At the end of the _Symposium_ Plato represents Socrates as convincing
both Agathon, a tragedian, and Aristophanes that the writer of tragedy
will be able to write comedy also. That the two forms are not wholly
divorced is clear from the history of ancient drama itself: Each
dramatist competed with four plays, three tragedies and a Satyric drama.
What this last is can be plainly seen in the _Cyclops_ of Euripides,
which relates in comic form the adventures of Odysseus and Silenus in
the monster's company. Further, the tendency of tragedy was inevitably
towards comedy. The extant work of Aeschylus and Sophocles is not
without comic touches; but the trend is clearer in Euripides who was
an innovator in this as in many other matters. Laughter and tears are
neighbours; a happy ending is not tragic; loosely connected scenes are
the essence of Old Comedy, and loosely written tragic dialogue (common
in Euripides' later work) closely resembles the language of comedy,
which is practically prose in verse form. The debt which later comedy
owed to Euripides is great; reminiscences of him abound; he is quoted
directly and indirectly; his stage tricks are adopted and his realistic
characters are the very population of the Comic stage.
The logically developed plot is the characteristic of serious drama.
Old Comedy, its antithesis, is often a succession of scenes in which the
connection is loose without being impossible. In it the unexpected is
common, for it is an escape from the conventions of ordinary life, a
thing of causes and effects. It might be more accurate to say that farce
is a better description of the work which is associated with the name of
Aristophanes.
This writer was born about 448, was a member of the best Athenian
society of the day, quickly took the first place as the writer of comedy
and died about 385. He saw the whole of the Peloponnesian war and has
given us a most vivid account of the passions it aroused and its effect
on Athenian life. He first won the prize in 425, when he produced
the _Acharnians_ under an assumed name. Pericles had died in 429; the
horrors of war were beginning to make themselves felt; the Spartans were
invading Attica, cutting down the fruit-trees and compelling the country
folk to stream into the city. One of these, Dicaeopolis enters the
stage. It is early morning; he is surprised that there is no popular
meeting on the appointed day. He loathes the town and longs for his
village; he had intended to heckle the speakers if they discussed
anything but peace. Ambassadors from foreign nations are announced;
seeing them he conceives the daring project of making a separate peace
with the Spartan for eight drachmae. His servant returns with three
peaces of five, ten and thirty years; he chooses the last.
A chorus of angry Acharnians rush in to catch the traitor; they are
charcoal burners ruined by the invasion. Dicaeopolis seizes a charcoal
basket, threatening to destroy it if they touch him. Anxious to spare
their townsman, the basket, they consent to hear his defence, which he
offers to make with his neck on an executioner's block. He is afraid
of the noisy patriotism appealed to by mob-orators and of the lust for
condemning the accused which is the weakness of older men. Choosing from
Euripides' wardrobe the rags in which Telephus was arrayed to rouse the
audience to pity, he boldly ventures to plead the cause of the Spartans,
though he hates them for destroying his trees. He asserts that "Olympian
Pericles who thundered and lightened and confounded Greece" caused the
war by putting an embargo on the food of their neighbour Megara, his
pretext being a mere private quarrel.
The Chorus are divided; his opponents send for Lamachus, the
swashbuckling general; the latter is discomfited and Dicaeopolis
immediately opens a market with the Peloponnesians, Megarians and
Boeotians, but not with Lamachus. In an important choral ode the poet
justifies his existence. By his criticism he puts a stop to the foreign
embassies which dupe the Athenians; he checks flattery and folly; he
never bribes nor hoodwinks them, but exposes their harsh treatment of
their subjects and their love of condemning on groundless charges the
older generation which had fought at Marathon.
The play ends with a trading scene; a Boeotian in exchange for Copaic
eels takes an Athenian informer, an article unknown in Boeotia. Lamachus
returns wounded while Dicaeopolis departs in happy contrast to celebrate
a feast of rustic jollity.
