[1] _Codex Venet. ann._, 981, and _Codex Etchmiaz._ of the 11th
century.
ARISTIPPUS (c. 435-356 B.C.), Greek philosopher, the founder of the
Cyrenaic school, was the son of Aritadas, a merchant of Cyrene. At an
early age he came to Athens, and was induced to remain by the fame of
Socrates, whose pupil he became. Subsequently he travelled through a
number of Grecian cities, and finally settled in Cyrene, where he
founded his school. His philosophy was eminently practical (see
CYRENAICS). Starting from the two Socratic principles of virtue and
happiness, he emphasized the second, and made pleasure the criterion of
life. That he held to be good which gives the maximum of pleasure. In
pursuance of this he indulged in all forms of external luxury. At the
same time he remained thoroughly master of himself and had the
self-control to refrain or to enjoy. Diogenes Laertius (ii. 65), quoting
Phanias the peripatetic, says that he received money for his teaching,
and Aristotle (_Met_. ii. 2) expressly calls him a sophist. Diogenes
further states that he wrote several treatises, but none have survived.
The five letters attributed to him are undoubtedly spurious. His
daughter Arete, and her son Aristippus ([Greek: maetrodidaktos], "pupil
of his mother"), carried on the school after his death. A cosmopolitan
on principle, and a convinced disbeliever in the ethics of his day, he
comes very near to modern empiricism and especially to the modern
Hedonist school.
ARISTO or ARISTON, of Chios (c. 250 B.C.), a Stoic philosopher and pupil
of Zeno. He differed from Zeno on many points, and approximated more
closely to the Cynic school. He was eloquent (hence his nickname "the
Siren") but controversial in tone. He despised logic, and rejected the
philosophy of nature as beyond the powers of man. Ethics alone he
considered worthy of study, and in that only general and theoretical
questions. He rejected Zeno's doctrine of desirable things, intermediate
between virtue and vice. There is only one virtue--a clear, intelligent,
healthy state of mind (_hygeia_). Aristo is frequently confounded with
another philosopher of the same name, Ariston of Iulis, in Ceos, who,
about 230 B.C., succeeded Lyco as scholarch of the Peripatetics. (See
STOICS.)
ARISTO, of Pella, a Jewish Christian writer of the middle of the 2nd
century, who like Hegesippus (q.v.) represents a school of thought more
liberal than that of the Pharisaic and Essene Ebionites to which the
decline of Jewish Christianity mainly led. Aristo is cited by Eusebius
(_Hist. Eccl._ iv. 6. 3) for a decree of Hadrian respecting the Jews,
but he is best known as the writer of a _Dialogue_ (between Papiscus, an
Alexandrian Jew, and Jason, who represents the author) on the witness of
prophecy to Jesus Christ, which was approvingly defended by Origen
against the reproaches of Celsus. The little book was perhaps used by
Justin Martyr in his own _Dialogue with Trypho_, and probably also by
Tertullian and Cyprian, but it has not been preserved.
The literature is cited in G. Kruger's _Early Christian Literature_,
pp. 104 f.
ARISTOBULUS, of Cassandreia, Greek historian, accompanied Alexander the
Great on his campaigns, of which he wrote an account, mainly
geographical and ethnological. His work was largely used by Arrian.
Muller, _Historicorum Graecorum Fragmenta_; Schone, _De Rerum
Alexandri Magni Scriptoribus_ (1870).
ARISTOBULUS, of Paneas (c. 160 B.C.), a Jewish philosopher of the
Peripatetic school. Gercke places him in the time of Ptolemy X.
Philometor (end of 2nd century), Anatolius in that of Ptolemy II.
Philadelphus, but the middle of the 2nd century is more probable. He was
among the earliest of the Jewish-Alexandrian philosophers whose aim was
to reconcile and identify Greek philosophical conceptions with the
Jewish religion. Only a few fragments of his work, apparently entitled
_Commentaries on the Writings of Moses_, are quoted by Clement, Eusebius
and other theological writers, but they suffice to show its object. He
endeavoured to prove that early Greek philosophers had borrowed largely
from certain parts of Scripture, and quoted from Linus, Orpheus, Musaeus
and others, passages which strongly resemble the Mosaic writings. These
passages, however, were obvious forgeries. It is suggested that the name
Aristobulus was taken from 2 Macc. i. 10. The hypothesis (Schlatter,
_Das neugefundene hebraische Stuck des Sirach_) that it was from
Aristobulus that the philosophy of _Ecclesiasticus_ was derived is not
generally accepted.
