigious man ! 
 
 Saus. Go to, you canting varlet, am not I 
 A sausage-vender ] — how shall greatness then 
 Sit on a man of my profession 1 
 
 Bern. Tut ! 
 
 It is the very source of greatness : — answer : — 
 Art not a knave 1 — art not o'the forum ?| — hast not 
 A front of brass ? — can Fortune set her seal 
 Of greatness with more certainty upon thee ! 
 
 Saus. I cannot find in me that worthiness 
 And seal of future power you vaunt so mightily. 
 
 Dem. Anan ! why sure thou hast some squeamishness 
 Of honesty about thee ! All 's not right, 
 I fear: — answer, art fair'? — art honest ? — art 
 A gentleman ?:|: — how say 'st? 
 
 Saus. {coldly.) Not I, by Jove ! 
 I am, as all my fathers were — a blackguard. 
 
 Dem. Then thou art blest : — Fortune hath stamp't and mark'd thee 
 For state-aflairs. 
 
 Saus. Nay, I want skill in music ;§ 
 
 * Caria and Chalcedon ■were the northern and southern extremities of real or asserted 
 Athenian dominion on tlie western side of ancient Asia. 
 
 •f Tlic agora or forum was the resort of all the idle and profligate in Athens. "When 
 Theoplirastus describes a vicious character, the agora is sure to be the scene in which 
 some part of it is laid. 
 
 % The word used in the text is that which, in the Socratic school, signified the utmost 
 perfection of which our nature is capable. An English translator may take pride ia 
 feeling that his own language can not onlj' supply a word which comes nearest in meaning 
 to the Ka-KCKitybiA ol the ancients, but that Iiis own counUy is that where most examples 
 of it are to be found in existence. Some apology, perhaps, is due for the manner in which 
 the reply to the question in the text is worded ; but the translation is literal, and the 
 moral disgust, which it is meant to convey, forms some justification, it is hoped, in re- 
 taining it. 
 
 § A knowledge of music formed one of the elementary branches of Athenian education. 
 It was necessary for the younger people of both sexes, that they might be able to bear a 
 part in the choruses and the hymns which accompanied their many religious solemnities ; 
 it was required of men, who held the higher offices of the state, to enable them to give 
 their suffrages with propriety at those contests, which were perpetually submitted to 
 their decision at the theatre and the music rooms. We must not, however, confine the 
 term music to the precise meaning which it bears at present. It had a close relation to 
 gi-ammar, and was made to bear upon all the niceties of that wonderful language. " So 
 simple is its analogy," says Mr Mitford, "of such complex art in its composition and 
 inflexion, of such clearness, force, and elegance in its contexture, and of such singular 
 sweetness, variety, harmony, and majesty in its sound." How nicely susceptible the Attic 
 ear was, and how minntcly the lowest persons entered into the intricacies of its com- 
 position, may be inferred from the wellknown story, related by Cicero, of Theophrastus 
 and the herb-woman. 
 
102 THE knights; 
 
 And am the sorriest dabster e'en at letters.* 
 
 Dem. Better you wanted that small skill you boast — 
 'T is all that makes 'gainst thy sufficiencies : 
 Music and letters ! — tut ! we want no gifts 
 Like these in men who rule us — morals, quotha? — 
 A dolt — a knave, — these are the stuff we make 
 Our statesmen of — but come — throw not away 
 The blessing gracious heav'n has put upon thee 
 By virtue of these oracles. 
 
 Satis. First let me hear 
 
 The wording of them. 
 
 Dem. Nay, you '11 find no want 
 
 Of wisdom in them, nor variety 
 In the conceit — observe — (Reads.) 
 
 (Oracle.)]" 
 
 When the monster, half-tanner, half-eagle, shall take 
 
 To his mouih, crooked-back'd, the dull blood-sucking snake: 
 
 Then if rightly prophetic the future I trace, 
 
 Paphlagonia and :j:pickle shall sink in disgrace. 
 
 * In the Athenian course of instruction the ypafjifxcLrnnc (or grammarian) immediately 
 preceded thex/9«p/c»c (or music-master). Both preceptors cultivated the imagination, 
 almost exclusively at the expense of the understanding ; and to this vicious system of edu- 
 cation may be traced much of the wild extravagance and fickle enthusiasm which so 
 strongly marked the Athenian character. Instead of those plain treatises on the nature, 
 extent, and situation of the soil on which we live, and those works on morality, which 
 teach us how to live, the first book which the grammarian invariably put into the hands 
 of his pupil, was the works of Homer. The whole of these (see Plato's Banquet) were 
 not unfrequently committed to memory ; and the mischiefs, which resulted from thus 
 reading in infancy, what ought to have been the study of riper years, were so many, (see 
 the Repub. 1. 2. 3.) that Plato, notwithstanding his own evident predilection tor the 
 great father of poetry, concludes with banishing him from his infant state. From the criti- 
 cism, commentaries, explanations, and interpolations of Homer by the grammarians, the 
 pupil was committed to the teacher of music ; till it was gradually discovered that a long ap- 
 plication to music unfits the mind for the acquisition of the sublimer sciences ; that as the 
 sounds and airs are retained, ideas are apt lo slip from the memory, and that the play o 
 the understanding becomes less in proportion as the fingers become more active. De Fauw 
 torn. ii. p. 128. From the works of ^schines, or the person who wrote in his name, it 
 appears therefore that harp music as well as flute music (vide the Acharnians) fell 
 gradually into disuse : but the grammarians (who stood nearly in the same relations of 
 rivalrv and opposition to the philosophers as the comic writers) did not so easily part 
 ■with their predilection for poetry ; and the exclusive system of the two illustrious gram- 
 marians, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aristarchus of Alexandria, may almost be 
 traced in the great public schools of England to this day, where the dramatists, the lyric 
 and epic poet, almost entirely supersede the philosopher, and not unfrequently the his- 
 torian and the orator of antiquity. 
 
 t Oracles were commonly delivered in verse, or at least committed to measure as soon 
 aS they had passed the prophetic lips of the priestess. M. de Pauw, remarking upon 
 those delivered at Delphi, has very justly observed that nowhere did the god of harmony 
 receive such cruel affronts as in his own sanctuary ; where the task of versifying the pre- 
 dictions delivered by the god was committed to persons who sinned not only against 
 poetry, but the commonest rules of metrical composition. 
 
 ^ Most probably the liquid used in tanning. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 103 
 
 The venders of sausages' star shall arise, 
 
 And Glory come down with a crown from the skies : — 
 
 Unfading their fame, as their sacrifice great, 
 
 Who leave a good trade to take care of the state. 
 
 Sous, And how points this to me 1 
 
 JDem. I will resolve you. 
 
 The tanner-eagle is the Paphlagonian. 
 
 Saus, But he is call'd crook-beak'd. — 
 
 Dent. With reason good. 
 
 What else his hands but beak and claws and talons ? 
 
 Saus. But then the serpent — how expound you that ? 
 
 Dem. Nay, 't is the clearest of similitudes : 
 What is a serpent but a lengthy thing 1 
 And what your sausage but the samel — again — 
 Your sausage is a bloodsucker; — so is 
 Your snake — and snake, so runs the prophecy. 
 Shall beat the tanner-eagle ; — take he heed, 
 Meantime, that no false speeches cozen him. 
 
 Saus. The light is broke upon me, and I see 
 A call from heav'n in this ; — I marvel most 
 How I shall do to rule the populace. 
 
 Dem. Nought easier : model you upon your trade. 
 Deal with the people as with sausages — 
 Twist, implicate, embroil ; — nothing will hurt, 
 So you but make your court to Demus — cheating 
 And soothing him with terms of kitchen science. 
 All other public talents are your own; 
 Your voice is strong, your liver white, and you are 
 O' the forum — say, could Diffidence ask more 
 To claim the reins of state 1 — the Pythian god, 
 The oracles are in your favour; — clap then 
 A chaplet on your head ; drop instant prayer 
 Unto Coalemus,* and bear your manhood 
 Entire against him. 
 
 Sans. But what aidance may I 
 Expect ? The wealthier fear, the meaner folk 
 Pay the most crouching reverence to him. 
 
 D<m- Nay, nay, 
 
 The Knights will be your friends, there are among them 
 Some twice five hundred, who detested him ; citizens 
 Of breeding and of mark, be sure, will side 
 With you, and such spectators here as boast 
 Right-minded notions — what 's more to the purpose, 
 Thou 'It lack no aid which heav'n and I can give. 
 
 * This demigod (the Genius of Stupidity) is most probably a deity of the author's o\ni 
 creation. Another ideal being called Copalos, to whom the sausage-vender also appeaU 
 more than once in this play, possessed a more substantial place in tlie Attic legends, ac- 
 cording to Wieland. That learned writer considers the Cobalos of Aristophanes as nearly 
 allied to Shakespeare's Puck, and still more to the Kobou)£ of his own countrymen. 
 
104 THE KNIGHTS i 
 
 But see thou show no fear : none needs : the face 
 
 You '11 see is not the Paphlagonian's, 
 
 Nor bears its nice impress : for our artificers 
 
 Took fright and would not give a semblance of it — 
 
 It matters not: — an audience like this 
 
 Needs no such aidance to their nice discernment. 
 
 SCENE VI. 
 
 NiciAS, Demosthenes, Cleon, Sausage-Vender. 
 Chorus. 
 
 Nic. He comes, he comes, the cursed Paphlagonian ! 
 
 Cleon, whose enterance has been thus artfully delayed, at length makes his 
 appearance: he begins immediately with the common popular cry of Athens, 
 that a conspiracy is on foot, and that the democracy is in danger : he remarks 
 the cup from which Demosthenes had made his libation : — ic was a cup from 
 Chalcis,* and consequently proved most clearly that the two slaves were stirring 
 up the Chalcidians to a revolt: death of course was to be the punishment of such 
 an atrocity. At the sight of his terrible antagonist, the sausage-vender's courage 
 forsakes him, and he endeavours to make his escape : he is brought back, however, 
 to the charge by Demosthenes, who makes a powerful appeal to the Knights. 
 
 " Now, gentlemen of the horse, is the time to give your assistance." Two 
 of them are summoned by name — " Simonj — Panaetius — to the right wing! 
 forward." The Knights are obedient to the summons. Demosthenes turns 
 triumphantly to the sausage-vender, and bids him mark the dust which announc- 
 ed the approach of this new body of auxiliaries. The attack of the Knights, 
 who are thus artfully interwoven into the business of the piece, commences in 
 a burst of double trochaics, the common metre for expressing strong emotion on 
 the Greek stage. It is observable that the name of the object of their attack 
 never escapes their lips.:^: 
 
 * The revolt among the Chalcidians (not those of Euboea, as the learned Casaubon 
 inadvertently observes, but of Thrace) actually broke out about this time ; and the serious 
 consequences, with which it was attended, could little have been foreseen by the poet, 
 or, with all his audacity, he would hardl}- have ventured to joke upon the subject. The 
 Athenians lost by this revolt one of those valuable dependencies, (Amphipolis,) from 
 whose wealth their republic chiefly derived its power ; but posterity has gained by it 
 one of the most incomparable histories, which any age or country ever produced. The 
 works of Thucydides, Xenophon, Dante, and Clarendon, form indeed the best compen- 
 sation for the acts of injustice, which have too often disgraced the annals of free govern- 
 ments both in ancient and modern times. 
 
 t It was a person of this name, whom Xenophon followed in his Treatise on Horse- 
 manship. 
 
 % The reader has already been apprised of the coarse invective, which many of the 
 following scenes will exhibit. If we were to consult those curious little Provencal poems, 
 called tensons, in which the knights of a later period contested with each other the 
 prize of composition with as much heat as they did the prize of valour, we should, 
 perhaps, find instances of recrimination not less gross than those exhibited in the follow- 
 ing comedy. A tenso7i is preserved, in whichAlbert Malespina and Rambaud de Vaque- 
 iras, two of the greatest lords and most valiant captains of the thirteenth century, re- 
 
or the demagogues. 105 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Stripes and torment, whips and scourges, for the toll-collecting knave ! 
 
 Knighthood wounded, troops confounded, chastisement and vengeance crave. 
 
 Taxes sinking, tributes shrinking, mark his appetite for plunder; 
 
 At his craw and rav'ning maw dykes and Avhirl pools fail for wonder. 
 
 Explanation and evasion — covert art and close deceit — 
 
 Fraudful funning, force and cunning, who with him in these compete? 
 
 He can cheat and eke repeat twenty times his felon feat. 
 
 All before yon blessed sun has quench'd his lamp of glowing heat. 
 
 Then to him — pursue him — strike, shiver, and hew him ; 
 
 Confound him and pound him, and storm all around him — 
 And keep wary eye. Made a way, will this man 
 
 Looking round, far and nigh. Discover some plan, 
 
 Or with the same ease Corner, hole, crack, or cran- 
 
 As the knave Eucrates,* ny, your eyes to trepan. 
 
 Through the chaff and the bran And escape as he can. 
 
 Confounded by an attack, which commences so vigorously, Cleon calls 
 loudly on the members of the Helicea (the high court of judicature) for 
 help. 
 
 Judges, jurymen, or pleaders, you whose soul is in your fee ; 
 
 You that in a three-piec'd obol, father, mother, brother see; 
 
 You, whose food 1 'm still providinsf, strainingr voice through risrht and wrontr — 
 
 Mark and see — conspiracy drives and buffets me along! 
 
 Cho. 'T is with reason — 't is in season — 't is as you yourself have done: 
 Thou fang, thou claw — thou gulph, thou maw! yielding partage fair to 
 
 none. 
 Where 's the officer at audit but has felt your cursed gripe? 
 Squeez'd and tried with nice discernment, whether yet the wretch be ripe. 
 Like the men our figs who gather, you are skilful to discern 
 Which is green and which is ripe, and which is just upon the turn. 
 
 preach each other with having deceived their allies by false oaths, and with having 
 robbed on the high roads. As these couplets were extemporaneous productions, an 
 excellent critic and historian (M. Sismondi) charitably demands that allowance 
 should be made for the heat of the moment, and the difficulty perhaps of finding a 
 rhyme. The heroes of chivalry, however, were not unfrcquently given to be foul 
 mouthed. Two French knights, in one of Mr Ellis's specimens, call Richard Coeur 
 de Lion a iaylard ; Charlemagne hits his nephew Roland a great blow on the nose, 
 and styles him a traitor; while the courtiers both of Arthur and Charlemagne 
 (another substantial reason for considering the latter as Charles Martel) repeatedly 
 call their monarch a fool, and treat him with the utmost contempt. See particularly 
 the Morgante Maggiore, a poem which affords us so many domestic trails of the 
 heroes, whom we have been accustomed to admire in Ariosto and Tasso. 
 
 • Eucrates appears to have speculated in flour as well as in flax. In his office 
 of public treasurer, he disappeared with a large sura of the public money. In 
 Athens, where everything was made a subject of pleasantry, the escape of Eucrates 
 passed into a bon-mot, 
 14 
 
106 THE knights; 
 
 Is there one well-purs'd among us, lamblike in *heart and life, 
 Link'd and wedded to retirement, hating business, hating strife 1 
 Soon your greedy eye 's upon him — when his mind is least at home, — 
 Room and place — from farthest Thrace, f at your bidding he must come. 
 Foot and hand are straight upon him — neck and shoulder:^ in your grip. 
 To the ground anon he 's thrown, and you smite §him on the hip. 
 
 Cleon (^fawning.) Ill from you comes this irruption, you for whom my cares 
 provide, 
 To reward old deeds of valour, stone and monumental pride. 
 'T was my purpose to deliver words and speech to that intent — 
 And for such my good intentions must I be thus tempest-rent ? 
 
 Cho. Fawning braggart, proud deceiver, yielding like a pliant thong ! 
 We are not old men to cozen and to gull with lying tongue. 
 Fraud or force — assault or parry — at all points will we pursue thee : 
 And the course which first exalted, knave, that same shall now undo thee. 
 
 Cleon [to the audience.) Town and weal — I make appeal — back and breast 
 these monsters feel. 
 
 Cho. Have we wrung a clamour from thee, pest and ruin of our town ] 
 
 Sous. Clamour as he will, I 'II raise a voice that shall his clamour drown. 
 
 Cho. To outreach this knave in speech were a great and glorious feat — 
 But to pass in face and brass — that were triumph all complete. 
 Then might fly to earth and sky notes of victory paean'd high! 
 
 Cleon {to the audience.') Allegation — affirmation — I am here prepared to 
 make 
 That this man {pointing to the Sausage-vender) shipp'd spars and ||timber and 
 — sausages for Sparta's sake. 
 
 Sous. Head and oath, I stake them both, and free before this presence 
 say. 
 That the Hall a guest most hungry sees in this man (pointing to Cleon) ev'ry 
 
 day; 
 He walks in with belly empty and with full one goes away. 
 
 Dem. Add to this, on my witness, that in covert close disguise. 
 Of fish and flesh and bread most fragrant — he makes there unlawful prize : 
 Pericles, in all his grandeur, ne'er was gifted in such guise. 
 
 * How difficult it was for the most quiet and cautious person to live undisturbed 
 in Athens, is most clearly evinced by those naive confessions, which the licensed 
 garrulity of old age, and the consciousness of an upright and wellspent life, allowed 
 Isocrates to make in his later speeches. See particularly the Oration de Permuta- 
 tione, and that called the Panathenaic. 
 
 ■j- Some of the most valuable colonies of Athens lay in the Chersonesus of 
 Thrace, and consequently many of the richest citizens made it their occasional 
 residence. 
 
 i Some terms of the palaestra are here introduced, the exact meaning of which 
 does not appear to be thoroughly understood. The learned reader is referred to Sca- 
 liger's note on the passage in Kuster's edition of Aristophanes. 
 
 § Literally, 1/021 sxualloiv him up, like the loaf, collabus. 
 
 II Certain forbidden articles of exportation and some articles of cookery are con- 
 founded together in the original by one of those plays of words, which it is impossi- 
 ble to preserve in a translation. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 
 
 107 
 
 Cleon (loudly.') Cleon {mortified.) 
 
 Fate hath mark'd you with her eye: Small applause your feats demand : 
 Yet awhile and both must die. The art, 't is known, 
 
 Saus. {louder.) Is not your own; 
 
 Pitch your voice, knave, as you will : You 're but a knave at second hand. 
 
 I '11 that voice out-clamour still. 
 
 Cleon {crescendo.) 
 When I soar, the ocean's roar 
 Fails for very wonder. 
 Saus. 
 In my throat I 've but one note, 
 
 But to the hall, anon, I go. 
 Incontinent our chairmen know, 
 You 've intestines here which owe 
 A tythe to Jove and heaven. 
 
 Cho. 
 Wretch ! without a parallel — 
 
 And that note is — thunder. {Speaking Son of thunder — child of hell, — 
 
 very loud.) 
 
 Cleon. 
 I have test your parts to try : 
 Look at me, nor wink your eye. 
 
 Saus. 
 Be your challenge on your head : {Looks 
 without winking.) 
 
 Creature of one mighty sense. 
 Concentrated impudence! — 
 From earth's centre to the sea. 
 Nature stinks of that and thee. 
 It stalks at the bar. 
 It lurks at the tolls; 
 In th' Assembly, black war 
 
 {Scornfully.) Where suppose ye I was And defiance it rolls. 
 
 bred? 
 
 Ckon. 
 I can steal, and, matchless grace! 
 Own it with unblushing face. 
 You dare not thus pursue it. 
 
 Saus. 
 Empty boasting, void as air! 
 I can steal, and then outswear 
 The man who saw me do it. 
 
 It speaks to our ears 
 In an accent of thunder; 
 It climbs to the spheres 
 And rives heav'n asunder. 
 Athens deafens at the sound in her ears 
 still drumming; 
 
 W^hile seated high. 
 You keep an eye 
 Upon the tolls, like those who spy 
 If tunny fish be coming. 
 Cleon. It 'scapes me not, whose hands this plot have paicWd for my undoing. 
 Saus. Thanks for the word — 't is well preferr'd and asks a short pursuing, — 
 To stuff intestines is my trade, as yours the art of shoeing. 
 By the same sign, a scurvy hide your skill was lately trying; 
 The bumpkins heard, and out of hand were all for shoes applying. 
 Solid and good the leather seem'd, yet scarce was sol in ocean. 
 But two large fists had found within full power of locomotion. 
 
 Beyn. Myself can best this truth attest — I shod me in his leather; 
 My burg just reach'd, the skin so stretch'd, I scarce my point could weather. 
 My townsmen sneer'd — my neighbours jeer'd — 't was ask'd thro' all the 
 
 quarter — 
 Came you in boots, sir, or a boat — by land, sir, or by water? 
 
 Cho. 
 From the first unto the last. 
 Never was this man surpast 
 In the lawyer's shield and pass,- 
 Front of iron, face of brass! 
 
 This it is, wherewith he bilks 
 Wealthy foreigners, and milks 
 Sojourners both all and one. 
 
 Mark *Hippodamus's son! {Point- 
 ing to him among the audience.) 
 
 Hippodamus was a celebrated architect. See Mcursius de Pirso, c. 2. 
 
108 THE knights; 
 
 At his sight he feels undone, Quirks, and heart-diving wiles, 
 
 And his tears in torrents run! And the craft of false smiles, 
 
 But my eyes — transport fraught — Covert art and pretence. 
 
 Have at length vision caught And bold plain impudence: — 
 
 Of a man in tongue war For his very emanations 
 
 His superior by far: Are a common thiePs sensations. 
 
