COMEDIES OF THE WAR: THE ACHARNIANS--THE PEACE--LYSISTRATA.
The momentous period in the history of Greece during which Aristophanes
began to write, forms the ground-work, more or less, of so many of his
Comedies, that it is impossible to understand them, far less to
appreciate their point, without some acquaintance with its leading
events. All men’s thoughts were occupied by the great contest for
supremacy between the rival states of Athens and Sparta, known as the
Peloponnesian War. It is not necessary here to enter into details; but
the position of the Athenians during the earlier years of the struggle
must be briefly described. Their strength lay chiefly in their fleet; in
the other arms of war they were confessedly no match for Sparta and her
confederate allies. The heavy-armed Spartan infantry, like the black
Spanish bands of the fifteenth century, was almost irresistible in the
field. Year after year the invaders marched through the Isthmus into
Attica, or were landed in strong detachments on different points of the
coast, while the powerful Bœotian cavalry swept all the champaign,
burning the towns and villages, cutting down the crops, destroying vines
and olive-groves,--carrying this work of devastation almost up to the
very walls of Athens. For no serious attempt was made to resist these
periodical invasions. The strategy of the Athenians was much the same as
it had been when the Persian hosts swept down upon them fifty years
before. Again they withdrew themselves and all their movable property
within the city walls, and allowed the invaders to overrun the country
with impunity. Their flocks and herds were removed into the islands on
the coasts, where, so long as Athens was mistress of the sea, they would
be in comparative safety. It was a heavy demand upon their patriotism;
but, as before, they submitted to it, trusting that the trial would be
but brief, and nerved to it by the stirring words of their great leader
Pericles. The ruinous sacrifice, and even the personal suffering,
involved in this forced migration of a rural population into a city
wholly inadequate to accommodate them, may easily be imagined, even if
it had not been forcibly described by the great historian of those
times. Some carried with them the timber framework of their houses, and
set it up in such vacant spaces as they could find. Others built for
themselves little “chambers on the wall,” or occupied the outer courts
of the temples, or were content with booths and tents set up under the
Long Walls which connected the city with the harbour of Piræus. Some--if
our comic satirist is to be trusted--were even fain to sleep in tubs and
hen-coops. Provisions grew dear and scarce. Pestilence broke out in the
overcrowded city; and in the second and third years of the war, the
Great Plague carried off, out of their comparatively small population,
above 10,000 of all ranks. The lands were either left unsown, or sown
only to be ravaged before harvest-time by the enemy. No wonder that, as
year after year passed, and brought no respite from suffering to the
harassed citizens, they began to ask each other how long this was to
last, and whether even national honour was worth purchasing at this
heavy cost. Even the hard-won victories and the successful blows struck
by their admirals at various points on their enemies’ coasts failed to
reconcile the less warlike spirits to the continuance of the struggle.
Popular orators like Cleon, fiery captains like Alcibiades, still
carried the majority with them when they called for new levies and
prophesied a triumphant issue; but there was a party at Athens, not so
loud but still very audible, who said that such men had personal
ambitions of their own to serve, and who had begun to sigh for “peace at
any price.”
But it needed a pressure of calamity far greater than the present to
keep a good citizen of Athens away from the theatre. If the times were
gloomy, so much the more need of a little honest diversion. And if the
war party were too strong for him to resist in the public assembly, at
least he could have his laugh out against them when caricatured on the
stage. It has been already shown that the comic drama was to the
Athenians what a free press is to modern commonwealths. As the
government of France under Louis XIV. was said to have been “a
despotism tempered by epigrams,” so the power of the popular leaders
over the democracy of Athens found a wholesome check in the free
speech--not to say the licence--accorded to the comedian. Sentiments
which it might have been dangerous to express in the public assembly
were enunciated in the most plain-spoken language by the actor in the
new burlesque. The bolder the attack was, and the harder the hitting,
the more the audience were pleased. Nor was it at all necessary, in
order to the spectator’s keen enjoyment of the piece, that he should
agree with its politics. Many an admirer of the war policy of Lamachus
laughed heartily enough, we may be sure, at his presentment on the stage
in the caricature of military costume in which the actor dressed the
part: just as many a modern Englishman has enjoyed the political
caricatures of “H. B.,” or the cartoons in ‘Punch,’ not a whit the less
because the satire was pointed against the recognised leaders of his own
party. It is probable that Aristophanes was himself earnestly opposed to
the continuance of the war, and spoke his own sentiments on this point
by the mouth of his characters; but the prevalent disgust at the
hardships of this long-continued siege--for such it practically
was--would in any case be a tempting subject for the professed writer of
burlesques; and the caricature of a leading politician, if cleverly
drawn, is always a success for the author. To win the verdict of popular
applause, which was the great aim of an Athenian play-writer, he must
above all things hit the popular taste.
The Peloponnesian War lasted for twenty-nine years--during most of the
time for which our dramatist held possession of the stage. Nearly all
his comedies which have come down to us abound, as we should naturally
expect, in allusions to the one absorbing interest of the day. But three
of them--‘The Acharnians,’ ‘The Peace,’ and ‘Lysistrata,’--are founded
entirely on what was the great public question of the day--How long was
this grinding war to continue? when should Athens see again the
blessings of peace? Treated in various grotesque and amusing forms, one
serious and important political moral underlies them all.
THE ACHARNIANS.