See E. Schurer, _History of the Jewish People_ (Eng. trans.,
1890-1891), ii. 237 seq.; article ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL: _Philosophy_;
and _s.v._ "Aristobulus" in _Jewish Encyclopedia_ (Paul Wendland).
ARISTOCRACY (Gr. [Greek: aristos], best; [Greek: aristos], government),
etymologically, the "rule of the best," a form of government variously
defined and appreciated at different times and by different authorities.
In Greek political philosophy, aristocracy is the government of those
who most nearly attain to the ideal of human perfection. Thus Plato in
the _Republic_ advocates the rule of the "philosopher-king" who, in the
social scheme, is analogous to Reason in the intellectual, and alone is
qualified to control the active principles, i.e. the fighting population
and the artisans or workers. Aristocracy is thus the government by those
who are superior both morally and intellectually, and, therefore, govern
directly in the interests of the governed, as a good doctor works for
the good of his patient. Aristotle classified good governments under
three heads--monarchy, aristocracy and commonwealth [Greek: politeia],
to which he opposed the three perverted forms--tyranny or absolutism,
oligarchy and democracy or mob-rule. The distinction between aristocracy
and oligarchy, which are both necessarily the rule of the few, is that
whereas the few [Greek: aristoi] will govern unselfishly, the oligarchs,
being the few wealthy ("plutocracy" in modern terminology), will allow
their personal interests to predominate. While Plato's aristocracy might
be the rule of the wise and benevolent despot, Aristotle's is
necessarily the rule of the few.
Historically aristocracy develops from primitive monarchy by the gradual
progressive limitation of the regal authority. This process is effected
primarily by the nobles who have hitherto formed the council of the king
(an excellent example will be found in Athenian politics, see ARCHON),
whose triple prerogative--religious, military and judicial--is vested,
e.g., in a magistracy of three. These are either members of the royal
house or the heads of noble families, and are elected for life or
periodically by their peers, i.e. by the old royal council (cf. the
Areopagus at Athens, the Senate at Rome), now the sovereign power. In
practice this council depends primarily on a birth qualification, and
thus has always been more or less inferior to the Aristotelian ideal; it
is, by definition, an "oligarchy" of birth, and is recruited from the
noble families, generally by the addition of emeritus magistrates. From
the earliest times, therefore, the word "aristocracy" became practically
synonymous with "oligarchy," and as such it is now generally used in
opposition to democracy (which similarly took the place of Aristotle's
[Greek: politeia]), in which the ultimate sovereignty resides in the
whole citizen body.
The aristocracy of which we know most in ancient Greece was that of
Athens prior to the reforms of Cleisthenes, but all the Greek
city-states passed through a period of aristocratic or oligarchic
government. Rome, between the regal and the imperial periods, was always
more or less under the aristocratic government of the senate, in spite
of the gradual growth of democratic institutions (the Lat. _optimates_
is the equivalent of [Greek: aristoi]). There is, however, one feature
which distinguishes these aristocracies from those of modern states,
namely, that they were all slave-owning. The original relation of the
slave-population, which in many cases outnumbered the free citizens,
cannot always be discovered. But in some cases we know that the slaves
were the original inhabitants who had been overcome by an influx of
racially different invaders (cf. Sparta with its Helots); in others they
were captives taken in war. Hence even the most democratic states of
antiquity were so far aristocratic that the larger proportion of the
inhabitants had no voice in the government. In the second place this
relation gave rise to a philosophic doctrine, held even by Aristotle,
that there were peoples who were inferior by nature and adapted to
submission ([Greek: phusei douloi]); such people had no "virtue" in the
technical civic sense, and were properly occupied in performing the
menial functions of society, under the control of the [Greek: aristoi].
Thus, combined with the criteria of descent, civic status and the
ownership of the land, there was the further idea of intellectual and
social superiority. These qualifications were naturally, in course of
time, shared by an increasingly large number of the lower class who
broke down the barriers of wealth and education. From this stage the
transition is easy to the aristocracy of wealth, such as we find at
Carthage and later at Venice, in periods when the importance of commerce
was paramount and mercantile pursuits had cast off the stigma of
inferiority (in Gr. [Greek: banausia]).