 One that leaves him behind 
 
 In each trick of the mind, 
 But thou, {turning to Sausage-vender,) whose breeding and whose feeding were 
 
 in those schools and masters. 
 From whence proceed all those who breed our present state disasters, — 
 Unfold thy speech — direct and teach in eloquent oration 
 That they are naughfwho 'd have us taught a virtuous education. 
 
 Saus. Then at a word must first be heard my rival's estimation. 
 
 Cleon {eagerly.) I claim precedence in my speech — nor you my right deny, 
 sir. 
 
 Saus. Your reason, — pleal — mere knavery! {proudly) marry, and what am 
 I, sirl 
 I stake my fame and this way claim a right to prior speaking. 
 
 Cho. {gravely.) The reason's good, well understood; — if more the foe be 
 seeking. 
 Be it replied — that you 're a knave and not of new creation, 
 But known and tried — on either side — through all your generation. 
 
 Cleon {to Saus.) Dost still oppose? 
 
 Saus. 'Fore friends and foes. 
 
 Cleon. My soul is in commotion : — 
 
 By Earth !— 
 
 Saus. By Air ! — 
 
 Cleon. I vow ! 
 
 Saus. I swear ! 
 
 Cleon. By Jupiter!— 
 
 Saus. By Ocean ! — 
 
 Cleon. O I shall choke — 
 
 Saus. You shall not choke— myself am your prevention. 
 
 Cho. {to Saus.) Forbear, forbear, my friend — nor mar so useful an intention ! 
 
 Cleon {to Saus.) Discuss — propound your cause — your ground for these 
 your words nefarious. 
 
 Saus. My powers of speech — my art to reach phrase season'd high and 
 various — 
 
 Cleon {contemptuously.) Your powers of speech ! — ill fare the cause beneath 
 your hands e'er falling — 
 Batter'd and rent, 't will soon present a sample of your calling. 
 The same disease will fortune you — that meets our eyes not rarely : — 
 Hear — mark — reply, and own that I discuss the matter fairly. 
 Some petty suit 'gainst strangers gain'd— anon you 're set a crowing; 
 The mighty feat becomes forthwith a birth that 's ever growing. 
 By day, by night, on foot, on horse, when riding or when walking, — 
 Your life a mere soliloquy — still of this feat you 're talking.* 
 
 • The extreme disposition of the Athenians to garrulity is painted with admirable 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 109 
 
 You fall to drinking^ water next — on generous wine you trample, 
 While friends are sore — worn o'er and o'er with specimen and sample. 
 And this attain'd, you think you 've gain'd the palm of oratory — 
 Heav'n help ihee, silly one, you 've yet to learn another story. 
 
 Sous. And what is your own beverage, its mode'? its preparation? 
 That you alone have found the art to tongue-tie all the nation ? 
 
 Cleon (^fiercely.) And who dares bandy words with me, or meet me in 
 oration ? 
 'Tis but to eat some tunny fish and sup a strong potation, 
 And I am he that dare set free my tongue in loose reviling, 
 'Gainst all our chiefs in Pylus' fort long charge and crimes compiling. 
 
 Saus. (Jiercely.) At speech or feat, at word or meat, mark here your fit 
 opponent — 
 Let ribs of beef this framework line — let tripe form part component : 
 Let me but sup the broth clean up, and — no ablutions making — 
 The advocates I '11 throttle all, and Nicias set a-quaking.* 
 
 Cho. {luith gravity, to Saus.) Your speech well ran as it began, nor ask'd 
 the end aspersion — 
 But to sup broth, nor ask your friends, — may gender some aversion. 
 
 A translator may easily feel doubtful in what light this scene will appear to 
 an English reader. If he should think there is fire and vigour in it, he may 
 be assured that that vigour does not diminish ; if he considers it more coarse 
 than humourous, no promise can be held out that the dialogue becomes more 
 refined ; on the contrary, it immediately assumes a character of jthreat and 
 recrimination which the most fastidious taste might object to without being 
 
 humour by Theophrastus ; vide Char. 3. 7. Isocrates, who did not spare his country- 
 men, rallies them also on the same topic. Our passion, says he, for talking is 
 insatiable : we are ever indeed commending moderation and fitness of season, and 
 if our ordinary language might be believed, they are qualities which surpass all 
 others ; but the moment we imagine we have anything to oficr ourselves, all mo- 
 deration is at an end; something has still been left unsaid, some little addition is 
 yet to be made, and fitness of season might almost be thought to be synonymous 
 with unlimited duration. De Permuta. v. ii. p. 411. 
 
 * The excessive timiditj^ of Nicias is satirized by many of the comic writers of 
 his time. Plutarch, in his Life of Nicias, has quoted some strong passages from 
 Teleclcides, Eupolis, and Phrynichus, to this effect; but his own observations are 
 still stronger, and mark in an extraordinary manner the fears to which persons of 
 property were subjected in a democracy like Athens. He (Nicias) was so afraid of 
 informers, says Plutarch, that he would neither venture to eat nor converse with any 
 of the citizens, nor would he visit, or be visited, or, in a word, enter into any 
 amusements of this kind. When he was Archon, he used to stay in court till night, 
 being always the first that came, and the last that went away. When no public 
 business called him from home, it was no easy matter to get access to him, for he 
 kept himself close within doors ; and when any came to speak with him, he had 
 some particular friend ready who went to the gate, desiring Nicias might be excused, 
 because he was then taken up with some important affairs relating to the state. 
 
 f The small omission which is here made, may not inadequately be supplied from 
 
110 THE knights; 
 
 thought over-delicate. The Greeks, however, allowed a wider range to their 
 humour than we do : and the exertions of the Sausage-vender, so far from 
 offending the moral Chorus, are rewarded by the applauses of those friends in 
 the shape of the following reflections — " Fire is not the most burning thing in 
 nature : and, shameless as the words are, which we hear continually in our 
 city, it seems there are words of still more frontless impudence, — courage, 
 thou illustrious vender of sausages ! — what you have done already is by no 
 means despicable — but persevere — you have your enemy already by the waist, 
 throw him once to the ground, and you '11 find him a very bankrupt in 
 courage." 
 
 Saus. Nor am myself unschool'd what man I have 
 T' encounter with — coward he is at heart, 
 And only wears a show of bravery 
 When his false sickle reaps another's harvest. 
 Reaping where ethers sow'd, his ears he harvests : 
 And having dried them, looks him out a purchaser. 
 
 This of course alludes to the affair of Pylus and the money which Cleon 
 hoped to make of the prisoners who had there fallen into his hands. Cleon 
 affects an utter indifference to all these charges. " I am perfectly safe," says 
 he, "while the senate exists, and while Demus remains in a sedentary state, 
 and more like an image* than a living person. A consciousness of self- 
 security, however, does not abate a warm feeling of resentment against his ad- 
 versary. "I hate you," says he, turning to the persecuting Sausage-vender, 
 " from the bottom of my heart; and if ever this feeling cease, may I become 
 
 Shakspeare's Timon of Athens. The poet of all ages and all times has caught the 
 very scurrility of the old comedy in the following little dialogue. 
 
 Tim. I had rather be a beggar's dog, than Apemantus. 
 
 »4p. Thou art the cap of all the fools alive. 
 
 Tim. Would thou wert good enough to spit upon. 
 A plague on thee ! 
 
 ^p. Thou art too bad to curse, 
 
 Tim. All villains, that do stand by thee, are pure. 
 
 Jlp. There is no leprosie but what thou speak'st. 
 
 Tim. If I name thee. — I'll beat thee ; but I should infect my hands. 
 
 ^p. I would my tongue could rot them off! 
 
 Tim. Away, thou issue of a mangy dog ! 
 Choler does kill me, that thou art alive : 
 I swoon to see thee. 
 
 ^p. Would thou wouldst burst ! 
 
 Tim. Away thou tedious rogue, I am sorry I shall lose a stone by thee, 
 
 ^p. Beast! 
 
 Tim. Slave ! 
 
 ^p. Toad! 
 
 Tim. Rogue ! rogue ! rogue ! 
 
 * Suidas derives the verb, by which the representative of the Athenian people is 
 characterised, from Macco, a woman, who to the misfortune of dumbness added into- 
 lerable stupidity. Wieland supposes that the scene opened in this part and discovered 
 Demus sitting as described in the text. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 
 
 Ill 
 
 one of Cratinus's pillows,* or be taught to sing a part in a tragedy of Morsi- 
 mus." This attack rouses the acrimony of the Chorus, who return the assault 
 in the following manner. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Matchless this knave ! — at ear and Then will I sing and sportive say, 
 
 eye, 
 Mouth, touch, and taste — he 's bribery. 
 On beds of fragrant flowers he sips 
 Corruption at his very lips. 
 Some day shall end his guilty reign ; 
 The same foul means that work'd his 
 
 gain 
 Shall make him render it again. 
 
 " A cup, a cup, to bless this day ! 
 A cup, a cup, I '11 bathe in wine — " 
 See Julius' aged fson incline — 
 One generous joy he dares to steal 
 And keep his eyes awhile from— 
 
 meal. 
 He rends the welkin with applause 
 And chants full Pasans in so just a 
 
 cause. 
 
 The new statesman, however, was quite equal to his own defence ; and to 
 convince his friends, that their interference was unnecessary, he records some 
 childish traits of himself: many were the cheats, says he, I put upon the 
 cooks. Look, boys, yonder, I was wont to say ; the spring 's at hand, for 
 yonder is the swallow.:^: They gap'd and gaz'd, while I, meantime, made 
 
 • Cratinus and Morsimus were two dramatic rivals of Aristophanes. The ob- 
 jection which Cleon professes to being one of the pillows of the former, relates to a 
 little piece of private history, from which the audience were led to infer, that intem- 
 perance had produced certain infirmities in the old bard, and that the fleeces, or 
 whatever else supported him at table, were frequently sufierers by its eflTects. 
 
 I The person here satirized, according to the Scholiast, supplied the Prytaneum 
 or Public Hall with bread, and kept a vigilant eye that he was not defrauded in his 
 dealings. Casaubon is unwilling to let him off" so cheaply, and adds to his offences, 
 that he had turned a great dearth of corn in Athens to his private advantage. 
 
 + The swallow, as the harbinger of spring, was a favourite bird among the Greeks ; 
 his first appearance made a holiday for the Greek boys, and a song has been preserved 
 in Athenaeus, (lib. viii. p. 360.) by which the little mendicants used to levy contri- 
 butions on the goodnature of their fellow citizens. 
 
 The swallow, the swallow has burst on Or our strength shall be tried 
 
 the sight. 
 
 He brings us gay seasons of vernal de- 
 light; 
 
 His back it is sable, his belly is white. 
 
 Can your pantry nought spare, 
 
 That his palate may please, 
 
 A fig — or a pear — 
 
 Or a slice of rich cheese 1 
 
 Mark, he bars all delay : 
 
 At a word, my friend, say, 
 
 Is it yes, — is it nay 1 
 
 Do we go T — do we stay T — 
 
 One gift and we 're gone : 
 
 Refuse, and anon 
 
 On your gate and your door 
 
 All our fury we pour. 
 
 On your sweet little bride ; 
 
 From ber seat we will tear her: 
 
 From her home we will bear her: 
 
 She is light, and will ask 
 
 But small hands to the task. — 
 
 Let your bounty then lift 
 
 A small aid to our mirth; 
 
 And whatever the gift, 
 
 Let its size speak its worth. 
 
 The swallow, the swallow 
 
 Upon you doth wait : 
 
 An almsman and suppliant 
 
 He stands at your gate : 
 
 Set open, set open 
 
 Your gate and your door ; 
 
 Neither giants nor greybeards, 
 
 We your bounty implore. 
 
112 THE knights; 
 
 booty. In general, continues he, these tricks of mine escap'd observation : 
 and what if any one took note 1 it was but hiding the prize awhile, and making 
 solemn oath that I knew nothing of the theft, and all was well. My dexterity 
 ■was observed by one of our public orators, and it cannot be, said the gentle- 
 man, with a prophetic air, but this boy will one day have charge of the public 
 purse. The storm of language now takes another direction, and is carried on 
 almost entirely in nautical terms. Cleon declares that his opponent has robbed 
 the Athenians of many a talent. To add to the pleasantry of laying such a 
 charge upon a man who possessed nothing but his knife and his chopping 
 block, Cleon confirms the accusation by an oath, which the Greeks reckoned 
 the most solemn of all ; — he swears by the mysterious name of Ceres. The 
 Chorus affect some terror at this accusation : let go your rope, say they to 
 their friend, and drive before the wind ; it is the wind Caesias (a violent 
 stormy wind) and blows up calumnies. Cleon follows his blow with assert- 
 ing that the sausage-vender, to his certain knowledge, had received ten talents 
 from Potidaea. " Will you take one of them," says his rival, " and hold 
 your tongue about the matter ]" That he will most gladly, says the Chorus : 
 see, the wind is going down already. Cleon continues his threats. 
 
 Cleon. Four charges have I 'gainst you, and in each 
 Assess the damage at a *hundred talents. 
 
 Saus. I 've twenty 'gainst yourself, and twice five hundred ; 
 The twenty are for absence and desertion — 
 The thousand note your shameless peculations. 
 
 Cleon. Your birth derives from those, whose hands profan'd — 
 Most execrable they ! — the goddess' temple. f 
 
 Saus. Your grandsire rank'd among the satellites — 
 
 Cleon. Of whom ? 
 
 Saus. Of Hippias' consort, fairest — Byrsine.:}: 
 
 If the reader should think that the abuse of this pair has reached its climax, 
 he has yet to learn the perseverance and extent of Grecian invective — the two 
 rivals compass half the circle of Grecian science for terms of reproach, before 
 they conclude ; — the builder's art, the powers of the nail and the hammer, the 
 
 • In trials at Athens, the plaintiff stated not only the offence committed, but the 
 punishment and extent of punishment which he thought due to it. 
 
 + An occurrence in Grecian history is here alluded to, which happened about a 
 century before the performance of this play. Some partizans of Cylon, who had 
 aspired to the sovereignty of Athens, had been taken from the altars of Minerva, and 
 under the direction of Megacles, the archon, put to death. For this sacrilege, the 
 whole family of the Megacleidse, with all their descendants, were declared to be for 
 ever execrable. The Spartans, at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, 
 attempted to make use of this occurrence against Pericles, who by the mother's 
 side was descended from Megacles. Thucyd. 1. i. c. 126. 127. Plut. Life of 
 Pericles. 
 
 ■^ The wife of Hippias was named Myrrhine : the poet changes the name into 
 Byrsine, in order to raise a laugh at the former trade and occupation of Cleon. The 
 English reader will sometimes entertain no very exalted idea of Grecian wit ; and 
 this is one passage among many others, where a translator of Aristophanes must 
 feel himself upon very unsteady ground. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 113 
 
 glue pot, the carpenter's yard, the art of running and casting metal, the crafts 
 of the founder, the brazier, the cheesemonger, and the currier, all furnish 
 terms, which render their sarcasms more poignant, and alternately turn the 
 tide of victory. The storm is indeed kept up so loudly and incessantly, that 
 Cleon is fain to throw himself upon the senate, and challenges his rival to 
 meet him at that awful bar. His antagonist professes his readiness to do so : 
 the Chorus, considering him as one of the combatants who were going to ex- 
 hibit in the wrestling school, anoint his body with the fat of his own sausages, 
 that he " may slip from his adversary's calumnies;" they feed him like a fight- 
 ing cock with pungent garlic ; they remind him (in allusion to the combats of 
 the same bird) to peck at his adversary, — to tread him down, — to gnaw his 
 crest, — and swallow his gills; and they finally recommend him to the protec- 
 tion of that divinity, which, in modern times, would, under the same mytho- 
 logy, have presided over the Palais Royal of Paris and the Piazza di Marco 
 of Venice. 
 
 May the spirit that 's in me direct thee; 
 And Jove of the Market protect thee ; 
 May the pride of my blessing erect thee 
 
 To efforts and enterprise glorious ; 
 And when next you 're descried, 
 May it be in the pride 
 
 Of conquest and valour victorious. [^Exit Suusagc-vemkr. 
 
 To a much harder task (^turning to the audience') 
 I am bent, while I ask 
 A hearing from those, 
 Who in verse and in prose 
 
 For their tact and their skill are notorious. 
 
 Parabasis." 
 Were it one of that jold school, learned sirs, who long the rule 
 
 and the tone to our drama have given. 
 Who his lessons and his verse having :j:taught us to rehearse, 
 
 Avould before this high presence have driven; 
 
 * When a writer at Athens had completed a dramatic work, he generally put it 
 into the hands of one of those wealthy persons who either voluntarily undertook, or 
 by compulsion of the law were enjoined, to defray the expenses of the choral and 
 theatrical exhibitions. This was called ^igov cutuv. Aristophanes explains why 
 he bad been backward in complying with this established custom. The parabasis 
 itself displays a feeling of ingratitude in the Athenians, which excites as much indig- 
 nation, as the courage, with which it is here exposed, demands applause. 
 
 ■\ The more immediate precursors of Aristophanes on the comic stage were 
 Chionidcs, Magnes, and Deinolochus. Nothing of their works has come down to us 
 but the titles of some of them. 
 
 % From the qualitj' of their writing materials, the Greeks had not the convenience 
 of copj-ing their compositions with facility: the parts, therefore, of a drama were 
 studied from the repeated delivery of the poet, and the Chorus exercised in the same 
 manner. This was called teaching a piece. In tragedy, (and most probably in 
 comedy,) not merely the poetry, but the musical accompaniment, the scenical deco- 
 15 
 
114 THE knights; 
 
 'T is great chance that his request, however warmly prest, 
 
 might have met with no easy compliance: — 
 But indulgent we have heard the petitions of a bard 
 
 of new mettle and noblest appliance. 
 And well may he command aid and service at our hand ; 
 
 for his hatreds and ours closely blending 
 Into one concurring point leap, and hand and heart and joint 
 
 to the same noble object are tending. 
 He no shade nor shelter seeks; — what he thinks he boldly speaks; — 
 
 neither skirmish nor conflict declining, 
 He marches all elate 'gainst that Typhon of the state, 
 
 storm and hurricane and tempest combining. 
 Marvel much we hear has grown, and inquiries through the town 
 
 of the poet have been most unsparing, 
 (With submission be it known that these words are not our own, 
 
 but his own proper speech and declaring,) 
 Why his dramas hitherto came not forward as was due, 
 
 their own proper Choregus* obtaining; 
 Take us with you, sirs, awhile and a moment's easy toil 
 
 will in brief be the reason explaining. 
 
 ration and representation, were all the creation of the poet. The player was a mere 
 tool, and his excellence consisted in the accuracy with which he filled up his part, 
 and by no means in arbitrary bravura, or an ostentatious display of skill. — Schlegel. 
 * The ofiice of Choregus, or Chorus master, was both honourable and expensive. 
 Each of the ten tribes furnished one annually, and his business was to defray the 
 expenses of the scenical representations and those of the solemn festivals. If the 
 tribe were too poor to provide a choregus, the expense fell upon the state. Some- 
 times the charge was divided between two persons ; sometimes the choregus of one 
 tribe was allowed to conduct the Chorus of another tribe. The choregus was by 
 law to be at least forty years of age : upon him rested the choice of the persons com- 
 posing the Choucs; and they were generally taken from the youth of the tribe to 
 which he belonged. A good flute player, to modulate their voices, and a skilful 
 dancing master, to regulate their steps and gestures, would naturally be among the 
 chief objects of his research. Some months before the approach of the festivals, the 
 Chorus and actors began to be practised in their performance : the choregus fre- 
 quently maintaining them during the whole of that time in his own house, that they 
 might never be out of his view. At the festivals and pompous processions he ap- 
 peared at their head, adorned with a gilt crown and a magnificent robe. But it was 
 in the theatre that the chief contention took place between the rival choregi. 
 Judges were solemnly established, and a prize was adjudged to the Chorus, which 
 had done most honour to the republic. Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm with 
 which this victory was sought and received. The prize was generally a tripod ; and 
 the victorious tribe most commonly consecrated it in the street, which from that cus- 
 tom was called the street of tripods. To these tripods were attached notices of the 
 tribe which had gained the victory — of the archon who presided at the festival — of 
 the citizen, who, under the name of choregus, had furnished the expenses of the 
 company — of the poet who composed the verses — of the master who exercised the 
 Chorus, and the musician who directed the songs by the sound of his flute. The 
 conquerors of the Persians, says the Abbe Barthelemi, thought it an addition to 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 115 
 
 'T was no folly bred, we say, this distrust and cold delay, 
 
 but a sense of th' extreme application 
 And the toil* which he who woos in our town the Comic Muse 
 
 must encounter in such his vocation. 
 Suitors many (and brisk sparks,) as our poet oft remarks, 
 
 pay her court and profoundest attention; 
 But of all that love and burn, very few meet due return: — 
 
 this observance first bred apprehension. 
 Then your tempers quick — severe — ever changing with the year — - 
 
 to this thought added fears more appalling, 
 And a sense of those disasters which, through you their fickle masters, 
 
 old age on your poets sees falling. 
 Could it 'scape observing sight what was Magnes' wretched plight, 
 
 when his hairs and his temples were hoary ; 
 Yet who battled with more zeal or more trophies left to tell 
 
 of his former achievements and glory? 
 He came piping,f dancing, tapping, — fig-gnatting and wing-clapping, — 
 
 frog-bcsmear'd and with Lydian grimaces: 
 Yet he too had his date, nor could wit nor merit great 
 
 preserve him, unchanged, in your graces. 
 Youth pass'd brilliantly and bright ; — when his head was old and white, 
 
 strange reverse and hard fortune confronted ; 
 What boots taste or tact forsooth, if they 've lost their nicest truth, 
 
 or a wit wheie the edge has grown blunted ! 
 Who Cratinus may forget or the storm of whim and wit 
 
 which shook theatres under his guiding ] 
 When Panegyric's song pour'd her flood of praise along, 
 
 who but he on the top wave was riding? 
 Foe nor rival might him meet; plane:)^ and oak ta'en by the feet 
 
 did him instant and humble prostration ; 
 For his step was as the tread of a flood that leaves its bed, 
 
 and his march it was rude desolation. 
 
 their celebrity to have appeared at the head of the Cnonrs; and on one tripod it 
 might be seen inscribed " The tribe Antiochis gained this prize: Aristeides was the 
 chorus master: Archestratus composed the piece." On another, "Themistocles was 
 the choregus: the tragedy was written by Phrynicus: Adimantus was the archon." 
 Le Jeune Anach. torn. ii. cc. 12. 24. 
 
