Atque alii, quorum Comœdia prisca virorum est,
Si quis erat dignus describi, quod malus, aut fur,
Aut mœchus foret, aut sicarius, aut alioqui
Famosus, multâ cum libertate notabant.”
This is the early judgment of Horace (Serm. i, 4, 1): his later opinion on the Fescennina licentia, which was the same in spirit as the old Grecian comedy, is much more judicious (Epistol. ii, 1, 145): compare Art. Poetic. 224. To assume that the persons derided or vilified by these comic authors must always have deserved what was said of them, is indeed a striking evidence of the value of the maxim: “Fortiter calumniare; semper aliquid restat.” Without doubt, their indiscriminate libel sometimes wounded a suitable subject; in what proportion of cases, we have no means of determining: but the perusal of Aristophanês tends to justify the epithets which Lucian puts into the mouth of Dialogus respecting Aristophanês and Eupolis—not to favor the opinions of the authors whom I have cited above (Lucian, Jov. Accus. vol. ii, p. 832). He calls Eupolis and Aristophanês δεινοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπικερτομῆσαι τὰ σεμνὰ καὶ χλευάσαι τὰ καλῶς ἔχοντα.
When we notice what Aristophanês himself says respecting the other comic poets, his predecessors and contemporaries, we shall find it far from countenancing the exalted censorial function which Bergk and others ascribe to them (see the Parabasis in the Nubes, 530, seq., and in the Pax, 723). It seems especially preposterous to conceive Kratinus in that character; of whom what we chiefly know, is his habit of drunkenness, and the downright, unadorned vituperation in which he indulged: see the Fragments and story of his last play, Πυτίνη (in Meineke, vol. ii, p. 116; also Meineke, vol. i, p. 48, seq.).
Meineke copies (p. 46) from Suidas a statement (v. Ἐπείου δειλότερος) to the effect that Kratinus was ταξίαρχος τῆς Οἰνηΐδος φυλῆς. He construes this as a real fact: but there can hardly be a doubt that it is only a joke made by his contemporary comedians upon his fondness for wine; and not one of the worst among the many such jests which seem to have been then current. Runkel also, another editor of the Fragments of Kratinus (Cratini Fragment., Leips. 1827, p. 2, M. M. Runkel), construes this ταξίαρχος τῆς Οἰνηΐδος φυλῆς, as if it were a serious function; though he tells us about the general character of Kratinus: “De vitâ ipsâ et moribus pæne nihil dicere possumus: hoc solum constat, Cratinum poculis et puerorum amori valde deditum fuisse.”
Great numbers of Aristophanic jests have been transcribed as serious matter-of-fact, and have found their way into Grecian history. Whoever follows chapter vii of K. F. Hermann’s Griechische Staats-Alterthümer, containing the Innere Geschichte of the Athenian democracy, will see the most sweeping assertions made against the democratical institutions, on the authority of passages of Aristophanês: the same is the case with several of the other most learned German manuals of Grecian affairs.
[529] Horat. de Art. Poetic. 212-224.
“Indoctus quid enim saperet, liberque laborum,