It is important at this stage to distinguish between aristocracy and the
feudal governments of medieval Europe. In these it is true that certain
power was exercised by a small number of families, at the expense of the
majority. But under this system each noble governed in a particular area
and within strict limitations imposed by his sovereign; no sovereign
authority was vested in the nobles collectively.
Under the conditions of the present day the distinction of aristocracy,
democracy and monarchy cannot be rigidly maintained from a purely
governmental point of view. In no case does the sovereign power in a
state reside any longer in an aristocracy, and the word has acquired a
social rather than a political sense as practically equivalent to
"nobility," though the distinction is sometimes drawn between the
"aristocracy of birth" and the "aristocracy of wealth." Modern history,
however, furnishes many examples of government in the hands of an
aristocracy. Such were the aristocratic republics of Venice, Genoa and
the Dutch Netherlands, and those of the free imperial cities in Germany.
Such, too, in practice though not in theory, was the government of Great
Britain from the Revolution of 1689 to the Reform Bill of 1832. The
French nobles of the _Ancien Regime_, denounced as "aristocrats" by the
Revolutionists, had no share as such in government, but enjoyed
exceptional privileges (e.g. exemption from taxation). This privileged
position is still enjoyed by the heads of the German mediatized families
of the "High Nobility." In Great Britain, on the other hand, though the
aristocratic principle is still represented in the constitution by the
House of Lords, the "aristocracy" generally, apart from the peers, has
no special privileges.
ARISTODEMUS (8th century B.C.), semi-legendary ruler of Messenia in the
time of the first Messenian War. Tradition relates that, after some six
years' fighting, the Messenians were forced to retire to the fortified
summit of Ithome. The Delphic oracle bade them sacrifice a virgin of the
house of Aepytus. Aristodemus offered his own daughter, and when her
lover, hoping to save her life, declared that she was no longer a
maiden, he slew her with his own hand to prove the assertion false. In
the thirteenth year of the war, Euphaes, the Messenian king, died. As he
left no children, popular election was resorted to, and Aristodemus was
chosen as his successor, though the national soothsayers objected to him
as the murderer of his daughter. As a ruler he was mild and
conciliatory. He was victorious in the pitched battle fought at the foot
of Ithome in the fifth year of his reign, a battle in which the
Messenians, reinforced by the entire Arcadian levy and picked
contingents from Argos and Sicyon, defeated the combined Spartan and
Corinthian forces. Shortly afterwards, however, led by unfavourable
omens to despair of final success, he killed himself on his daughter's
tomb. Though little is known of his life and the chronology is
uncertain, yet Aristodemus may fairly be regarded as a historical
character. His reign is dated 731-724 B.C. by Pausanias, and this may be
taken as approximately correct, though Duncker (_History of Greece_,
Eng. trans., ii. p. 69) inclines to place it eight years later.
Pausanias iv. 9-13 is practically our only authority. He followed as
his chief source the prose history of Myron of Priene, an
untrustworthy writer, probably of the 2nd century B.C.; hence a good
deal of his story must be regarded as fanciful, though we cannot
distinguish accurately between the true and the fictitious.
(M. N. T.)
ARISTOLOCHIA (Gr. [Greek: aristos], best, [Greek: locheia], child-birth,
in allusion to its repute in promoting child-birth), a genus of shrubs
or herbs of the natural order Aristolochiaceae, often with climbing
stems, found chiefly in the tropics. The flower forms a tube inflated at
the base. _A. Clematitis_, birthwort, is a central and southern European
species, found sometimes in England apparently wild on ruins and similar
places, but not a native. _A. Sipho_, Dutchman's pipe, or pipe vine, is
a climber, native in the woods of the Atlantic United States, and grown
in Europe as a garden plant. The flower is bent like a pipe.
A member of the same order is the _asarabacca_ (_Asarum europaeum_), a
small creeping herb with kidney-shaped leaves and small purplish
bell-shaped flowers. It is a native of the woods of Europe and north
temperate Asia, and occurs wild in some English counties. It was
formerly grown for medicinal purposes, the underground stem having
cathartic and emetic properties. An allied species, _A. canadense_, is
the Canadian snake-root, a native of Canada and the Atlantic United
States.
