CHAPTER V.THE WASPS.

Str.(yawning in his bed). O—h!Great Jove, how terribly long the nights are now!Interminable! will it never be day, I wonder?I’m sure I heard the cock crow long ago.These slaves are snoring still, the rascals. Ah!It was not so in the old times of peace.Curse the war, I say, both for other reasons,And specially that I daren’t punish my own slaves.[28]And there’s that hopeful son of mine can sleepSound as a top, the whole night long, rolled upLike a great sausage there, in five thick blankets.Well—I suppose I’d as well put my headUnder the clothes, and try to get a snooze.—I can’t—Ican’tget to sleep! There are things biting me—I mean the bills, the stable expenses, and the debtsRun up for me by that precious son of mine.And he—oh, he lives like a gentleman,Keeps his fine horses, drives his curricle—Is dreaming of them now, no doubt—while I lie vexing,Knowing next month those notes of hand come due,With interest mounting up. (Calls to his slave without.)Boy! light a lamp;Bring me my pocket-book, that I may seeHow my accounts stand, and just cast them up.(Slave brings a lamp, and holds it while Strepsiadessits up and looks over his account-book.)Let’s see now. First, here’s Prasias, fifty pounds.Now, what’s that for? When did I borrow that?Ah! when I bought that grey. Oh dear, oh dear!I shall grow grey enough, if this goes on.Ph.(talking in his sleep). That’s not fair, Philo! keep your own side of the course!Str.Ay, there he goes! that’s what is ruining me;He’s always racing, even in his dreams.Ph.(still asleep). How many times round do the war-chariots go?Str.You make your old father’s head go round, you do.But let me see—what stands here next to Prasias?—Twelve pounds to Amynias,—for a car and wheels.Ph.There—give that horse a roll, and take him home.Str.You’ll roll me out of house and home, young man!I’ve judgment debts against me, and the rest of themSwear they’ll proceed.Ph.(awaking).Good heavens! my dear father,What makes you groan and toss so all night long?Str.There’s a sheriff’s officer at me—in the bed-clothes.Ph.Lie quiet, sir, do pray, and let me sleep.Str.Sleep, if you like; but these debts, I can tell you,“Will fall on your own head some day, young man.Heugh! may those match-makers come to an evil endWho drew me into marrying your good mother!There I was living a quiet life in the country,—Shaved once a-week, may-be, wore my old clothes—Full of my sheep, and goats, and bees, and vineyards,And I must marry the fine niece of Megacles.The son of Megacles! an awkward country fellowMarry a fine town belle, all airs and graces!A pretty pair we were to come together—I smelling of the vineyard and the sheep-shearing,She with her scents, and essences, and cosmetics,And all the devilries of modern fashion.Not a bad housekeeper though—I will say that—For she kept open house. “Madam,” said I,Showing her one day my old coat with a hole in’t,By way of parable,—“this can’t last long.”Slave(examining the lamp, which is going out). This lamp has got no oil in it.Str.Deuce take you,Why did you light that thirsty beast of a lamp?Come here, and you shall catch it.Slave.Catch it,—why?Str.(boxes his ears). For putting such a thick wick in, to be sure.—Well,—in due time this boy of ours was bornTo me and my grand lady. First of all,We got to loggerheads about his name;She would have something that had got ahorsein it,—Xanthippus—or Charippus—or Philippides;[29]I was for his grandfather’s name—Pheidonides.Well, for some time we squabbled; then at lastWe came to a compromise upon Pheid—ippides.This boy—she’d take him in her lap and fondle him,And say, “Ah! when it grows up to be a man,It shall drive horses, like its uncle Megacles,And wear a red cloak, it shall.” Then I would say,“He shall wear a good sheep-skin coat, like his own father,And drive his goats to market from the farm.”But there—he never would listen to me for a moment;He’s had a horse-fever always—to my ruin.

He has thought of a scheme, however, if he can but get his son to fall in with it, by which they may both be relieved from the pressure of these debts. So he awakes young Pheidippides, and takes him into his counsels. They both walk to the front; the scene shuts, and they are outside the house. The father points to another building at the wing.