Aristophanes' chief butts were Cleon, Socrates and Euripides; the last
is treated with good nature in this play. To modern readers the comedy
is important for two reasons; first, it attacks the strange belief that
a democracy must necessarily love peace; Aristophanes found it as full
of the lust for battle as any other form of government; all it needed
was a Lamachus to rattle a sword. Again, the unfailing source of war is
plainly indicated, trade rivalry. War will continue as long as there are
markets to capture and rivals to exclude from them.
In the next year, 424, Aristophanes produced the _Knights_, the most
violent political lampoon in literature. The victim was Cleon who had
succeeded Pericles as popular leader. He was at the height of his glory,
having captured the Spartan contingent at Pylos, prisoners who were
of great importance for diplomatic purposes. The comedy is a scathing
criticism of democracy; the subject is so controversial that it will be
best to give some extracts without comment.
Two servants of Demos (the People) steal the oracles of the Paphlagonian
(the babbler, Cleon) while he is asleep. To their joy they find that
he will govern Demos' house only until a more abominable than he shall
appear, namely a sausage-seller. That person immediately presenting
himself is informed of his high calling. At first he is amazed. "I know
nothing of refinement except letters, and them, bad as they are, badly."
The answer is:
"Your only fault is that you know them badly; mob-leadership has
nothing to do with a man refined or of good character, rather with
an ignoramus and a vile fellow."
To his objection that he cannot look after a democracy the reply is,
"it is easy enough; only go on doing what you are doing now. Mix
and chop up everything; always bring the mob over by sweetening it
with a few cook-shop terms. You have all the other qualifications,
a nasty voice, a low origin, familiarity with the street."
The Paphlagonian Cleon runs in bawling that they are conspiring against
the democracy. They call loudly for the Knights, who enter as the Chorus
to assist them against Cleon, encouraging the sausage-seller to show
the brazen effrontery which is the mob-orator's sole protection, and
to prove that a decent upbringing is meaningless. Nothing loth, he
redoubles Cleon's vulgarity on his head. Cleon rushes out intending to
inform the Upper House of their treasons; the sausage-seller hurries
after him, his neck being well oiled with his own lard to make Cleon's
slanders slip off. A splendid ode is sung in the meantime; it contains a
half-comic account of Aristophanes' training in his art and a panegyric
on the old spirit which made Athens great. The sausage-seller returns
to tell of Cleon's utter defeat; he is quickly followed by Cleon, who
appeals to Demos himself, pointing out his own services.
"At the first, when I was a member of the Council, I got in vast
sums for the Treasury, partly by torture, partly by throttling,
partly by begging. I never studied any private person's interest
if I could only curry favour with you, to make you master of all
Greece."
The sausage-seller refutes him.
"Your object was to steal and take bribes from the cities, to blind
Demos to your villainies by the dust of war, and to make him gape
after you in need and necessity for war-pensions. If Demos can only
get into the country in peace and taste the barley-cakes again, he
will soon find out of what blessings you have rid him by your
briberies; he will come back as a dour farmer and will hunt up a
vote which will condemn you."
Cleon, the new Themistocles, is deposed from his stewardship.
He appeals to some oracles of Bacis, but the sausage-seller has better
ones of Bacis' elder brother Glanis. The Chorus rebuke Demos, whom all
men fear as absolute, for being easily led, for listening to the newest
comer and for a perpetual banishment of his intelligence. In a second
contest for Demos' favours Cleon is finally beaten when it appears that
he has kept some dainties in his box while the sausage-seller has given
his all. An appeal to an oracle prophesying his supplanter--one who
can steal, commit perjury and face it out--so clearly applies to the
sausage-seller that Cleon retires.
After a brief absence Demos appears with his new friend--but it is a
different Demos, rid of his false evidence and jury system, the Demos
of fifty years before. He is ashamed of his recent history, of his
preferring doles to battleships. He promises a speedy reform, full pay
to his sailors, strict revision of the army service rolls, an embargo
on Bills of Parliament. To his joy he recovers the Thirty Years' peace
which Cleon had hidden away, and realises at last his longing to escape
from the city into the country.
