“Unj. But what do you see?
“Just. By all the gods, I see more blackguards than anything else. That fellow, I particularly know; and him yonder; and that blackguard with the long hair.”
The above was the true license of the fool, in the professional use of the term; and the Athenian blackguards only laughed to hear themselves thus distinguished.
The above is among the boldest of the personal assaults made by Aristophanes against the vices or failings of his countrymen. He claimed the privileges of Comedy, as the Fool did those of his cap and bells. This he does, especially in ‘The Acharnians,’ when Dicæopolis, looking straight at the audience, says, “Think nothing the worse of me, Athenian gentlemen, if, although I am a beggar, I hazard touching on your affairs of state, in comic verse; for even comedy knows what is proper, and, if you find me sharp, you shall also find me just.” Still nearer did the poet come to the license of the jester, when, in ‘The Knights,’ he himself turns actor as well as author, and so dressed, looked, and mimicked, without once employing the name of, the great demagogue whom he was satirizing, that every spectator recognized the well-known Cleon. The same author’s attack on the litigious spirit of the Athenians, in his ‘Wasps,’ is another instance of what I am attempting to illustrate. This is more particularly the case when he makes his characters address themselves immediately to the audience, as may be supposed to occur in the Parabasis of the last-named piece. Here the satirist bids the audience to provide themselves with clearer understandings, if they would enjoy the poets thoroughly. “Henceforth, good gentlemen,” are his words, “have more love and regard for such of your poets as treat you to something original. Preserve their sayings, and keep them in your chests with your apples. If you do this, there will be a scent of cleverness from your clothes, that shall last you through a whole year.” In his ‘Peace,’ the finest touch of satire is not in what is said, but in what is left unsaid; for the goddess whose name gives a title to the piece, never once opens her mouth. The licensed jester appears as broadly in the author’s dealings with the gods, whose place in Heaven is represented as occupied by the Demon of War, who is engaged in braying the Greek States in a stupendous mortar. The daring of the author, as exercised in pelting the gods themselves with jokes, is still more flagrant in ‘The Birds,’ where he burlesques the national mythology, in presence of a people whose jealous fury was just then aroused by suspicion of a conspiracy existing against the national religion. That the audience should have tolerated the audacity of their favourite jester, is a proof of the power he held over them. Nevertheless, they were probably more delighted with his personalities, and they recognized with shouts of laughter the brace of gallant military gentlemen thus described by one of the women in the ‘Lysistrata’:—“By Jove, I saw a man with long hair, a commander of cavalry, on horseback, who was pouring into his brazen helmet a lot of pease-soup, which he had just bought from an old woman. I saw also a Thracian, with shield and javelin, like Tereus. He went up to the woman who sold figs, and, frightening her away with his arms, took up her ripe figs and began swallowing them.” The national satirist is seen again in the recommendation put in the mouth of the male chorus in the same play, and which is to this effect:—“If the Athenians would only follow my advice, their ambassadors should never go upon their missions, except when drunk. Sobriety and Common Sense do not go together with us. If, for instance, we send sober legates to Sparta, they only watch for opportunity to create mischief. If the Spartans speak, we do not heed them; if they are silent, we wrongly suspect them. Let our envoys get drunk, and agree in what they hear, and in the reports they send home.” Nor does Aristophanes spare the women more than the men. How archly, no doubt, did Mnesilochus look at the audience, when he ungallantly remarked, in ‘The Thesmophoriazusæ,’—“Among all the ladies of the present day, you would seek in vain to find a Penelope. They are Phædras, every one of them.” It is not to be supposed that the comic poet ever offended by his trenchant jests, although a passage delivered by the chorus, in ‘The Ecclesiazusæ’ (that exquisite satire against the ideal republics of philosophers, with impracticable laws), would seem, perhaps, to imply something of the sort. Turning to the audience, the Chorus remarks, “I am going to make a little suggestion to you. I wish the clever among you to be on my side; for remember how clever I am myself. They who laugh merrily will prefer me, I know, because of my own mirthful jesting.” This suggestion sounds as if the dunces and dullards had been sneering at the satirist for his smartness and sprightliness. Even if so, he continued to laugh at gods and men. At both, as in ‘Plutus,’ where he ridicules the deities for their many names, by which they hoped to catch a gift under one appellation, which they lost under another; and where he illustrates the irreligiousness of men, by remarking that nowadays they never enter a temple, except for a purpose which, it will be recollected, was religiously avoided by the Essenes on the Sabbath. The last illustration is made in the very spirit and letter which marked the “Fools” of the fifteenth century. They pleaded for such jokes the immunities of their office, and Aristophanes does something very like this when he makes Xanthias exclaim, in ‘The Frogs,’ “Oh, they are always carrying baggage in comedy!”