That’s the great Thinking-School of our new philosophers;There live the men who teach that heaven around usIs a vast oven, and we the charcoal in it.[30]And they teach too—for a consideration, mind—To plead a cause and win it, right or wrong.Ph.(carelessly). Who are these fellows?Str.I don’t quite rememberThe name they call themselves, it’s such a long one;Very hard thinkers—but they’re first-rate men.Ph.Faugh! vulgar fellows—I know ’em. Dirty vagabonds,Like Socrates there and Chœrephon—a low set.Str.Pray hold your tongue—don’t show your ignorance.But, if you care at all for your old father,Be one of them, now, do, and cut the turf.Ph.Not I, by Bacchus! not if you would give meThat team of Arabs that Leogoras drives.Str.(coaxingly). Do, my dear boy, I beg you—go and be taught.Ph.And what shall I learn there?Str.Learn? (Confidentially.) “Why, theydosayThat these men have the secret of both Arguments,The honest Argument (if there be such a thing) and the other;Now this last—this false Argument, you understand—Will make the veriest rascal win his cause.So, if you’ll go and learn for us this glorious art,The debts I owe for you will all be cleared;For I shan’t pay a single man a farthing.Ph.(after a little hesitation). No—I can’t do it. Studying hard, you see,Spoils the complexion. How could I show my faceAmong the Knights, looking a beast, like those fellows?Str.Then, sir, henceforth I swear, so help me Ceres,I won’t maintain you—you, nor your bays, nor your chestnuts.Go to the dogs—or anywhere—out of my house!Ph.Well, sir, I’m going. I know my uncle MegaclesWon’t see me without a horse—so I don’t mind.

Indignant as he is with his son, the father is determined not to lose the chance which this new science offers him of getting rid of his creditors. If his son will not learn, he will take lessons himself, old as he is; and with this resolve he knocks at the door of this “Thinking-School,” the house of Socrates. One of the students comes to answer his summons—in no very good humour, for the loudness and suddenness of Strepsiades’s knock has destroyed in embryo a thought which he was breeding. Still, as the old gentlemanseems an earnest disciple, he condescends to expatiate to him on the subject of some of the great master’s subtle speculations; subtle in the extreme, not to say childish, but yet not very unfair caricatures of some which we find attributed to Socrates in the ‘Dialogues’ of Plato. Charmed with what he hears, the new scholar begs to be at once introduced. The back scene opens, and discovers the students engaged in their various investigations, with Socrates himself suspended in a kind of basket, deeply engaged in thought. The extraordinary attitude of one class of learners arrests the attention of the visitor especially:—

Str.Whatarethose doing—stooping so very oddly?Student.They probe the secrets that lie deep as Tartarus.Str.But why—excuse me, but—their hinder quarters—Why are they stuck so oddly up in the air?Stud.The other end is studying astronomyQuite independently. (To the students, whose attention is, of course, diverted to the visitor.) Go in, if you please!SupposeHEcomes, and catches us all idling!

But Strepsiades begs to ask a few more questions. These mathematical instruments,—what are they for?

Stud.Oh, that’s geometry.Str.And what’s the use of it?Stud.For measuring the Earth.Str.You mean the grantsWe make in the colonies to Athenian citizens?Stud.No—allthe Earth.Str.A capital idea!Divide it all?—I call that true democracy.Stud.See, here’s an outline-map of the whole world;And here lies Athens.Str.Athens! nay, go to—It cannot be—I see no law-courts sitting.Stud.’Tis Attica, I assure you, none the less.Str.And where’s my parish, then—and my fellow-townsmen?Stud.Oh, they’re all there.—And here’s Eubœa, you see,That long strip there, stretched out along the coast.Str.Ay—we and Pericles stretched that—pretty tight.[31]But where’s Lacedæmon, now?Stud.Why, there, of course.Str.How close to Athens! Pray, with all your thinking,Can’t ye contrive to get it further off?Stud.(shaking his head). That we can’t do, by Jove!Str.Then worse luck for ye.—But who hangs dangling in the basket yonder?Stud.Himself.Str.And who’s Himself?Stud.Why, Socrates.Str.Ho, Socrates!—Call him, you fellow—call loud.Stud.Call him yourself—I’ve got no time for calling.(Exit indoors.)Str.Ho, Socrates! sweet, darling Socrates!Soc.Why callest thou me, poor creature of a day?Str.First tell me, pray, whatareyou doing up there?Soc.I walk in air, and contemplate the sun.Str.Oh,that’sthe way that you despise the gods—You get so near them on your perch there—eh?Soc.I never could have found out things divine,Had I not hung my mind up thus, and mixedMy subtle intellect with its kindred air.Had I regarded such things from below,I had learnt nothing. For the earth absorbsInto itself the moisture of the brain.—It is the very same case with water-cresses.Str.Dear me! so water-cresses grow by thinking!

