"He ignores the function of poetry, which is to see beauty, and to create it: for he places utility above grace, truth above all beauty. He drags human squalor on to the scene because he recognizes its existence. The world of the poet's fancy, that world into which he was born, does not exist for him. He spoils his art as well as his life, carving back to bull what another had carved into a sphinx."
"How are such proceedings to be dealt with? They appeal to the mob. The mob is not to be swayed by polished arguments or incidental hints. We don't scare sparrows with a Zeus' head, though the eagle may recognize it as his lord's. A big Priapus is the figure required."
"And this," so Aristophanes resumes his defence, "comedy supplies. Comedy is the fit instrument of popular conviction: and the wilder, the more effective: since it is the worship of life, of the originative power of nature; and since that power has lawlessness for its apparent law. Even Euripides, with his shirkings and his superiority, has been obliged to pay tribute to the real. He could not shake it off all at once. He tacked a Satyric play to some five of his fifty trilogies: and if this was grim enough at first, he threw off the mask in Alkestis, showing how one could be indecent in a decent way."[[44]]
For the reasons above given, which he farther expands and illustrates, Aristophanes chooses the "meaner muse" for his exponent. "And who, after all, is the worse for it? Does he strangle the enemies of the truth? No. He simply doses them with comedy, i.e. with words. Those who offend in words he pays back in them, exaggerating a little, but only so as to emphasize what he means; just as love and hate use each other's terms, because those proper to themselves have grown unmeaning from constant use. And what is the ground of difference between Balaustion and himself? Slender enough, in all probability, as he could show her, if they were discussing the question for themselves alone. As it is, Euripides has attacked him in the sight of the mob. His defence is addressed to it: he uses the arguments it can understand. It does not follow that they convey a literal statement of his own views. Euripides is not the only man who is free from superstition. He too on occasion can show up the gods;" and he describes the manner in which he will do this in his next play. All that is serious in the Apology is given in the concluding passage. "Whomever else he is hard upon, he will level nothing worse than a harmless parody at Sophocles, for he has no grudge against him:—
'He founds no anti-school, upsets no faith,
But, living, lets live,' (vol. xiii. p. 110.)
And all his, Aristophanes', teaching is this:—
'... accept the old,
Contest the strange! acknowledge work that's done,
Misdoubt men who have still their work to do!' (p. 111.)