 * See Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Literature. 
 
 j- The poet alludes in his peculiar manner to the titles of some of the dramatic 
 works of Magnes. 
 
 t There is some allusion here, most probably, to a passage in one of the plays of 
 Cratinus, all of which have unfortunately perished. The praise bestowed upon the 
 old bard, who was living at the time of the exhibition of the Knights, is a little 
 equivocal throughout, and at last ends in a direct reference to his intemperance. 
 Cratinus lived to convince his youthful rival, that his powers were not so much ex- 
 hausted as he has here described them to be. A play presented by Cratinus in the 
 following year, and formed to meet the allusions here made to his convivial habits, 
 gained the prize against the most elaborate of all the compositions of Aristophanea, 
 the farfiiined Clouds. 
 
116 THE knights; 
 
 Who but he the foremost guest then on gala-day and feast? 
 
 What strain fell from harp or musicians, 
 But " Doro,* Doro sweet, nymph with fig-beslipper'd feet" — 
 
 or — " Ye verse-smiths and bard-mechanicians." 
 Thus in glory was he seen, while his years as yet were green ; 
 
 but now that his dotage is on him, 
 God help him ! for no eye, of all those who pass him by, 
 
 throws a look of compassion upon him. 
 'T is a couch, but with the loss of its garnish and its gloss ; — 
 
 't is a harp that hath lost all its cunning, — 
 'T is a pipe where deftest hand may the stops no more command, 
 
 nor on it divisions be running, 
 f Connas-like, he 's chaplet-crown'd, and he paces round and round 
 
 in a circle which never is ended ; — 
 On his head a chaplet hangs, but the curses and the pangs 
 
 of a drought on his lips are suspended. 
 
 if ever yet on bard waited, page-like, high Reward : 
 
 former exploits and just reputation. 
 By an emphasis of right, sure had earn'd this noble wight 
 
 in the Hall a most constant — potation ;:}: 
 And in theatres high station ;§ there a mark for Admiration 
 
 to anchor her aspect and face on. 
 In his honour he should sit, nor serve triflers in the pit 
 
 As an object their rude jests to pass on. 
 
 1 spare myself the toil to record the buffets vile, 
 
 the affronts and the contumelies hateful. 
 Which on ||Crates frequent fell, yet I dare you, sirs, to tell, 
 
 where was caterer more pleasing or grateful 1 ^ 
 
 * Two celebrated songs of Cratinus began in this manner. The first appears to 
 have been a satire upon the corruption of the magistrates; and those who at- 
 tend to the note upon sycophancy, in the comedy of the Acharnians, will be at no 
 loss to understand the epithet which is here joined with the imaginary nymph, who 
 stands for the personification of corruption. The latter song appears to have been 
 aimed at some of the poet's contemporaries, who wrote more from mechanical rules 
 than the fervour of a poetical spirit. 
 
 ■|- Connas was a flute-player, and is not to be confounded with Connus, the pre- 
 ceptor of Socrates in harp music. Vid. Plat, in Euthydemo, et Menexeno. From 
 a fragment of Cratinus, Connas appears to have made himself a little conspicuous by 
 constantly wearing a chaplet on his head. 
 
 + A pleasantry by surprise. The poet should have said dinner: the change is 
 made, in allusion to the intemperance of Cratinus. In general this species of wit, in 
 which Aristophanes indulges very largely, has more humour in the original than a 
 translation can give ; because there the words are nearly similar in sound. 
 
 § There were distinct seats in the theatre; but the most commodious and honour- 
 able places were those near the images of the gods, which were placed on the stage. 
 — Casaubon. 
 
 II Crates was first an actor, and afterwards a writer of the Old Comedy : he per- 
 formed the principal characters in Cratinus's plays, and was the great rival of Aris- 
 tophanes's favourite actors Callistratus and Philonides. He is said to have been the 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 117 
 
 Who knew better how to lay soup piquant and entremets, 
 
 dainty patties and little side dishes 1 
 Where with all your bards a Muse cook'd more delicate ragouts 
 
 or hash'd sentiment so to your wishes ? 
 Princely cost nor revenue ask'd his banquets it is true ; 
 
 yet he is the only stage master, 
 Through all changes and all chances, who undaunted still advances, 
 
 alike master of success and disaster. 
 Sirs, ye need no more to hear — ye know whence the hue of fear 
 
 o'er our bard's cheek of enterprise stealing, 
 And why like wiser men, who look forward in their ken, 
 
 in proverbs he 's wont to be dealing; 
 Saying — better first explore what the powers of scull and oar, 
 
 ere the helm and the rudder you 're trying ; 
 At the *prow next take your turn, there the mysteries to learn 
 
 of the scud and the winds that are flying. 
 This mastery attain'd, time it is a skiff were gain'd, 
 
 and your f pilotage put to the trial : — 
 Thus with caution and due heed step by step would he proceed 
 
 in a course that should challengre denial. 
 
 first who introduced a drunken character on the Athenian stage. The following 
 fragment on Old Age, translated by the learned author of the Observer, is almost all 
 that remains of the works of Crates. 
 
 These shrivell'd sinews and this bending frame 
 
 The workmanship of Time's strong hand proclaim. 
 
 Skill'd to reverse whate'er the gods create. 
 
 And make that crooked which they fashion straight. 
 
 Hard choice for men to die — or else to be 
 
 That tottering, wretched, wrinkled thing you see ! 
 
 Age then we all prefer ; for age we pray, 
 
 And travel on to life's last lingering day ; 
 
 Then sinking slowly down from worse to worse, 
 
 Find heaven's extorted boon our greatest curse. 
 
 * The Trgaga/c, says Archbishop Potter, was next under the master: to his care 
 was committed the tackling of the ship, and the rowers had their places assigned by 
 him. He also assisted the master at consultations. — Grec. Ant. v. ii. p. 146. 
 
 ■j- The pilot, says the same learned writer, held a much higher rank in the Greek 
 navy than in ours. He had the care of the ship and government of the seamen, and 
 sat at the stern to steer; all things were managed according to his direction: it was 
 therefore necessary that he should have obtained an exact knowledge of the art of 
 navigation, which consisted chiefly in three things: 1. In the right management of 
 the rudder, sails, and all the engines used in navigation : 2. In the knowledge of the 
 winds and celestial bodies, their motions and influences : 3. In the knowledge of 
 commodious harbours, rocks, quicksands, and other occurrences on the sea. — Idem, 
 p. 144. A still more important part of his duty, the direction of the diecplus, which 
 so often decided the naval engagements of the ancients, has been omitted by the 
 learned archbishop. 
 
118 THE knights; 
 
 Nor let it breed offence, if for such befitting sense 
 
 and so modest a carriage and bearing, 
 We ask some mark of state on its author here to wait; — 
 
 guard of honour,* procession, or chairing : — 
 With a shout of such cheering Your bard shall depart 
 
 As Bacchus is hearing, With a rapture-touch'd heart. 
 
 When vats overflowing While Triumph shall throw 
 
 Set Mirth all a-crowing, O'er his cheeks such a glow. 
 
 And Joy and Wine meet That Pleasure might trace 
 
 Hand in hand in each street. Her own self in his face. 
 
 So his purpose attained 
 And the victory gain'd, 
 
 Semi-Chorus. 
 
 Choral Hymn. 
 Lord of the Waters! king of might, Lord of the dolphins and the spear — 
 Whose eyes and ears take stern delight :j:Geroestian — Sunian — or more dear, 
 From neighing steeds and stormy fight If Cronus' name salute thy ear. 
 
 And galley swift pursuing ; And §Phormion's gallant daring; 
 
 From starling car and chariot gay, O come amongst us in thy power. 
 
 And contests on that festive day, Great Neptune; in her trying hour 
 
 When Athens' sprightly youth display Athens knows none so swift to shower 
 Their pride and their — undoing ;f Aids of immortal bearing. 
 
 Full Chorus. 
 Praise and homage let us pay Plants of an eternal spring, 
 
 To the men of elder day: Born for endless blossoming.[| 
 
 They alone of this our earth Foot or horse — by land or sea 
 
 Ne'er impeach'd their noble birth: Still they reach'd at victory; 
 
 • The ancient guard of honour diifered much from a modern one, being composed 
 of ships and not of soldiers. According to Cassaubon, the complement was eleven 
 ships, or a man of war with eleven oars on each side. 
 
 + The poet ridicules' the young men of fashion, who ruined themselves by run- 
 ning chariots at the public games. 
 
 ^ Epithets of Neptune, derived from Geraestus, a port in Euboea, and Sunium, 
 the famous promontorj" in Attica. 
 
 § For the achievements of this able and active officer see Thucydides, lib. ii. 
 
 11 Literally, -worthy to be described on the peplus. The peplus was that superb 
 veil displayed in the magnificent festival of the Panathensea. The first artists in 
 Athens furnished the designs for this splendid piece of embroidery, and the young 
 ladies, most distinguished for their skill, executed the needlework. Various subjects 
 were represented on it, but the combat of the gods and the giants always formed 
 one. In the corners of this magnificent embroidery were sometimes depictured the 
 heroes and great men of Athens ; and the most aspiring of her citizens considered 
 this distinction as the summit of all human honours. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 
 
 119 
 
 Raising high by generous toil 
 
 The splendour of their native soil. 
 
 When they saw their foemen bold, 
 
 They their numbers never told; 
 
 Ready swords and valour high 
 
 Were a helpmate ever nigh. 
 
 If upon the arm they fell ; 
 
 'T was but a *brush, and all was well ; 
 
 Rising quick, they dealt a wound. 
 
 As they had never touch'd the ground. 
 
 Never then did general, 
 
 Though ambitious of the fHall, 
 
 Pay the tribute of his knee, 
 
 To ijiCJaEnctus that he 
 
 Miffht his commons eet cost-free. 
 
 Rank§ and banquet now men ask. 
 Or they spurn the soldier's task. 
 Not so we, sirs ; we '11 still wear 
 Athens' wrongs upon our spear; 
 And the best blood in our breast 
 Free shall flow at her behest. — 
 Nor for this our patriot flame 
 Other payment will wo claim. 
 Than when Peace resumes her sway 
 (Nor far distant be that day !) 
 None shall taunt reproachful throw, 
 That our locks|| too trimly flow, 
 Nor malignly mark, if we 
 With the^ bath and brush make free. 
 
 Choral Hymn. 
 
 O thou, whom Patroness we call 
 Of this the holiest land of all, 
 
 That circling seas admire; 
 The land where Power delights to 
 
 dwell. 
 And War his mightiest feats can tell. 
 And Poesy to sweetest swell 
 
 Attunes her voice and lyre; 
 
 Come, bluc-ey'd Maid, and with thee 
 
 bring 
 The goddess of the eagle wing; 
 
 To help our bold endeavour: 
 Long have our armies own'd thy aid, 
 O Victory, immortal maid ! 
 Now other deeds befits thee tell, 
 A bolder foe remains to quell ; 
 
 Give aid, then, now or never. 
 
 Chorus. 
 To **chargers and steeds mettle-proof tunc the string: 
 I speak from self knowledge in what I now sing — 
 In fight and in skirmish and battle array. 
 Their aid has been with us full many a day. 
 
 • An allusion to the customs of the palaestra or wrestling-school. 
 
 ■j- The Prytancuui. 
 
 t Clscnctus was the author of a law which limited the admissions to the Pryta- 
 ncum. All persons, therefore, who were ambitious of this honourable distinction, 
 took care to pay their court previously to him. 
 
 § Precedence at religious ceremonies and the public spectacles is the species of 
 rank more particularly intimated here. 
 
 II There was a law provided against soldiers observing too much foppery in the 
 arrangement of their hair. 
 
 t The Greeks, as well as the Romans, indulged very freely in the luxur}' of the 
 bath ; but it was considered a mark of effeminacy to visit the bath too often ; and I 
 believe there was an express law against the Knights thus ofl'ending. 
 
 ** The learned Casaubon imagines that the poet here satirizes the knights for the 
 immoderate attention they paid to their steeds. It was more probably intended as a 
 compliment to the Knights for a service which will be presently mentioned; and in- 
 
120 THE knights; 
 
 But their feats and achievements by land I shall pass : 
 
 The marvel* and show and the bravery was, 
 
 When in naval array and equipt like a crew 
 
 Of tars thorouorhbred, to the transports they flew. 
 
 Their cabins withf garlic and onions were stor'd ; 
 
 Their cans (cheaply bought) were laid duly on board. 
 
 They grasp'd their green oars, and like boatmen did ply. 
 
 And " iJlHippapae, Ryppapae, boys !" was the cry; 
 
 " Bear a hand, my brave§ Koppa, — Samphor, lad, pull away, 
 
 (The command came enforc'd twixt a shout and a neigh,) 
 
 Do your work, or we never shall compass the land." — 
 
 The very word brought them to Corinth's proud |[ strand. 
 
 They landed ; — and who had young blood in their veins 
 
 With their hoofs beat a bed up : but the clothes ask'd more pains. 
 
 Their food was young pungers ; and he who was cast 
 
 By good luck on a crab, held a princely repast. 
 
 The best grass was but dull to 't — and hence the bon-mot, 
 
 (Whether true, sirs, or false, best ^Theorus can show,) 
 
 geniously paid through that medium, which every Knight holds most dear. Babieca, 
 Frontino and Bayardo are almost as dear to the readers of romance as Eodrigo, Rug- 
 giero or Rinaldo. 
 
 * The first instance mentioned by Thucydidcs of Athenian cavalry being trans- 
 ported by sea, occurs in the second year of the Peloponnesian war. Thucyd. t. ii. 
 c. 56. 
 
 ■j- The construction of the ancient ships of war rendered it absolutely impo'ssible 
 to carry much provisions on board : and the crews, therefore, were generally debarked 
 for the purposes both of refreshment and sleep. The reader of Thucydides is often 
 surprised by unexpected events, resulting from the necessities to which this want of 
 accommodation exposed the Grecian fleets. See, among other instances, 1. viii. 
 c. 95. 
 
 ■^ Hippapx ! a humorous alteration for the common exhortatory word among 
 Greek sailors, Ryppapx. It is not to be expected that naval language should be 
 very harmonious. \n the old romance of Richard Cceur de Lion, that valorous 
 knight orders his rowers to exert themselves. 
 
 " Roweth on fast : who that is faint, 
 In evil water may he be dreynt:" 
 They rowed fast and sung thereto 
 With lieveluxv and rumbeloo. 
 
 § Horses were thus called, who were marked on the thigh with the letter K. 
 Those marked with an S were called SamphorfE. 
 
 II The poet alludes to an expedition recently conducted (Thucyd. t. iv. c. 44.) 
 under Nicias against Corinth, in which the exertions of the Knights were particu- 
 larly conspicuous. The praise is bestowed upon the horses ; but the audience rea- 
 dily applied the panegyric. 
 
 ^ Two persons are attacked in the following lines, Carcinus and Thcorus. Car- 
 cinus in Greek signifies a crab, and it appears that he was in the habit of passing 
 much of his time in Corinth, for the sake of the gaieties and guilty pleasures of that 
 luxurious and splendid town. Theorus and Carcinus had both some way or other 
 incurred the displeasures of the Knights. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 121 
 
 Of a crab on the spot, — ' By the lord of the ocean, 
 I speak to my soul's inward pain and commotion, 
 Of these horses and horsemen I well may complain ; 
 They compass the land and they fathom the main, 
 And escape from their full omnipresence is vain.' 
 
 ACT II. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 Sausage-seller, Chorus. 
 
 The anxiety of the Chorus is relieved at the end of this Intermede by the 
 reentrance of the Sausage-seller; and the *name which he assumes to him- 
 self, is sufficient at once to convince them that his exertions in the fSenate 
 
 * In allusion to the common termination of Athenian names, Thrasybulus, Neo- 
 bulus, Critobulus, etc., he tells them that he has returned a Nicobulus (victor in the 
 senate) to them. 
 
 f A succinct account of this branch of the Athenian polity may not perhaps be 
 unacceptable to the reader. The Athenian Senate consisted of five hundred mem- 
 bers : i. e., fifty from each of the ten tribes. It was elected every year, and each 
 member's life and character underwent a strict examination, before he was admitted 
 into this dignified body. To fill up vacancies and deaths, each tribe furnished a 
 subsidiary body of fifty members. The Attic year was divided into ten parts; and 
 thus each tribe had in turn the oflice of presiding in the Senate. The tribe, to 
 whose turn it fell in succession, was called for the time the Prytanes ; and during 
 that period, they were excused from all other public duties. In this work the word 
 Prytanes has been generally rendered by the word Chairmen. To avoid confusion, 
 every Prytaneia (or company of Prytanes) was divided into five weeks of days, by 
 which means the fifty Prytanes were subdivided into five Decuriae ; each Decuria 
 having charge of the government for a week. During this period of oflice, they 
 assumed the name of Proedri : out of these one was elected by lot to preside over 
 the rest, in each of the seven days : so that of the ten Proedri, three were necessarily 
 excluded from presiding. The President of the Proedri was called Epistates. To 
 his custody were committed the public seal, and the keys of the Citadel and the 
 public Exchequer. It was an important trust, and therefore no man was permitted 
 by the law to hold it more than one day, nor to be elected into it a second time. As 
 character and not fortune constituted the right of becoming a member of the Senate, 
 it will be seen that the poorest man in Athens had the chance of holding the 
 sovereign power one day at least in the year. The Senate held its sittings every 
 day, those only excepted which were appropriated to the public festivals. All acts 
 of this body, whether approved by the Ecclesia (i. e., the General Assembly) or not, 
 were binding for the year they were in oflice. The especial duty of the Senate was 
 to correct and modify such decrees as were to be submitted to the General Assembly, 
 whose ratification alone passed them into j)crnianent acts of the legislature. Hence 
 the bon-inot of Anacharsis the Scythian: the laws of Athens are discussed by sages, 
 and put into execution liv fools. 
 16 
 
122 THE knights; 
 
 have been crowned with complete success. A shout of acclamation bursts 
 from that friendly body at this welcome intelligence ; they declare, in strong 
 language, how desirous they are to hear a more particular account of his ex- 
 ertions; they are not sure but they would even take a long journey to enjoy 
 the narration. The new favourite does not try their resolution on this point, 
 but proceeds immediately to gratify their wishes. 
 
 And trust me, friends, the tale will pay the hearing — 
 Straight as he went from hence, I clapt all sail 
 And followed close behind. Within I found him 
 Launching his bolts and thunder-driving words, 
 Denouncing all the Knights, as traitors, vile 
 Conspirators — jags, crags and masses huge 
 Of stone were nothing to the monstrous words 
 His foaming mouth heav'd up. All these to hear 
 Did the grave Council seriously incline; 
 They love a tale of scandal to their hearts, 
 And his had been as quick in birth as golden herb. 
 Mustard was in their faces, and their brows 
 With frowns w^ere furrow'd up. I saw the storm, 
 Mark'd how his words had sunk upon them, taking 
 Their very senses prisoners : — and, oh ! 
 In knavery's name, thought I, — by all the fools 
 And scrubs and rogues and scoundrels in the town, — 
 By that same forum, where my early youth 
 Received its first instruction, let me gather 
 True courage now: be oil upon my tongue. 
 And shameless Impudence direct my speech- 
 Just as these thoughts pass'd over me, I heard 
 A sound of thunder pealing on my right — 
 I mark'd the omen, — grateful, kiss'd the ground — 
 And pushing briskly thro' the *lattice work — 
 Rais'd my voice to its highest pitch, and thus 
 Began upon them — " Messieurs of the Senate, 
 I bring good news, and hope your favour for it. 
 Anchovies, such as since the war began, 
 Ne'er cross'd my eyes for cheapness, do this day 
 Adorn our markets" — at the words a calm 
 Came over every face, and all was hush'd — 
 A f crown was voted me upon the spot. 
 Then I (the thought was of the moment's birth) 
 Making a mighty secret of it, bade them 
 Put pots and pans in instant requisition, 
 And then — one obol loads you with anchovies, 
 
 * To keep the crowds from thronging in, the places of public meeting were sur- 
 rounded with a rope, and sergeants appointed to keep the doors. 
 
 f A crown or chaplet was a reward usually conferred upon such persons as, by 
 the annunciation of good news, gained the momentary affections of the Athenians. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 123 
 
 Said I: anon most violent applause, 
 
 And clapping hands ensued ; and every face 
 
 Grew unto mine, gaping in idiot vacancy. 
 
 My Paphlagonian discern'd the humour 
 
 O' the time ; and seeing how the members all 
 
 Were tickled most with words, thus utter'd him : 
 
 " Sirs — Gentlemen — 't is my good will and pleasure, 
 
 That for this kindly news we sacrifice 
 
 One hundred* oxen to our patron-goddess." 
 