He begs Socrates to come down and help him in his difficulties. He is very anxious to learn this new Argument—that “which pays no bills.” Socrates offers to introduce him to the Clouds, the new goddesses of philosophers—“great divinities to idle men;” and Strepsiades—first begging to be allowed to wrap his cloak round his head for fear of rain, having left home in his hurry without a hat—sits down to await their arrival.

(Socrateschants.)

Come, holy Clouds, whom the wise revere,Descend in the sight of your votaries here!Whether ye rest on the heights of Olympus,whereon the sacred snow lies ever,Or in coral groves of your father Oceanye weave with the Nymphs the dance together,Or draw aloft in your golden vesselsthe holy waters of ancient Nile,Or haunt the banks of the lake Mæotis,or clothe the Mimas’ steeps the while,—Hear our prayer, O gentle goddesses,take the gifts your suppliants bring,Smile propitious on these our offerings,list to the mystic chant we sing!

It is not very easy to comprehend the mode in which the succeeding scene was managed, but the appliances of the Athenian stage were no doubt quite equal to presenting it very effectively. The vast amphitheatre in which these performances took place, open to the sky, andfrom which actors and audience commanded a view of the hills round Athens, and of the “illimitable air” and “cloudless heaven” which Socrates apostrophises in his invocation to the goddesses, would add greatly to the effect of the beautiful choric songs which follow. But, on the other hand, it presents difficulties to any arrangement for the actual descent of the Clouds upon the stage. Probably their first chorus is sung behind the scenes, and they are invisible,—present to the imagination only of the audience, until they enter the orchestra in palpable human shape. Theories and guesses on these points are, after all, but waste of ingenuity. The beauty of the lines which herald their entrance (which can receive but scant justice in a translation) is one of the many instances in which the poet rises above the satirist.

(Chorus of Clouds,in the distance, accompanied by the low rolling of thunder.[32])

Eternal clouds!Rise we to mortal view,Embodied in bright shapes of dewy sheen,Leaving the depths sereneWhere our loud-sounding Father Ocean dwells,For the wood-crownèd summits of the hills:Thence shall our glance commandThe beetling crags which sentinel the land,The teeming earth,The crops we bring to birth;Thence shall we hearThe music of the ever-flowing streams,The low deep thunders of the booming sea.Lo, the bright Eye of Day unwearied beams!Shedding our veil of stormsFrom our immortal forms,We scan with keen-eyed gaze this nether sphere.

Socrates falls to the ground in adoration of his beloved deities; and Strepsiades follows his example, in great terror at the thunder, with all the buffoonish exaggeration which would delight an Athenian audience.

(Chorus of Clouds,nearer.)

Sisters who bring the showers,Let us arise and greetThis glorious land, for Pallas’ dwelling meet,Rich in brave men, beloved of Cecrops old;Where Faith and Reverence reign,Where comes no foot profane,When for the mystic rites the Holy Doors unfold.There gifts are duly paidTo the great gods, and pious prayers are said;Tall temples rise, and statues heavenly fair.There, at each holy tide,With coronals and song,The glad processions to the altars throng;There, in the jocund spring,Great Bacchus, festive king,With dance and tuneful flute his Chorus leads along.

