"to give the mothers of famous sons the right of place in festivals;
those whose sons are evil should take a lower place."
In an amusing series of scenes Euripides enters dressed up as some of
his own characters to save Mnesilochus. A borough officer enters with
a policeman whom he orders to bind the prisoner and guard him. More
disguises are adopted by Euripides who succeeds at last in freeing his
kinsman by pretending to be an old woman with a marriageable daughter
whom the policeman can have at a price. When the latter goes to fetch
the money Euripides and his relative disappear.
The poet has in this play very skilfully palmed off on Euripides his own
attack on women. We have already seen what Euripides' attitude was to
the neglected sex. Feminine deceit has been a stock theme in all ages;
it had already been treated in Greek literature and was to be passed
through Roman literature to the Middle Ages, in which period it received
more than its due share of attention. In itself it is a poor theme, good
enough perhaps as a stand-by, for it is sure to be popular. Those who
pose as woman-haters might consider the words of the Chorus in this
play.
The most violent attack on Euripides was delivered after his death by
Aristophanes in the _Frogs_, written in 405. This famous comedy is so
well-known that a brief outline will suffice. It falls into two parts.
The first describes the adventures of Dionysus who with his servant
Xanthias descends to the lower world to bring back Euripides. The god
and his servant exchange parts according as the persons they meet are
friendly or hostile. In the second part the three great tragedians
are brought on the scene. Euripides, who has just died, tries to claim
sovereignty in Hades; Sophocles, "gentle on earth and gentle in death"
withdraws his claim, leaving Aeschylus to the contest. The two rivals
appoint Dionysus, the patron of drama, to act as umpire. In a series
of admirable criticisms the weaknesses of both are plainly indicated.
Finally Dionysus decides to take back Aeschylus.
This play is as popular as the Birds. It contains one or two touches
of low comedy, but these are redeemed by the spirit of inexhaustible
jollity which sets the whole thing rocking with life and gaiety. It is
an original in Greek literature, being the first piece of definitely
literary criticism. A long experience had made the sense of the stage a
second nature to Aristophanes who here criticises two rival schools of
poetry as a dramatist possessed of inside professional knowledge. So
far his work is of the same class as Cicero's _De Oratore_ and Reynolds'
_Discourses_. His object, however, was not to preserve a balance
of impartiality but to condemn Euripides as a traitor to the whole
tradition of Attic tragedy. He does so, but not without giving his
reasons--and these are good and true. No person is qualified to judge
the development of Greek tragedy who has not weighed long and carefully
the second portion of the _Frogs_.
In 393 Aristophanes broke entirely new ground in the _Ecclesiazousae_
(women in Parliament), a discussion of social and economic problems.
Praxagora assembles the women of Athens to gain control of the city.
They meet early in the morning, disguise themselves with beards and open
the question.
"The decisions of men in Parliament are to reflecting people like
the derangements of drunken men. I am disgusted with our policy,
we always employ unscrupulous leaders. If one of them is honest
for one day, he is a villain for ten. Doling out public money, men
have eyes only for what they can make out of the State. Let women
govern; they are the best at providing money and are not likely to
be deceived in office, for they are well versed in trickery."
They proceed to the Assembly to execute their plot.
On the opening of the discussion one Euaeon proposed a scheme of
wholesale spoliation of the property owners to support the poor. Then
a white-faced citizen arose and proposed flatly that women should rule,
that being the one thing which had never yet been tried. The motion was
carried with great enthusiasm, the men declaring that "an old proverb
says all our senseless and foolish decisions turn out for good". When
Praxagora returns to the stage, she declares she intends to introduce
a system of absolute communism. All citizens are to live and dine in
common and possess wives in common, existing on the work of slaves. Any
person who refuses to declare his wealth is to be punished by losing
his rations, "the punishment of a man through his belly being the worst
insult he can suffer". A vivid description of the workings of the new
system ends the play.
Aristophanes is no doubt criticising Plato's _Republic_, but allowing
for altered circumstances we cannot go far wrong if we see here a
picture of the suggested remedy for the social distress which is
inseparable from a great war. At Athens, beaten and impoverished, there
must have been widespread discontent; the foundation upon which society
was built must have been criticised, its inequalities being emphasised
by idealists and intriguers alike. Our own generation has to face a
similar situation. We have seen women in Parliament and we are deluged
by a flood of communistic idealism emanating from Russia. Its one
commendation is that it has never yet been tried among us and many
simple folk will applaud the philosophy which persuades itself that all
our mistakes will somehow come right in the end. The problem of finding
somebody to do the work was easily solved in ancient Athens where the
slaves were three times as numerous as the free. England, possessing no
slaves, would under communism be unable to feed herself and would die of
starvation.