 Straight the tide turn'd : each head within the Senate 
 
 Nodded assent and warm goodwill to Cleon : 
 
 " What! shall a little bull flesh gain the day]" 
 
 Thought I within me: then aloud, and shooting 
 
 Beyond his mark: — "1 double, sirs, this vote, — 
 
 Nay more, sirs, should tomorrow's sun see sprats 
 
 One hundred to the penny sold, I move 
 
 That we make offering of a thousand goats 
 
 Unto Diana." — Every head was raised; 
 
 And all turn'd eyes incontinent on me. 
 
 This was a blow he ne'er recover'd : straight 
 
 He fell to muttering fooleries and words 
 
 Of no account — the chairman and the oflicers 
 
 Were now upon him. — All, meantime, was uproar 
 
 In th' Assembly — Nought talkM of but anchovies. — 
 
 How far'd our statesman! he with suppliant tones 
 
 Begg'd a few moments' pause. — " Rest ye, sirs, rest ye 
 
 Awhile — I have a tale will pay the hearing — 
 
 A herald is arriv'd from Sparta, claiming 
 
 An audience — he brings terms of peace, and craves 
 
 Your leave to utter them before yc." " Peace !" 
 
 Cried all, (their voices one) " is this a time 
 
 To talk of peace ] — out, dotard ! What, the rogues 
 
 Have heard the price anchovies bear ! — marry 
 
 Our needs, sir, ask not peace. — War, war, for us — 
 
 And, chairmen, break the assembly up." 'T was done. 
 
 Upon their bidding, straight — who might oppose 
 
 Such clamour"? — then, what haste and expedition 
 
 On every side ! one moment clears the rails ! 
 
 I, the meantime, steal privately away 
 
 And buy me all the leeks and coriander 
 
 In -the market — these I straight make largess of, 
 
 • When the Athenian people were to be cajoled, a feast or sacrifice (and they 
 were nearly synonymous terms, for a small portion only of the victim was oft'ered to 
 the gods) was the surest and most elTectual mode. It was thus that the abandoned 
 Chares maintained himself in office; who, from his share of the plunder made from 
 the temple of Delphi, once feasted the whole people of Athens. (Ath. 1. xii. p. 533.) 
 It is curious that the only interpolations made by the thirty tyrants in the MS, laws 
 of Solon, were directed in the same way to the gratification of Athenian appetite. 
 (Oratio livsise contra Nicomachum.) 
 
124 THE knights; 
 
 And gratis give as sauce to dress their fish. 
 
 Who may recount the praises infinite 
 
 And groomlike courtesies this bounty gain'd me ! 
 
 In short you see a man, that for one pennyworth 
 
 Of coriander vile has purchas'd him 
 
 An entire senate — not a man among them 
 
 But is at my behest and does me reverence.* 
 
 It will readily be imagined that this speech elicits a song of applause from 
 the delighted Chorus. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Well, my son, hast thou begun and well hast thou competed ; 
 Rich bliss and gain wilt thou attain, thy mighty task completed. 
 He, thy rival, shall admire. In all crafts and tricks that be. 
 
 Chok'd with passion, pale with ire. At all points art thou equipt. 
 Thy audacity and fire: Eye and tongue with treach'ry tipt. 
 
 He shall own, abash'd, in thee Soul and body, both are dipt 
 
 Power and peerless mastery In deceit and knavery. 
 
 Forward, son of mine, undaunted — complete thy bold beginning : 
 No aid from me shall be delay'd — which may the prize be winning. 
 
 * Absurd as some parts of the above narration may appear to an English reader, 
 it can hardly be called a caricature of the public meetings in Athens. Every per- 
 son, conversant with the orators and historians of that singular republic, has occa- 
 sionally met with instances of ridiculous conduct, which hardly fall below what is 
 here represented : he has seen the most frivolous circumstances swelled into import- 
 ance, and the most important trifled with in her noisy and crowded assemblies. The 
 character of them may be estimated from the following well known stories among 
 others. When Cleon was in the height of his power with the people, (who at the 
 same time idolized and despised him,) some matter of importance was before the 
 Assembly; the people had met, and Cleon's presence was impatiently expected. 
 His tardiness occasioned strong murmurs of disapprobation ; at length he made his 
 appearance : he rose in his place, and addressing the people, told them that he had 
 some strangers to entertain at his table, and begged that the meeting might be de- 
 ferred to another day. The people, instead of resenting this impertinence, started 
 from their seats, clapped their hands violently in token of applause ; and the orator 
 was in greater credit than ever. The Assembly, one day in later times, had been 
 thrown into a violent state of agitation and inquietude by the account of some hos- 
 tilities committed by Philip of Macedon. At this trying moment the rostrum was 
 mounted by a man of diminutive stature and ill made; it was Leon, the ambassador 
 from Byzantium. The Assembly broke out into shouts of laughter. Leon could 
 hardly gain a moment's attention. " Gentlemen," said he, at length, " you are 
 pleased to be merry : but what if you were to see my wife ? she scarcely reaches my 
 knee ; and yet," continued he, with a grave face and pompous tone of voice, " when 
 a dispute takes place between us, little as we are, all Byzantium cannot contain us !" 
 A stroke of pleasantry was sure to succeed at Athens : the mock solemnity of Leon 
 amused the Assembly ; and the succours which he came to demand were instantly 
 granted, though Philip's proceeding had very justly created no small degree of ap- 
 prehension in the Athenian people for their own safety. — See Le Jeune Anacharsis- 
 and Crebillon's Lettres Athuiiennes. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 125 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 Chorus, Sausage-vender, Cleon. 
 
 The Paphlagonian returns to the stage at the conclusion of this address of 
 the Chorus. He enters, " pushing a maimed wave before him," and with an 
 air as if he could " drink up" his victorious opponent. His thundering aspect 
 and his menacing words are equally'lost upon the Sausage-vender, who, in his 
 own language, " is delighted with his opponent's threats — laughs at his smoke- 
 boast'ing — and makes the fittest answer to his menaces by singing the mothon,* 
 and crying cuckow in a circle." Another scene of altercation now takes place 
 between these intellectual gladiators ; and the reader, who has already had a 
 specimen of Athenian invective, will not perhaps be eager to enter into the 
 details of this second war of words. Some of their strokes, however, must 
 not be omitted. The Sausage-vender remarks upon his adversary's passion, 
 and asks him if he will have a purse to eat and so allay his wrath. Cleon, 
 after a volley of abuse, threatens to bring him before Demus : that is, in other 
 words, the people. " There," says he, " you will be sure to be worsted — you 
 will find no credit there, while I can play upon him as I please." " You 
 seem to consider this Demus as your own property." " Yes, for I know the 
 morsels which he likes to feed upon." "True, and like children's nurses, 
 you grudge the food you give him — you champ, and champ ; and for one morsel 
 that you give the child, eat three yourself." Cleon now calls loudly for 
 Demus, the representative of the people ; and that dignified person makes his 
 appearance : a growl, and an instant charge of ftheft upon the parties present, 
 express at once his grandeur, his resentment, and his suspicious temper. 
 The two candidates state their several claims to his favour. " I am the friend 
 of Demus," says Cleon, " and am as much attached to him as a lover to his 
 mistress." " I am your rival in his affections," says the sausage-seller. 
 " Yes, my dear Demus ; I have loved you this long time, and it would give 
 me the greatest pleasure to be of service to you ; all honest men partake my 
 sentiments; but this man keeps us away and prevents our showing you proofs 
 of our attachment." He proceeds to state very candidly to Demus that he re- 
 sembled very much those capricious beauties, who dismiss such suitors from 
 them as are men of probity and honour, and dispose of their favours and affec- 
 tions to the lowest of mankind — to lamplighters, tanners and curriers.:): Cleon 
 
 * The mothon was one of the songs which, among the Greeks, were accompanied 
 by a dance. Ath. xiv. 618. 
 
 \ The article charged as being stolen is the Eircsione. This was an olive branch 
 wrapped in wool ; at the festivals Pyancpsia and Tliargeha the Athenian boys used 
 to carry branches of this kind in procession, and then suspend them over the doors 
 of the house. The custom of covering the fronts of the houses with branches on 
 festival days, prevails still in Catholic countries. 
 
 \ Isocratcs, whose honest virtue and genuine patriotism place him in the same 
 rank among the rhetoricians, as the son of Sophroniscus held among the philo- 
 phers, addresses much the same language to the General Assembly. " When you 
 are consulting on your own private affairs, you seek out those advisers, whose supe- 
 rior wisdom enables them best to direct you : but wlien the affairs of the stale are 
 
126 THE KXIGHTS; 
 
 knew his strong place; he presently, therefore, proposes that Demus shall call 
 a General Assembly, and that it should be there decided who had most pre- 
 tensions to his favour. His adversary has no objection, provided the Assem- 
 bly be not held in the Pnyx. " The old gentleman," says he, " is a man of 
 excellent sense, while he abides at home ; but the moment he goes to that 
 cursed place, he is as much at his wit's ends, as the man who wishes to dry 
 his figs in the sun, and has not a stalk to fasten them by." (This was the 
 Athenian mode of drying figs.) But Demus will hear of no other place. 
 " Pnyx is my true and proper seat. I hold my sittings nowhere else." 
 " Then I am a ruined man," says the Sausage-vender. 
 
 The Chorus, as well as the Sausage-vender, knew that the gist of the con- 
 test must lie in this trial of strength before the General Assembly: they pre- 
 pare their friend accordingly for the arduous contest. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Hawser and cable both let free, Such as may the foe constrain 
 
 We drive before a raging sea. In indissoluble chain. 
 
 Mark you plant within your eye 'T is a many-colour'd man ; 
 
 High resolve and bravery. Apt in fancy, — quick in plan : 
 
 Words gigantic must be falling, Making way, where others see 
 
 Overwhelming and appalling; Stern impossibility. 
 
 Be full then, impetuous and bright in your daring. 
 Clear your decks, and for battle and blood be preparing; 
 Let your *dolphins rise high, while the enemy 's nearing, 
 Or make a full dash, while his vessel is wearing. 
 
 The scene now changes to the |Pnyx, and the pleadings begin with the 
 author's characteristic humour; Cleon taking the lead. 
 
 under deliberation, all such persons meet with distrust and jealousy, and your praises 
 are reserved for the most worthless of those who mount the bema: there the drunken 
 are considered as better disposed to the people than the sober, the irrational than the 
 wise : and the feeders upon the public revenue are more valued than those who 
 execute the laborious offices of the state at their own charges." Iso. de Pace, v. i. p. 
 329. See also Xenophon de Rep. Ath. c. 1 . ss. 4. 5. 
 
 * Dolphins were vast weights, which might be hoisted and dropped on any vessel 
 passing near, and with such violence as to sink it. 
 
 + As Demus in the following scene is supposed to typify the Ecclesia or General 
 Assembly, it may not be amiss to give a short account of that important branch of 
 the Athenian constitution, in which the democracy or real power of the state re- 
 sided. The Ecclesia consisted of all such as were freemen of Athens, of what 
 quality soever, and generally met to the number of five or six thousand members. 
 These Assemblies were either stated or extraordinary. The stated Assemblies were 
 those held at four regular times during the thirtyfive days that each Prytaneia or 
 company of Prytanes successively presided in the Senate. Each of these four days 
 had its peculiar duties, and regular public business to transact. Before the gratuity 
 of three obols was allowed to each member for his attendance, it was sometimes 
 necessary to use a little force to compel the attendance of the citizens. The extra- 
 ordinary Assemblies were such as were summoned by the Generals or the Polemarch, 
 in the case of some sudden and unexpected war. The magistrates who had the care 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 127 
 
 SCENE III. 
 
 Cleon, Sausage-seller, Demus, Chorus. 
 
 Cleon (^anapasstics.) "With our lady divine, the town's saviour and mine, 
 my prayers make, as meet, their beginning: — (a pause of affected de- 
 votioti) 
 If disguise none I wear, while to Demus I swear 
 
 such love as from none he is winning, 
 (Lysicles* I except, and a clause too is left 
 for the fair]- Salabaccha and Cynna,) 
 
 of these Assemblies were the Prytanes, the Proedri, and the Epistatse. The Pry- 
 tanes sometimes called the people together, and always before the meeting set up a 
 programma in some place of general concourse, in which were contained the matters 
 that were to form the subject of consideration at the ensuing Assembly. The Proe- 
 dri, as their name imports, held the first places in the Assemblies. Their business 
 was to propose to the people the subjects whicli they were to deliberate and determine 
 upon in the meeting: at the end of which their offices expired. It was provided by 
 a law, that in every Assembly, one of the Tribes should be appointed by lots to hold 
 the office of Proedri, to preside at the Suggestum, (or place from which the speeches 
 were delivered,) and defend the commonwealth, by preventing the orators and others 
 from propounding anything inconsistent with the received laws, or destructive of 
 the peace and welfare of the city. The Epistates, or President of the Assembly, was 
 chosen by lot out of the Proedri; the chief part of his office seems to have consisted 
 in granting the people liberty to give their voices, which they were not permitted to 
 do till he had given the signal. The Assemblies were held in the Agora, or market- 
 place, in the theatre of Bacchus, or in the Pnyx. They began with expiatory rites, 
 with prayers to the gods for the prosperity of Athens, and with bitter imprecations 
 upon such as should counsel anything in that Assembly to the prejudice of Athens. 
 (See the Comedy of the Female Parliament, where all the proceedings are parodied 
 with much humour.) When these ceremonies were concluded, the crier, by com- 
 mand of the Proedri, repeated the probideuma, or decree of the Senate, upon which 
 the Assembly was to deliberate : he then demanded in a loud voice, " which of the 
 men above fifty years of age will make an oration 1" The elders having delivered 
 their opinions, the crier made a second proclamation, " It is allowed to every Athe. 
 nian, in conformity with existing laws, to deliver his sentiments." It was the pri- 
 vilege, therefore, of every Athenian citizen to give his opinion on public afiairs at 
 pleasure, but the task was more commonly left to the public orators, of whom some 
 account has already been given. The curious reader may compare with these ac- 
 counts of the Athenian Senate and General Assembly, the general establishments of 
 the Italian republics under Otho I. Hist, des Rep. Ital, t. i. c. 6. 
 
 * Who Lysicles was has been explained already. 
 
 •j- Salabaccha and Cynna were two famous courtezans of the day. Persons of 
 their description were not unfrequcntly introduced on the Grecian stage; and if the 
 letters of Alciphron (by whomsoever written) may be considered as a correct picture 
 of Athenian manners, authors frequently took this method of revenging the private 
 affronts, which they might happen to have received from them. Epist. Alciphronis. 
 V. i. Epist. 29. 
 
128 THE knights; 
 
 May the *HalI without tasking my labour, or asking 
 
 equivalent, find me a dinner. 
 If time my love draw to a close, may the saw 
 
 take in vengeance my body's dimension; 
 May I wither and pine, till I symbol the line, 
 
 which without any breadth is extension. 
 Sous. To love — fair and true — I can make my claim too; 
 
 and if ever its chain should less bind me; 
 May I mince into meat, so minute that who eat, 
 
 must have eyes keen as fAttic to find tne. 
 Further, sirs, may the knife make a push at my life, 
 
 and for cheese may the :J:salad receive me, 
 To my own fleshhook hung, may men force me along, 
 
 and nought but the §churchyard relieve me. 
 Clean (/o Dsmus.^ For service and zeal I to facts, sir, appeal : — 
 
 say of all that e'er sway'd this proud city. 
 Who had ever more skill your snug coffer to fill, 
 
 undisturb'd by respectance or pity] 
 For one and for two I 've the rope and the screw, 
 
 to a third I make soft supplication; 
 And I spurn at all ties, and all laws I despise, 
 
 so that Demus find gratification. 
 Saus. Mere smoke this and dust! Demus, take it on trust, 
 
 that my service and zeal can run faster : 
 1 am he that can steal at the mouth a man's meal, 
 
 and set it before my own master. 
 Other proofs than of love in this knave's grate and stove, 
 
 noble lord, may your eyes be discerning : 
 There the coal and the ||fuel that should warm your own gruel, 
 
 to your slave's ease and comfort are burning. 
 
 * The nature of the establishment called the Prytaneum, or Halls of public ban- 
 quets, has been explained already. 
 
 + La nature avoit done les Atheniens d'une grande subtilite dans les organes 
 optiques; et en eux la force intuitive etoit telle, que jamais notre vue ne sauroit at- 
 teindre au point d'eloignement ou la lour s'etendoit. Du promontoire de Sunium, 
 dit Pausanias, ils distinguent jusqu'au plumage du casque et jusqu'au sommet de la 
 pique dont on a arme une statue colossale de Minerve, place e dans la citadelle 
 d'Athenes. Cependant cette distance est tout au moins en ligne droite de dix lieues 
 de France. De Pauw. t. i. p. 109. 
 
 t The composition of an Athenian salad will be explained in the comedy of the 
 Peace. 
 
 § In the original Cerameicus. Duo Athenis fucrunt loci hoc nomine, alter Cele- 
 bris propter sepulcbra bene meritorum de republica ; alter propter habitationem mere- 
 tricum. Beckii Comment. 
 
 H Lucian, who had alwa3's his eye upon Aristophanes, taunts the Rhetoricians in 
 the same way that his master does the poets. See that admirable piece of humour, 
 the Rhetorum Prseceptor, Luc. v. vii. p. 2.38. Bipont. edit. The Athenians being at 
 once metallurgists and navigators, the consumption of wood was necessarily great, 
 and the article itself consequently very dear. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 129 
 
 Nay, since Marathon's day, when thy sword (Jto Demus) pav'd the way 
 
 to Persia's disgrace and declension, 
 (That bountiful mint in which *bards without stint 
 
 fashion words of sixfooted dimension) 
 Like a stone or a stock, hast not sat on a frock, 
 
 cold, comfortless, bare and derided: — 
 While this chief of the land never yet to your hand 
 
 a cushion or seat hath provided ? 
 But take this {giving a cushion) to the ease of your hams and your knees : 
 
 for since Salamis' proud day of story. 
 With a fleet ruin-hurl'd, they took rank in the world, 
 and should seat them in comfort and glory. 
 Dem. What vision art thou ! let me read on thy brow, 
 what lineage and kindred have won thee ! 
 Thou wast born for my weal, and the impress and seal 
 of Harmed ius are surely upon thee. 
 Cleon (morfijicd.) O feat easy done ! and is Demus thus won 
 
 by diminutive gifts and oblations? 
 Saus. Small my baits 1 allow, but in size they outgo 
 
 your own little douceurs and donations. 
 Ckon {fiercely.') Small or great be my bait, ne'er my boast I abate, 
 but for proof head and shoulders I offer, 
 That in act and in will to Demus here still 
 a love unexampled I profler. 
 Saus. {dactylics.) You proffer love indeed ! you that have seen him bleed, 
 buffing and roughing it years twice four ; 
 A tub and cask :|:tenant, — vulture lodg'd — sixth floor man ; 
 
 batter'd and tatter'd, and bruis'd and sore ! 
 There was he pent and shent with u most vile intent, 
 
 his milk and honey sweet from him to squeeze ; 
 Pity none e'er he won, though the smoke pinch'd his eyes, 
 and his sweet wine it was drawn to the lees. 
 
 • Not only bards, however, and orators swore by the battles of Marathon and 
 Salamis, but the very cooks embcHishcd their diction by the same appeal. Vide 
 Athcn. 1. ix. p. 380. The battles of Marathon and Salamis have been attended 
 with consequences of too much importance to society, to admit of their being made 
 a subject even of momentary pleasantry ; but it may be permitted to remark, that 
 they are not without their merit to the classical reader in furnishing some variety to 
 those topics of Athenian eulogy, — the battle with the Amazons — the war for the re- 
 covery of the dead bodies at Thebes — and the services to the Heracleidaa, which so 
 perpetually recur in the Attic writers. See among other pieces of antiquity the 
 Funeral Orations of Lysias and Plato, and the speech of Isocrates, called the 
 Panegyrica. 
 
 f An allusion to the stones, with which the Pnyx, the usual place of meeting for 
 the General Assembly, was crowded. 
 
 \ The poet in the strongest manner paints the miserable accommodation, provided 
 for the numbers of country people, wliom the policy of Pericles had obliged to take 
 up their residence in the capital. The preceding line applies to the number of years 
 wliich tiie Pcloponnesian war had now lasted. 
 17 
 
130 THE knights; 
 
 When Archeptolemus lately brought *Peace to us; 
 
 who but you (to Cleon) scatter'd and scar'd the virgin, 
 While your foot rudely plac'd, where Honour's soul is cas'd, 
 
 spurn'd at all such as acceptance were urging? 
 Cleon {fawning.) And, my good sir, the caused — Marry that Demus' laws 
 
 Greece universal might obey : 
 Oracles here have I, and they in verity 
 
 bear that this lord of our's must hold sway, 
 Judging in f Arcady, and for his salary, 
 
 earning him easily a five obol coin. 
 Let him but wait his fate ; and in mean time his state, 
 
 food and support shall be care of mine. [that way : 
 
 Saus. (contemptuously.) Arcady, fee and sway ! look'd not your thoughts 
 
 donative, gift and bribe, these were your aim : 
 War is your hoodwink wherein Demus' senses sink, 
 
 'till to your hand he crouch trembling and tame. 
 But let him once again unto his field and plain. 
 