‘The Acharnians’ might indeed have fairly claimed the first place here,
on the ground that it was the earliest in date of the eleven comedies of
Aristophanes which have been preserved to us. Independently of its great
literary merits, it would have a special interest of its own, as being
the most ancient specimen of comedy of any kind which has reached us. It
was first acted at the great Lenæan festival held annually in honour of
Bacchus, in February of the year 425 B.C., when the war had already
lasted between six and seven years. It took its name from Acharnæ, one
of the “demes,” or country boroughs of Attica, about seven miles north
of Athens; and the Chorus in the play is supposed to consist of old men
belonging to the district. Acharnæ was the largest, the most fertile,
and the most populous of all the demes, supplying a contingent of 3000
heavy-armed soldiers to the Athenian army. It lay right in the
invader’s path in his march from the Spartan frontier upon the city of
Athens: and when, in the first year of the war, the Spartan forces
bivouacked in its corn-fields and olive-grounds, and set fire to its
homesteads, the smoke of their burning and the camp of the destroying
enemy could be seen from the city walls. The effect was nearly being
that which the Spartan king Archidamus had desired. The Athenians--and
more especially the men of Acharnæ, now cooped within the fortifications
of the capital--clamoured loudly to be led out to battle; and it needed
all the influence of Pericles to restrain them from risking an
engagement in which he knew they would be no match for the invaders. The
Acharnians, therefore, had their national hostility to the Spartans yet
more imbittered by their own private sufferings. Yet it was not
unnatural that a sober-minded and peaceful yeoman of the district,
remembering what his native canton had suffered and was likely to suffer
again, should strongly object to the continuance of a war carried on at
such a cost. His zeal for the national glory of Athens and his
indignation against her enemies might be strong: but the love of home
and property is a large component in most men’s patriotism. He was an
Athenian by all means--but an Acharnian first.
Such a man is Dicæopolis, the hero of this burlesque. He has been too
long cooped up in Athens, while his patrimony is being ruined: and in
the first scene he comes up to the Pnyx--the place where the public
assembly was held--grumbling at things in general, and the war in
particular. The members of the Committee on Public Affairs come, as
usual, very late to business--every one, in this city life, is so lazy,
as the Acharnian declares: but when business does begin, an incident
occurs which interests him very much indeed. One Amphitheus--a personage
who claims to be immortal by virtue of divine origin--announces that he
has obtained, perhaps on that ground, special permission from the gods
to negotiate a peace with Sparta. But there is one serious obstacle;
nothing can be done in this world, even by demigods, without money, and
he would have the Committee supply him with enough for his long journey.
Such an outrageous request is only answered on the part of the
authorities by a call for “Police!” and the applicant, in spite of the
remonstrances of Dicæopolis at such unworthy treatment of a public
benefactor, is summarily hustled out of court. Dicæopolis, however,
follows him, and giving him eight shillings--or thereabouts--to defray
his expenses on the road, bids him haste to Sparta and bring back with
him, if possible, a private treaty of peace--for himself, his wife and
children, and maid-servant. Meanwhile the “House” is occupied with the
reception of certain High Commissioners who have returned from different
foreign embassies. Some have been to ask help from Persia, and have
brought back with them “the Great King’s Eye, Sham-artabas” (Dicæopolis
is inclined to look upon him as a sham altogether)--who is, in fact, all
eye, as far as the mask-maker’s art can make him so. He talks a jargon
even more unintelligible than modern diplomatic communications, which
the envoys explain to mean that the king will send the Athenians a
subsidy of gold, but which Dicæopolis interprets in quite a contrary
sense. Others have come back from a mission to Thrace, and have brought
with them a sample of the warlike auxiliaries which Sitalces, prince of
that country (who had a sort of Athenomania), is going to send to their
aid--at two shillings a-day; some ragamuffin tribe whose appearance on
the stage was no doubt highly ludicrous, and whose character is somewhat
like that of Falstaff’s recruits, or Bombastes Furioso’s “brave army,”
since their first exploit is to steal Dicæopolis’s luncheon: a palpable
warning against putting trust in foreign hirelings.
Within a space of time so brief as to be conceivable upon the stage
only, Amphitheus has returned from Sparta, to the great joy of
Dicæopolis. His mission has been successful. But he is quite out of
breath; for the Acharnians, finding out what his business is, have
hunted and pelted him up to the very walls of Athens. “Peace, indeed! a
pretty fellow you are, to negotiate a peace with our enemies after all
our vines and corn-fields have been destroyed!” He has escaped them,
however, for the present, and has brought back with him three samples of
Treaties--in three separate wine-skins. The contents are of various
growth and quality.[18]
“_Dic._ You’ve brought the Treaties?
_Amph._ Ay, three samples of them;
This here is a five years’ growth--taste it and try.
_Dic._ (_tastes, and spits it out_). Don’t like it.
_Amph._ Eh?
_Dic._ Don’t like it--it won’t do;
There’s an uncommon ugly twang of pitch,
A touch of naval armament about it.
_Amph._ Well, here’s a ten years’ growth may suit you better.
_Dic._ (_tastes again_). No, neither of them; there is a sort of sourness
Here in this last,--a taste of acid embassies,
And vapid allies turning to vinegar.
_Amph._ But here’s a truce of thirty years entire,
Warranted sound.
_Dic._ (_smacking his lips and then hugging the jar_).
O Bacchus and the Bacchanals!
This is your sort! here’s nectar and ambrosia!
Here’s nothing about providing three days’ rations;[19]
It says, ‘Do what you please, go where you will;’
I choose it, and adopt it, and embrace it,
For sacrifice, and for my private drinking.
In spite of all the Acharnians, I’m determined
To remove out of the reach of wars and mischief,
And keep the Feast of Bacchus on my farm.”--(F.)
He leaves the stage on these festive thoughts intent. The scene changes
to the open country in the district of Acharnæ, and here what we must
consider as the second act of the play begins. The Chorus of ancient
villagers--robust old fellows, “tough as oak, men who have fought at
Marathon” in their day--rush in, in chase of the negotiators of this
hateful treaty. Moving backwards and forwards with quick step in
measured time across the wide orchestra (which, it must be remembered,
was their proper domain), they chant a strain of which the rhythm, at
least, is fairly preserved in Mr Frere’s translation:--
“Follow faster, all together! search, inquire of every one.
Speak--inform us--have you seen him? whither is the rascal run?
’Tis a point of public service that the traitor should be caught
In the fact, seized and arrested with the treaties he has brought.”