This violent attack on Cleon was vigorously met; Aristophanes was
prosecuted and seems to have made a compromise. In his next comedy,
the _Clouds_ (which was presented in 423) he changes his victim.
Strepsiades, an old Athenian, married a high-born wife of expensive
tastes; their son Pheidippides developed a liking for horses and soon
brought his father to the edge of ruin. The latter requests the son
to save him by joining the academy conducted by Socrates, where he can
learn the worse argument which enables its possessor to win his case.
Aided by it he can rid his father of debt. As the son flatly refuses,
the old man decides to learn it himself. Entering the school he sees
maps and drawings of all kinds and finally descries Socrates himself,
far above his head in a basket, high among the clouds, studying the sun.
Strepsiades begs him to teach him the Worse Argument at his own price.
After initiating him, Socrates summons his deities the Clouds, who enter
as the Chorus. These are the guardian deities of modern professors,
seers, doctors, lazy long-haired long-nailed fellows, musicians who
cultivate trills and tremolos, transcendental quacks who sing their
praises. The old gods are dethroned, a vortex governing the universe.
The Chorus tells Socrates to take the old man and teach him everything.
The ode which follows contains the poet's claim to be original.
"I never seek to dupe you by hashing up the same old theme two or
three times, but show my cleverness by introducing ever-new ideas,
none alike and all smart."
Socrates returns with Strepsiades, whom he can teach nothing. The Chorus
suggest he should bring his son to learn from Socrates how to get rid of
debts. At first Pheidippides refuses but finally agrees, though he warns
his father that he will rue his act. The Just and Unjust arguments
come out of the academy to plead before the Chorus. The former draws a
picture of the old-fashioned times when a sturdy race of men was reared
on discipline, obedience and morality--a broad-chested vigorous type. In
utter contempt the latter brands such teaching as prehistoric. Pleasure,
self-indulgence, a lax code of morality and easy tolerance of little
weaknesses are the ideal. The power of his words is such that the Just
Argument deserts to him.
Strepsiades, coached by his son, easily circumvents two money-lenders
and retires to his house. He is soon chased out by his son, who when
asked to sing the old songs of Simonides and Aeschylus scorned the idea,
humming instead an immoral modern tune of Euripides' making. A quarrel
inevitably followed; Strepsiades was beaten by his son who easily proved
that he had a right to beat his mother also. Stung to the quick the old
man burns the academy; when Socrates and his pupils protest, he tells
them they have but a just reward for their godlessness.
The Socrates here pilloried is certainly not the Socrates of history;
his teaching was not immoral. But Aristophanes is drawing attention
to the evil effects produced by the Sophists, who to the ordinary man
certainly included Socrates. The importance of this play to us is clear.
We are a nation of half-trained intelligences. Our national schools are
frankly irreligious, our teachers people of weak credentials. Parental
discipline is openly flouted, pleasure is our modern cult. Jazz bands,
long-haired novelists and poets, misty philosophers, anti-national
instructors are the idols of many a pale-faced and stunted son of
Britain. The reverence which made us great is decadent and openly
scoffed at. What is the remedy? Aristophanes burnt out the pestilent
teachers. We had better not copy him till we are satisfied that the
demand for them has ceased. A nation gets the instruction for which it
is morally fitted. There is but one hope; we must follow the genuine
Socratic method, which consisted of quiet individual instruction. Only
thus will we slowly and patiently seize this modern spirit of unrest;
our object should be not to suppress it--it is too sturdy, but to direct
its energies to a better and a more noble end.
Finding that the _Clouds_ had been too wholesome to be popular,
Aristophanes in 422 returned to attack Cleon in the _Wasps_. Early in
the morning Bdelycleon (Cleon-hater) with his two servants is preventing
his father Philocleon from leaving the house to go to the jury-courts.
The old man's amusing attempts to evade their vigilance are frustrated,
whereupon he calls for assistance. Very slowly a body of old men dressed
as wasps, led by boys carrying lanterns, finds its way to the house to
act as Chorus. They make many suggestions to the father to escape; just
as he is gnawing through the net over him his son rushes in. The wasps
threaten him with their formidable stings. After a furious conflict
truce is declared. Bdelycleon complains of the inveterate juryman's
habit of accusing everybody who opposes them of aiming at establishing
a tyranny. Father and son consent to state their case for the Chorus to
decide between them.