ARISTOMENES, of Andania, the semi-legendary hero of the second Messenian
war. He was a member of the Aepytid family, the son of Nicomedes (or,
according to another version, of Pyrrhus) and Nicoteleia, and took a
prominent part in stirring up the revolt against Sparta and securing the
co-operation of Argos and Arcadia. He showed such heroism in the first
encounter, at Derae, that the crown was offered him, but he would accept
only the title of commander-in-chief. His daring is illustrated by the
story that he came by night to the temple of Athene "of the Brazen
House" at Sparta, and there set up his shield with the inscription,
"Dedicated to the goddess by Aristomenes from the Spartans." His prowess
contributed largely to the Messenian victory over the Spartan and
Corinthian forces at "The Boar's Barrow" in the plain of Stenyclarus,
but in the following year the treachery of the Arcadian king
Aristocrates caused the Messenians to suffer a crushing defeat at "The
Great Trench." Aristomenes and the survivors retired to the mountain
stronghold of Eira, where they defied the Spartans for eleven years. On
one of his raids he and fifty of his companions were captured and thrown
into the Caeadas, the chasm on Mt. Taygetus into which criminals were
cast. Aristomenes alone was saved, and soon reappeared at Eira: legend
told how he was upheld in his fall by an eagle and escaped by grasping
the tail of a fox, which led him to the hole by which it had entered. On
another occasion he was captured during a truce by some Cretan
auxiliaries of the Spartans, and was released only by the devotion of a
Messenian girl who afterwards became his daughter-in-law. At length Eira
was betrayed to the Spartans (668 B.C. according to Pausanias), and
after a heroic resistance Aristomenes and his followers had to evacuate
Messenia and seek a temporary refuge with their Arcadian allies. A
desperate plan to seize Sparta itself was foiled by Aristocrates, who
paid with his life for his treachery. Aristomenes retired to Ialysus in
Rhodes, where Damagetus, his son-in-law, was king, and died there while
planning a journey to Sardis and Ecbatana to seek aid from the Lydian
and Median sovereigns (Pausanias iv. 14-24). Another tradition
represents him as captured and slain by the Spartans during the war
(Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xi. 187; Val. Maximus i. 8, 15; Steph. Byzant. s.v.
[Greek: Andania]). Though there seems to be no conclusive reason for
doubting the existence of Aristomenes, his history, as related by
Pausanias, following mainly the _Messeniaca_ of the Cretan epic poet
Rhianus (about 230 B.C.), is evidently largely interwoven with fictions.
These probably arose after the foundation of Messene in 369 B.C.
Aristomenes' statue was set up in the stadium there: his bones were
fetched from Rhodes and placed in a tomb surmounted by a column (Paus.
iv. 32. 3, 6); and more than five centuries later we still find heroic
honours paid to him, and his exploits a popular subject of song (_ib_.
iv. 14. 7; 16. 6).
For further details see Pausanias iv.; Polyaenus ii. 31; G. Grote,
_History of Greece_, pt. ii. chap. vii.; M. Duncker, _History of
Greece_, Eng. trans., book iv. chap, viii.; A. Holm, _History of
Greece_, Eng. trans., vol. i. chap. xvi. (M. N. T.)
ARISTONICUS, of Alexandria, Greek grammarian, lived during the reigns of
Augustus and Tiberius. He taught at Rome and wrote commentaries and
grammatical treatises. His chief work was [Greek: Peri Saemeion
Homaerou], in which he gave an account of the "critical marks" inserted
by Aristarchus in the margin of his recension of the text of the _Iliad_
and _Odyssey_. Important fragments are preserved in the scholia of the
Venetian Codex A of the _Iliad_.
Friedlander, _Aristonici_ [Greek: Peri Saemeion Iliados] _reliquiae_
(1853); Carnuth, _Aristonici_ [Greek: Peri Saemeion Odusseias]
_reliquiae_ (1869).
ARISTOPHANES (c. 448-385 B.C.[1]), the great comic dramatist and poet of
Athens. His birth-year is uncertain. He is known to have been about the
same age as Eupolis, and is said to have been "almost a boy" when his
first comedy (_The Banqueters_) was brought out in 427 B.C. His father
Philippus was a landowner in Aegina. Aristophanes was an Athenian
citizen of the tribe Pandionis, and the deme Cydathene. The stories
which made him a native of Camirus in Rhodes, or of the Egyptian
Naucratis, had probably no other foundation than an indictment for
usurpation of civic rights ([Greek: xenias graphae]) which appears to
have been more than once laid against him by Cleon. His three
sons--Philippus, Araros and Nicostratus--were all comic poets.