Then they separate into two bodies, mutually urging each other to the
pursuit, and leave the scene in different directions as Dicæopolis
reappears. He is come to hold a private festival on his own account to
Bacchus, in thanksgiving for the Peace which he, at all events, is to
enjoy from henceforward. But he will have everything done in regular
order, so far as his resources admit, with all the pomp and solemnity of
a public festival. His daughter is to act as “Canephora,” or
basket-bearer, carrying the sacred emblems of the god--a privilege which
the fairest and noblest maidens of Athens were proud to claim--and her
mother exhorts her to move and behave herself like a lady,--if on this
occasion only. Their single slave is to follow behind with other mystic
emblems. But a spectacle is nothing, as Dicæopolis feels, without
spectators; so he bids his wife go indoors, and mount upon the house-top
to see the procession pass. Next to a caricature of their great men, an
Athenian audience enjoyed a caricature of their religion. They had this
much of excuse, that Paganism was full of tempting themes for
burlesque, of which their comic dramatists liberally availed themselves.
But in truth there is a temptation to burlesque and parody presented by
all religions, more or less, on their external side. Romanism and
Puritanism have met with very similar treatment amongst ourselves; and
one has only to refer to the old miracle-plays, and such celebrations as
the Fête d’Ane, to be convinced how closely in such matters jest and
earnest lie side by side.
But the festivities are very soon interrupted. The Acharnians have
scented their prey at last, and rush in upon the celebrant with a shower
of stones. Dicæopolis begs to know what crime he has committed. They
soon let him know it: he has presumed to separate his private interest
from the public cause, and to make a private treaty with the detested
Spartans. They will listen to no explanation:--
“Don’t imagine to cajole us with your argument and fetches!
You confess you’ve made a peace with these abominable wretches?
_Dic._ Well--the very Spartans even--I’ve my doubts and scruples whether
They’ve been totally to blame, in every instance, altogether.
_Cho._ Not to blame in every instance?--villain, vagabond! how dare ye?
Talking treason to our faces, to suppose that we shall spare ye?
_Dic._ Not so totally to blame; and I will show that, here and there,
The treatment they received from us has not been absolutely fair.
_Cho._ What a scandal! what an insult! what an outrage on the state!
Are ye come to plead before us as the Spartans’ advocate?”--(F.)
Well,--yes, he is, if they will only listen to him; and so confident is
he of the justice of his views, that he undertakes to plead his cause
with his head laid upon a chopping-block, with full permission to his
opponents to cut it off at once if he fails to convince them. Even this
scanty grace the indignant Acharnians are unwilling to allow him, until
he fortunately lays his hand upon an important hostage, whose life
shall, he declares, be forfeited the moment they proceed to violence. He
produces what looks like a cradle, and might contain a baby. It is
really nothing more or less than a basket of charcoal--the local product
and staple merchandise of Acharnæ. “Lo,” says he to his irate
antagonists, throwing himself into a tragic attitude and brandishing a
dagger--“Lo, I will stab your darling to the heart!” The joke seems so
very feeble in itself, that it is necessary to bear in mind that a
well-known “situation” in a lost tragedy of Euripides (Telephus), which
would have been fresh in the memory of an audience of such inveterate
play-goers, is here burlesqued for their amusement. The threat brings
the Acharnians to terms at once; they lay down their stones, and prepare
to listen to argument, even in apology for the detested Spartans. The
chopping-block is brought out; but before Dicæopolis begins to plead, he
remembers that he is not provided with one very important requisite for
a prisoner on trial for his life. He ought to be clothed in “a most
pathetical and heart-rending dress”--to move the compassion of his
judges. Will they allow him just to step over the way and borrow one
from that great tragedian Euripides, who keeps a whole wardrobe of
pathetic costumes for his great characters? They give him leave; and as
Euripides--most conveniently for dramatic purposes--appears to live
close by, Dicæopolis proceeds at once to knock at the door of his
lodging, and a servant answers from within. The humour of the scene
which follows must have been irresistible to an audience who were
familiar with every one of the characters mentioned, and who enjoyed the
caricature none the less because they had, no doubt, applauded the
tragic original.
“_Servant._ Who’s there?
_Dic._ Euripides within?
_Serv._ Within, yet not within. You comprehend me?
_Dic._ Within and not within! why, what d’ye mean?
_Serv._ I speak correctly, old sire! his outward man
Is in the garret writing tragedy;
While his essential being is abroad,
Pursuing whimsies in the world of fancy.
_Dic._ O happy Euripides, with such a servant,
So clever and accomplished!--Call him out.
_Serv._ It’s quite impossible.
_Dic._ But it must be done.
Positively and absolutely I must see him;
Or I must stand here rapping at the door.
Euripides! Euripides! come down,
If ever you came down in all your life!
’Tis I--’tis Dicæopolis from Chollidæ.
_Eur._ I’m not at leisure to come down.
_Dic._ Perhaps--
But here’s the scene-shifter can wheel you round.
_Eur._ It cannot be.
_Dic._ But, however, notwithstanding.
_Eur._ Well, there then, I’m wheeled round; for I had not time
For coming down.
_Dic._ Euripides, I say!
_Eur._ What say ye?
_Dic._ Euripides! Euripides!
Good lawk, you’re there! up-stairs! you write up-stairs,
Instead of the ground-floor? always up-stairs?
Well now, that’s odd! But, dear Euripides,
If you had but a suit of rags that you could lend me!
You’re he that brings out cripples in your tragedies,
A’nt ye?[20] You’re the new Poet, he that writes
Those characters of beggars and blind people?
Well, dear Euripides, if could you but lend me
A suit of tatters from a cast-off tragedy!
For mercy’s sake, for I’m obliged to make
A speech, in my own defence before the Chorus,
A long pathetic speech, this very day;
And if it fails, the doom of death betides me.
_Eur._ Say, what d’ye seek? is it the woful garb
In which the wretched aged Æneus acted?
_Dic._ No, ’twas a wretcheder man than Æneus, much.
_Eur._ Was it blind Phœnix?
_Dic._ No, not Phœnix; no,
A fellow a great deal wretcheder than Phœnix.”--(F.)
