Authors of Greece

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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."

A better plan would be

"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.

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