And now, while Socrates directs the attention of his pupil towards Mount Parnes, from whose heights hesees (and the imagination of the audience is not slow to follow him) the ethereal goddesses descending towards the earth, the Chorus in bodily form enter the orchestra, to the sound of slow music—four-and-twenty nymphs in light cloud-like drapery. They promise, at the request of their great worshipper Socrates, to instruct his pupil in the mysterious science which is to free him from the importunity of his creditors. For these, says the philosopher, are your only true deities—Chaos, and the Clouds, and the Tongue. As to Jupiter, whom Strepsiades just ventures to mention, he is quite an exploded idea in these modern times; the great ruler of the universe is Vortex.[33]The machinery of the world goes on by a perpetual whirl. Socrates will, with the help of the Clouds, instruct him in all these new tenets. There is one point, however, upon which he wishes first to be satisfied—has he a good memory?

Str.’Tis of two sorts, by Jove! remarkably good,If a man owes me anything; of my own debts,I’m shocked to say, I’m terribly forgetful.Soc.Have you good natural gifts in the way of speaking?Str.Speaking,—not much; cheating’s my strongest point.

He appears to the philosopher not so very unpromising a pupil, and the pair retire into the “Thinking-shop,” to begin their studies, while the Chorus make their usual address to the audience in the poet’s name,touching chiefly upon topics of the day which have lost their interest for us moderns.

But the next act of the comedy brings in Socrates, swearing by all his new divinities that he never met with so utterly hopeless a pupil, in the whole course of his experience, as this very late learner, who has no one qualification for a sophist except his want of honesty. He puts him through a quibbling catechism on the stage about measures, and rhythms, and grammar, all which he declares are necessary preliminaries to the grand science which Strepsiades desires to learn, although the latter very naïvely remonstrates against this superfluous education: he wants to learn neither music nor grammar, but simply how to defeat his creditors. At last his instructor gets out of patience, and kicks him off the philosophical premises as a hopeless dunce. By the advice of the Clouds the rejected candidate goes in search of his son, to attempt once more to persuade him to enter the schools, and learn the art which has proved too difficult for his father’s duller faculties.

One step, indeed, the old gentleman has made in his education; he swears no more by Jupiter, and rebukes his son, when he does so, for entertaining such very old-world superstitions; somewhat to the astonishment of that elegant young gentleman, whose opinions (if he has any on such subjects) are not so far advanced in the way of scepticism. The latter is, however, at last persuaded to become his father’s substitute as the pupil of Socrates, though not without a warning on the young man’s part that he may one day come to rue it. On this head the father has no misgivings, butintroduces him to the philosopher triumphantly as a scholar who is sure to do him credit—he was always a remarkable child:—

He was so very clever always, naturally;When he was but so high, now, he’d build mud houses,Cut out a boat, make a cart of an old shoe,And frogs out of pomegranate-stones—quite wonderful![34]

And Socrates, after a sneer at the young gentleman’s fashionable lisp, admits him as a pupil, and undertakes to instruct him in this “new way of paying old debts.”

The choral ode which must have divided this scene from the next is lost. The dialogue which follows, somewhat abruptly as we now have the play, is but another version of the well-known “Choice of Hercules” between Virtue and Vice, by the sophist Prodicus—known probably to the audience of the day as well as to ourselves. The Two Arguments, the Just and the Unjust, now appear upon the stage in character; one in the grave dress of an elder citizen, the other as a young philosopher of the day.[35]It is very probable that they wore masks which would be recognised by the audience as caricatures of real persons; it has been suggested,of Æschylus and Euripides, or of Thrasymachus the sophist, and of Aristophanes himself. What is certain is, that they represent the old and new style of training and education: and they set forth the claims of their respective systems in a long discussion, in which each abuses the other with the utmost licence of Athenian comedy. Yet there are passages of great simplicity and beauty here and there, in the speeches of the worthier claimant. The Unjust Argument, confident in the popularity of his system and his powers of argument, permits his rival to set his claims before the audience first. He proceeds to speak of the days when justice, temperance, and modesty were in fashion; when the Athenian youth were a hardy and a healthy race, not languid and effeminate as now; and he calls upon young Pheidippides to choose for himself the principles and the training which “had made the men of Marathon:”—

Cast in thy lot, O youth, with me, and choose the better paths—So shalt thou hate the Forum’s prate, and shun the lazy baths;Be shamed for what is truly shame, and blush when shame is said,And rise up from thy seat in hall before the hoary head;Be duteous to thy parents, to no base act inclined,But keep fair Honour’s image deep within thine heart enshrined;And speak no rude irreverent word against the father’s years,Whose strong hand led thine infant steps, and dried thy childhood’s tears.