Philippus, the eldest, was a rival of Eubulus, who began to exhibit in
376 B.C. Araros brought out two of his father's latest comedies--the
_Cocalus_ and the _Aeolosicon_, and in 375 began to exhibit works of his
own. Nicostratus, the youngest, is assigned by Athenaeus to the Middle
Comedy, but belongs, as is shown by some of the names and characters of
his pieces, to the New Comedy also.
Although tragedy and comedy had their common origin in the festivals of
Dionysus, the regular establishment of tragedy at Athens preceded by
half a century that of comedy. The Old Comedy may be said to have lasted
about eighty years (470-390 B.C.), and to have flourished about
fifty-six (460-404 B.C.). Of the forty poets who are named as having
illustrated it the chief were Cratinus, Eupolis and Aristophanes. The
Middle Comedy covers a period of about seventy years (390-320 B.C.), its
chief poets being Antiphanes, Alexis, Theopompus and Strattis. The New
Comedy was in vigour for about seventy years (320-250 B.C.), having for
its foremost representatives Menander, Philemon and Diphilus. The Old
Comedy was possible only for a thorough democracy. Its essence was a
satirical censorship, unsparing in personalities, of public and of
private life--of morality, of statesmanship, of education, of
literature, of social usage--in a word, of everything which had an
interest for the city or which could amuse the citizens. Preserving all
the freedom of banter and of riotous fun to which its origin gave it an
historical right, it aimed at associating with this a strong practical
purpose--the expression of a democratic public opinion in such a form
that no misconduct or folly could altogether disregard it. That
licentiousness, that grossness of allusion which too often disfigures
it, was, it should be remembered, exacted by the sentiment of the
Dionysiac festivals, as much as a decorous cheerfulness is expected at
the holiday times of other worships. This was the popular element.
Without this the entertainment would have been found flat and
unseasonable. But for a comic poet of the higher calibre the
consciousness of a recognized power which he could exert, and the desire
to use this power for the good of the city, must always have been the
uppermost feelings. At Athens the poet of the Old Comedy had an
influence analogous, perhaps, rather to that of the journalist than to
that of the modern dramatist. But the established type of Dionysiac
comedy gave him an instrument such as no public satirist has ever
wielded. When Moliere wished to brand hypocrisy he could only make his
Tartuffe the central figure of a regular drama, developed by a regular
process to a just catastrophe. He had no choice between touching too
lightly and using sustained force to make a profound impression. The
Athenian dramatist of the Old Comedy worked under no such limitations of
form. The wildest flights of extravagance were permitted to him. Nothing
bound him to a dangerous emphasis or a wearisome insistence. He could
deal the keenest thrust, or make the most earnest appeal, and at the
next moment--if his instinct told him that it was time to change the
subject--vary the serious strain by burlesque. He had, in short, an
incomparable scope for trenchant satire directed by sure tact.
Aristophanes is for us the representative of the Old Comedy. But his
genius, while it includes, also transcends the genius of the Old Comedy.
He can denounce the frauds of a Cleon, he can vindicate the duty of
Athens to herself and to her allies, with a stinging scorn and a force
of patriotic indignation which makes the poet almost forgotten in the
citizen. He can banter Euripides with an ingenuity of light mockery
which makes it seem for the time as if the leading Aristophanic trait
was the art of seeing all things from their prosaic side. Yet it is
neither in the denunciation nor in the mockery that he is most
individual. His truest and highest faculty is revealed by those
wonderful bits of lyric writing in which he soars above everything that
can move laughter or tears, and makes the clear air thrill with the
notes of a song as free, as musical and as wild as that of the
nightingale invoked by his own chorus in the _Birds_. The speech of
Dikaios Logos in the _Clouds_, the praises of country life in the
_Peace_, the serenade in the _Ecclesiazusae_, the songs of the Spartan
and Athenian maidens in the _Lysistrata_, above all, perhaps, the chorus
in the _Frogs_, the beautiful chant of the Initiated,--these passages,
and such as these, are the true glories of Aristophanes. They are the
strains, not of an artist, but of one who warbles for pure gladness of
heart in some place made bright by the presence of a god. Nothing else
in Greek poetry has quite this wild sweetness of the woods. Of modern
poets Shakespeare alone, perhaps, has it in combination with a like
richness and fertility of fancy.
