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He apologizes for the liberties taken by satiric poets in general, and particularly by himself. The poets Eupolis, and Cratinus, and Aristophanes, and others, who are authors of the ancient comedy, if there was any person deserving to be distinguished for being a rascal or a thief, an adulterer or a cut-throat, or in any shape an infamous fellow, branded him with great freedom. See!
From these statements I conceive myself justified in assuming that among the pieces of Aristophanes, the Knights is the most in the style of Cratinus, and the Birds in that of Eupolis; and that he had their respective manners in view when he composed these pieces.
He is thought to have had a bastard son by her, who is mentioned by Eupolis in his play of 'The Townships, where Perikles is introduced, asking, "Lives then my son?" to which Myronides answers: "He lives, and long had claimed a manly name, But that he feared his harlot mother's shame."
As ACHILLES tortured the dead body of HECTOR; and as ANTONIUS and his wife FULVIA tormented the lifeless corpse of CICERO; so GABRIEL HARVEY hath showed the same inhumanity to GREENE, that lies full low in his grave. As EUPOLIS of Athens used great liberty in taxing the vices of men: so doth THOMAS NASH. Witness the brood of the HARVEYS!
Besides, as at great men's tables every man hath a servant waiting at his elbow, so each of his guests would need a grammarian to sit by him, and explain who is Laespodias in Eupolis, Cinesias in Plato, and Lampo in Cratinus, and who is each person that is jeered in the play. Concerning new comedy there is no need of any long discourse.
"Bowed down With a dreadful frown, Because matters of state have gone wrong, Until at last, From his head so vast, His ideas burst forth in a throng." And Eupolis, in his play of Demoi, asking questions about each of the great orators as they come up from the other world one after the other, when at last Pericles ascends, says: "The great headpiece of those below."
So, also, the informer whom Eupolis introduces in his Maricas, attacking a good, simple, poor man: How long ago did you and Nicias meet? I did but see him just now in the street. The man has seen him and denies it not, 'Tis evident that they are in a plot. See you, O citizens! 'tis fact, Nicias is taken in the act. Taken, Fools! take so good a man In aught that's wrong none will or can.
Aristophanes was 'profane, under satiric direction, unlike his rivals Cratinus, Phrynichus, Ameipsias, Eupolis, and others, if we are to believe him, who in their extraordinary Donnybrook Fair of the day of Comedy, thumped one another and everybody else with absolute heartiness, as he did, but aimed at small game, and dragged forth particular women, which he did not.
"Bowed down With a dreadful frown, Because matters of state have gone wrong, Until at last, From his head so vast, His ideas burst forth in a throng." And Eupolis, in his play of 'Demoi, asking questions about each of the great orators as they come up from the other world one after the other, when at last Perikles ascends, says, "The great headpiece of those below."
But even out of that seemingly bare chaos, Athenian genius was learning how to construct, under Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, that elder school of comedy, which remains not only unsurpassed, but unapproachable, save by Rabelais alone, as the ideal cloudland of masquerading wisdom, in which the whole universe goes mad but with a subtle method in its madness.
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