Philocleon glories in the absolute power he exercises over all classes;
his rule is equal to that of a king. To him the greatest men in Athens
bow as suppliants, begging acquittal. Some of these appeal to pity,
others tell him Aesop's fables, others try to make him laugh. Most
of all, he controls foreign policy through his privilege of trying
statesmen who fail. In return for his duties he receives his pay, goes
home and is petted by his wife and family. Bdelycleon opens thus:
"it is a hard task, calling for a clever wit and more than comic
genius to cure an ancient disease that has been breeding in the
city."
After giving a rough estimate of the total revenue of Athens, he
subtracts from it the miserable sum of three obols which the jurymen
receive as pay. Where does the remainder go? It is evident that the
jurymen are the mere catspaw of the big unscrupulous politicians who get
all the profit and incur none of the odium. This argument convinces
both the Chorus and Philocleon, old heroes of Marathon who created the
Empire.
The latter asks what he is to do. His son promises to look after him,
allowing him to gratify at home his itch for trying disputes. Two dogs
are brought in; by a trick the son makes his father acquit instead
of condemn. He then dresses him up decently and instructs him in the
etiquette of a dinner-party, whither they proceed. But the old man
behaves himself disgracefully, beating everyone in his cups. He appears
with a flute-girl and is summoned for assault by a vegetable-woman,
whose goods he has spoiled, and by a professional accuser. His insolence
to his victims is checked by his son who thrusts him into the house
before more accusers can appear.
It is sometimes believed that democracy is a less corrupt form of polity
than any other. Aristophanes in this play exposes one of its greatest
weaknesses.
Flattered by the sense of power which the possession of the vote brings
with it, the enfranchised classes cannot always see that they easily
become the tools of the clever rogues who get themselves elected to
office by playing on the fears of the electors. The Athenian voter
was as easily scared by the word "tyranny" as the modern elector is
by "capital". The result is the same. Not only do the so-called
lower orders sink into an ignorant slavery; they use their power so
brainlessly and so mercilessly that they are a perfect bugbear to the
rest.
Literary men's prophecies rarely come true. In 421 the _Peace_, produced
in March, was followed almost immediately by a compact between Athens
and Sparta for fifty years. An old farmer, Trygaeus, sails up to heaven
on the back of a huge beetle, bidding his family farewell for
three days. He meets Hermes, who tells him that Zeus in disgust has
surrendered men to the war they love. War himself has hidden Peace in
a deep pit, and has made a great mortar in which he intends to grind
civilisation to powder. He looks for the Athenian pestle, Cleon, but
cannot find him--the Spartan pestle Brasidas has also been mislaid; both
were lost in Thrace. Before he can find another pestle Trygaeus summons
all men to pull Peace out of her prison. Hermes at first objects, but is
won over by offers of presents. At length the goddess is discovered with
her two handmaids, Harvest and Mayfair.
A change immediately comes over the faces of men. In pure joy they
laugh through their bruises. Hermes explains to the farmers who form the
Chorus why Peace left the earth. It was the trade rivalry which first
drove her away; at Athens the subject cities fomented strife with
Sparta, then the country population flocked to the city, where they
fell easy victims to the public war-mongers, who found it profitable
to continue the struggle. The god then offers to Trygaeus Harvest as a
bride to make his vineyards fruitful. In the ode which follows the poet
claims that he first made comedy dignified
"with great thoughts and words and refined jests, not lampooning
individuals but attacking the Tanner war-god."
Returning to earth Trygaeus sends Harvest to the Council, while the
marriage sacrifice is made ready. A soothsayer endeavours to impose on
the rustics with prophecies that the Peace will be a failure. Trygaeus
refutes him with a quotation from Homer. "Without kin or law or home
is a man who loveth harsh strife between peoples." The makers of
agricultural implements quickly sell all their stock, while the makers
of helmets, crests and breastplates find their market gone. A glad
wedding song forms the epilogue.