 Peace, in thy arms, sweetest maiden, be borne ; 
 Let him but play the guest with olives newly prest, 
 
 and hold a tete-a-tete with green corn; 
 Straight he will learn and know, who 't is hath work'd him woe, 
 
 that his own bribery might have sway : 
 Then from his rustic home, like salvage man he '11 come, 
 
 turning up :j:sea shells along his way. 
 {to Cleon.) You well advis'd of this, no fav'ring moment miss 
 
 wild dreams and oracles ever to proffer — 
 Cleon. (^interrupting.) This to me 1 — and from thee 1 — O matchless villainy ! 
 
 calumnies thus 'gainst a statesman to offer, 
 Who blessings rich and great, on this our town and state, 
 
 ever is careful to heap and to pour: 
 Noble Themistocles, Ceres can witness it, 
 
 in his prosperity never heap'd more. 
 Saus. Hear him, ye starry spheres ! earth and sea, lend your ears ! 
 
 he to compare with our patriot of yore. 
 Who found our city trim, full to the lip and brim, 
 
 yet made her liquor cup run all o'er! 
 When she had din'd and supp'd, his bounty serv'd her up, 
 
 as a dessert, the §Peiraeus rare ; 
 New fish still dealing her, without curtailing her, 
 
 matchless caterer ! her old bill of fare. 
 
 • Thuc. I. iv. CO. 12—22. 
 
 f Arcadia, as the central province of Peloponnesus, is here put for the whole of 
 that peninsula. Cleon's oracles therefore promised all that was most agreeable to 
 Athenian imagination : extended dominion, judicial employment, and extraordinary 
 pay. 
 
 i An allusion to the shells, which were used in the courts of justice. 
 
 § The policy of Themistocles in securing the famous harbour of Peiraeus by long 
 walls is too well known to need a further explanation. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 131 
 
 But 'neath your rule our town totters and tumbles down, 
 
 dwarf d and curtail'd in her members fair; 
 With walls she 's overrun, with prophecies undone ; 
 
 yet with Themistocles dare you compare ! 
 He, sooth, his country fled — while you on *cates are fed, 
 
 on rich conserves, and on cakes of the best! 
 Clean. Demus, I make appeal — must I this tempest feel, 
 
 Thus for my love to you harass'd and prest ] 
 
 But the reign of favouritism is beginning to be at an end. The li^ht is let 
 in upon Demus, and conscious that he has been cheated long enough, he de- 
 sires Cleon to forbear his railleries. The Sausage-vender follows up his in- 
 cipient triumph. 
 
 Saus. 
 
 Mark him, Demus, mark and soc Petty plunder — sweet douceur, — 
 
 Triple dye of knavery! Compromise and bargain sure — 
 
 When your senses wander wide ; — Symbol of mere deglutition. 
 
 Lost in ignorance and pride, — He sucks all at competition — 
 
 This the man on whom to fix Fibre, tendril, root and branch, 
 
 Haifa score of dirty tricks. Nought escapes his grinders staunch ; 
 
 All that form'd your daintiest treat But with either hand a scoop. 
 
 And your banquet's sav'riest meat — All is gone at one fell swoop. 
 
 The boisterous answers, wliich Cleon makes to these and some similar 
 charges, are ridiculed by two powerful Greek words, which compare them to 
 " beating the sea, and making a flouncing noise with the broad part of an 
 oar:" while the attacks awaken Uie poetical powers and congratulations of 
 the friendly Chorus. 
 
 Cho. Star of salvation, through the night to darkling man apnearing-, 
 Now blessed be that fruitful tongue and port of mighty daring. 
 Pursue thy course, and thou, perforce, o'er Greece and this our nation, 
 Wilt hold high state and shine elate in most exalted station. 
 A three-fork'd sceptre in thy hand, large wealth wilt thou be making, 
 Rending and blending all at will — confounding, — stirring, — shaking. 
 Your rival noos'd — beware he 's loos'd — keep sturdy grasp and tension : 
 Small task I ask from bulk like thine and sides of such dimension. 
 
 Cleon, however, had been too long in oflUce, and knew too well the sweets 
 of power, to be dispossessed very easily : and one source of security particu- 
 larly remained to him: — let affairs come to the worst, he can "stop the 
 mouths" of his most violent enemies, while one of those shields remained, 
 which he had taken from the enemy at Pylus. But the ingenuity of his rival 
 
 * The placentsE Achilici.'E, mentioned in the text as the chief article of Oleon's 
 diet, were made of a particular sort of biiricy, vvhicb, according to Lucian, had the 
 sini?ular virtue of augmrntin<T flie ficnltv of intuition and the suiitilty of the optic 
 origans. 
 
132 THE knights; 
 
 finds a topic of accusation and complaint against him even on that subject, 
 which in his own imagination formed his most brilliant achievement. In the 
 pride of conquest, Cleon had hung up the shields of the captured Spartans as 
 a trophy in the temple of the gods. The laws of Athens required, that all 
 offerings of this nature should first be mutilated or dispossessed of whatever 
 could afterwards make them serviceable for profane uses. In neglect of this 
 ordinance, Cleon had suspended his shields, without previously dispossessing 
 them of their handles. The Sausage-vender, therefore, does not merely uso 
 the language of metaphor, when hearing his rival talk of these shields, he bids 
 him stop, and tells him he has " a handle against himself." He draws per- 
 haps upon his own ingenuity, when he endeavours to persuade Demus, that 
 this omission was not a mere act of forgetfulness in Cleon, but that it pro- 
 ceeded from a settled and premeditated purpose, that in case he found his mas- 
 ter " roaring and looking the *ostracism at him," he might have a resource 
 wherewith " to arm all the tanners, cheesemongers, and venders of honey in 
 the town, and then seize upon the granaries." The imagination of Demus is 
 presently occupied with this narration, and he exclaims in an accent of terror 
 and dismay at the deceits which were practised upon him. Cleon endeavours 
 to reassure him — and particularly boasts of his talent in keeping down cabals, 
 and of his readiness at giving tongue, when a conspiracy is on foot. " Like 
 enough," says his persevering rival : " conspiracy is to you, what troubled 
 water is to those who fish for eels. When the lake is still, their labour goes 
 for nothing; when the mud is well stirred, they take eels in plenty. It is the 
 same case between our city and yourself. But tell me," he continues, " you 
 deal in leather, and you profess a great affection for Demus : did you ever, in 
 the plenitude of your love, make him your debtor for a pair of shoes ■?" " That 
 I '11 be sworn he did not," says the old gentleman. The Sausage-vender fol- 
 lows up his blow by instantly presenting a pair. Demus is all gratitude — he 
 declares that himself, the republic, and his toes never had so sincere a friend. 
 These kind affections are still further improved by the present of one of those 
 mantles which had double sleeves hanging down from the shoulder blade. 
 " Themistocles himself," says Demus, in a transport of gratitude, "never 
 struck upon a brighter thought than this : his fortifications in the Peirseus were 
 a brilliant invention ; but this far surpasses it !" Cleon reproaches his adver- 
 sary with his servile flattery : " I have but borrowed your own manners," re- 
 plies his opponent : " I am like our Athenians, who having drunk freely at an 
 
 * Of the nature of this punishment more will be said hereafter : one nearly simi- 
 lar exists in the despotic empire of China, where the Emperor is as jealous of his 
 authority, as the sovereign people of Athens were of their supreme dominion. It is 
 enacted in the penal code of China, that if any officer belonging to any of the de- 
 partments of government, or any private individual, shall address the Emperor in 
 praise of the virtues, abilities, or successful administration, of any of his Majesty's 
 confidential ministers of state, it is to be considered as an evidence of a treasonable 
 conspiracy subversive of government, and shall therefore be investigated with the ut- 
 most strictness and accuracy : the causes and origin of these interested praises of 
 persons high in rank and office being traced, the offending party shall suffer death, 
 by being beheaded, after remaining in prison the usual period. His wives and chil- 
 dren shall become slaves, and his property shall be confiscated. — Ta 'I'sing Leu Lee, 
 etc., by Sir George Staunton. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 133 
 
 entertainment, and finding it necessary to retire for a moment, use their neigh- 
 bours *slippers instead of their own." Cleon now finds it necessary to open 
 his pursestrings, and he makes a present of a robe — but the old gentleman's 
 nose grows delicate, and he complains bitterly of a smell of leather. The 
 rival courtier improves the hint, " Do you remember, sir, when fsilphium- 
 spice was sold so cheap V " I do," says Demus. " It was all this man's 
 doing; he thought the low price would tempt you to a purchase : then, says 
 he, when my masters sit in the Courts of Justice, they will poison each other 
 with their own effluvia." More humour of this kind follows, till Cleon, vexed 
 at his adversary's success, who sounds indeed the very bass string of humility 
 to gain the ascendancy over Demus, threatens him with some of those vexa- 
 tious proceedings, which, by the peculiar nature of the Attic constitution, a 
 man, high in olfice, could so easily employ to harass those who had incurred 
 his displeasure. 
 
 For this, friend, it shall be thy fate And still the more to drain thy purse, 
 To fit a :j:vessel for the state ; A leaky skiflT shall be thy curse. 
 
 • It appears to have been a custom among the Greeks, to leave their slippers in 
 an antichambcr when they went to an entertainment. 
 
 f The silphium, or herb Benjamin, was much used by the ancients in medicine. 
 It was brought chiefly from the country of Gyrene, and was held in such high 
 veneration, that a leaf of it was suspended in the Temple of Apollo. Cleon, it ap- 
 pears, had provided that this valuable herb should be brought in great quantities to 
 Athens; and for this he deserved commendation. It was the poet's purpose, how- 
 ever, to put an unfavourable, or at least a ridiculous construction on all his actions. 
 
 i For the Athenian fleet, the state furnished only the ship and the crew ; all the 
 other expenses fell upon the rich citizens, who, when appointed to this office, took 
 the name of Trierarcs. Thus, under democracy, as Mr Mitford observes, no man 
 was master of his own : property, person, everything must be devoted, not to the 
 service only, but to the pleasure and fanc}- of the people. The wealthy were not 
 allowed the choice of leaving Attica, and the constitution positively denied them thj 
 choice of quiet there. To execute the duties of magistracy, to equip a ship of war, 
 to preside at a public feast, to direct a dramatic entertainment, and to f«rnish the 
 whole cost, were equally required of all supposed of competent estate. 
 
 " The spirit of tyranny," continues the historian, " inherent in the Athenian con- 
 stitution, and the disregard, upon principle, for property and the convenience and 
 satisfaction of individuals, are very strikingly marked in a regulation which wc find 
 had the force of law. When an expensive office, and particularly when the equip- 
 ment of a trireme (as the larger vessels of war were termed) was assessed on any 
 one, he might, for the time, avoid the burthen by indicating a richer man ; and if 
 the superior wealth were denied, offering to exchange estates. The person so chal- 
 lenged had no alternative but to take upon himself the office, or accept the exchange. 
 The satisfaction thus of an Englishman, in considering his house and his field, more 
 securely his own under the protection of the law, than a castle defended by its gar- 
 rison, or a kingdom by its armies, was unknown in Attica. It was as dangerous to 
 be rich under the Athenian democracy as under the Turkish despotism; the same 
 subterfuges were used to conceal wealth ; the same bribery and flattery to preserve 
 it; with this difference principally, that, in Athens, the flattery was grosser, in pro- 
 portion to the low condition of the flattered and their multitude ; which so divided 
 
134 THE knights; 
 
 With all the neverending cares Sous, (^solemnly.) 
 
 Of pitching, tarring and repairs, — All threat I forbear. 
 
 Crazy in bottom, front and tail, — Or the menaced might rue it : 
 
 A tottering mast — a rotten sail. But I have a prayer, 
 
 Cho. (<o Cleon.) And the gods see me through it. — 
 
 Abate your threats — restrain your ire ; (^speaking rapidly) May a pan of sleeve 
 There 's too much wood upon the fire. fish, 
 
 Forbear, great man of words : no more : Hot as fancy could wish, 
 
 For see your vessel 's boiling o'er. Before you take station 
 
 Cleon. Some day, when oration 
 
 With tribute, tax and fine oppress'd. In Miletus' aid 
 
 You '11 find this quarrel, friend, no jest. You 're preparing to hold ; — 
 
 This moment I my journey hold The price of your labour 
 
 To have you with the rich enroll'd. A talent of *gold. 
 
 the shame, that, equally in receiving adulation and committing iniquity, no man 
 blushed for himself," Hist, of Greece. 
 
 To the sentiments thus forcibly and justly expressed, the following lines from the 
 Miles of Antiphanes can add little weight, but as they show the feelings of the 
 Athenians themselves on the hardships to which this note refers. 
 
 O, what a fool is he, 
 
 Who dreams about stability, or thinks. 
 
 Good easy dolt ! that aught in life's secure ! 
 
 Security ! — either a loan is ask'd ; 
 
 Then house and all that it contains are gone 
 
 At one fell sweep — or you 've a suit to meet, 
 
 And Law and Ruin ever are twin brothers. — 
 
 Art nam'd to a general's post? lines, penalties, 
 
 And debts upon the heels of office follow. 
 
 Do the stage charges fall upon you ] good : 
 
 The Chorus must go clad in spangled robes, 
 
 Yourself may pace in rags. Far happier he 
 
 Who 's nam'd a trierarc : — he buys a halter 
 
 And wisely balks at once th' expensive office. — 
 
 Sleeping or waking, — on the sea or land — 
 
 Among your menials or before your foes, 
 
 Danger and Insecurity are with you. 
 
 The very table, charg'd with viands, is 
 
 Mere mock'ry oft; — gives promise to the eye, 
 
 And breaks it to the lip. Is there nought safe then ? 
 
 Yes, by the gods, — that which has pass'd the teeth, 
 
 And is in state of deglutition — reckon 
 
 Yourself secure of that and that alone : — 
 
 All else is fleet, precarious, insecure. 
 * Fees and bcnevolencies of this kind were frequently given to the public orators 
 at Athens by foreign states, in order to keep them in their interest. We learn 
 through .-Eschincs (Oratio de Coronri) that a yearly sum of sixty pounds was to be 
 received by Demosthenes from the Amphissians, as a compensation for liis support 
 of their cause at Athens. 
 
 4 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGIES. 135 
 
 The fish quite in prime, You resolv'd to decline 
 
 And your appetite loose, Neither wages nor feast, 
 
 Yet wishing in time To your mouth straight consign 
 
 To be down at the House; Half a score at the least — 
 
 While your lips are preparing Your throat it takes umbrage 
 
 The feast to begin, At so much stor'd within it ; 
 
 With a summons appearing, You choke — give a gast, — 
 
 Steps a messenger in ; And are gone in a minute. 
 
 This imprecation, for which the Sausage-vender appears to have summoned 
 all his powers, is much to the taste of the Chorus : and that moral body swear 
 by Jupiter, by Apollo, and by Ceres, a triple oath which the last invocation 
 rendered most confirmatory, that the Sausage-vender had spoken nothing but 
 what had their commendation. Demus himself is roused, and breaks out into 
 an eulogium ; but panegyric was unusual to him, and even his praise is 
 coupled with a sarcasm. 
 
 Demus. I have observed this man : he wears a show 
 Of honesty, more than I ever saw 
 In those who go for many to the *penny. 
 In sooth I love the man — for you, fine Paphlagonian, 
 Who hold such large professions of your love. 
 Know that you 've anger'd me beyond all suff'rance. 
 And are dismiss'd : — I ask your fring of office. (CVeon gives his ring.) 
 {To Saus.) To you and to your care I do commend it. 
 
 Clcon. One word at parting — I have left your service — 
 Who follows me, believe, will prove a :^knave 
 Still greater than myself. 
 
 Dem. (to Cleon.) Why how now, rogue! 
 
 This is no ring of mine — it tallies not 
 With my device, or much my eyes deceive me. 
 
 Saus. Allow me, sir — what might be your impression? 
 
 Dem. A roasted thrium with thick §fat inclosed. 
 
 Saus. (Jooking at the ring.) I see no thrium. 
 
 Dem. What the impression then ? 
 
 * Demus alludes to the obol, the usual compensation for services among the Athe- 
 nians. 
 
 ■j- This ring may be considered as equivalent to our Great Seal. The direction of 
 public affairs was chiefly entrusted to the confidential person who held it; the Ar- 
 chons, the ostensible magistrates of Athens, possessing very little actual power. The 
 engravers of seals, who must have formed a considerable body in Athens, were for- 
 bidden by law, to keep an impression of any seal which they had cut, in their shops, 
 to prevent the frauds which might arise from counterfeiting the seals of private in- 
 dividuals. 
 
 t This was a dreary prospect for the Athenians, and a keen sarcasm on her public 
 men. 
 
 § The nature of the thrium has been explained in the Acharnians. The Greek 
 word Demus, with a variation of accent, signified " obesity," as well as " the people." 
 The allusion is evident. 
 
136 THE knights; 
 
 Satis. A wide mouth'd gull — high seated on a rock, 
 In act to make a speech. 
 
 Dem. Me miserable ! 
 
 Saus. What ails you, sir 1 
 
 Dcm. Away with it — it is 
 
 No seal of mine— CleonymuB may own it, 
 
 It is his property. Take this, (^giving another ring to Saus,^ and be 
 Therewith invested with supreme command 
 And sov'reignty o'er this my house and treasury. 
 
 Clean. One word —upon ray knees — I have some oracles — 
 Make your car partner to them, ere you pass 
 Your last resolve. 
 
 Saus. I too have oracles, 
 
 That claim a hearing. 
 
 Cleon. (^to Demus, showing him an oracle.) Sir, 't is worded here, 
 A time shall come, when crown'd with blooming roses 
 Demus shall sway the universal world. 
 
 Saus. 'T is worded, sir, in mine, that, deck'd in purple, — 
 A crown upon his head, and charioted 
 In golden car, — Deraus — in all the pomp 
 And circumstance of mighty majesty — 
 Shall hold pursuit — of Thracian *Smycythes — 
 And her fair lord. 
 
 Cleon. Produce your oracles. 
 
 Saus. I wait no second bidding. 
 
 Detn. {to Cleon.') Let the same 
 
 Be done by you — 
 
 Cleon. Your bidding is obeyed — 
 
 I go. — {hurrying off.) 
 
 Saus. I vanish. — 
 
 A short intermede relieves the time, while the two disputants are absent 
 fetching their oracles. It is scarcely susceptible of translation ; the reader's 
 indulgence is desired for the following attempt. — In the education of Athenian 
 youth, the science of music formed a prominent part; and the Greek music, it 
 has been already observed, was intimately connected with the principles of 
 grammar. The Chorus allege it to have been a complaint of Cleon's tutor on 
 the harp, that his pupil could apply himself to nothing but the Doric measure 
 in music: the double powers of the language thus enabling them lo raise a 
 smile at Cleon's bribery and love of presents. 
 
 * The humour of this passage, such as it is, must be sacrificed to the explanation. 
 When a married woman was cited to appear before a magistrate at Athens, her hus- 
 band was also summoned in this form, tw Suva, nctt tov kv^kv, i. e., such a ivoman and 
 her lord; because wives being under the government of their husbands, were not 
 permitted to appear in any court without them. Hence the allusion. — Smycythes 
 was a king of Thrace : the poet, falling in with that particular law term in the text, 
 by which a summons was issued, contrives to raise a laugh at the effeminacy of Smy- 
 cythes, as if he had been the lady, instead of the gentleman ; — a mistake which the 
 feminine termination of his name favoured. 
 
or the demagogues. 137 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 That day of all shall break most grateful 
 To this and future generations; 
 When death shall take our chief most hateful, 
 And Cleon end his usurpations. 
 Yet in the *Deigma many a day, 
 I hear our crabbed elders say, 
 With face where age and verjuice play 
 And wrestle ; 
 
 That Cleon state and grandeur losing, 
 Our town two weapons were misusing, 
 Of use for gathering and for bruising, 
 
 To wit, a scoop and pestle. 
 
 That hands like Cleon's, richly gifted, 
 To compass any depths should fail, 
 Is what with wonder most uplifted 
 I hear, and scarce believe the tale. 
 And yet his schoolmates still admire. 
 What sounds broke from his infant lyre, 
 And still they tell how stung with ire. 
 
 And rage plethoric, 
 
 The master-lutist spurn'd his fee. 
 
 And chid his pupil bitterly, 
 
 " Avaunt that harp ! whose only key 
 
 Is tuned to the Doric." 
 
 The Third Act is much calculated to try the unclassical reader's patience ; 
 a few omissions have been made in it, that the task might be rendered as light 
 as possible. 
 
 • The Deigma was situated in the Peirseus and answered to the modern 'Change. 
 Here were to be seen strangers, arriving from all the nations situated on the shores 
 of the Mediterranean and the Euxine seas ; and as if to prove that the arts more 
 particularly flourish under the patronage of commerce, no part of Athens was more 
 crowded with pictures and statues. None of the Athenians, according to Aristotle, 
 were so distinguished for their urbanity and politeness as the inhabitants of the 
 Peirffius ; it is there accordingly that Plato has laid the scene of some of his most 
 beautiful dialogues. It was among the merchants, the bankers, and tlie shipmasters 
 at the Peirseus, that the great orator Demosthenes acquired his extensive knowledge 
 of maritime usury, naval contracts, and those remarkable subtleties which the Greeks 
 displayed in their commercial transactions. Do Pauw, t. i. 72. 208. ii. 20. 
 
 18 
 
138 THE knights; 
 
 ACT III. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 Cleon, Sausage-seller, Demcs, Chorus. 
 
 Cleon (Jo Demus.^ You see, sir, what I *bear, yet forms not this 
 The whole. 
 
 Saus. (to DemusJ) I am a thaw — a dissolution — 
 My back runs oceans, with the weight of pressure ; 
 Yet sum not these the half. 
 
 Dem. What may you bear? 
 
