'The Peace,' B.C. 421: in support of the Peace of Nicias, ratified soon afterward (Grote's 'History of Greece,' Vol. vi., page 492). Trygæus, an honest vine-dresser yearning for his farm, in parody of the Bellerophon of Euripides, ascends to heaven on a dung-beetle. He there hauls Peace from the bottom of the well into which she had been cast by Ares, and brings her home in triumph to Greece, when she inaugurates a reign of plenty and uproarious jollity, and celebrates the nuptials of Trygæus and her handmaid Opora (Harvest-home).
'The Birds,' B.C. 414. Peisthetærus (Plausible) and Euelpides (Hopeful), whose names and deeds are perhaps a satire on the unbounded ambition that brought ruin on Athens at Syracuse, journey to Birdland and persuade King Hoopoe to induce the birds to build Nephelococcygia or Cloud-Cuckoo-Burgh in the air between the gods and men, starve out the gods with a "Melian famine," and rule the world themselves. The gods, their supplies of incense cut off, are forced to treat, and Peisthetærus receives in marriage Basileia (Sovereignty), the daughter of Zeus. The mise en scène, with the gorgeous plumage of the bird-chorus, must have been very impressive, and many of the choric songs are exceedingly beautiful. There is an interesting account by Professor Jebb in the Fortnightly Review (Vol. xli.) of a performance of 'The Birds' at Cambridge in 1884.
Two plays, B.C. 411: (1) at the Lenæa, 'The Lysistrata,' in which the women of Athens and Sparta by a secession from bed and board compel their husbands to end the war; (2) The 'Thesmophoriazusæ' or Women's Festival of Demeter, a licentious but irresistibly funny assault upon Euripides. The tragedian, learning that the women in council assembled are debating on the punishment due to his misogyny, implores the effeminate poet Agathon to intercede for him. That failing, he dispatches his kinsman Mnesilochus, disguised with singed beard and woman's robes, a sight to shake the midriff of despair with laughter, to plead his cause. The advocate's excess of zeal betrays him; he is arrested: and the remainder of the play is occupied by the ludicrous devices, borrowed or parodied from well-known Euripidean tragedies, by which the poet endeavors to rescue his intercessor.
'The Frogs,' B.C. 405, in the brief respite of hope between the victory of Arginusæ and the final overthrow of Athens at Ægospotami. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are dead. The minor bards are a puny folk, and Dionysus is resolved to descend to Hades in quest of a truly creative poet, one capable of a figure like "my star god's glow-worm," or "His honor rooted in dishonor stood." After many surprising adventures by the way, and in the outer precincts of the underworld, accompanied by his Sancho Panza, Xanthias, he arrives at the court of Pluto just in time to be chosen arbitrator of the great contest between Aeschylus and Euripides for the tragic throne in Hades. The comparisons and parodies of the styles of Aeschylus and Euripides that follow, constitute, in spite of their comic exaggeration, one of the most entertaining and discriminating chapters of literary criticism extant, and give us an exalted idea of the intelligence of the audience that appreciated them. Dionysus decides for Æschylus, and leads him back in triumph to the upper world.
The 'Ecclesiazusæ' or 'Ladies in Parliament,' B.C. 393: apparently a satire on the communistic theories which must have been current in the discussions of the schools before they found definite expression in Plato's 'Republic.' The ladies of Athens rise betimes, purloin their husbands' hats and canes, pack the Assembly, and pass a measure to intrust the reins of government to women. An extravagant and licentious communism is the result.
The 'Plutus,' B.C. 388: a second and much altered edition of a play represented for the first time in 408. With the 'Ecclesiazusæ' it marks the transition to the Middle Comedy, there being no parabasis, and little of the exuberant verve of the older pieces. The blind god of Wealth recovers his eyesight by sleeping in the temple of Æsculapius, and proceeds to distribute the gifts of fortune more equitably.
The assignment of the dates and restoration of the plots of the thirty-two lost plays, of which a few not very interesting fragments remain, belong to the domain of conjectural erudition.
Aristophanes has been regarded by some critics as a grave moral censor, veiling his high purpose behind the grinning mask of comedy; by others as a buffoon of genius, whose only object was to raise a laugh. Both sides of the question are ingeniously and copiously argued in Browning's 'Aristophanes' Apology'; and there is a judicious summing up of the case of Aristophanes vs. Euripides in Professor Jebb's lectures on Greek poetry. The soberer view seems to be that while predominantly a comic artist, obeying the instincts of his genius, he did frequently make his comedy the vehicle of an earnest conservative polemic against the new spirit of the age in Literature, Philosophy, and Politics. He pursued Euripides with relentless ridicule because his dramatic motives lent themselves to parody, and his lines were on the lips of every theatre-goer; but also because he believed that Euripides had spoiled the old, stately, heroic art of Aeschylus and Sophocles by incongruous infusions of realism and sentimentalism, and had debased the "large utterance of the early gods" by an unhallowed mixture of colloquialism, dialectic, and chicane.
Aristophanes travestied the teachings of Socrates because his ungainly figure, and the oddity (atopia) attributed to him even by Plato, made him an excellent butt; yet also because he felt strongly that it was better for the young Athenian to spend his days in the Palæstra, or "where the elm-tree whispers to the plane," than in filing a contentious tongue on barren logomachies. That Socrates in fact discussed only ethical problems, and disclaimed all sympathy with speculations about things above our heads, made no difference: he was the best human embodiment of a hateful educational error. And similarly the assault upon Cleon, the "pun-pelleting of demagogues from Pnux," was partly due to the young aristocrat's instinctive aversion to the coarse popular leader, and to the broad mark which the latter presented to the shafts of satire, but equally, perhaps, to a genuine patriotic revolt at the degradation of Athenian politics in the hands of the successors of Pericles.
But Aristophanes's ideas interest us less than his art and humor. We have seen the nature of his plots. In such a topsy-turvy world there is little opportunity for nice delineation of character. His personages are mainly symbols or caricatures. Yet they are vividly if broadly sketched, and genuine touches of human nature lend verisimilitude to their most improbable actions. One or two traditional comic types appear for the first time, apparently, on his stage: the alternately cringing and familiar slave or valet of comedy, in his Xanthias and Karion; and in Dicæopolis, Strepsiades, Demos, Trygæus, and Dionysus, the sensual, jovial, shrewd, yet naïve and credulous middle-aged bourgeois gentilhomme or 'Sganarelle,' who is not ashamed to avow his poltroonery, and yet can, on occasion, maintain his rights with sturdy independence.