Flögel has been too anxious to increase his list of Fools, by including among them the planus, or impostor. He takes for a joker, the cheat denounced by Horace in the 17th of the First Book of his Epistles. That cheat is simply a street vagabond, who deceives the humane by pretending to have broken his leg, and who laughs at them when they have passed on, after giving him relief. Even this sorry joke he cannot often repeat. Then we have, from Athenæus, other comical fellows cited, whose funny things won the admiration of Greece and Rome, the people of which countries must have been easily pleased. Among these are the Alexandrian Matreas, who wrote chapters of a ‘Comic Natural History,’ wherein he discussed such questions as, “Why, when the sun sets at sea, does he not set off swimming?” “Why do the swans never get drunk with what they imbibe?” Then we hear of a Cephisodorus,—neither the tragic poet nor the historian,—whose stock joke consisted in his running breathless, either from or towards the city honoured by his residence, and with an air of frantic terror, informing all whom he passed or encountered, of some awful calamity. It is hardly possible to imagine that people laughed more than once, if once, at a sorry fool like this. Not much more risible was that Pantaleon, who was wont to address strangers in the street in tirades of bombastic nonsense, utterly meaningless and incomprehensible. The joke was for the standers-by, who knew Pantaleon, and enjoyed the astounded look of those whom he addressed. According to Athenæus, the last comicality of Pantaleon was in imposing on his two sons, whom he called separately to his side, when dying, and confidentially told each where he would find a hidden treasure. When they had looked for this in vain, they probably understood why their respectable sire had died laughing. Many of this class of fools can only be considered as “hoaxers.” Such was another Cephisodorus, who disgraced his dignified name by very undignified tricks,—as when he hired a host of hardy day-labourers, and gave them rendezvous in such a narrow street that, when all were assembled, it was impossible to move either backward or forward. The “Berners Street Hoax,” by Theodore Hook, was entirely after the fashion of Cephisodorus, and was not the more excusable on that account.
Forcatulus, a learned writer on law, accepts as true a story, very like one to be found in Rabelais, and which Flögel quotes from another accomplished jurist, Accursius. It is a story in which ignorance is made to pass for wisdom, and is therefore, although common, yet not quite so excellent a joke as it would pretend to be; and is to this effect:—
The Romans sent an ambassador to Greece, in order to procure a copy of the Laws of the twelve Tables. The Greeks would make no such costly gift till they were satisfied that the petitioners had men amongst them who could comprehend the wisdom of the Laws. They despatched an envoy to look into the matter; and when the Romans heard of him and his purpose, they resolved to defeat him by means of a fool. They clothed the latter in purple, surrounded him with a guard of honour, and dismissed him to encounter the accomplished ambassador from Greece, with one single point of instruction,—he was on no account to open his mouth.
The Athenian commissioner, seeing the representative of Roman wisdom standing before him, grave and speechless, observed, with a smile, “I understand. The gentleman is a Pythagorean, and carries on an argument only by signs. With all my heart!” And, thereupon he raised a single finger, to imply that there was only one principle of nature in the universe.
The simpleton sent by Rome, not dreaming that this was the opening of a philosophical argument, but looking upon it rather as a menace, extended two fingers and a thumb towards the Greek, as if about to take him by the nose.
“Good! very good!” murmured the Athenian. “He shows me the Pythagorean Trias,—the triple God in one. I must intimate that I understand him;”—and the philosophical envoy approached the stolid Roman, with the flat of his hand extended towards him. He intended thereby to imply that the divine Trias was the upholder of all things. The Roman, however, thinking it an approximation to a box on the ear, drew back a step, lifted his doubled fist, and awaited the coming of the Greek.