Aristophanes believed that the war meant an extinction of civilisation
and loathed it because it was useless. What would he have thought of the
barbarous and bloodthirsty Great War of our own day? The causes which
produced both struggles were identical--trade rivalry and a set of
jingoes who found that war paid. But he was mistaken in believing that
peace was the normal condition of Greek life. He was born just before
the great period began during which Pericles gave Greece a long respite
from quarrels, and seems to have been quite nonplussed by what to him
was an abnormal upheaval. His bright hopes soon faded and he seems
to have given up thinking about peace or war during a period of eight
years. In the meanwhile Athens had attacked Sicily; perhaps a change had
come over comedy itself owing to legal action. At any rate, the old and
virulent type of political abuse was becoming a thing of the past; the
next play, the _Birds_, produced in 414, abandons Athens altogether for
a new and charming world in which there was a rest from strife.
Two Athenians, Peithetairus (Persuasive) and Euelpides (Sanguine) reach
the home of the Hoopoe bird, once a mortal, to find a happier place than
their native city. Suddenly, as the bird describes the happy careless
life of his kind, Peithetairus conceives the idea of founding a new bird
city between earth and heaven. The Hoopoe summons his friends to hear
their opinion; as they come in he names them to the wondering Athenians.
At first the Birds threaten to attack the mortals, their natural
enemies. They listen, however, to Peithetairus' words of wisdom.
"Nay, wise men learn much from their foes, for good counsel saves
everything. We cannot learn from a friend, but an enemy quickly
forces the truth upon us. For example, cities learn from their
enemies, not their friends, to create high walls and battleships,
and such are the salvation of children, home and substance."
A truce is made. Peithetairus tells them the Birds once ruled the world
but have been deposed, becoming the prey of those who once worshipped
them. They should ring round the air, like Babylon, with mighty baked
bricks and send an ultimatum to the gods, demanding their lost kingdom
and forbidding a passage to earth; another messenger should descend
to men to require from them due sacrifices. The Birds agree; the two
companions retire to Hoopoe's house to eat the magic root which will
turn them into winged things. After a choral panegyric on the bird
species Peithetairus returns to name the new city Cloudcuckootown, whose
erection is taken in hand. Impostors make their appearance, a priest to
sacrifice, a poet to eulogise, an oracle-dealer to promise success, a
mathematician to plan out the buildings, an overseer and a seller of
decrees to enact by-laws; all are summarily ejected by Peithetairus.
News comes that the city is already completed. Suddenly Iris darts in,
on her way to earth to demand the accustomed sacrifices from men which
the new city has interrupted; she is sent back to heaven to warn the
gods of their coming overthrow. A herald from earth brings tidings that
more than a myriad human beings are on their way to settle in the city.
A parent-beater first appears, then a poet, then an informer--all
being firmly dealt with. Prometheus slips in under a parasol, to advise
Peithetairus to demand from Zeus his sceptre and with it the lady
Royalty as his bride. Poseidon, Heracles and an outlandish Triballian
god after a long discussion make terms with the new monarch, who goes
with them to fetch his bride. A triumphant wedding forms the conclusion.
The purpose of this comedy has been the subject of much discussion. As a
piece of literature it is exquisite. It lifts us out of a world of hard
unpleasant fact into a region where life is a care-free thing, bores or
impostors are banished and the reign of the usurper ends. The play
is not of or for any one particular period; it is really timeless,
appealing to the ineradicable desire we all have for an existence of
joy and light, where dreams always come true and hope ends only in
fulfilment. It is therefore one of man's deathless achievements; the
power of its appeal is evident from the frequency with which it has been
revived--it was staged at Cambridge this very year. Staged it will be as
long as men are what they are.