After some further suggestions on the part of Euripides of other tragic
characters, whose piteous “get-up” might excite the compassion of
audience or judges, it turns out that the costume on which the applicant
has set his heart is that in which Telephus the Mysian, in the tragedy
which bears his name, pleads before Achilles, to beg that warrior to
heal, as his touch alone could do, the wound which he had made. The
whole scene should be read, if not in the original, then in Mr Frere’s
admirable translation. Dicæopolis begs Euripides to lend him certain
other valuable stage properties, one after the other: a beggar’s
staff,--a little shabby basket,--a broken-lipped pitcher. The tragedian
grows out of patience at last at this wholesale plagiarism of his
dramatic repertory:--
“_Eur._ Fellow, you’ll plunder me a whole tragedy!
Take it, and go.
_Dic._ Yes; I forsooth, I’m going.
But how shall I contrive? There’s something more
That makes or mars my fortune utterly;
Yet give them, and bid me go, my dear Euripides;
A little bundle of leaves to line my basket.
_Eur._ For mercy’s sake!... But take them.--There they go!
My tragedies and all! ruined and robbed!
_Dic._ No more; I mean to trouble you no more.
Yes, I retire; in truth I feel myself
Importunate, intruding on the presence
Of chiefs and princes, odious and unwelcome.
But out, alas! that I should so forget
The very point on which my fortune turns;
I wish I may be hanged, my dear Euripides,
If ever I trouble you for anything,
Except one little, little, little boon,--
A single lettuce from your mother’s stall.”--(F.)
This parting shot at the tragedian’s family antecedents (for his mother
was said to have been a herb-woman) is quite in the style of Athenian
wit, which was nothing if not personal. Euripides very naturally orders
the door to be shut in the face of this uncivil intruder,--who has got
all he wanted, however. Clad in the appropriate costume, he lays his
head on the chopping-block, while one of the Chorus stands over him with
an axe; and in this ludicrous position makes one of those addresses to
the audience which were usual in these comedies, in which the poet
assumes for the moment his own character, and takes the house into his
personal confidence. As he has already told Euripides,--
“For I must wear a beggar’s garb to-day,
Yet be myself in spite of my disguise,
That the audience all may know me.”
He will venture upon a little plain-speaking to his fellow-Athenians,
upon a very delicate subject, as he is well aware. But at this January
festival, unlike the greater one in March, no foreigners were likely to
be present, so that all that was said might be considered as between
friends.
“The words I speak are bold, but just and true.
Cleon, at least, cannot accuse me now,
That I defame the city before strangers.
For this is the Lenæan festival,
And here we meet, all by ourselves alone;
No deputies are arrived as yet with tribute,
No strangers or allies; but here we sit,
A chosen sample, clean as sifted corn,
With our own denizens as a kind of chaff.
First, I detest the Spartans most extremely;
And wish that Neptune, the Tænarian deity,
Would bury them and their houses with his earthquakes.
For I’ve had losses--losses, let me tell ye,
Like other people: vines cut down and ruined.
But, among friends (for only friends are here),
Why should we blame the Spartans for all this?
For people of ours, some people of our own,--
Some people from amongst us here, I mean;
But not The PEOPLE--pray remember that--
I never said The PEOPLE--but a pack
Of paltry people, mere pretended citizens,
Base counterfeits, went laying informations,
And making confiscation of the jerkins
Imported here from Megara; pigs, moreover,
Pumpkins, and pecks of salt, and ropes of onions,
Were voted to be merchandise from Megara,
Denounced, and seized, and sold upon the spot.”--(F.)
He goes on to mention other aggressions on the part of his own
countrymen--to wit, the carrying off from Megara a young woman, no great
loss to any community in point of personal character, but still a
Megarian--aggressions not of much importance in themselves, but such as
he feels sure no high-spirited nation could be expected to put up
with:--
“Just make it your own case; suppose the Spartans
Had manned a boat, and landed on your islands,
And stolen a pug puppy-dog from Seriphos”--
why, as he says, the whole nation would have flown to arms at once to
avenge the insult.
At this point he is interrupted. One party of the Acharnians are for
making short work with such a blasphemer. But the other Semi-chorus vow
that he says nothing but the truth, and dare them to lay hands upon
him. A struggle ensues, and the war faction call aloud for Lamachus--the
“Great Captain” of the day. And that general, being ready within call
(as every one is who is required for stage purposes), makes his
appearance in grand military costume, with an enormous crest towering
over his helmet, and a gorgon’s head of gigantic dimensions upon his
shield. He speaks in heroics, as befits him:--
“Whence falls that sound of battle on mine ear?
Who needs my help? for Lamachus is here!
Whose summons bids me to the field repair,
And wakes my slumbering gorgon from her lair?”
Dicæopolis is paralysed at the terrible vision, and humbly begs pardon
of the hero for what he has said. Lamachus bids him repeat his words:--
“_Dic._ I--I can’t remember--I’m so terrified.
The terror of that crest quite turned me dizzy:
Do take the hobgoblin away from me, I beseech you.[21]
_Lam._ (_takes off his helmet._) There then.
_Dic._ Now turn it upside down.
_Lam._ See, there.
_Dic._ Now give me one of the feathers.”--(F.)
And, to the general’s great disgust, he pretends to use it to tickle his
throat. He is so terribly frightened he _must_ be sick. Lamachus draws
his sword, and makes at the scoffer; but in the tussle the general (to
the great amusement, no doubt, of the audience) gets the worst of it. He
indignantly demands to know who this vulgar fellow is, who has no
respect for dignities:--
“_Dic._ I’ll tell ye--an honest man; that’s what I am.
A citizen that has served his time in the army,
As a foot-soldier, fairly; not like you,
Pilfering and drawing pay with a pack of foreigners.”--(F.)
He appeals to his audience--did any of them ever get sent out as High
Commissioners, with large salaries, like Lamachus? Not one of them. The
whole administration of the Athenian war office is nothing but rank
jobbery. The general, finding the argument taking a rather personal and
unpleasant turn, goes off, with loud threats of what he will do to the
Spartans; and Dicæopolis, assuming his own acquittal by the Acharnians,
proclaims, on the strength of his private treaty of peace, a free and
open market on his farm for Megarians and Thebans, and all the
Peloponnesian Greeks.