 Cleon. Predictions — oracles. 
 
 Dem. What all? 
 
 Cleon. Now you 
 
 Admire — and yet a chest possest entire 
 Is left behind ! 
 
 Saus. I have a fgarret stor'd 
 
 With them, and eke two dwelling chambers whole. 
 
 Dem. And who has worded these ? 
 
 Cleon. Mine come from Bacis, 
 
 Dem. (to Saus.) And yours? 
 
 Saus. From Glanis, sir, his elder brother. 
 
 Dem. And what may they relate to ? 
 
 Cleon. They relate 
 
 To Athens and to Pylus — to yourself — 
 To me — to everything. 
 
 Dem. (to Saus.) And your's? 
 
 Saus. Mine tell 
 
 Of Athens' blooming town, and paltry lentils; — 
 Of Lacedaemon and of dainty mackarel; — 
 They speak of men, who play the subtle trickster, 
 As they mete corn at Market. — They relate 
 To you and me — (to Cleon) for thee, knave, hang thyself. 
 
 Dem. Now mould them for my ears, and see you read 
 That first, which prophesies my after glory. 
 How I shall lift me in the clouds :{:an eagle I 
 My love is link'd most strangely to that prophecy ! 
 
 * The two candidates for the favour of Demus enter, labouring under a weight of 
 oracles. 
 
 ■j- The modern Greeks, (says Athenaeus, lib. ii. p. 57,) used vre^cta in the same 
 sense that the earlier Greeks used ** : which signified the upper part of the house, 
 and also an egg. Clearchus says, that the story of the beautiful Helen having 
 been born from an egg was derived from her having occupied an apartment thus 
 situated. 
 
 ^ Aristophanes mentions this old oracle, so gratifying to Athenian pride and love 
 
 { 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 139 
 
 Ckon. It shall be done, sir, — list. 
 (^Beads) " Predictions are come from Apollo's blest shrine: 
 Let the son of *Erectheus their import divine. 
 A dog is about him, that 's mighty to bark ; 
 His wit is from heaven, his tooth from a shark ; 
 Pay and gift he '11 provide, if well guarded his days ; — 
 But ravens croak hoarsely, and daws clamour raise." 
 
 Bern. This lies beyond my reach : I marvel much 
 Why dogs and jackdaws couple with Erectheus. 
 
 Cleon. The dog, sir, points to me; who else keeps watch 
 And barks 1 Apollo bids that you preserve 
 Your dog. 
 
 Saus, Build not the faith of oracles 
 On him : he knows them, mighty sir, dog fashion ; 
 And bites them like a cur, that gnaws the post 
 He 's tied to : I have here a prophecy 
 That speaks (and its words bear the stamp of truth) 
 Respecting this same dog. 
 
 Dem. Out with it straight : 
 
 I '11 look me out a trusty stone, meantime, 
 Lest this dog oiacle should give a gripe. 
 
 Saus. (reads.) " Erectheus' great son, let thy thoughts musing dwell 
 On the slavedealing dog, that fit tenant for Hell. 
 He fawns as you sup ; but your eye once away. 
 He darts on your bread, and your fish is his prey. 
 The fkitchen and pantry at night see his tricks, 
 And a plate, or an island, is gone, where he licks." 
 
 Dem. Success to Glanis : trust me, he speaks most 
 Unto the purpose. 
 
 Cleon. Dearest Demus — hear 
 
 Again, then judge between us : 
 
 (^Eeads.) " In Athens the sacred, a cry 's heard for help : 
 A woman 's in labour; — a lion her whelp, 
 For warfare he 's born, and will fight by the great 
 With the ants and the gnats, and the vermin of state. 
 
 of dominion, in two or three of his comedies. The powers of the German language 
 enable Wieland to give it in the very words and metre of the original. 
 Gluckliche Stadt der Athene, dcr Siegverleihenden Gottin, 
 Vieles hast du gesehn, viel geduUet, viel gearbeitet, 
 Aber du wirst auch dafiir ein Adler in Wolken auf immer. 
 It was in the spirit of this lust for universal empire, that this ambitious republic 
 exacted an oath of all her young men, when they entered the military service, that 
 they would improve the dominions of Athens to the utmost of their abilities, "while 
 there were vineyards and olive trees without its limits." The pleasantry of making 
 Cleon engage to recite this favourite prediction and then putting one, which relates 
 solely to his own interest, into his mouth, will not escape the reader. 
 
 • Erectheus is most probably known to the reader, as an ancient king of Athens, 
 f By the kitchen is meant the Prytaneum: in the following Hne occurs one of 
 those pleasantries by surprise, which so often meet us in Aristophanes. 
 
140 THE KXIGHTS; 
 
 On Gratitude rests it this guard to environ 
 With a wall of stout wood, and a turret of iron." 
 
 Dem. Dost reach him ? {turning to the Sausage-seller.') 
 
 Saus. Sir, not I. 
 
 Ckon. And yet the God 
 
 Speaks clear. I am the lion, and I claim 
 Protection. 
 
 Dem. Good : his words sure stand with reason: 
 
 Who else may plead ♦a lion's tooth and claws ! 
 
 Saus. Aye, but he sinks the iron wall and wood. 
 Where Phoebus wills that you hold guard of him; 
 And thus he falsifies the exposition. 
 
 Dem. And how do you expound it] 
 
 Saus. By the wood 
 
 And iron wall I understand the pillory : — 
 The oracle enjoins, he takes his place there. 
 
 Dem. And I subscribe me to its pleasure — 
 
 Clean. Nay, 
 
 Not so : the envious crows are croaking round me ; 
 (^Fawningly .) Let your hawk win your love ; think who jbound and who 
 
 bore 
 The young Spartan ravens in chains to your shore. 
 
 Saus. The man was in his cups, when he achieved 
 The feat — and what so wondrous in the deed ] — 
 The weakest sex can bear a burthen, be it 
 Once lifted to :f;their head. {To Demus.) But, sir, I have 
 A §prophecy will please your royal ear : 
 It has our fleet for object. 
 
 Dem. I 'm all attention. 
 
 {Sighs.) Would it might pay our crews their due arrears! 
 
 Saus. {reads.) " A riddle, a riddle 's the theme of my story^ 
 'T is a dog in the stern ; 't is a ||fox a priori ; 
 
 • There is a play of words in the original, calculated to raise an innocent laugh 
 at one Antileo. I have given a substitute for it. 
 
 ■f The prisoners made at Pylus were not only brought in chains to Athens, but a 
 decree of the people ordained, (Thuc. 1. iv. c. 41.) that they should be kept in chains, 
 till some arrangement was made between the two contending states : with a further 
 provision, that if the Peloponncsians in the interim invaded Attica, the prisoners 
 should immediately be put to death. " Such," says Mr Mitford, " were at that time 
 the maxims of warfare among those who boasted to be the most civilized, and indeed 
 the only civilized people upon earth ; and such the motives for preferring death in 
 the field to the condition so mild, in modern Europe, except in France since the 
 revolution, of a prisoner of war." 
 
 ^ The poet insinuates, that Cleon owed his success at Pylus to the previous 
 arrangements of Demosthenes. The scholiast enters into a long explanation of the 
 passage. 
 
 § An old oracle respecting Pylus has been omitted. It is introduced only for the 
 purpose of making two puns on propi/lseo7i, a forecourt, and pyelus, a bathing- 
 vessel. 
 
 11 By the fox-dog, says Casaubon, is meant Cleon, as uniting in himself the worst 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 141 
 
 Its knowledge is various, its foot swift and sure, 
 
 And its gripe, aini'd in secret, leaves nothing secure." — 
 
 Dost comprehend ? 
 
 Dem. No further, friend, than this : 
 
 That your fox-dog must mean Philostratus : 
 None couples the two species sure but he. 
 
 Saus. You 're vicious in your guess. The oracle 
 Enjoins you grant no *tribute gath'ring ships, 
 Nor heed the Paphlagonian's suit for them. 
 
 Dem. Why calls the oracle a vessel fox-dog? 
 
 Saus. With reason good : a ship is swift, and what 
 Is swifter than a dog? 
 
 Dem. Why join the names 
 
 Of fox and dog? 
 
 qualities of both those animals. The sarcasm (with a passing blow upon one Philo- 
 stratus, a brothel keeper) is directed (where, at the outset, it might little be expected 
 by the modern reader) against that particular species of vessel, which the Athenians 
 employed in collecting tribute from the islanders! This part of Athenian polity 
 will require more notice than the light raillery, which Aristophanes has ventured to 
 pass upon it: the practice indeed was in his time only commencing, 
 
 * The tribute gathering business, as Mr Mitford calls it, is one of the most dis- 
 gusting pictures, among the many which Athenian history presents to us. The 
 words of Phocion, when sent upon this odious employment, are too well known to 
 need mentioning; but Phocion in this, as in other matters, stood single among his 
 countrymen. The commander of the tribute gathering fleet, says the English histo- 
 rian of Greece, made his own terms with all the numerous maritime states of the 
 shores of the Mge&n. Paying him as he required, they were to have protection for 
 their commerce: not so paying, they would he open to depredation from pirates, 
 especially the greatest of pirates, the commander of the Athenian fleet. The pecu- 
 lation was reduced to a system. Every man in the fleet, according to his rank, had 
 regularly his share. The treasury profited little: but every individual seaman being 
 interested in the corruption, and the fleet being a large part of the commonwealth 
 not only to bring any to punishment was seldom possible, but the peculator, through 
 the interest he acquired by allowing a share in the peculation, was generally safer 
 than the honest commander, who would dare to deny to those under him the wages 
 of corruption. Hist, of Greece, v, vii. 376. A valuable passage from the speech of 
 Demosthenes de Chers, translated by the same author, admirably confirms this state- 
 ment. " In this dilemma of the republic," says the orator, " I must speak openly : 
 and at all risk for the consequences, I will assure you, that no naval commander 
 ever sails from your harbours, but he receives presents. They come from the Chians 
 the Erythrseans, all the commercial states likely to be within reach of your fleets: I 
 mean, however, the Asiatic only. If he has but one or two ships under his orders 
 he has something: if his force is greater, he has more in proportion. The pretence 
 of these presents is goodwill to the commander : under that title they are offered. 
 But those states you may be sure, none of them give this money for nothing: they 
 pay for the safety of their commerce ; that their ships may be, not plundered, but 
 protected." v. viii. 327. The infamous Chares, the unworthy associate of Demos- 
 thenes, was supposed to have raised, in the course of his various commands, no less 
 than 1 500 talents, near 300,000/. which he distributed among his favourite olBcers 
 and supporting orators. 
 
142 THE knights; 
 
 Saus. To part them were to separate 
 The ships and those they carry in them — sir — 
 Oar soldiers are the foxes, witness many 
 A town whose grapes have feasted them. 
 
 Bern. The oracle 
 
 Is right — hut, friend — money runs short, and foxes 
 Abound — how satisfy them all 1 
 
 Saus. Rest that 
 
 With me : a three days' pay shall be allowed them. 
 (Reads.) But another prediction awaits my lord's ear ; 
 'T is Phoebus that warns — " of *Cyllene beware." 
 
 Dem. Cyllene, Cyllene, (/o Saus.) how this undsrstandl 
 
 Saus. Cyllene is lameness, and means a maim'd hand. 
 To Cleon's apply it; — as with bruise or with maim — 
 Still 't is bent with — " Your honour, drop gift in the same." 
 
 Clean. You are wrong; when maim'd hands are the point in dispute, 
 Diopeithes knows best how to settle the suit. 
 But enough — I 've an oracle yet to declare. 
 It comes from the clouds and is borne on the air. 
 (To Demus) Like an eagle, it tells, you shall spread your wide wings, 
 A lord over monarchs, a king over kings. 
 
 Saus. (eagerly.) I 've the same ; while a clause supplemental extends 
 Your reign to the Red Sea, and earth's jfarthest ends; 
 With a seat on the bench in remote Ecbatane, 
 And a banquet of sweets, while the suits are in train. 
 
 Clean. I have seen me a vision ; I 've dream'd me a dream : 
 Its author was Pallas, and Demus its theme: 
 The cup :|:aryt8ena blaz'd wide in her hand, 
 And plenty and riches fell wide o'er the land. 
 
 Saus. I too have my visions and dreams of the night: 
 Our Lady and §owl stood confest to my sight: 
 
 • Cyllene was a city of Arcadia : a Greek word of similar sound signifies a lamed 
 hand. The poet is preparing a blow at Cleon's corruption and love of bribes : the 
 blow is also made to fall upon Diopeithes, whose hand appears to have been maimed 
 in some discreditable exploit. 
 
 f An allusion has already been made to a singular oath, which was taken by the 
 young men of Athens, before they went upon an expedition. It was taken in the 
 temple of Agraulos, and implied, that they would consider wheat and barley, and 
 vines and olives to be the limits of Attica; by which, says Plutarch, they were taught 
 to claim a title to all lands that were manured and fruitful. Life of Alcibiades. 
 
 ^ The arytasna was a sort of cup or vessel used to draw water with. 
 
 § A gentleman who can bring the most profound erudition to the aid of his re- 
 searches, has remarked that the owl was very properly made the symbol of Minerva, 
 Cthe pure emanation of the divine mind,) as it is a bird which seems to surpass all 
 other creatures in acuteness and refinement of organic perception ; its eye being cal- 
 culated to discern objects which, to all others, are enveloped in darkness ; its ear to 
 hear sounds distinctly, when no other can perceive them at all; and its nostrils to 
 discriminate effluvia with such nicety, that it has been deemed prophetic from dis- 
 covering the putridity of death, even in the first stages of disease. R. P. Knight's 
 Inquiry into the Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 143 
 
 From the cup *aryballus choice blessings she threw, 
 
 On him (^turning to Cleon) fell tanpickle, and nectar on you (Jo Demus). 
 
 If the reader has been content to follow me through these oracles and pre- 
 dictions, he will probably come to the same conclusions with Demus ; that of 
 the two prophets, Glanis is much the wiser man. One only resource now re- 
 mained for Cleon. The nation which ranked cookery among the liberal arts, 
 and whose mythical fables sent Hercules to the relief of Prometheus (the 
 emblem of afflicted humanity, according to W. Schlegel) in a wine cup, had 
 other appetites to be gratified besides a love of power and dominion ; and Cleon 
 determines to appeal from his master's hopes and fears to the humbler gratifi- 
 cations of his palate. The first attack is made through the medium of barley, 
 and the offer of providing him daily sustenance — but the bare mention of 
 barley is offensive to Demus — he had been deceived enough already on that 
 point by Cleon and f Thuphanes. An offer of prepared wheat does not pro- 
 pitiate him more. The Sausage-vender is both more delicate and profuse : the 
 banquet which he proposes to lay before his master is to consist of little 
 puddings well baked, and broiled fish; and his life, as this aspirant to favour 
 declares, shall be nothing but a scene of mastication. The imagination of 
 Demus begins to open to the flattering prospect. 
 
 Dem. About it straight then, and — observe — 
 
 Who caters best and offers me most presents, 
 To him I give the state and all its harness. 
 
 Cleon (running.) Sayst thou? I 'm on my legs, and start this instant. 
 
 Saus. (running faster.) I 've left already longer space behind me. 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 Chorus, Demus. 
 
 Chor. :|:Honour, power and high estate, 
 Demus, mighty §1ord, hast thou ! 
 To thy sceptre small and great 
 In obeisance lowly bow! — 
 
 • The aryballns was a vessel shaped like a purse, broad at bottom and narrow at 
 top. On the names and properties of Greek vases of every description, the reader 
 may consult the eleventh book of Athenseus. That those beautiful specimens of art, 
 which still excite the utmost admiration, should have been highly prized by a people, 
 whose niceness of organic perception best enabled them to appreciate their merits, 
 forms no subject of wonder : but a smile is excited, when we find that one man 
 (Pytheas of Phigalia) carried his admiration of them so far, as to leave an epitaph 
 for bis tomb behind him, (vid. Athcn. 1. xi. p. 465.) in which it was considered less 
 a point that posterity should be made acquainted with his goodness and his temper- 
 ance, (virtues which it appears really belonged to him,) than that he died possessed 
 of more vases of every description than any of his predecessors. 
 
 •j- Thuphanes, according to the scholiast, was a secretary of Cleon ; what particular 
 transaction is here alluded to, the scholiast does not mention. 
 
 % The measure, to which this little dialogue has been adapted, is borrowed from 
 one of those ballads of Campbell's, which make every pulse in his readers beat, and 
 which the maritime Genius of our island seems to have dictated to that admirable poet. 
 
 § In the original the term is tyrant ; and very justly : the true Demus of Athens 
 
144 THE knights; 
 
 Yet you 're easy to his hand whoever cringes ; 
 Ev'ry fool you gape upon, 
 Ev'ry *speech your ear hath won, 
 While your wits move off and on 
 Their hinges. 
 Dem. {surlihi.) Hinges in their teeth, who deem 
 That Demus is an easy fool; 
 If he yawn and if he dream. 
 If he tipple, 't is by rule; 
 'T is his way to keep in pay one knave to ease him ; — 
 Him he keeps for guide and gull, 
 But when once the spunge is full. 
 To himself the knave he '11 pull, 
 
 And jsqueeze him. 
 Chor, I can feel, and I commend 
 
 This your wisdom's sign and seal; 
 If it own a proper end. 
 
 If with public men you deal. 
 As with scapegoat and the land's devoted sinner; 
 If you lodge them in the :|:Pnyx, 
 
 united in himself all the powers of government, legislative, executive, financial and 
 judicial, which, as Montesquieu observes, constitutes the very essence of tyranny. 
 See the Areiopagitic Oration of Isocrates, v. i. p. 288. 
 
 * This trait in the character of the Athenian people is painted with admirable 
 force by Thucydides, (Lib. iii. s. 38.) in a passage excellently and closely translated 
 by Hobbes. The sentiments in the original are put into the mouth of Cleon, that 
 the historian, without violating the impartiality which he so strictly observes, may 
 have an opportunity of describing that demagogue indirectly through the speech of 
 his opponent Diodorus. 
 
 « It is your custom to be spectators of words and hearers of actions, beholding 
 future actions in the words of them that speak well, as possible to come to pass; and 
 actions already past in the orations of such as make the most of them, and that with 
 such assurance as if what you saw with your eyes were not more certain than what 
 you hear related. You are excellent men for one to deceive with a speech of a new 
 strain but backward to follow any tried advice : slaves to strange things, contemners 
 of things usual. You would every one chiefly give the best advice, but if you can- 
 not, then you will contradict those that do. You would not be thought to come after 
 with your opinion ; but rather if anything be acutely spoken, to applause it first, and 
 to appear ready apprchenders of what is spoken, even before it be out ; but slow to 
 preconceive the sequel of the same. You would hear, as one may say, somewhat 
 else than what our life is conversant in ; and yet you sufficiently understand not 
 that that is before your eyes. And to speak plainly, overcome with the delight of 
 the ear, you are rather like unto spectators, sitting to hear the contentions of sophists, 
 than to men that deliberate the state of a commonwealth." 
 
 + The marks of kindred, which Mr Mitford (vol. v. p. 22,) notices between the 
 Turkish despotism and the Athenian democracy, are probably founded on this pas- 
 sage of Aristophanes. 
 
 t This alludes to a custom practised among the ancients for averting famine, 
 plague, or any epidemic disorder. A man and woman were entertained at the public 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 145 
 
 Then when fit occasion pricks, 
 On the fattest there you fix 
 
 For a dinner. 
 
 Dem. Hear and own, that I have known 
 To circumvent when prest ; 
 Eyes I close and seem to doze. 
 But 't is dog sleep at the best; 
 "While the varlets fondly cram I 'm heedful : 
 For the learned in the law 
 Know with *camus I can draw. 
 As with probe from throat or maw, 
 What 's needful. 
 
 With this |dialogue ends the third act; if Aristophanes have no other merit, 
 
 expense, who might serve upon occasion as expiatory victims, each for his own sex. 
 The ceremony was to march them round the streets to the sound of instruments, to 
 give them a few stripes with rods, and then make them leave the city. Sometimes 
 the unfortunate pair were burnt, and their ashes thrown into the sea. A practice 
 somewhat similar seems to have prevailed at Aries. " In that part of the town of 
 Aries, called La Roquette," says Mr Thicknesse, " I was shown the place where 
 formerly stood an elevated altar, whereon three young citizens were sacrificed an- 
 nually, and who were fiittcned at the public expense for a whole year, for that horrid 
 purpose ! On the first of May their throats were cut in the presence of a prodigious 
 multitude of people, assembled from all parts ; among whom the blood of the victim 
 was thrown, for they weakly imagined that their sins were expiated by this barba- 
 rous practice." Thicknesse's Journey, vol. ii. p. 18. See also the French Anachar- 
 sis, t. iii. p. 409. 
 
 * The caimts was a little funnel, through which the dicasts cast into the urns the 
 beans, which were to decide upon the acquittal or condemnation of prisoners. 
 
 f The following note is rather longer than has been usually allowed in the present 
 work; but the translator feels that some apology is due for the inadequate manner 
 in which this little dialogue is rendered, and he is happy to do it in the words of a 
 writer who, with talents to which he has no pretensions, feels it necessary to make 
 the same excuse, and in part advances the same cause of failure, viz., the difference 
 of language. The note is the more readily inserted, as the reader will perceive that 
 a little use has been made of a small part of it in the preface to this play. 
 
