The poet ought to keep in harmony
With any subject that he has to treat:
If women be his theme, then must his person
Be toned and fashioned to a female mood;
But when he writes of men he has no need
To study change; 'tis only what we have not
We seek to supplement by dressing up.
Besides, how unæsthetic 'tis to see
A poet coarse and hairy! Just remember
Famed Ibycus, Anacreon, Alcæus,
Who made our music and our metres flow,
Wore caps, and followed soft Ionian fashions:
And Phrynichus—this surely you have heard—
Was beautiful and beautifully dressed;
And this, we cannot doubt, is why his plays
Were beautiful; for 'tis a natural law
That like ourselves our work must ever be.
Modern writers upon whose lips in udo est Mænas et Attis might take some of this satire not inaptly to themselves. But the crowning sport of the Thesmophoriazusæ is in the last scene, when Mnesilochus adapts the Palamedes and the Helen of Euripides to his own forlorn condition, jumbling up the well-known verses of these tragedies with coarse-flavored rustical remarks; and when at last Euripides himself acts Echo and Perseus to the Andromeda of his father-in-law, and both together mystify the policeman by their ludicrous utterance of antiphonal lamentations.
I have but scanty space for touching on one of the topics which the Thesmophoriazusæ suggests—the satire of Aristophanes upon Athenian women, whom he invariably represents as profligate, licentious, stupid, drunken, thieves, and liars. Whether they were in any sense as bad as he has painted them—and he has given them a worse character than any other Greek poet, not even excepting Simonides of Amorgos—or whether their absence from the comic spectacles encouraged a paradoxical misrepresentation of their worst and most exceptional qualities, is not easy to decide. This at least is clear that, while comic exaggeration is obvious in every detail, the picture, overdrawn and coarse as it may be, accords with that of other and less copious Greek satirists; nor could it have been tolerated in a society where women held a station of respect and honor.[121]
The point of the Thesmophoriazusæ, so far as the women are concerned, is that while Aristophanes pretends to show up Euripides for his abuse of them, his own satire is far more searching, and penetrates more deeply into the secrets of domestic life. What are the crimes of Phædra in comparison with the habits he imputes to Athenian wives and daughters? The Lysistrata will not bear discussion; but in passing I may notice the humor of the oath by wine which the inexorable heroine and her Spartan friend administer. Other oaths might be broken, but no Athenian wife or maid would incur the penalty of this dread imprecation: "If I fail, may the bowl be filled with water." Of the three comedies which treat of women, the Ecclesiazusæ has the most permanent interest. Indeed, mutatis mutandis, its satire might almost be adapted to the present day, or to the future which our theorists upon the rights of women are preparing. The Athenian ladies disguise themselves as men, and crowd the assembly, where they outvote their husbands, sons, and brothers, and proclaim the supremacy of women in the State. Praxagora, the agitator of the scheme, is chosen strategis. She decides that a community of property and free-trade between the sexes are the two things wanted to insure general felicity. The point of the satire consists in this: that the arguments by which the women get the upper-hand all turn on their avowed conservatism; men change and shift, women preserve their old customs, and will maintain the ἦθος of the State; but no sooner have they got authority than they show themselves more democratic than the demagogues, more new-fangled in their political notions than the philosophers. They upset time-honored institutions and make new ones to suit their own caprices, squaring the laws according to the logic of feminine instincts. Of course speculations like those of Plato's Republic are satirized in the farcical scenes which illustrate the consequences of this female revolution. But perhaps the finest point about the comedy is its humorous insight into the workings of women's minds—its clear sense of what a topsy-turvy world we should have to live in if women were the lawgivers and governors.
In quitting Aristophanes I am forced to reflect upon the inadequacy of my attempts to interpret the secret of his strength and charm. The epithets which continually rise to our lips in speaking of him—radiant, resplendent, swift, keen, changeful, flashing, magical—carry no real notion of the marvellous and subtle spirit, that animates his comedy with life peculiar to itself. In dealing with no other poet is the critic or historian so powerless. No other work of art leaves so incommunicable an impression on the mind of the student. As for my words about Aristophanes, they are "sound and fury signifying nothing:" to be known, he must be read with admiration and delight. But those who have submitted themselves to the influence of his genius will understand what I mean when, in conclusion, I say that, with Plato and Aristophanes for guides, we can to some extent reconstruct the life of the Athenians, animate the statues of Myron and Lysippus, and see the aisles of the Parthenon or the benches of the Pnyx crowded with real human beings. Plato introduces us to the graver and more elegant side of Attic life, to the καλοκἀγαθοὶ and χαρίεντες, to men of sober tastes and good birth and exquisite breeding. Aristophanes acquaints us with men of pleasure, vulgar and uneducated characters, haunters of the law courts and the market-place and the assembly. From Plato we learn what occupied philosophers and people of distinction. Aristophanes tells us the popular jokes at Athens, how the political and military edicts recorded by Thucydides were familiarly discussed, how people slept and walked and dressed and dined. In Plato's Dialogues the fine Greek intellect is shown to us trained and tutored into exquisite forms of elevated culture. In Aristophanes, though art even more consummate has been used, we see the same refined intellect running riot and disporting itself with the flexibility of untamable youth. By Plato we are taught how dignified and humane the Greeks could be, by Aristophanes how versatile and human they were.
FOOTNOTES:
[114] It is almost impossible to translate this word, which will frequently recur in the essay, and which seems to depend for its force upon the conception of the satiric spirit, as that which "stets vernichtet," the Mephistophilistic "verneinender Geist."
[115] Since this chapter was written, Mr. Browning's interesting piece of criticism in verse, Aristophanes' Apology, containing a most clever caricature of Aristophanes, and a no less clever defence of Euripides, has appeared. I do not see any reason to alter the view expressed above concerning Greek Comedy.
[116] See below, chap. xix.
[117] As a minor instance of these sudden transitions from the touching to the absurd, take Charon's speech (Frogs, 185):