An interval between what we should call the acts of the play is filled
up by a “_Parabasis_” as it was termed--a chant in which the Chorus
pleads the author’s cause with the audience. By his comedy of ‘The
Babylonians,’ produced the year before, he had drawn upon him, as has
been already said, the wrath of Cleon and his party, and they had even
gone so far as to bring an indictment against him for treason against
the state. And he now, by the mouth of the Chorus, makes a kind of
half-apology for his former boldness, and assures the spectators that he
has never been really disloyal to Athens. As to Cleon the tanner--he
will “cut him into shoe-soles for the Knights;” and we have already seen
how he kept his word.
When the regular action of the comedy is resumed, Dicæopolis has opened
his free market. The first who comes to take advantage of it is an
unfortunate Megarian, who has been reduced to poverty by the war. His
native district, lying midway between the two powerful neighbours, had
in its perplexity taken what they thought the strongest side, had put an
Athenian garrison to the sword, and had suffered terribly from the
vengeance of the Athenians in consequence. They had been excluded, on
pain of death, from all ports and markets within the Athenian rule, and
twice in every year orders were given to march into their territory and
destroy their crops. The misery to which the wretched inhabitants were
thus reduced is described with a grim humour. The Megarian, having
nothing else left to dispose of, has brought his two little daughters to
market for sale.
“_Meg._ Ah, there’s the Athenian market! heaven bless it,
I say; the welcomest sight to a Megarian.
I’ve looked for it, and longed for it, like a child
For its own mother. You, my daughters dear,
Disastrous offspring of a dismal sire,
List to my words, and let them sink impressed
Upon your empty stomachs; now’s the time
That you must seek a livelihood for yourselves,
Therefore resolve at once, and answer me;
Will you be sold abroad, or starve at home?
_Daughters_ (_both together_). Let us be sold, papa! Let us be sold!
_Meg._ I say so too; but who do ye think will purchase
Such useless, mischievous commodities?
However, I have a notion of my own,
A true Megarian scheme; I mean to sell ye
Disguised as pigs, with artificial pettitoes.
Here, take them, and put them on. Remember now,
Show yourselves off; do credit to your breeding,
Like decent pigs; or else, by Mercury,
If I’m obliged to take you back to Megara,
There you shall starve, far worse than heretofore.
This pair of masks too--fasten ’em on your faces,
And crawl into the sack there on the ground.
Mind ye, remember--you must squeak and whine.”--(F.)
After some jokes upon the subject, not over-refined, Dicæopolis becomes
the purchaser of the pair for a peck of salt and a rope of onions. He is
sending the Megarian home rejoicing, and wishing that he could make as
good a bargain for his wife and his mother as well, when that curse of
the Athenian commonwealth, an informer, comes upon the scene. He at once
denounces the pigs as contraband; but Dicæopolis calls the constables to
remove him--he will have no informers in his market. The next visitor is
a Theban, a hearty, good-humoured yeoman, but who disgusts Dicæopolis by
bringing with him two or three pipers, whom the master of the market
bids hold their noise and be off; Bœotian music, we are to understand,
being always excruciating to the fine Athenian ear. The new-comer has
brought with him, to barter for Athenian produce, fish, wild-fowl, and
game of all kinds, including grasshoppers, hedgehogs, weasels,
and--writing-tables. But what attracts the attention of Dicæopolis most
is some splendid Copaic eels.[22] He has not seen their sweet faces, he
vows, for six years or more--never since this cursed war began. He
selects the finest, and calls at once for brazier and bellows to cook
it. The Bœotian naturally asks to be paid for this pick of his basket;
but Dicæopolis explains to him that he takes it by the landlord’s right,
as “market-toll.” For the rest of the lot, however, he shall have
payment in Athenian wares. “What will he take?--sprats? crockery?” Nay,
they have plenty of these things at home, says the Theban; he would
prefer some sort of article that is plentiful in Attica and scarce at
Thebes. A bright idea strikes Dicæopolis at once:--
“_Dic._ Ah! now I have it! take an Informer home with ye--
Pack him like crockery--and tie him fast.
_Bœot._ By the Twin Gods, I will! I’ll make a show of him
For a tricksy ape. ’Twill pay me well, I warrant.”
Apropos to the notion, an informer makes his appearance, and Dicæopolis
stealthily points him out to the Bœotian. “He’s small,” remarks the
latter, in depreciation. “Yes,” replies the Athenian; “but every inch of
him is thoroughly bad.” As the man, intent on his vocation, is
investigating the stranger’s goods, and calling witnesses to this breach
of the law, Dicæopolis gives the signal, and in a trice he is seized,
tied up with ropes and straw like a large jar, and after a few hearty
kicks--administered to him just to see whether he rings sound or
not--this choice specimen of Athenian produce is hoisted on the
shoulders of a slave, and carried off as a curiosity to Thebes.
The concluding scene brings out in strong contrast the delights of peace
and the miseries of war. General Lamachus has heard of the new market,
and cannot resist the temptation to taste once more some of its now
contraband luxuries. He sends a slave to buy for him a three-shilling
eel. But no eel shall the man of war get from Dicæopolis--no, not if he
would give his gorgon-faced shield for it; and the messenger has to
return to his master empty. A farmer who has lost his oxen in one of the
raids made by the enemy, and has heard of the private supply of Peace
which is in the possession of Dicæopolis, comes to buy a small measure
of it for himself, even if not of the strongest quality--the
“five-years’ sort” would do. But he asks in vain. Next arrives a
messenger from a newly-married bridegroom, who has a natural dislike
under the circumstances to go on military service. Would Dicæopolis
oblige him with a little of this blessed balsam, so that he may stay at
home this one campaign?
“_Dic._ Take it away;
I would not part with a particle of my balsam
For all the world; not for a thousand drachmas.
But that young woman there--who’s she?
_Mess._ The bridesmaid,
With a particular message from the bride,
Wishing to speak a word in private with you.