Fifty-four[2] comedies were ascribed to Aristophanes. Forty-three of
these are allowed as genuine by Bergk. Eleven only are extant. These
eleven form a running commentary on the outer and the inner life of
Athens during thirty-six years. They may be ranged under three periods.
The first, extending to 420 B.C., includes those plays in which
Aristophanes uses an absolutely unrestrained freedom of political
satire. The second ends with the year 405. Its productions are
distinguished from those of the earlier time by a certain degree of
reticence and caution. The third period, down to 388 B.C., comprises two
plays in which the transition to the character of the Middle Comedy is
well marked, not merely by disuse of the parabasis, but by general
self-restraint.
I. _First Period_, (1) 425 B.C. _The Acharnians._--Since the defeat in
Boeotia the peace party at Athens had gained ground, and in this play
Aristophanes seeks to strengthen their hands. Dicaeopolis, an honest
countryman, is determined to make peace with Sparta on his own account,
not deterred by the angry men of Acharnae, who crave vengeance for the
devastation of their vineyards. He sends to Sparta for samples of peace;
and he is so much pleased with the flavour of the Thirty Years' sample
that he at once concludes a treaty for himself and his family. All the
blessings of life descend on him; while Lamachus, the leader of the war
party, is smarting from cold, snow and wounds.
(2) 424 B.C. _The Knights._--Three years before, in his _Babylonians_,
Aristophanes had assailed Cleon as the typical demagogue. In this play
he continues the attack. The Demos, or State, is represented by an old
man who has put himself and his household into the hands of a rascally
Paphlagonian steward. Nicias and Demosthenes, slaves of Demos, contrive
that the Paphlagonian shall be supplanted in their master's favour by a
sausage-seller. No sooner has Demos been thus rescued than his
youthfulness and his good sense return together.
(3) 423 B.C. _The Clouds_ (the first edition; a second edition was
brought out in 422 B.C.).--This play would be correctly described as an
attack on the new spirit of intellectual inquiry and culture rather than
on a school or class. Two classes of thinkers or teachers are, however,
specially satirized under the general name of "Sophist" (v. 331)--1. The
Physical Philosophers--indicated by allusions to the doctrines of
Anaxagoras, Heraclitus and Diogenes of Apollonia. 2. The professed
teachers of rhetoric, belles lettres, &c., such as Protagoras and
Prodicus. Socrates is taken as the type of the entire tendency. A youth
named Pheidippides--obviously meant for Alcibiades--is sent by his
father to Socrates to be cured of his dissolute propensities. Under the
discipline of Socrates the youth becomes accomplished in dishonesty and
impiety. The conclusion of the play shows the indignant father preparing
to burn up the philosopher and his hall of contemplation.
(4) 422 B.C. _The Wasps._--This comedy, which suggested _Les Plaideurs_
to Racine, is a satire on the Athenian love of litigation. The strength
of demagogy, while it lay chiefly in the ecclesia, lay partly also in
the paid dicasteries. From this point of view the _Wasps_ may be
regarded as supplementing the _Knights_. Philocleon (admirer of Cleon),
an old man, has a passion for lawsuits--a passion which his son,
Bdelycleon (detester of Cleon) fails to check, until he hits upon the
device of turning the house into a law-court, and paying his father for
absence from the public suits. The house-dog steals a Sicilian cheese;
the old man is enabled to gratify his taste by trying the case, and, by
an oversight, acquits the defendant. In the second half of the play a
change comes over the dream of Philocleon; from litigation he turns to
literature and music, and is congratulated by the chorus on his happy
conversion.
(5) 421 B.C.[3] _The Peace._--In its advocacy of peace with Sparta, this
play, acted at the Great Dionysia shortly before the conclusion of the
treaty, continues the purpose of the _Acharnians_. Trygaeus, a
distressed Athenian, soars to the sky on a beetle's back. There he finds
the gods engaged in pounding the Greek states in a mortar. In order to
stop this, he frees the goddess Peace from a well in which she is
imprisoned. The pestle and mortar are laid aside by the gods, and
Trygaeus marries one of the handmaids of Peace.