 " Ohne mir, wie der mahler in Lessings Emilia Galotti, viel darauf einzubil- 
 den, dass ich weiss, was und wie viel von den feinsten Schbnheiten, Atticismen, 
 Anspielungen, Wendungen, Schattirungen und Druckern des Originals in meiner 
 Kopie verlohren geht, und wie und warum es verlohren geht, verkiimmert mir 
 das blosse Gefiihl, dass soviel (nicht immer durch meine schuld) verlohren 
 geht und verlohren gehen muss, alle Freude an dem was hie und da viel- 
 leicht gelungen ist. Dies ist ganz besonders bey den intermezzen der Cuore 
 der Fall, die gerade das schonstc in diesem Dichter sind. Unliiugbar liegt eine 
 der hauptursachen, warum ein TIbersetzer des Aristofanes cin so boses spiel hat, 
 in seiner Sprache. Was ich gegeben babe, " steckt dem Dieb die Sonde in Rachen," 
 sagt nicht die hiilfte dessen, was der Dichter mit den zwey worten *j)^5v KxretfAitkm 
 darstcUt, und es brauchte, um sie zu erklaren, eine lange und tadiose note, die der 
 19 
 
146 THE knights; 
 
 at least it cannot be denied that he thoroughly understood the character and 
 brutal feelings of a mob; for an ochlocracy is the same in all countries, — 
 grasping, supercilious, arrogant and overbearing, — winking at iniquities by 
 which themselves are to be profited, and only just because they are selfish. 
 
 ACT IV. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 Cleon, Sausage-vender, Demus, Chorus. 
 
 Cleon (Jo Saus.) Off, knave ! and feast the *crows. 
 
 Griechischgelehrte nicht bedarf, and wobey die andern leser nichts gewannen. 
 Eben so ist es in der ersten strofe des Demos mit dem worte ^puxKnv in der Stelle, 
 iIi/TOf T6 y^f iiSofjLAi ^puKKCDV TO xaS"' «^£/)*v, das in den zuhbrern sogleich das Bild eines 
 kiirzlich gebohrnen Sauglings erweckte, und so schbn dazu hilft, die dumpfe 
 Behaglichkeit des clivino far fiiente auszudrlicken. Denn gewiss meynte Aristo- 
 fanes mehr damit, als potitare in dies, oder gobeleter tons les jours. Das ganze 
 leben des suveriinen volks zu Athen war, so zu sagen, nichts anders als ein immer- 
 wahrendes nippen und nicken, schnappen, gaffen, auf horchen, witzeln, necken, hin 
 und herflattern ; ein Leben ohne Plan, und ohne zweck, ohne wahre Thatigkeit 
 und ohne wirklichen Genuss, unter ewigem Streben nach heyden, mitten in den 
 Zerstreuungen der albernsten Langeweile, hingetraumt. Hiezu giebt kein anderer 
 Autor so viele und starke Belege als Aristofanes. Freylich war dies nicht immer 
 der Karakter der Bewohner der Minerven stadt gewesen; und man kbnnte nicht 
 ohne Grund bchaupten, dass sie erst durch den vollen Gebrauch ihrer volkssuverani- 
 tiit, unter den heillosen Demagogen, die auf den Perikles folgten, so schlecht 
 geworden, wis sie sich im Verlauf des Peloponnesischen Krieges gezeigt haben, 
 und wie unser Dichter sie in alien seinem StUcken, besonders in diesem und in deii 
 Wespen und Vogeln darstellt. Auch das ist ein Meisterzug im Karakter des 
 Athenischen Suverans, dass Demos sich fiir einen machtigen Politikus halt, weil er 
 sich von seinem Ministern betrligen und bestehlen liisst um sie hernach wieder 
 ausdrllcken zu kbnnen. — (Die Ritter des Arist. ubersetzt von Wieland.) The allu- 
 sions, contained in this note, to the delicate beauties of language, Attic spirit, play 
 of words, ingenious turns, and shades of character, exhibited in the original of this 
 truly Aristophanic little dialogue, are such as might be expected from the author of 
 Oberon : his tippling, boozing, muddle-headed, snapping, gaping, jeering, egging, 
 volatile, fluttering Demus, who considers it as a master stroke in politics to let his 
 ministers cheat him and steal, that he may be the gainer by their thefts, presents no 
 trait of character, which the writings of the author whom he translates, do not justify. 
 The reader, who wishes for further classical authority for some of these features of 
 character in the sovereign multitude of Athens, may consult Plato's Apologia, 
 p. 364. (G.) his first Alcibiades, p. 36. (H.) and the eighth book of his Republic, 
 p. 498. — Edit. Mars. Ficini. 
 
 * The crows appear to have been in great disfavour with the A thenians ; they had 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 147 
 
 Saus, On your own head 
 
 Fall the ill wish ! 
 
 Clean. Demus, I wait a week 
 
 With hands prepar'd to show'r my gifts upon you. 
 
 Saus. And I a month — a year — a century — 
 Time out of mind, mind, mind. 
 
 Dem. And I wait here 
 
 Expecting your large promises, and venting 
 Curses on both {mimics') before creation, — ation — ation. 
 
 Saus. {Jo Demus.) Know'st what to do? 
 
 Dem, Your wisdom can advise me. 
 
 Saus. Start him and me, observe, as from the barriers : 
 We '11 run a race as 't were, who most can give you. 
 
 Dem. 'T is well advised : one — two — three — away! 
 
 Saus. We 're gone. 
 
 Dem. Run quick. 
 
 Clean. I dare him to outstrip me. 
 
 [ Exeunt Clean and Saus. 
 
 Dem. {sohis.) I must be dainty nice indeed, if such 
 A pair of lovers do not satisfy me! 
 
 Such was the humour of the Old Comedy : it must be confessed that we 
 have improved largely both in our notions of wit and humour. The rival 
 
 the fce-simplc of all that society wished to eject from itself; and thus stood to the 
 
 Greeks somewhat in the relation of that malignant person, who, according to Rabe- 
 lais, breakfasts on the souls of sergeants-at-law fricasseed. The following song will 
 
 show, that this dislike to the crow did not prevail universally among the Greeks, 
 but that the same use was made in some parts of the crow, as in others was made 
 of the swallow. 
 
 Lords and ladies, for your ear. May thy sire in aged ease 
 We have a petitioner. Nurse a boy who calls thee mother; 
 Name and lineage would you know? — And his grandam on her knees 
 'T is Apollo's child, the crow ; Rock a girl who calls him brother; — 
 Waiting till your hands dispense Kept as bride in reservation 
 Gift of barley, bread or pence. For some favour'd near relation. — 
 Be it but a lump of salt ; But enough now : I must tread. 
 His is not the mouth to halt. Where my feet and eyes are led ; 
 Nought that 's proffer'd he denies : Dropping at each door a strain, 
 Long experience makes him wise. Let me lose my suit or gain. 
 Who today gives salt, he knows. Then search, worthy gentles, the cup- 
 Next day fig or honey throws. — board's close nook : 
 Open, open gate and door : To the lord and still more to the lady we 
 Mark ! the moment we implore, look : 
 
 Comes the daughter of the squire. Custom warrants the suit — let it still then 
 
 With such figs as wake desire. — bear sway ; 
 
 Maiden, for this favour done And your crow as in duty most bounden 
 
 May thy fortunes, as they run, shall pray. 
 
 Ever brighten — be thy spouse Mhen. lib. viii. p, 359. 
 Rich and of a noble house ; 
 
148 THE knights; 
 
 candidates now commence their contest of presents — they consist chiefly of 
 culinary articles, and that everlasting dish, the affair at Pylus, is again served 
 up to the worthy Demus, whom the poet seems resolved to satiate with the 
 only exploit which Cleon ever accomplished. There is so much play of 
 words in this short scene, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to render 
 it satisfactory to the Engrllsh reader. Aristophanes, like the French Piron, is 
 sometimes a mere machine for throwing out puns, squibs, sarcasms, pleas- 
 antries, and play of words. He is a firework discharging the most brilliant 
 scintillations on all sides, but their effect is lost, if analysed or contemplated 
 too curiously. The Sausage-vender has the advantage of his rival for some 
 time in his presents, till Cleon awakens his fears by talking of a dish of hare, 
 which he has exclusively to present. His rival, disconcerted at first, has 
 recourse to a stratagem. " Some ambassadors came this way to me, and their 
 purses seem well Jilled.'''' " Where are they ]" exclaims Cleon eagerly, and 
 turns about. The hareflesh was immediately in the hands of his rival, who 
 presents the boasted dainty in his own name to Demus, and he of course casts 
 the old affair of Pylus in the disappointed Cleon's teeth. 
 
 While the Sausage-vender piously refers the suggestion of this little theft 
 to Minerva, and modestly takes the execution only to himself, Cleon resents 
 the surprise very warmly. " I had all the danger of catching the hare," says 
 he, referring to his predecessor Demosthenes. " And I had all the trouble of 
 dressing it," says his rival. " Fools," says Demus, in the true spirit of Athe- 
 nian and democratical selfishness, "I care not who caught it, nor who dressed 
 it; all I regard is the hand which serves it up to table." A conscious feeling 
 of inferiority now comes over Cleon, and one of those powerful words, which 
 the Greek language only supplies, expresses his fears, that the race is against 
 him, and that he shall be distanced in impudence. His rival proposes a new 
 lest of affection. " Let our chests," says he, " be searched. It will then be 
 proved who loves Demus most:" or, in the Sausage-vender's own words, 
 " who is the better man towards Demus and his stomach." This is accord- 
 ingly done. That of the' new candidate for power is found empty. " He had 
 given dear little Demus everything." In Cleon's is found abundance of all 
 good things ; and a tempting cheesecake particularly excites Demus's surprise. 
 "The rogue!" says this representative of the sovereign multitude, " to con- 
 ceal such a prodigious cheesecake as this, and to cut me off but a mere morsel 
 of it; and that, too," subjoins the complainant, changing his *dialect for a 
 reason which the learned reader will appreciate, " after I had made him a 
 present of a chaplet, and added many other douceurs besides !" Cleon in vain 
 pleads that he stole for the good of the country. He is ordered to lay down 
 his fchaplet and invest his antagonist with it. Nay, says he, still struggling 
 for the retention of office, 
 
 Cleon. I have an oracle, — it came from Phoebus, 
 And tells to whom Fate wills I yield the mastery. 
 
 * The change is made from the Attic to the Doric dialect ; and a hearty laugh 
 no doubt accompanied this sudden and significant allusion to the demagogue's cor- 
 ruption and love of presents, 
 
 ■\ Cleon, according to the scholiast, had received a chaplet in full assembly from 
 the people; with the privilege perhaps attached of wearing it on all occasions. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 149 
 
 Saus. Declare the name — my life upon 't — the god 
 Refers to me.* 
 
 Cleon. Presumptuous ! — you ! — low scoundrel ! 
 
 To the proof: — where were you school'd, and who the teacher 
 That first imbued your infant mind with knowledge? 
 
 Saus. The kitchen and the scullery gave me breeding; 
 And teacher I had none save blows and cuffs. 
 
 Cleon (^aside.) My mind misgives me: what am I deliver'd ! 
 But pass we on : {ciloud) say further what the fwrestling master 
 Instructed you] 
 
 Saus. To steal — to look the injured 
 
 Straight in the face, and then forswear the theft. 
 
 Cleon (aside.) Angels:}: and ministers of grace protect me! 
 (^Jloud) Unclasp what art or trade your manhood practis'd. 
 
 Saus. I dealt in sausages. 
 
 Cleon. Aught more? 
 
 Saus. I found 
 
 The bagnios employment. 
 
 Cleoti (aside.') I 'm undone. 
 
 One only hope remains, (aloud) Resolve me — practis'd you 
 Within the market place, or at the §gatcs? 
 
 Saus. Nay, at the gates, among the men who deal 
 In salted fish. 
 
 Cleon. All is accomplished. 
 
 It is the will of heav'n : bear me within : — 
 A long farewell to all my former greatness ! 
 Adieu, II fair chaplet! 'gainst my will I quit thee, 
 And give thy matchless sweets to other hands ! — 
 There may be knaves more fortunate than I, 
 But never shall the world see thief more rascally. 
 
 Saus. (devoutly.) Thine be the triumph, Jove^ Ellanian ! 
 
 * Brumoy observes, that the anagnosis, by which Clcon's successor in office is 
 pointed out, is a parody^TJn the well known scene in the Oedipus Tyrannus, where 
 the incestuous parricide is so skilfully brought to light. 
 
 ■\ The vuiitoTpifiii;, or wrestling master, succeeded the ■yfu.fAfAxrtTn; and Kid-upi^m. 
 
 i Cleon parodies the Bellcrophon of Euripides. 
 
 § The lowest tradesmen only practised at the gates of the town : every answer is 
 made to show the utter baseness of Clcon's rival, and thus to place himself in the 
 most ignominious light. 
 
 II Parodied from the description of the dying Alccstcs taking leave of her bridal 
 bed. 
 
 Tf Jupiter was worshipped at ^Egina under this title upon the following occasion. 
 A great drought prevailed in that island, which had nearly brought the people to 
 ruin. By the united prayers of the Pan Hellenes (or universal Greeks) to Jupiter, 
 this affliction was removed. It was while making excavations in x^gina, in order 
 to ascertain the proportions of the temple of Jupiter Panhcllcnius, that the pieces of 
 sculpture were dug up, which have so much exercised the ingenuity of the learned. 
 
150 THE knights; 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 Agoracritus, Chorus, Demus. 
 
 Cho. Joy 
 
 And gratulation to our friend ; bear he 
 In mem'ry's tablet, 't is to us he owes 
 These proofs of manhood. (Jo Jlgor.) Worthy sir, I have 
 A small request — the place which Phanus holds — 
 I am your suitor for the same, and fain 
 Would sign your writs.* 
 
 Dem. And I have my request — 
 
 How runs your name ? 
 
 Jlgor. They call me [Agoracritus, 
 
 And justly; for my livelihood and bread, 
 r the forum have been earn'd by litigation. 
 
 • There is something very humorous in this readiness of the Chorus to make use 
 of their friend's advancement, 
 
 ■\ Enough already has been said of the Athenian Agora, to give some idea of what 
 this name is meant to convey. A translation of part of the sixth of Theophrastus's 
 characters will convey the idea still more fully ; the author seems to have had the 
 Agoracritus of our author in his eye, when he wrote it. The picture itself is such 
 as a republic only could furnish, and something like a parallel to it might, I believe, 
 be still found in the free states of America. " A man of desperate impudence is one 
 whom it costs nothing to say and to do the most disgraceful actions. He is quick 
 at an oath, has no reputation to lose, and may be affronted with impunity. For his 
 manners — they are those of a man from the agora ; he displays all that others con- 
 ceal, and in everything that is done he must have a share. He is of all trades : to- 
 day he keeps a tavern, tomorrow a bagnio, and the next day he has some office in 
 the public farms. There is no occupation of which he thinks the exercise disgrace- 
 ful. He is alternately a public cryer, a cook, and a gambler. If he have a mother 
 living, he leaves her unsupported ; he is dragged through the city by a rope for theft, 
 and he spends more days in the public prison than he does in his own house. This 
 is the man who has always a crowd about him ; who calls to every one that passes, 
 addressing them in a loud and hoarse tone, and assailing them with reproaches. He 
 is ever involved in lawsuits, either as defendant or plaintiff: in the former case he 
 excuses his appearance by a false oath, in the latter he appears with his \echiims in 
 his bosom, and a bundle of forensic papers in his hand. The most remarkable 
 characteristic of his impudence is, that he is at the head of all the petty dealers in 
 the agora — he lends them money upon usury, and receives daily for a drachma 
 three half obols — he frequents the cookshops, and the stalls where fish, as well salt 
 as fresh, are sold ; and the money which he receives on interest he puts into his 
 mouth. Men of this kind are difficult to deal with : for their mouth easily breaks 
 forth into revilings, and they speak with so loud a voice that the forum and the 
 workshops ring again with it," 
 
 t The echinus was a large vessel in which all the papers connected with tlie future process were 
 deposited. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 151 
 
 Dem. To Agoracritus I now commit me : 
 And with myself I give unto liis ciiarge 
 Tliis Paphlagonian here. 
 
 Jignr. And bravely will I 
 
 Maintain thee, Deraus — your own lips shall testify, 
 That you have never seen a better nor 
 A wiser man in this our town* — Cechenian. 
 
 SEMI-CnORUS.f 
 
 Where shall praise and commendation 
 
 Make their lasting habitation, 
 
 But with them, whose steeds though spent 
 
 Still are on their topmost benti — 
 
 In beginning and in ending, 
 
 Muse, then let thy high commending 
 
 With our noble Horsemen rest. 
 Take no part. 
 
 From mere gaiety of heart, 
 
 'Gainst Lysistratus the supple ; 
 Nor the smart 
 
 Of satire with Thaumantis couple. 
 
 'T is a wretch beyond a jest. 
 With famine and leanness his meals he has made, 
 And when Delphi he seeks in the course of his trade. 
 And with sighs and with tears the god's favour would win, 
 His strength tops the quiver, but fails at the chin. 
 
 Full Chorus. 
 Guilty men to taunt with satire is no subject for reproof: 
 Sober men the deed will honour; — what if Envy stand aloof] 
 
 * The audience expected the speaker to say Athenian. The word Cechetiian 
 means stupid, gajiinff, — easy to be cheated ; and applies more particularly to that 
 love of news which distinguished the Athenians in the time of Demosthenes and St. 
 Paul, and which still forms a prominent feature in the character of the modern 
 Athenians. 
 
 ■j- The Intcrmede, which now relieves the action of the play, — revolting enough 
 in some of its parts, but curious in all, — shows what a most inquisitorial power the 
 Old Comedy exercised over public and private life in Athens. What the courtesy 
 indeed of modern manners cither drops altogether, or mentions only as a misfortune, 
 is by the Greek stage, which was directed entirely to the amelioration or perfection 
 of men gathered into a community, stigmatised almost as an offence. Accordingly 
 the poverty of Lysistratus and Thaumantis, made contemptible indeed by other 
 accessories, forms a prelude to the public mention and ridicule of crimes which the 
 dramatist brands indeed with the most deserved infamy, but which, for the honour 
 of human nature, will not bear the most distant allusion. The lighter raillerv upon 
 the wretched CIconymus, who is now served up to the public as a parasite, and 
 upon the worthless Hyperbolus, as the author of an obnoxious state measure, can 
 hardly fail to excite a smile. 
 
152 THE knights; 
 
 i 
 
 A wretch exists, — were common knowledge more familiar with his name, m 
 
 I without an innuendo loudly would pronounce the same. 
 
 But obscurity protects him, and Satire, much desiring other, 
 
 Finds no shaft to pierce and wound him, but through his exalted brother. 
 
 Arignotus — (when I name him, none his merit needs to learn, 
 
 Who is master of his gamut, or can black from white discern) 
 
 Shames his fortunes by a brother, pair'd with him in nought but blood, 
 
 Who takes pleasure in his vices as a swine that 's wash'd, in mud. 
 
 Were he, sirs, a simple scoundrel, as a cutpurse from the street, 
 
 A suborner or informer, or a bully or a cheat; 
 
 Had he turned his mind to filching, or to flattery or praise, 
 
 Or had practis'd oldest vices in the newest kind of ways ; 
 
 Verse of mine had never touched him, nor perhaps his name been known, 
 
 But the wretch to old pollutions adds inventions of his own. 
 
 In the flow of solemn verse 
 
 Here then I pronounce a curse, 
 
 And I damn to endless fame 
 
 Ariphrades, that thing of shame. 
 
 And his deed without a *name; — 
 
 If there be who counter run 
 
 To this honest malison, 
 
 Fellowship with them I '11 none : 
 
 I abjure them and resign ; 
 
 Nor shall juice of generous wine 
 
 Ever flow in friendly cup 
 
 For our common lips to sup. 
 
 Semi-Chokus. 
 
 On my bed and in my play, 
 
 — Much by night and more by day, — 
 
 To myself I talk and say. 
 
 What profession, art, or trade. 
 
 Earns Cleonymus his bread? 
 
 Rumour says, that once within 
 
 A rich man's cupboard, press or bin, 
 
 Pray'r nor tear, nor menace stout, 
 
 Can entice the glutton out. 
 
 Though from his knees the suppliant rise — 
 
 Attest the earth — adjure the skies, 
 
 And beg with deprecating cries 
 
 " King — Emperor — Lord — come forth we pray. 
 
 And grant our board one holiday." 
 
 • Of sinnes heteroclitall, and such as want either name or president, there is oft- 
 times a sinne even in their histories. We desire no recorde of such enormities ; 
 sinnes should be accounted new that so they may be esteemed monstrous. — Browne 
 on Vulgar Errors. 
 
or the demagogues. 153 
 
 Full Chorus. 
 Our ships in congress met of late 
 For councils grave and sage debate. 
 A frigate well advanced in years 
 Rose first and told her secret fears. 
 " Sad tidings, ladies, these I hear; — 
 Things go but ill in town, I fear. 
 A hundred of us — such the tale — 
 Must instant to "Chalcedon sail : 
 May fiery vengeance blast the brute, 
 Hyperbolusj — who urg'd the suit 
 And carried it!" — The lady spoke. 
 And terror seiz'd the maids of oak. — 
 " 'T was past endurance" — " faith and troth." — 
 Some fainted — others dropp'd an oath. 
 Uprose a sloop, whose maiden breast 
 No hand of man had yet comprest, 
 And, " Ladies," with a sneer, cried she, 
 " Such scurvy captains board not me. 
 Sooner shall age these timbers eat, 
 And give the worms a lasting treat. 
 
 * The possession of Chalcedon and Byzantium was of the utmost importance to 
 Athens. Both were great objects, for revenue and for commerce ; for commerce 
 especially in two principal articles of the Attic market, corn and slaves. 
 