_Dic._ Well, what have ye got to say? let’s hear it all.
Come--step this way--no, nearer--in a whisper--
Nearer, I say--Come then, now, tell me about it.
(_After listening with comic attention to a
supposed whisper._)
O, bless me! what a capital, comical,
Extraordinary string of female reasons
For keeping a young bridegroom safe at home!
Well, we’ll indulge her, since she’s only a woman;
She’s not obliged to serve; bring out the balsam!
Come, where’s your little vial?”--(F.)
While Dicæopolis is continuing his culinary preparations for the banquet
which is to close the festival--preparations in which the old gentlemen
of the Chorus, in spite of their objections to the truce, take a very
lively interest--a messenger comes in hot haste to summon Lamachus. The
Bœotians are meditating an attack on the frontier, hoping to take the
Athenians at disadvantage at this time of national holiday. It is
snowing hard; but the orders of the commanders-in-chief are imperative,
and Lamachus must go to the front. And at this moment comes another
messenger to call Dicæopolis to the banquet, which stays only for him. A
long antithetic dialogue follows, pleasant, it must be supposed, to
Athenian ears, who delighted in such word-fencing, tiresome to English
readers. Lamachus orders out his knapsack; Dicæopolis bids his slave
bring his dinner-service. The general, cursing all commanders-in-chief,
calls for his plume; the Acharnian for roast pigeons. Lamachus calls for
his spear; Dicæopolis for the meat-spit. The hero whirls his gorgon
shield round; the other mimics the performance with a large cheese-cake.
Losing patience at last, partly through envy of such good fare, and
partly at the mocking tone of the other, Lamachus threatens him with his
weapon; Dicæopolis defends himself with the spit, like Bailie Nicol
Jarvie with his hot poker; and so, after this passage of broad farce,
the scene closes--the general shouldering his knapsack and marching off
into the snow-storm, while the other packs up his contribution to the
public supper, at which he hastens to take his place.
A brief interval, filled by a choral ode, allows time enough in dramatic
imagination for Lamachus’s expedition and for Dicæopolis’s feast. A
messenger from the army rushes in hot haste upon the stage, and knocks
loudly at the door of the former. “Hot-water, lint, plaister, splints!”
The general has been wounded. In leaping a ditch he has sprained his
ankle and broken his head; and here he comes. As the discomfited warrior
limps in on the one side, groaning and complaining, Dicæopolis, with a
train of joyous revellers, enters on the other. He does not spare his
jests and mockeries upon the other’s miserable condition; and the piece
closes with a tableau sufficiently suggestive of the advantages of peace
over war--the general, supported by his attendants, having his wounds
dressed, and roaring with pain, occupying one side of the stage; while
the Acharnian revellers, crowned with garlands, shout their joyous
drinking-songs to Bacchus on the other.
THE PEACE.
‘The Peace’ was brought out four years after ‘The Acharnians,’ when the
war had already lasted ten years. This was not long before the
conclusion of that treaty between the two great contending powers which
men hoped was to hold good for fifty years, known as the Peace of
Nicias. The leading idea of the plot is the same as in the previous
comedy; the intense longing, on the part of the more domestic and less
ambitious citizens, for relief from the prolonged miseries of the war.
Trygæus,--whose name suggests the lost merriment of the
vintage,--finding no help in men, has resolved to undertake an
expedition in his own person, to heaven, to expostulate with Jupiter for
allowing this wretched state of things to go on. With this object in
view (after some previous attempts with a ladder, which, owing to the
want of anything like a _point d’appui_, have naturally resulted in some
awkward falls), he has fed and trained a dung-beetle, which is to carry
him up to the Olympian throne; there being an ancient fable to the
effect that the creature had once upon a time made his way there in
pursuit of his enemy the eagle.[23] It is a burlesque upon the aerial
journey of Bellerophon on Pegasus, as represented in one of the popular
tragedies of Euripides; and Trygæus addresses his strange steed as his
“little Pegasus” accordingly. Mounted in this strange fashion, to the
great alarm of his two daughters, he makes his appearance on the stage,
and is raised bodily through the air, with many soothing speeches to the
beetle, and a private “aside” to the machinist of the theatre to take
great care of him, lest like his predecessor Bellerophon he should fall
down and break his leg, and so furnish Euripides with another crippled
hero for a tragedy. By some change of scenery he is next represented as
having reached the door of Jupiter’s palace, where Mercury, as the
servant in waiting, comes out to answer his knock.
_Mercury_ (_looks round and sniffs_). What’s this
I smell--a mortal? (_Sees Trygæus on his beetle._) O, great Hercules!
What horrible beast is this?
_Tryg._ A beetle-horse.
_Merc._ O you abominable, impudent, shameless beast!
You cursed, cursed, thrice accursed sinner!
How came you up here? what business have you here?
O you abomination of abominations,
Speak--what’s your name? D’ye hear?
_Tryg._ Abomination.
_Merc._ What place d’ye come from?
_Tryg._ From Abomination.
_Merc._ (_rather puzzled_). Eh?--what’s your father’s name?
_Tryg._ Abomination.
_Merc._ (_in a fury_). Look here now,--by the Earth, you die this minute,
Unless you tell me your accursed name.
_Tryg._ Well--I’m Trygæus of Athmon; I can prune
A vine with any man--that’s all. I’m no informer,
I do assure you; I hate law like poison.
_Merc._ And what have you come here for?
_Tryg._ (_pulling something out of a bag_). Well, you see,
I’ve brought you this beefsteak.
_Merc._ (_softening his tone considerably_). Oh, well--poor fellow!
But how did you come?
_Tryg._ Aha, my cunning friend!
I’m not such an abomination, after all!
But come, call Jupiter for me, if you please.
_Merc._ Ha, ha! you can’t see him, nor any of the gods;
They’re all of them gone from home--went yesterday.
_Tryg._ Why, where on earth are they gone to?
_Merc._ Earth, indeed!
_Tryg._ Well, then, but where?
_Merc._ They’re gone a long way off
Into the furthest corner of the heavens.