The _Plutus_, written in 388 is a singular work. An honest old man
Chremylus enters with Carion "his most faithful and most thievish
servant". They are holding fast a blind old man, in obedience to an
oracle of Apollo. After a little questioning the stranger admits that
he is Plutus, the god of wealth. Wild with joy they invite him to their
house. He does not like houses, for they have never brought him to any
good.
"If I enter a stingy man's abode, he immediately digs me deep in
the earth and denies he has ever seen me. If I enter a crazy
man's home, given to dicing and fast living, I am soon ejected
naked."
Learning that Chremylus is honest and poor he consents to try once
again.
The rumour gets abroad that Chremylus has suddenly grown rich; his
acquaintance reveal their true characters as they come to question him
about his luck. The goddess Poverty enters, to be cross-examined by
Chremylus who has suggested that Plutus should recover his sight under
the healing care of Asclepius. Before the care is effected, she points
out the dangers of his project. He is well-meaning, but foolish; Poverty
is not Mendicancy, it means a life of thrift, with nothing left over
but with no real want; it is the source of the existence of all
the handicrafts, nor can the slaves be counted on to do the work if
everybody becomes rich, for nobody will sell slaves if he has money
already. Riches on the other hand are the curse of many; wealth rots
men, causing gout, dropsy and bloated insolence; the gods themselves are
poor, otherwise they would not need human sacrifice.
The cure is successful; Plutus recovers his eyes and can see to whom he
gives his blessings; the good and the rascals alike receive their
due reward. The change which wealth produces in men's natures is most
admirably depicted in the Epilogue.
This is an Allegory dramatised with no little skill. The piece is full
of the shrewdest hits at our human failings, aimed, however, with
no ill-nature. Aristophanes' power of characterisation here shows
no falling-off. Fortune's fickleness is proverbial and has received
frequent literary treatment. Men's first prayer is for wealth; poverty,
according to Dr. Johnson, is evidently a great evil because it needs
such a long defence. Yet it is only the well-meaning but utterly
unpractical idealists who desire to make us all prosperous--
"How that may change our nature, that's the question."
Some are not fit for riches, being ignorant of their true function;
self-indulgence and moral rottenness follow wealth; because of the abuse
of the power which wealth brings, we are taught that it is hard for the
rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
It is difficult to convey an adequate impression of Aristophanes to the
English reader. Long excerpts are impossible and undesirable. Comedy
is essentially a mirror of contemporary life; it contains all kinds of
references to passing political events and transient forms of social
life; its turns of language are peculiar to its own age. We who are
familiar with Shakespeare know that one of our chief difficulties
in reading him is the constant reference to what was obvious to the
Elizabethan public but is dark to us. Yet the plays of Aristophanes in
an English translation such as that of Frere read far more like
modern work than the comedies of Ben Jonson, for the society in which
Aristophanes moved was far more akin to ours. It was democratic, was
superficially educated, was troubled by socialistic and communistic
unrest exactly as we are. Some of our modern thinkers would be surprised
to find how many of their dreamings were discussed twenty-three
centuries ago by men quite as intelligent and certainly as honest.
Aristophanes' greatest fault is excessive conservatism. He gives us a
most vivid description of the evils and abuses of his own time, yet has
no remedy except that of putting back the hands of the clock some fifty
years. Marathon, Aeschylus, the nascent democracy were his ideal and he
was evidently put out by the ending of the period of "Periclean calm."
He then has no solution for the problems in front of him. But it might
be asked whether a dramatist's business is not rather to leave solutions
to the thinker, concerning himself only with mirroring men's natures.
With singular courage and at no small personal risk this man attacked
the great ones of his day, scourging their hypocrisies and exposing the
real tendencies of their principles. If he has opened our eyes to the
objections to popular government and popular poetry and has made us
aware of the significance of the feminist movement, let us be thankful;
we shall be more on our guard and be less easily persuaded that problems
are new or that they are capable of a final solution.
On the other hand, we shall find in him qualities of a most original
type. His spirits are inexhaustible, he laughs heartily and often
without malice at the follies of the mass of men; Cleon and Euripides
were anathema to him, but the rest he treats as Fluellen did Pistol:
"You beggarly knave, God bless you". His lyrics must be classed with
the best in Greek poetry. Like Rabelais this rollicking jolly spirit
disguises his wisdom under the mask of folly, turning aside with some
whimsical twist just when he is beginning to be too serious. He will
repay the most careful reading, for his best things are constantly
turning up when least expected. His political satire ceasing with the
death of Cleon, he turned to the land of pure fancy among the winged
careless things; he then raised the woman's question, started literary
criticism and ended with Allegory. To few has such a noble cycle of work
been vouchsafed; we owe him at least a debt of remembrance, for he loved
us as our brother.