[330] Since that siege lasted nine months of the year in which the decree was made.
[331] Aristophanes thus vigorously describes the applauses that attended the earlier productions of Cratinus. I quote from the masterly translation of Mr. Mitchell.
"Who Cratinus may forget, or the storm of whim and wit,
Which shook theatres under his guiding;
When Panegyric's song poured her flood of praise along,
Who but he on the top wave was riding?"
* * * * * * *
"His step was as the tread of a flood that leaves its bed,
And his march it was rude desolation," etc.
Mitchell's Aristoph., The Knights, p. 204.
The man who wrote thus must have felt betimes—when, as a boy, he first heard the roar of the audience—what it is to rule the humours of eighteen thousand spectators!
[332] De l'esprit, passim.
[333] De Poet., c. 26.
[334] The oracle that awarded to Socrates the superlative degree of wisdom, gave to Sophocles the positive, and to Euripides the comparative degree,
Sophos Sophoclaes; sophoteros d'Euripoeaes;
'Andron de panton Sokrataes sophotatos.