_Tryg._ And why are you left here, pray, by yourself?
_Merc._ Oh, I’m taking care of the pots and pans, and suchlike.
_Tryg._ What made them all leave home so suddenly?
_Merc._ Disgusted with you Greeks. They’ve given you up
To War, to do exactly what he likes with:
They’ve left him here to manage all their business,
And gone themselves as far aloft as possible,
That they may no more see you cutting throats,
And may be no more bothered with your prayers.
_Tryg._ What makes them treat us in this fashion--tell me?
_Merc._ Because you would have war, when they so often
Offered you peace. Whenever those fools the Spartans
Met with some small success, then it was always--
“By the Twin Gods, Athens shall catch it now!”
And then, when you Athenians got the best of it,
And Sparta sent proposals for a peace,
You would say always--“Oh, they’re cheating us!
We won’t be taken in--not we, by Pallas!
No, by great Jupiter! they’ll come again
With better terms, if we keep hold of Pylos.”
_Tryg._ That is uncommonly like what we _did_ say.
No doubt it was: Aristophanes is writing history here with quite as much
accuracy as most historians. Mercury goes on to explain to his visitor
that the Greeks are never likely to see Peace again: War has cast her
into a deep pit (which he points out), and heaped great stones upon her:
and he has now got an enormous mortar, in which he proposes to pound all
the cities of Greece, if he can only find a pestle big enough for his
purpose. “But hark!” says Mercury--“I do believe he’s coming out! I must
be off.” And while the god escapes, and Trygæus hides himself in
affright from the terrible presence, War, a grim giant in full panoply,
and wearing, no doubt, the most truculent-looking mask which the
theatrical artist could furnish, comes upon the scene, followed by his
man Tumult, who lugs a huge mortar with him. Into this vessel War
proceeds to throw various ingredients, which represent the several towns
and states which were the principal sufferers in the late campaigns:
leeks for Prasiæ, garlic for Megara, cheese for Sicily. When he goes on
to add some Attic honey to his olio, Trygæus can scarcely restrain
himself from giving vent aloud to the remonstrance which he utters in an
“aside”--not to use so terribly expensive an article. Tumult is
forthwith despatched (with a cuff on the head for his slowness) to fetch
a pestle of sufficient weight for his master’s purpose. He goes to
Athens first; but their great war-pestle has just been lost--Cleon, the
mainstay of the war party, has been killed in battle at Amphipolis, in
Thrace. The messenger is next despatched to Sparta, but returns with no
better success: the Spartans had lent their pestle to the Thracians, and
Brasidas had fallen, with the Athenian general, in that same battle at
Amphipolis. Trygæus, who all this while has been trembling in his
hiding-place, begins to take heart, while War retires with his slave to
manufacture a new pestle for himself. Now, in his absence, is the great
opportunity to rescue Peace from her imprisonment. Trygæus shouts to all
good Greeks, especially the farmers, the tradesmen, and the working
classes, to come to his aid; and a motley Chorus, equipped with shovels,
ropes, and crow-bars, appear in answer to his call. They give him a good
deal of annoyance, however, because, true to their stage business as
Chorus, instead of setting to work at once they will waste the precious
minutes in dancing and singing,--a most incongruous proceeding, as he
observes, when everything depends upon speed and silence; an amusing
sarcasm from a writer of what we may call operatic burlesque upon the
conventional absurdities which are even more patent in our modern
serious opera than in Athenian comedy. At last they go to work in
earnest, and succeed in bribing Mercury, who returns when War is out of
the way, to help them. But to get Peace out of the pit requires, as
Trygæus tells them, “a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull
altogether.” And first the Bœotians will not pull, and then the
Argives, and then the Megarians; and Lamachus, the impersonation of the
war party at Athens here as in ‘The Acharnians,’ gets in the way, and
has to be removed; until at last the “country party”--the
husbandmen--lay hold with a will, and Peace, with her companions
“Plenty” and “Holiday,” represented also by two beautiful women, is
drawn up from the pit, and hailed with great joy by Trygæus and the
Chorus. But Peace, for a while, stands silent and indignant in the midst
of their congratulations. She will not open her lips, says Mercury, in
the presence of this audience. She has confided the reason to him in a
whisper--for she never speaks throughout the play: she is angry at
having been thrice rejected by vote in the Athenian assembly when she
offered herself to them after the affair of Pylos. But she is soon so
far appeased, that with her two fair companions she accompanies Trygæus
to earth. The beetle remains behind--having received an appointment to
run under Jupiter’s chariot and carry the lightning.
The last act--which, as is commonly the case with these comedies, is
quite supplementary to what we moderns should call the catastrophe of
the piece--takes place in front of Trygæus’s country house, where he
celebrates his nuptials with the fair Opóra (Plenty), whom Mercury has
presented to him as the reward of his good service. The festival held on
the occasion is represented on the stage with a detail which was
probably not tedious to an Athenian audience. All who ply peaceful arts
and trades are freely welcomed to it; while those who make their gain by
war--the sooth-sayer who promulgates his warlike oracles to delude
men’s minds, the trumpeter, the armourer, and the singer of
war-songs--are all dismissed by the triumphant vine-dresser with
ignominy and contempt.
One little point in this play is worth notice, as a trait of generous
temper on the part of the dramatist. Cleon, his great personal enemy,
was now dead. He has not been able to restrain himself from aiming a
blow at him even now, as one of those whom he looks upon, justly or
unjustly, as the authors of the miseries of Greece. But he holds his
hand half-way. When Mercury is descanting upon some of these evils which
went near to the ruin of Athens, he is made to say that “the
Tanner”--_i.e._, Cleon--was the cause of them. Trygæus interrupts him,--
Hold--say not so, good master Mercury;
Let that man rest below, where now he lies.
He is no longer of our world, but yours.
This forbearance towards his dead enemy is turned off, it is true, with
a jest to the effect that anything bad which Mercury could say of him
now would be a reproach to that ghostly company of which the god had
especial charge; but even under the sarcasm we may willingly think there
lies a recognition of the great principle, that the faults of the dead
should be buried with them.