II. _Second Period_. (6) 414 B.C. _The Birds._--Peisthetaerus, an
enterprising Athenian, and his friend Euelpides persuade the birds to
build a city--"Cloud-Cuckoo-borough"--in mid-air, so as to cut off the
gods from men. The plan succeeds; the gods send envoys to treat with the
birds; and Peisthetaerus marries Basileia, daughter of Zeus. Some have
found in the _Birds_ a complete historical allegory of the Sicilian
expedition; others, a general satire on the prevalence at Athens of
headstrong caprice over law and order; others, merely an aspiration
towards a new and purified Athens--a dream to which the poet had turned
from his hope for a revival of the Athens of the past. In another view,
the piece is mainly a protest against the religious fanaticism which the
incident of the Hermae had called forth.
(7) 411 B.C. _The Lysistrata._--This play was brought out during the
earlier stages of those intrigues which led to the revolution of the
Four Hundred. It appeared shortly before Peisander had arrived in Athens
from the camp at Samos for the purpose of organizing the oligarchic
policy. The _Lysistrata_ expresses the popular desire for peace at any
cost. As the men can do nothing, the women take the question into their
own hands, occupy the citadel, and bring the citizens to surrender.
(8) 411 B.C. _The Thesmophoriazusae_ (Priestesses of Demeter).--This
came out three months later than the _Lysistrata_, during the reign of
terror established by the oligarchic conspirators, but before their blow
had been struck. The political meaning of the play lies in the absence
of political allusion. Fear silences even comedy. Only women and
Euripides are satirized. Euripides is accused and condemned at the
female festival of the Thesmophoria.
(9) 405 B.C. _The Frogs._--This piece was brought out just when Athens
had made her last effort in the Peloponnesian War, eight months before
the battle of Aegospotami, and about fifteen months before the taking of
Athens by Lysander. It may be considered as an attempt to distract men's
minds from public affairs. It is a literary criticism. Aeschylus and
Euripides were both lately dead. Athens is beggared of poets; and
Dionysus goes down to Hades to bring back a poet. Aeschylus and
Euripides contend in the under-world for the throne of tragedy; and the
victory is at last awarded to Aeschylus.
III. _Third Period_.[4] (10) 393 B.C.[4] _The Ecclesiazusae_ (women in
parliament).--The women, disguised as men, steal into the ecclesia, and
succeed in decreeing a new constitution. At this time the demagogue
Agyrrhius led the assembly; and the play is, in fact, a satire on the
general demoralization of public life.
(11) 388 B.C. _The Plutus_ (Wealth).--The first edition of the play had
appeared in 408 B.C., being a symbolical representation of the fact that
the victories won by Alcibiades in the Hellespont had brought back the
god of wealth to the treasure-chamber of the Parthenon. In its extant
form the _Plutus_ is simply a moral allegory. Chremylus, a worthy but
poor man, falls in with a blind and aged wanderer, who proves to be the
god of wealth. Asclepius restores eyesight to Plutus; whereupon all the
just are made rich and all the unjust are reduced to poverty.
Among the lost plays, the following are the chief of which anything is
known:--
1. _The Banqueters_ [Greek: Daitaleis], 427 B.C.--A satire on young
Athens. A father has two sons; one is brought up in the good old
school, another in the tricky subtleties of the new; and the contrast
of results is the chief theme.
2. _The Babylonians_, 426 B.C.--Under this name the subject-allies of
Athens are represented as "Babylonians"-barbarian slaves, employed to
grind in the mill. The oppression of the allies by the demagogues--a
topic often touched elsewhere--was, then, the main subject of the
piece, in which Aristophanes is said to have attacked especially the
system of appointing to offices by lot. The comedy is memorable as
opening that Aristophanic war upon Cleon which was continued in the
_Knights_ and the _Wasps_.
_The Merchantmen, The Farmers, The Preliminary Contest_ (_Proagon_),
and possibly the _Old Age_ (_Geras_), belonged to the First Period.
The _Geras_ is assigned by Suvern to 422 B.C., and is supposed to have
been a picture of dotage similar to that in the _Knights_. A comedy
called _The Islands_ is conjectured to have dealt with the sufferings
imposed by the war on the insular tributaries. The _Triphales_ was
probably a satire on Alcibiades; the _Storks_, on the tragic poet
Patrocles.
