All this is very pleasing as far as it goes. The question is:—How far is this respect professed for women, genuine? Enquiry would seem to show that very little of it, if any, is genuine at all. Of the Scenas Catalambanusae it is impossible to speak with certainty,[224] but, as for the other two plays mentioned above, it is hard to believe that the women are introduced for any other purpose than that of leading up to the various scenes of indecency which afford the main interest of both pieces. The climax of the Lysistrata is the pathetic speech of Cinesias (865 seqq.), that of the Ecclesiazusae the struggle between the γραῦς and the νεανίς (877 seqq.), and neither of these scenes can be said to show much respect for female nature. As for the success of the women’s efforts in both these plays, it is perhaps sufficient to observe that in each case the poet’s main object was to point out the advantages of a particular course of action, not to suggest any novel method of procedure by means of which this course was to be adopted. The political object of both comedies is merely to attack the government of the day. No one who has ever read these plays would be likely to argue that they advocated the extension of the franchise to women, or indeed concerned themselves in any way with any subject of the kind. To put it shortly, the women are introduced for indecency’s sake, and their revolutions succeed simply because they are revolutions against the existing order of things, an order of which Aristophanes did not approve. It would be as reasonable to suppose that the Aves was a serious piece of advice to the Athenians to consult with birds about the management of the State, as to assume that the Ecclesiazusae meant to imply that the views of women were really worthy of consideration or adoption.
The incessant allusions in these plays, no less than in others, to the incontinence,[225] the drunkenness, and the various other faults with which it was usual at the time to tax women—allusions which frequently take the form of frank confessions on the part of the women themselves—are so numerous that there is no need to quote any of them.
Another rather striking feature is the way in which several of the plays of Aristophanes conclude with the wedding of one of the characters—a feature at first sight very suggestive of the comedy typical of a much later period. The best known instance of this is perhaps in the Eirene, but the same seems to have been the case in the Polyidus (where the successful soothsayer is rewarded with the hand of the king’s daughter, Phaedra), and in the Geras, where the hero, having been miraculously restored to youth, repudiates his former wife, and marries one more suited to his recently acquired—or lost—years. It must, however, be observed that in none of these plays, as far as one can see, is the wedding of the hero by any means the logical result of the action of the piece; it is merely an incidental episode introduced, in the Eirene at any rate, and very possibly also in the others, simply with the view of providing the chorus with an effective exit. In the Polyidus, moreover, it is clear that though Minos gives his daughter as a reward, he has his own opinion as to the value of the gift, an opinion which is hardly complimentary to Phaedra[226]; while in the Geras there can be little reasonable doubt that the connubial arrangements were made the occasion for a plentiful supply of obscenities, quae nunc desiderantur, if one can use the words in such a connection.[227] One must be careful, therefore, not to exaggerate the importance of this feature in the Aristophanic treatment of women, though it cannot, of course, be denied that to introduce a wedding at all on the stage was a distinct advance on strict Athenian views with reference to such events.[228]
Aristophanes was above all things, by profession at least, a conservative and a laudator temporis acti; but, strangely enough, this characteristic of his is but little noticeable in his treatment of women. Nothing would have been more natural, one would have thought, than that he should, in the course of some of his highly-coloured pictures of primeval felicity before the days of Euripides and the philosophers, have dwelt upon the purity of ancient family life and the chastity of a previous generation of women, in contrast to that present depravity to which he makes such frequent allusion. But, true to his Athenian temperament, he never follows any such line, nor indeed does he ever take up high ground on this subject. Ready as he is to moralise seriously on other matters, even on matters so distinctly erotic as the relations of man to man,[229] his tone with regard to women is invariably flippant.
Women are, above all things, conservative:
μοιχοὺς ἔχουσιν ἔνδον ὥσπερ καὶ πρὸ τοῦ.
(Eccles. 225.)
Euripides may have made rude remarks about women, but his suggestions are politeness itself compared with what might have been said.[230] Indeed, the main charge of the women against Euripides in the Thesmophoriazusae is not that he has maligned them, but that he has opened the eyes of their husbands to what they actually do.[231] It is needless to multiply instances; the general tendency is plain. Woman in Aristophanes is invariably an object of ridicule. So incapable was he of treating her otherwise, that his one ideal woman, Eirene, for whom the knight-errant Trygaeus flies up to heaven on the dung-beetle, was a colossal failure, a κολοσσικὸν ἄγαλμα that was the general laughing-stock of his contemporaries.[232]
This being so, there is but little need to dwell on such “erotic” passages as do occur, here and there in his works, between men and women. Such scenes, of which the best instance is perhaps that in the Ecclesiazusae (877 seqq.), are never the main motive of the plot; they are merely more or less irrelevant incidents, developed or not according to the chances they afford for the introduction of amusing indecencies. In these scenes Aristophanes is often to be seen at his very best, but they cannot of course be drawn upon with the object of supplying evidence as to his real views of women, except in so far as they serve still further to emphasise what has already been said as to the poet’s disinclination to deal seriously with the subject of women at all. Indeed, his view of the proper relation between love and art is sufficiently illustrated by the famous argument in the Ranae (1043 seqq.) between Aeschylus and Euripides, where, after the former has stated with pride:
οὐδ’ οἶδ’ οὐδεὶς ἥντιν’ ἐρῶσαν πώποτ’ ἐποίησα γυναῖκα,