But the arguments of the evil counsellor are many andplausible. What good, he argues, have men ever gained by justice, continence, and moderation? For one poor instance which his opponent can adduce of virtue being rewarded upon earth, the fluent sophist quotes a dozen against him of those who have made their gain by the opposite qualities. Honesty isnotthe best policy among mortals; and most assuredly the moral virtues receive no countenance from the example of the gods. Sophistical as the argument is, and utterly unfair as we know it to be if intended to represent the real teaching of Socrates, the satirist seems to have been fully justified in his representation so far as some of the popular lecturers of the day were concerned. The arguments which Plato, in his ‘Republic,’ has put into the mouth of the sophist Thrasymachus—that justice is really only the good ofothers, while injustice is more profitable to a man’s self—that those who abuse injustice do so “from the fear of suffering it, not from the fear of doing it”—that justice is merely “an obedience yielded by the weak to the orders of the strong,”—do but express in grave philosophical language the same principles which Aristophanes here exaggerates in the person of his devil’s advocate.[36]This latter winds up the controversy by plying his antagonist with a few categorical questions, quite in the style of Socrates:—

Unjust A.Come now,—from what class do our lawyers spring?Just A.Well—from the blackguards.Unj. A.I believe you. Tell meAgain, what are our tragic poets?Just A.Blackguards.Unj. A.Good; and our public orators?Just A.Blackguards all.Unj. A.D’ye see now, how absurd and utterly worthlessYour arguments have been? And now look round—(turning to the audience)Which class amongst our friends here seems most numerous?Just A.I’m looking.Unj. A.Well;—now tell me what you see.Just. A.(after gravely and attentively examining the rows of spectators). The blackguards have it, by a large majority.There’s one, I know—and yonder there’s another—And there, again, that fellow with long hair.

And amidst the roars of delighted laughter with which the Athenian “gallery” would be sure to receive this sally of buffoonery, the advocate of justice and morality declares that he throws up his brief, and joins the ranks of the dissolute majority.

The creditors of Strepsiades have not been quiescent meanwhile. We find him, in the next scene, calculating with dismay that it wants but five days to the end of the month, when debts and interest must be paid, or legal proceedings will be taken. He is come to the School, to inquire how his son gets on with his studies. Socrates assures him that his education is quite complete; that he is now furnished with a mode of argument which will win any lawsuit, and get him offscot-free of all liabilities, even in the teeth of a thousand witnesses who could prove the debt. He presents the youth to his father, who is charmed at first sight with the change in his complexion, which has now the genuine disputatious tint. He looks, as Strepsiades declares, “all negations and contradictions,” and has the true Attic expression in his face. The father takes him home rejoicing, and awaits confidently the summons of his creditors.

The devices with which the claimants are put off by the new learning of Pheidippides, turn so entirely on the technical expressions of Athenian law, that they have little interest for an English reader. Suffice it to say that the unfortunate tradesmen with whom this young gentleman has run up bills for his horses and chariots do not seem likely to get their money. But the training which he has received in the “Thinking-shop” has some other domestic results which the father did not anticipate. He proceeds, on some slight quarrel (principally because he will quote Euripides, whom his father abominates), to cudgel the old gentleman, and further undertakes to justify his conduct on the plea that when he was a child his father had often cudgelledhim.

Strep.Ay, but I did it for your good.Pheid.No doubt;And pray am I not also right to showGoodwill to you—if beating means goodwill?Why should your back escape the rod, I ask you,Any more than mine did? was not I, forsooth,Born like yourself a free Athenian?Perhaps you will say, beating’s the rule for children;I answer, that an old man’s twice a child;And it is fair the old should have to howlMore than poor children, when they get into mischief,Because there’s ten times less excuse for the old ones.Strep.There never was a law to beat one’s father.Pheid.Law? pray who made the law? a man, I suppose,Like you or me, and so persuaded others:Why have not I as good a right as he hadTo start a law for future generationsThat sons should beat their fathers in return?We shall be liberal, too, if all the stripesYou laid upon us before the law was madeWe make you a present of, and don’t repay them.Look at young cocks, and all the other creatures,—They fight their fathers; and what difference is there’Twixt them and us—save that they don’t make laws?