LYSISTRATA.
The comedy of ‘Lysistrata,’ which was produced some ten years later,
deals with the same subject from quite a different point of view. The
war has now lasted twenty-one years. The women of Athens have grown
hopeless of any termination of it so long as the management of affairs
is left in the hands of the men, and impatient of the privations which
its continuance involves. They determine, under the leading of the
clever Lysistrata,[24] wife to one of the magistrates, to take the
question into their own hands. They resolve upon a voluntary separation
from their husbands--a practical divorce _a mensa et thoro_--until peace
with Sparta shall be proclaimed. The meeting of these fair conspirators
is called very early in the morning, while the husbands (at least such
few of them as the campaign has left at home) are in bed and asleep. By
a liberal stage licence, the women of Sparta (who talk a very broad
Doric), of Corinth, and Bœotia, and, in fact, the female representatives
generally of all Greece, attend the gathering, in spite of distance and
of the existence of the war. All take an oath to observe this
self-denying ordinance strictly--not without an amusing amount of
reluctance on the part of some weaker spirits, which is at last overcome
by the firm example of a Spartan lady. It is resolved that a body of the
elder matrons shall seize the Acropolis, and make themselves masters of
the public treasury. These form one of the two Choruses in the play, the
other being composed of the old men of Athens. The latter proceed (with
a good deal of comic difficulty, owing to the steepness of the ascent
and their shortness of breath) to attack the Acropolis, armed with
torches and fagots and pans of charcoal, with which they hope to smoke
out the occupants. But the women have provided themselves with buckets
of water, which they empty on the heads of their assailants, who soon
retire discomfited to call the police. But the police are in their turn
repulsed by these resolute insurgents, whom they do not exactly know how
to deal with. At last a member of the Public Committee comes forward to
parley, and a dialogue takes place between him and Lysistrata. Why, he
asks, have they thus taken possession of the citadel? They have resolved
henceforth to manage the public revenues themselves, is the reply, and
not allow them to be applied to carrying on this ruinous war. That is no
business for women, argues the magistrate. “Why not?” says Lysistrata;
“the wives have long had the management of the private purses of the
husbands, to the great advantage of both.” In short, the women have made
up their minds to have their voice no longer ignored, as hitherto, in
questions of peace and war. Their remonstrances have always been met
with the taunt that “war is the business of men;” and to any question
they have ventured to ask their husbands on such points, the answer has
always been the old cry--old as the days of Homer--“Go spin, you jade,
go spin!”[25] But they will put up with it no longer. As they have
always had wit enough to clear the tangled threads in their work, so
they have no doubt of settling all these difficulties and complications
in international disputes, if it is left to them. But what concern, her
opponent asks, can women have with war, who contribute nothing to its
dangers and hardships? “Contribute, indeed!” says the lady--“we
contribute the sons who carry it on.” And she throws down to her
adversary her hood, her basket, and her spindle, and bids him “go home
and card wool,”--it is all such old men are fit for; henceforth the
proverb (of the men’s making) shall be reversed,--“War shall be the care
of the women.” The magistrate retires, not having got the best of it,
very naturally, in an encounter of words; and the Chorus of elders raise
the cry--well known as a popular partisan-cry at Athens, and sure to
call forth a hearty laugh in such juxtaposition--that the women are
designing to “set up a Tyranny!”
But poor Lysistrata soon has her troubles. Her unworthy recruits are
fast deserting her. They are going off to their husbands in the most
sneaking manner--creeping out through the little hole under the citadel
which led to the celebrated cave of Pan, and letting themselves down
from the walls by ropes at the risk of breaking their necks. Those who
are caught all have excellent excuses. One has some fleeces of fine
Milesian wool at home which _must_ be seen to,--she is sure the moths
are eating them. Another has urgent occasion for the doctor; a third
cannot sleep alone for fear of the owls--of which, as every one knows,
there were really a great many at Athens. The husbands, too, are
getting uncomfortable without their housekeepers; there is no one to
cook their victuals; and one poor soul comes and humbly entreats his
wife at least to come home to wash and dress the baby.
It is becoming plain that either the war or the wives’ resolution will
soon give way, when there arrives an embassy from Sparta. _They_ cannot
stand this general strike of the wives. They are agreed already with
their enemies the Athenians on one point--as to the women--that the old
Greek comedian’s[26] proverb, which we have borrowed and translated
freely, is true,--
There is no living with ’em--or without ’em.
They are come to offer terms of peace. When two parties are already of
one mind, as Lysistrata observes, they are not long in coming to an
understanding. A treaty is made on the spot, with remarkably few
preliminaries. The Spartan ambassadors are carried off at once to an
entertainment in the Acropolis under the presidency of Lysistrata; and
the Athenians find, as is so often the case when those who have been the
bitterest opponents become better acquainted, that the Spartans are
excellent fellows in their cups--nay, positively entertaining, as one of
the plenipotentiaries who returns from the banquet declares; which last
would be quite a new characteristic, to the ears of an Athenian
audience, of their slow and steady neighbours. So charmed are the Chorus
with the effect of a little wholesome conviviality upon national temper,
that they deliver it as their decided opinion that in future all
embassies to foreign states should be fairly drunk before they set out.
When men are sober, they are critical and suspicious, and put a wrong
interpretation on things, and stand upon their dignity; but under the
genial influence of good liquor there is a disposition to make
everything pleasant. And so, with two choric hymns, chanted by Spartans
and Athenians in turn--so bright and graceful that they would seem out
of place in such wild company, but that we know the poet meant them to
herald the joy with which a real Peace would be welcomed--this broad
extravaganza ends.
For the humour is indeed of the broadest, in some passages, even for
Aristophanes. But in spite of coarse language, it has been justly said
by modern critics in the poet’s defence, that the moral of the piece is
honest and true. The longing for that domestic happiness which has been
interrupted and shattered by twenty years of incessant war, is a far
more wholesome sentiment, in its nature and effects, than very much of
modern sentiment which passes under finer names.