In the _Aeolosicon_--produced by his son Araros in 387
B.C.--Aristophanes probably parodied the _Aeolus_ of Euripides. The
_Cocalus_ is thought to have been a parody of the legend, according to
which a Sicilian king of that name slew Minos.
A sympathetic reader of Aristophanes can hardly fail to perceive that,
while his political and intellectual tendencies are well marked, his
opinions, in so far as they colour his comedies, are too indefinite to
reward, or indeed to tolerate, analysis. Aristophanes was a natural
conservative. His ideal was the Athens of the Persian wars. He
disapproved the policy which had made Athenian empire irksome to the
allies and formidable to Greece; he detested the vulgarity and the
violence of mob-rule; he clave to the old worship of the gods; he
regarded the new ideas of education as a tissue of imposture and
impiety. How far he was from clearness or precision of view in regard to
the intellectual revolution which was going forward, appears from the
_Clouds_, in which thinkers and literary workers who had absolutely
nothing in common are treated with sweeping ridicule as prophets of a
common heresy. Aristophanes is one of the men for whom opinion is mainly
a matter of feeling, not of reason. His imaginative susceptibility gave
him a warm and loyal love for the traditional glories of Athens, however
dim the past to which they belonged; a horror of what was ugly or
ignoble in the present; a keen perception of what was offensive or
absurd in pretension. The broad preferences and dislikes thus generated
were enough not only to point the moral of comedy, but to make him, in
many cases, a really useful censor for the city. The service which he
could render in this way was, however, only negative. He could hardly
be, in any positive sense, a political or a moral teacher for Athens.
His rooted antipathy to intellectual progress, while it affords easy and
wide scope for his wit, must after all, lower his intellectual rank. The
great minds are not the enemies of ideas. But as a mocker--to use the
word which seems most closely to describe him on this side--he is
incomparable for the union of subtlety with riot of the comic
imagination. As a poet, he is immortal. And, among Athenian poets, he
has it for his distinctive characteristic that he is inspired less by
that Greek genius which never allows fancy to escape from the control of
defining, though spiritualizing, reason, than by such ethereal rapture
of the unfettered fancy as lifts Shakespeare or Shelley above it,--
"Pouring his full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Editio princeps (Aldine, Venice, 1498), by Marcus
Musurus (not including the _Lysistrata_ and _Thesmophoriazusae_); S.
Bergler (ed. P. Burmann, 1760); Invernizi-Beck-Dindorf (1794-1834); I.
Bekker (1829); H.A. Holden (expurgated text, 1868), with
_Onomasticon_ (new ed., 1902); F.H.M. Blaydes (1880-1893), and
critical edition (1886); J. van Leeuwen (1893 foll.); F.W. Hall and
E.M. Geldart (text, 1900-1901), with the fragment (from the
Oxyrhynchus papyri) of a dialogue between two women concerning a
leathern phallus, perhaps from Aristophanes. There is a complete
edition of the valuable scholia by F. Dubner (1842, Didot
series),--with the anonymous biographies of the poet; of the Ravenna
MS. by A. Martin (1883), and W.G. Rutherford (1896-1905). Among
English translations mention may be made of those of V.J. Hickie
(prose, in Bohn's _Classical Library_); (verse) J. Hookham Frere, five
plays; T. Mitchell, four plays; and, above all, B.B. Rogers, a
brilliant work of exceptional merit. There is a concordance to the
plays and fragments by H. Dunbar (1883). On Aristophanes generally see
H. Muller-Strubing, _Aristophanes und die historische Kritik_ (1873);
the article by G. Kaibel in Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopadie_, ii. 1
(1896); A. Couat, _Aristophane et l'ancienne comedie attique_ (1889);
E. Deschanel, _Etudes sur Aristophane_ (3rd ed., 1892); G. Dantu,
_Opinions et critiques d'Aristophane sur le mouvement politique et
intellectuel a Athenes_ (Paris, 1907). For the numerous editions and
translations of separate plays in English and other languages see the
introductions to Blaydes's edition, and, for the literature, the
introduction to W.J.M. Starkie's edition of the _Wasps_ (1897); W.
Engelmann, _Scriptores Graeci_ (1880); and "Bericht uber die Literatur
der griechischen Komodie aus den Jahren 1892-1901" in C. Bursian's
_Jahresbericht uber die Fortschritte der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft_, cxvi. (1904). (R. C. J.)