The unlucky father finds himself quite unprepared with any reply to these ingenious arguments. Too late he begins to see that this new liberal education has its inconvenient side. He protests it would have been better for him to allow his son to go on driving four-in-hand to his heart’s content, than to become so subtle a philosopher. The only comfort which the young student offers him is the assurance that he is quite as ready to beat his mother, if occasion should arise; but it is much to the credit of domestic relations at Athens that, although the old gentleman has complained of his wife, in the earlier part of the play, as having been the cause of all his present difficulties, he shows no desire to accept this kind of consolation. He curses Socrates, and appeals to the Clouds, who, he complains, have terribly misled him. The Chorusreply with truth that the fault was his own; he had sought to be instructed in the school of Injustice, and the teaching has recoiled deservedly on his own head. But he has his revenge. Summoning his slaves, he bids them bring ladders and mattocks, and storm the stronghold of these charlatans and atheists. He mounts the roof himself, torch in hand, and proceeds to set fire to the timbers. When the students rush to the window in dismay to ask what he means by it, he tells them mockingly he is only

Holding a subtle disputation with the rafters.

Socrates is at length aroused from his lucubrations, and inquires what he is doing up there. Strepsiades retorts upon him his own explanation of his position in the hanging basket—

I walk in air, and contemplate the sun.

And the piece concludes with a grand tableau of the Thinking-school in flames, and Socrates and his pupils shrieking half-smothered from the windows.

The comedy, as has been said above,[37]was not so far successful as to obtain for its author either the first or second place in the award of the judges; Cratinus being placed first with his comedy of ‘The Bottle’—the child of his old age—and Ameipsias second. It has been thought necessary to account for this on other grounds than the respective merits of the three pieces; though, as we are not in possession of the text of either of the others, we have no means of ascertaining how far theaward was or was not an honest one. It has been suggested by some critics, that ‘The Clouds’ wastooclever for the audience, who preferred a coarser article; and indeed (unless the two gamecocks were produced upon the stage) the jests are more intellectual than practical, and the comic “business” has little of that uproarious fun with which some of the other plays abound. The author himself, as would appear from some expressions put into the mouth of the Chorus in his subsequent comedy of ‘The Wasps,’ was of opinion that his finer fancies had been in this case thrown away upon an unsympathetic public. Another explanation which has been given is, that the glaring injustice with which the character of Socrates is treated was resented by the audience—a supposition which carries with it a compliment to their principles which it is very doubtful whether they deserved, and which the author himself would have been very slow to pay them. There is a story that the result was brought about by the influence of Alcibiades, who had been already severely satirised in the poet’s comedy of ‘The Revellers,’ and who felt that the character of Pheidippides—his extravagance and love of horses, his connection by his mother’s side with the great house of Megacles, his relation to Socrates as pupil, and even the lisping pronunciation which his teacher notices[38]—were all intended to be caricatures of himself, which seems by no means improbable; and that he and friends accordingly exerted themselves to prevent the poet’s success.

It is not probable that the broader caricature of the great philosopher, any more than that of Cleon in ‘The Knights,’ had any special effect upon the popularity of its object. The story told by Ælian, that the subsequent condemnation of Socrates was due in great measure to the prejudice raised against him by this comedy, has been long refuted by the observation that it at least did not take place until more than twenty years after the performance. A traditionary anecdote of a very different kind, though resting upon not much better authority, has more of probability about it,—that the philosopher himself, having been made aware of what was in store for him, took his place among the audience at the representation, and laughed as heartily as any of them: nay, that he even rose and mounted upon a bench, in order that the strangers in the house to whom his person was previously unknown might see how admirable a counterpart the stage Socrates was of the original.