Having learned that men are a naturally combative race, lusting for
blood, the poet saw it was hopeless to bring them to terms. Nor could he
for ever live in Cloudcuckootowns; he therefore bethought him of another
expedient for obtaining peace. In 411 he imagines the women of Athens,
Peloponnese and Boeotia combining to force terms on the men by deserting
their homes, under the leadership of _Lysistrata_. She calls a council
of war, explaining her plot to capture the Acropolis. A Chorus of men
rush in to smoke them out, armed with firebrands, but are met by a
Chorus of women bearing pitchers to quench the flames. An officer of the
Council comes to argue with Lysistrata, who points out that in the first
part of the war (down to 421) the women had kept quiet, though aware of
men's incompetence; now they have determined to control matters. They
are possessed of the Treasury, their experience of household economy
gives them a good claim to organise State finance; they grow old in the
absence of their husbands; a man can marry a girl however old he is. A
woman's prime soon comes; if she misses it, she sits at home looking for
omens of a husband; women make the most valuable of all contributions to
the State, namely sons. The officer retires to report to the Council.
Lysistrata, seeing a weakness in the women's resolution, encourages
them with an oracle which promises victory if they will only persist.
A herald speedily arrives from Sparta announcing a similar defection in
that city. Ambassadors of both sides are brought to Lysistrata who makes
a splendid speech.
"I am a woman, but wit is in me and I have no small conceit of
myself. Having heard many speeches from my father and elder men
I am not ill-informed. Now that I have caught you I will administer
to you the rebuke you richly deserve. You sprinkle altars from the
same lustral-bowl, like relatives, at Olympia, Pylae, Delphi and
many other places. Though the barbarian enemy is on you in armed
force, you destroy Greek men and cities."
She points out that both sides have been guilty of injustice; both
should make surrenders and agree to a peace which is duly ratified. The
Chorus of men believe that Athenian ambassadors should go to Sparta in
their cups:--
"As it is, whenever we go there sober, we immediately see what
mischief we can make. We never hear what they say; what they do
not say we conjecture and never bring back the same tale about
the same facts."
Odes of thanksgiving wind up the piece.
Exactly twenty years earlier Euripides in the _Medea_ had written the
first protest against women's subjection to an unfair social lot. By
a strange irony of fortune his most severe critic Aristophanes was the
first man in Europe to give utterance to their claim to a political
equality. True, he does so in a comedy, but he was speaking perhaps more
seriously than he would have us think. Women do contribute sons to
the State; they do believe that they are as capable as men of judging
political questions--with justice, in a system where no qualifications
but twilight opinions are necessary. On this ground they have won the
franchise. Nor has the feminist movement really begun as yet. We may see
women in control of our political Acropolis, forcing the world to make
peace to save our chances of becoming ultimately civilised.
The _Thesmophoriazousae_, staged in 411, is a lampoon on Euripides.
That poet with his kinsman Mnesilochus calls at the house of Agathon, a
brother tragedian whose style is amusingly parodied. Euripides informs
him that the women intend to hold a meeting to destroy him for libel;
they are celebrating the feast of the Thesmophoria. As Agathon refuses
an invitation to go disguised and defend Euripides, Mnesilochus
undertakes the dangerous duty; his disguise is effected on the stage
with comic gusto. At the meeting the case against the poet is first
stated; he has not only lampooned women, he has taught their husbands
how to counter their knaveries and is an atheist. Mnesilochus defends
him; women are capable of far more villainies than even Euripides has
exposed. The statement of these raises the suspicions of the ladies
who soon unmask the intruder, inquiring of him the secret ritual of the
Thesmophoria.
One of them goes to the Town Council to find out what punishment they
are to inflict.
Mnesilochus meanwhile snatches a child from the arms of one of
them, holding it as a hostage. To his amazement it turns out to be a
wine-stoup. He vainly tries some of the dodges practised in Euripides'
plays to bring him to the rescue. The Chorus meantime expose the folly
of calling women evil.
"If we are a bane, why do you marry us? Why do you forbid us to
walk abroad or to be caught peeping out? Why use such pains to
preserve this evil thing? If we do peep out, everybody wants this
bane to be seen; if we draw back in modesty, every man is much
more anxious to see this pest peep out again. At any rate, no
woman comes into the city after stealing public money fifty
talents at a time."