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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.
Wine is bitter to my taste," he said. And turning to Pericles, he whispered: "Evil eyes have come here. This Aristophanes is not our friend! Do you know him?" "Very little, but he looks as though he would like to murder us." Alcibiades continued to address the skeleton: "Thus looks Athens at this moment!
This would be to deny Shakespeare as his comrades knew him, where the wit "out- did the meat, out-did the frolic wine," and to deny Ben Jonson's "tart Aristophanes, neat Terence, witty Plautus," and the rest. Doubtless Greece determined the custom for all our Occident; but none the less might the modern world grow more sensible of the value of composure.
Clodius had doubtless been instructed to leave him meanwhile at peace, but Caesar as little threw off Clodius on account of Cicero as he threw off Cicero on account of Clodius; and the great saviour of his country and the no less great hero of liberty entered into an antechamber-rivalry in the headquarters of Samarobriva, for the befitting illustration of which there lacked, unfortunately, a Roman Aristophanes.
The passage was one from the "Birds" of Aristophanes; and the fact of a treaty being concluded between the Olympians and terrestrials, led to the introduction of some interpolations as to the Washington Treaty, which, when interpreted by the production of the American flag and English Union Jack, brought down thunders of applause.
In an attack on the Sophists, in his play of the Clouds, he gives to Socrates the character of a vulgar Sophist, and holds him up to the derision of the Athenian people. But, as another has said, "Time has set all even; and 'poor Socrates, as Aristophanes called him as a far loftier bard has sung
We are not surprised, therefore, to find that the symbol of woman is the tortoise; and in the following burlesque passage from Aristophanes we shall recognise, in spite of the touch of caricature, the genuine features of the Greek wife.
And here we must read the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, and what more of that master we gain appetite for, to learn our way in the streets of Athens, and to know the tyranny of Aristophanes, requiring more genius and sometimes not less cruelty than belonged to the official commanders. Aristophanes is now very accessible, with much valuable commentary, through the labors of Mitchell and Cartwright.
If I were a military man, I might have been tempted to draw some further illustrations from the history of the two struggles, but my short and desultory service in the field does not entitle me to set up as a strategist. I went from my books to the front, and went back from the front to my books, from the Confederate war to the Peloponnesian war, from Lee and Early to Thucydides and Aristophanes.
More than once Aristophanes ridicules him for holding some strange view of the 'soul', and these jests were made at a time when Plato was only a child.
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