Thiscomedy, which was produced by its author the year after the performance of ‘The Clouds,’ may be taken as in some sort a companion picture to that piece. Here the satire is directed against the passion of the Athenians for the excitement of the law-courts, as in the former its object was the new philosophy. And as the younger generation—the modern school of thought—were there the subjects of the caricature, so here the older citizens, who took their seats in court as jurymen day by day, to the neglect of their private affairs and the encouragement of a litigious disposition, appear in their turn in the mirror which the satirist holds up. It is calculated that in the ten courts at Athens, when all were open, there might sometimes be required as many as six thousand jurymen, and there was never any difficulty in obtaining them. It was not the mere temptation of the “threepence,” more or less, to which each juryman was entitled as compensation for his loss of time, which drew so many to the courts, however convenient it might be for the purposes ofburlesque to assume that it was so. No doubt the pay was an object to some of the poorer citizens; and so far the influence of such a regulation was bad, inasmuch as it led to the juries being too often struck from an inferior class, less independent and less intelligent. Nor need we be so uncharitable as the historian Mitford, and calculate that “besides the pay, which was small, there was the hope of bribes, which might be large.” It is not probable that bribery could often be applied to so numerous a body. But the sense of dignity and personal importance which attaches to the right of giving a judicial decision, and the interest and excitement which are aroused by legal or criminal questions, especially in those who have to investigate them, are feelings perfectly well understood in our days, as well as in those of Aristophanes. Such feelings are not only natural, but have their use, more especially when the cause to be decided is, as it so often was at Athens, of a public character. Plato considered that a citizen who took no interest in these duties made himself a kind of alien in the state, and we Englishmen hold very much the same doctrine. But the passion for hearing and deciding questions, judicial or political, was carried to great excess among the Athenians at this date. Their own historians and orators are full of references to this national peculiarity, and Aristophanes is not the only satirist who has taken advantage of it. Lucian, in one of his very amusing dialogues, represents Menippus as looking down from the moon upon the earth below, and watching the various pursuits of the inhabitants. The northernhordes are fighting, the Egyptian is ploughing, the Phœnician is carrying his merchandise over the sea, the Spartan is undergoing corporal discipline, and the Athenian is “sitting in the jury-box.”[39]

This is perhaps the least amusing of all Aristophanes’s productions to a modern reader, although it was adopted by Racine as the basis of his only comedy, “Les Plaideurs.” There are but two characters in it of any importance to the action, a father and son. Philocleon,[40]the father, is strongly possessed with this mania for the courts. His family cannot keep him at home. He neglects his person, hardly sleeps at night for thinking of his duties in the courts, and is off before daylight in the morning to secure a good seat; he even declares the cock must have been bribed, by some profligates who have reason to dread the terrors of the law, not to crow loud enough to awake him. He keeps in his house “a whole beach” of little round pebbles, that he may always have one ready for giving his vote; and goes about holding his three fingers pinched together as if he had got one between them ready to slip into the ballot-box. In vain has his son remonstrated, and had him washed and dressed, and sent for the physicians, and even the priests, to try to rid him of his malady. And now, as a last resource, they have been obliged to lock him up, and set awatch upon the house. His contrivances to escape are in the very wildest vein of extravaganza. He tries to get out through the chimney, and pretends he’s “only the smoke;” and they all rush to put a cover on the chimney-top, and a great stone on it. He escapes through a hole in the tiles and sits on the roof, pretending to be “only a sparrow;” and they have to set a net to catch him. His son—a young gentleman of the more modern school—and the two slaves who are set to watch him day and night, have a very trying time of it.

The second scene introduces the Chorus of the play, consisting of Philocleon’s fellow-jurymen. The time is early daybreak, and they are already on their way to the courts, preceded by two or three boys with torches. Their appearance is of the strangest,—they are the “Wasps” who give the name to the piece. A mask resembling a wasp’s head, a black and yellow body, and some comic appendage in their rear to represent a sting,—were, we may presume, the costume provided by the stage manager. The poet probably intended to represent the acrimonious temper which delighted in the prosecution of individuals without much reference to their actual guilt, and the malevolence which often instigated the accusation. But he allows them to give, on their own behalf, another and more honourable explanation of their name, which, though it occurs later in the play, may find its place here. It is the old story, which the dramatist knew his audience were never tired of hearing:—

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