 The promontory on which the ancient Chalcedon stood, is, according to Pococke, 
 a very fine situation, being a gentle rising ground from the sea, with which it is 
 almost bounded on three sides ; and having further on the cast side of it a small 
 river, which falls into the little bay to the south, that seems to have been the port of 
 the Chalcedonians. Chalcedon, therefore, says this writer, would be esteemed a 
 most delightful situation, if Constantinople, which is still more advantageously 
 situated, were not so near it. 
 
 ■j" Hyperbolus was a man of much the same turbulent character as Cleon : he was 
 the friend of that ignorant and overbearing demagogue when living, and the suc- 
 cessor to his influence among the lowest of the people. A few years after this 
 comedy was written, Hyperbolus endeavoured to create a variance between Nicias 
 and Alcibiades, and to exercise upon the latter the well known punishment of 
 ostracism. " His influence," says the English historian of Greece, (vol. iv. p. 28.) 
 " was such, that it was evidently in his power to decide whether Alcibiades or Nicias 
 should be banished. But he had a politician to encounter such as Cleon never met 
 with. Alcibiades communicated with Nicias; an assembly of the people was held ; 
 both collected their strength ; and Hyperbolus was named as a person, by his weight, 
 influence and seditious designs, dangerous to the commonwealth. The people were 
 surprised: for no man of his mean condition was ever before proposed as a subject 
 for the ostracism. But the Athenian people loved a joke; and this appeared a good 
 one : they would honour him by ranking him with Miltiades, Aristeides, Themisto- 
 cles and Cymon. To this whim of a thoughtless multitude was added all the weight 
 of interest of Alcibiades and Nicias, and the banishment of Hyperbolus was decided." 
 The Athenians thought the punishment of ostracism (which some writer, I think, 
 has called a tax upon virtue) so much disgraced by a man like Hyperbolus having 
 been subjected to it, that they afterwards abolished it. 
 20 
 
154 THE knights; 
 
 You, ladies, as you please — but I 
 
 This chief of visag-e sour defy — 
 
 And Spitfire holds me company. 
 
 Our hearts are strong; — our cause is good ;- 
 
 He '11 find us, girls, true pitch and wood. — 
 
 For Athens — sure her wits are fled ; 
 
 Nor knows she what fits bark wellbred. 
 
 I move then, till the storm be past. 
 
 By *Theseus' fane we anchor fast, 
 
 Or stretch us for that chapel fair 
 
 Where the *Eumenides hear prayer. 
 
 Never, so help me Jove, shall he 
 
 To mock the town, take charge of me ; 
 
 But rather, when the wind sets fair. 
 
 Feast with his bones the fowls of air, 
 
 Launching the boats, wherein convey'd 
 
 Such wealth and stores of cash he made 
 
 By j-candlewicks and chandlers trade. 
 
 ACT V. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 Agoracritus, Chorus. 
 
 ^igor. A truce to the speech that ill omens would teach, 
 
 reign words of all blest acceptation ; 
 Affidavits may cease and the courts:}: all in peace 
 
 slumber quiet without molestation. 
 Such weak joys are no more — to new blessings we soar, 
 
 and oh ! for this blest transformation. 
 So prosp'rous and new, ring the theatre through 
 
 loud paeans of high gratulation. 
 
 * The temples of Theseus and the Eumenides were places of refuge for runaway 
 slaves, 
 
 \ Hyperbolus is laughed at elsewhere as a hnkmaker. How far the poet's satire 
 upon a man's occupation is to be extended, has been already explained. 
 
 ^ We shall have occasion to consider the judicial policy of Athens in the 
 comedy of the Wasps: in what light it was considered by themselves may be 
 seen by the concluding clause against those who violated the Amphictyonic oath, 
 and which the framers of that oath appear to have considered as all that was horri- 
 ble: May they never perform a pure sacrifice to Apollo, Di^na and Minerva the 
 provident: may they be alike vnsicccessfid in war and lawsuits, and may their 
 posterity be extirpated from the face of the earth. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 155 
 
 Chor. (/o Jlgor.) Thou star wond'rous bright, shedding radiance and light, 
 to our islands and town beneficial, 
 Say, what news dost thou note that our streets wide must float 
 in *perfume and rites sacrificial ? 
 ^gor. Demus, sirs, by ray power, is again seen to tower 
 in the vigour of youth and stern beauty ; 
 So hard have I toil'd, vapour'd, seeth'd and parboil'd, 
 and so well has my caldron done duty. 
 Chor. And where does he dwell, open further and tell, 
 
 thou man of devices victorious ] 
 dgor. He dwells in the town of the violet crown, 
 
 in Athens the ancient and glorious. 
 Chor. His bearing and port deign me next to report, 
 what dress and costume say have won hiral 
 Let me hear, sir, and learn, that my eyes meek may turn 
 views of love and devotion upon him. 
 Agor. In the garb of past years richly rob'd he appears; 
 in those fashions and forms all his pride is, 
 When he din'd in high state as Miltiades' mate, 
 
 and supp'd with the wise Aristeides. 
 But full view you may take — for hark ! the doors creak, 
 
 new jvisions of glory forth sending ; 
 Now clap hands and throw out all your soul in a shout 
 to the honour of Athens ascending. 
 
 • It was the custom, at Athens, on any good news to offer sacrifices to the gods, 
 whose images were placed in the streets. 
 
 •j- W. Schlegel thinks that the scene was here changed, and a view of the mag- 
 nificent Propylsea substituted in place of the humble dwelhng of the allegorical 
 Demus. The same excellent writer, as warm in his feelings as he is correct and 
 universal in his literature, remarks very justly, that there is something affecting in 
 this triumphal rejoicing, which attends the restoration of Demus to former youth, 
 and dignity of character. Aristophanes was, indeed, in his -way, a true patriot; and 
 the man, who fearlessly exposed himself, while he held up to ridicule two classes of 
 men, whose malignant influence had made this renovation so necessary ; viz., the 
 Demagogues, who abused the public confidcncp, and the still more pernicious 
 Sophists, who poisoned truth, justice and virtue in their very sources: such a man 
 might be expected to revert with feelings of no ordinary description to that period of 
 his country's history, which, if no other monument remained of it than the noble 
 message recorded in Herodotus, (Calliope, c. vii.) is entitled to a respect, which the 
 age of Pericles, with all its polish and civilization, its poets, its painters, its sculptors, 
 and its men of letters, fails to excite. As the nature of the present work has brought 
 the reader upon a period of Grecian history, which afTords few materials for com- 
 mendation, the translator gladly seizes an opportunity of reverting to a brighter side 
 of the picture, by the insertion of this message, so truly worthy by its noble sim- 
 plicity of the better times of Greece : — Now the Athenian deputies, in company with 
 those of Megara and Platsea, came to Lacedaemon, and being introduced to the 
 Ephori, they addressed them thus : We inform you, on the part of the Athenians, 
 that the king of the Medes is ready to restore to us our country, and to make an 
 alliance with us upon fair and equal terms, without fraud and without deceit : he is 
 willing also to give us another country in addition to our own, leaving the choice of 
 
156 THE knights; 
 
 She appears in her praise as the ancient of days, 
 
 the theme and the top of high wonder; 
 Demus' fitmost abode, hyinn'd in song- and in ode, 
 
 and echoed in peals of deep thunder. 
 Cho. O far envied town, in whose chaplet and crown 
 
 the violets never are blighted, 
 Athens famous and great, show thy king in his state, 
 
 and let Greece own her monarch delighted ! 
 Agar. Splendour deck'd, and in oils and in essences trick'd, 
 
 see he comes and claims deep veneration ! 
 He deigns in his hair the *cicada to wear. 
 
 breathing truce, love, and conciliation. 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 Demus, Chorus, Agoracritus. 
 
 Cho. Hail, hail to our lord, honour'd, lov'd and ador'd, 
 through Greece his all-hallow'd dominion ! 
 Transported we bring to the feet of our king 
 
 this triumph of public opinion. 
 To the pleasure and fame of our town and its name 
 
 thou hast order'd, decreed and enacted. 
 Thou hast acted and done, as achievements long won 
 at Marathon's high field exacted. 
 Btm, Come hither, Agoracritus — my gratitude 
 
 such country to ourselves. We, however, out of reverence to the Hellenic Jupiter, 
 and thinking that it would be an atrocious proceeding on our part to -prove traitors 
 to Greece, have rejected, instantly rejected, his offers, though the injuries and ex- 
 treme treachery we have experienced from the Greeks, might have justified us in 
 adopting a different course. We cannot be ignorant that it would be more for our 
 advantage to be on terms of amity with the Persian, than to be the object of his 
 hostility : but to such amity our own choice shall never lead us; we repeat it — never. 
 And thus far, on our part, all behaviour towards the Greeks has been marked with 
 candour and sincerity, «&c. Such was the mode of thinking among the Athenians, 
 when that giddy and ill advised people had just contrived to get rid of their 
 "tyrants;" — those tyrants who, as the impartial Thucydides says, cultivated, in an 
 extreme degree, virtue and wisdom ; and the happiness of whose administration is 
 compared by Plato to that of the golden age of Saturn. (Plat, in Hipparcho, 3. A.) 
 Whether their modes of thinking were improved by the introduction of republican- 
 ism, we leave the readers of Plato and Aristophanes to say. 
 
 * The Athenians prided themselves in the idea of being sprung from the earth : 
 and as an emblem of this imaginary generation they had a custom of wearing golden 
 cicadae (generally translated grasshoppers) in their hair. The Arcadians, who 
 boasted that they existed before the moon, advanced their pretence in the same way 
 by wearing moons in their shoes. Plato, whom nothing fanciful in the mythical 
 tales of his countrymen escaped, has prosecuted their claim to antiquity at some 
 length in his amusing little dialogue, called Critias. — See also his Republic, lib. iii. 
 p. 443. Edit. Mars. Ficmi. 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 157 
 
 Is tied to thee — such marvellous amendment 
 Hath this thy boiling wrought. 
 
 J]gor. O could your eye 
 
 Reverted trace your former state, and actions ! — 
 These have not come within your scope of knowledge; — 
 Had they — the gratitude would e'en come short, 
 That rank'd me next the mark of high divinity. 
 
 Dem. And what might be this former state] unbuckle thee 
 And paint my former self unto me. 
 
 Agor. Sir, 
 
 Your bidding shall be done. This was your nature : 
 Did one in the Assembly speak you thus, 
 (mimics) " Demus, I am your friend — Demus, 't is you 
 Alone command* my love — Demus, there 's none 
 But I takes counsel for you" — needed only 
 A speech and tricksy flourishing like this. 
 And straight your horns were in the air for pride 
 And joy unbounded. 
 
 Dem, Say, how far'd meantime 
 
 The trickster] 
 
 Agor. He had gain'd his end and march'd 
 
 Away; what should detain him to your uses] 
 
 Dem, And did they fool my senses thus] 
 
 Agor, . Your ears 
 
 Meantime went as it were on springs, sir, closing 
 And opening at will, like some umbrella. 
 
 Dem, that my riper years should see themselves 
 From wisdom thus divorced I I mourn my folly. 
 
 Jlgor. Put case, — a brace of orators arose, 
 And one thus utter'd him — " 'T is fit we mann'd 
 A fleet" — the other, " Sirs, the judges must not 
 Curtail them of their fee" — how went the issue] 
 Mark ! the ship-advocate is quash'd anon — 
 Look to the fee-commender — he hath gain'd 
 His cause, and gone about his business presently — 
 {to Dem.) Well may you shift your ground and hang your ears. 
 
 Dem. My cheeks indeed pay shame for such oflTence 
 And guilt of former days. 
 
 Agor. With you it rests not; 
 
 Nor shall you do yourself that wrong to think it : 
 
 • There is much humour in this passage, but Arbuthnot has carried the satire 
 much farther. When John Bull arrives at Ecciesdown Castle, he exacts from his 
 servants a declaration of their regard for him. 
 
 J. B. Are you glad to see your master in Ecciesdown Castle ? 
 
 All. Yes, indeed, sir. 
 
 J. B. Extremely gladl 
 
 All. Extremely, sir. 
 
 J. B. Swear to me that you are so. 
 
 Then they began to damn and sink their souls to the lowest pit of hell, if any 
 person in the world rejoiced more than they did. 
 
158 THE knights; 
 
 Their's was the shame, that play'd upon your easiness. 
 But now put case in after day — good Demus — 
 Some scoundrel iVoin the bar should thus address you. 
 " This culprit must be trounced — I '11 have that cause 
 Nonsuited — let the judges else look to it — 
 No fee, no bread for them if they refuse." — 
 Should one discourse you thus, how shall he fare 
 With you "? 
 
 Dem. The *public pit shall be his fate. 
 
 Thither shall he be borne — and at his neck 
 I '11 tie Hyperbolus by way of makeweight. 
 
 ^flgor. There is a smack of sense and justice here. 
 What other measures for the state's good ordinance 
 Have you devis'd ] 
 
 Bern. Who row our men of war, 
 
 Shall win the harbour and full f pay together. 
 
 Jlgor. Many worn :(:hams will thank you for this grace. 
 
 Dem, The list which sees a citizen§ enroll'd 
 Shall keep it there: no grace — no innovation. 
 
 Jlgor. This blow will strike Cleonymus' huge buckler. 
 
 Dem. I '11 have no speeches in the Agora 
 From those whose chins have not yet budded. 
 
 Jlgor. Clisthenes, 
 
 And Straton then must use dispatch, and straight 
 Look out another school of oratory. 
 
 Dem. My meaning rather points to those same sparks, 
 For ever haunting the perfumers shops. 
 
 Who sit and chatter to this tune — " Commend me (mimicking) 
 To ijPhaeax— swinge me! — 't is a man of parts — 
 
 • The barathrum is meant here, a deep pit, where criminals were thrown at 
 Athens. 
 
 + Every Athenian was more or less a seaman ; and as the soldier sometimes 
 worked at the oar, so the seaman, upon occasions, served by land. The pay of the 
 seaman, like that of the oplite, was, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, two 
 drachmee. (Thuc. 1. iii. c. 17.) This was found too much for the public treasury, 
 and a reduction took place. In the expedition against Sicily, the state allowance to 
 the mariners was only one drachma: (Thuc. 1. vi. c. 31.) we afterwards find 
 Alcibiades advising Tissaphernes (Thuc. 1. viii. c. 45.) that the Athenians gave but 
 half a drachma to their sailors, and recommending him to reduce his allowances to 
 the same sum. 
 
 i Lcs malheureux qui devoient gagner leur vie en servant, des I'enfance, sur les 
 flottes de la republique, y contractoient, par la manoeuvre penible des rames, un 
 defaut dans la taille auquel on les reconnoissoit parmi les autres habitans de I'Attique. 
 C'etoit une depression immediatement audessous de la colonne vertebrale, ou se 
 fait le plus grand effort des rameurs. Les mythologistes de la Grece, qui plaisan- 
 toient souvent a leur raaniere, disoient que cette difformite des Atheniens etoit un 
 vice hereditaire, que Thesee leur avoit transmis, apres avoir ete long temps assis 
 sur la pierre de doujeur; mais cette pretendue pierre de douleur n'etoit dans la 
 realite que le banc des galeriens. De Pauw, t. i. p. 109. 
 
 § See the comedy of the Peace. 
 
 g The inadvertencies of so learned a man as Casaubon are to be mentioned with 
 
OR THE DEMAGOGUES. 159 
 
 Vers'd in all school points most divinely — none 
 
 Takes firmer hold upon his hearer — split me ! — 
 
 And then such art in hamrnerintj his sentiments, 
 
 So clear, so powerful to sway the passions ! — 
 
 He '11 take them in their highest storm and buffetings, 
 
 And — stap my vitals — lay them in a moment." [maker 
 
 Jlgor. (jnimicking.') A rape ! a rape ! thou 'rt gone, thou 'rtlost — this phrase- 
 Hath ta'en thy very senses — split my windpipe ! 
 
 Dem. Nay, they may bid farewell to law and act making; 
 The woods* and fields offer more fit diversion — 
 There let them course and hunt, or force may drive them. 
 
 ^gor. Say you? by the same token then I gift you 
 With this trim folding f stool, and here 's at hand 
 A stout and well limb'd lad to bear it for you. 
 
 Dem. IMy heart o'erflows — old days return. 
 
 ^gor. None will 
 
 Gainsay that speech, when I shall put a gift 
 Into thy hand, which thirty years will not 
 Wear out — what hoa, my lady :|:Truces, enter ! 
 
 Dem. Why I what a world of charms is showered here ! 
 This lip might tempt me to a §thirty years 
 
 due respect. Phseax was not an imaginary voluptuar}', drawn from the Odyssey, as 
 he supposes, but a son of Erasistratus, who began public life with Alcibiades. 
 Phfeax, according to PUitarch, (Life of Alcibiades,) liad an easy, persuasive manner 
 of speaking in private conversation, but could not maintain a debate before the 
 people; or as Eupolis said of him, he was an excellent talker but a most impotent 
 orator {Kaxm ipig-oi, ctSvv^'rieTU.'Tot; Ktrynv). The poet therefore laughs at the young 
 coxcombs of Athens, as not knowing the difft>rence between true oratory and a 
 mere flow of words; and the satire is conveyed in the affected language of that 
 class of men, whom he exposes with such admirable art in the comedy of the 
 Clouds. The dialogue called Sophista, in which Plato brings all his gigantic 
 powers to bear upon the same pestilent race of men, with an apparent consciousness, 
 that even those powers are almost unequal to the task of fully exposing their falla- 
 cious subtleties and specious deceptions, is conducted almost entirely in the same 
 kind of phraseology. See also his dialogue called Politicus, and Xen. Mem. 1. 3. 
 c. 1. s. 6. That the spirit of the original might not be entirely lost, I have ventured 
 to substitute some of the terms of the diamatic fops of Charles the Second's time. 
 
 • The satire of Aristophanes is here, as in most other places, perfectly on the 
 right side. The young men of Athens were gradually deserting the manly exercises 
 of the field, for the effeminate pleasures of a town life, and for the public assemblies, 
 in which they valued themselves on displaymg a specious, false and foppish 
 eloquence, in what manners and under what masters acquired, we shall have occa- 
 sion to sec in the comedy of the Clouds. 
 
 ■\ It was customary for rich men at Athens to have a slave follow them with a stool 
 of this kind, that they might rest themselves at pleasure. The avaricious man in Thco- 
 phrastus saves himself this expense by carrying with him an old mantle for the purpose. 
 
 \ Some females are here introduced characteristically habited. All early comedy is 
 fond of allusions of this kind. In the French morality, Le bien advise et le mul advis^, 
 the present, past and future tenses of the verb to reign, figure as allegorical persons. 
 
 § Probably an allusion to tlic thirty years truce, which was to have preceded the 
 Peloponnesian war. 
 
160 THE knights; 
 
 Salute! — those eyes — how cam'st thou by these beauties 1 
 
 Jlgor. They were conceard within, and who but he, 
 The cursed Paphlagonian, to hide theml 
 Take them and hie thee to the country instantly. 
 
 Dem. And how, meantime, shall fare the Paphlagonian? 
 
 iMgnr. This be his punishment — to exercise 
 The trade I leave — dwell by the city gales. 
 Owning no fellowship nor soft communion — 
 To ply — (and that by grace) — the trade of Sausage-vender — 
 To make his olios — *dogflesh enrich'd 
 With asses meat — to know no sober moment — 
 And when he 's high in wine, to make a war 
 Of words upon his graceless nymph companions— 
 To thirst and slake his parching throat from streams 
 Which first have visited the public baths — 
 Does this content, or shall worst treatment bide him % 
 
 Dem. Nay, I subscribe to this — on such society 
 His swordtongue best is drawn — there let him battle — 
 (Jo 'igor.') For thee — thy services deserve the Hall, 
 And seat which late install'd that worthless varlet. 
 Take you this robe, ('t is green, and borrows name 
 From frogs) you are my debtor for it — follow me 
 And bear the same in hand — for Cleon, let now 
 His new pursuit see him in solemn act 
 Install'd, and garb'd as best befits his office: 
 'T will satisfy the strangers whom his coarse 
 Affronts have long been wont to mortify. f 
 
 [A processmi — Cleon is carried in state in the full costume and with all the imple- 
 ments of his new profession — the Chorus accompanying the pomp with a song, 
 which unfortunately has not come dotun to «s.] 
 
 • It was the custom, acrording to the Scholiast, for the lower tradesmen to prac- 
 tise tricks of this kind and thus impose upon the unwary. It appears, however, from 
 Hippocrates, unpalatable and even monstrous as such a dish may appear to us, that 
 the flesh of asses, horses, dogs and foxes was eaten without any scruple in Greece. 
 Dogs' flesh, according to Casaubon, was recommended by this great physician as 
 particularly wholesome. 
 
 f Thus ends this singular play : a short remark from one of the most clear- 
 sighted and virtuous of the poet's contemporaries will supersede the necessity of 
 making any comments upon its tendency, or pointing out the lessons of political 
 wisdom, which may be derived from it. — " That the populace should be partial to a 
 democracy," says the excellent Xenophon. " I can easily excuse ; for it is pardonable 
 that every person should try to benefit himself; but if any one, not immediately in 
 the rank of the people, prefers living in a democratical rather than in an oligarchical 
 government, that man is a villain by anticipation, and acts upon the consciousness, 
 that it is easier to be a bad man and to escape detection in a state where the govern- 
 ment is in the hands of the many, than it is in a state where the government is in 
 the hands of a few." Xen. de Rep. Ath. c. ii. § 20. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 J 
 
t 
 
•f5