The resort to Æsculapius has been entirely successful. But Aristophanes does not miss the opportunity of sharp satire upon the gross materialities of the popular creed and the tricks of priestcraft. Cario informs his mistress and the Chorus, who come to inquire the result, that the god has performed the cure in person—going round the beds of the patients, who lay there awaiting his visit, for all the world like a modern hospital surgeon, making his diagnosis of each case, with an assistant following him with pestle and mortar and portable medicine-chest. Plutus had been cured almost instantaneously—quicker, as the narrator impudently tells his mistress, than she could toss off half-a-dozen glasses of wine. But one Neoclides, who had come there on the same errand (though, blind as he was, observes Cario, not the sharpest-sighted of them all could match him in stealing), fares very differently at the hands of the god of medicine; for Æsculapius applies to his eyes a lotion of garlic and vinegar, which makes him roar with pain, and leaves him blinder than ever. Another secret of the temple, too, the cunning varlet has seen, while he was pretending to be asleep like the rest. He saw the priests go round quietly, after the lamps were put out, and eat all the cakes and fruit brought by the patients as offerings to the god. He took the liberty, he says—“thinking it must be a very holy practice”—of following their example, and so got possession of a pudding which an old lady, one of the patients, had placed carefully by her bedside for her supper, and on which he had set his heart when first he saw it. His mistress is shocked at such profanity.
Unhallowed varlet! didst not fear the god?
Cario. Marry did I, and sorely—lest his godship
Should get the start of me, and grab the dish.
But the old lady, when she heard me coming,
Put her hand out; and so I gave a hiss,
And bit her gently; ’twas the Holy Snake,
She thought, and pulled her hand in, and lay still.
But the mistress of the house is too delighted with the good news which Carlo has brought to chide him very severely for his irreverence. She orders her maids at once to prepare a banquet for the return of this blessed guest, who presently reappears, attended by Chremylus and a troop of friends. Plutus salutes his new home in a burlesque of the high vein of tragedy:—
All hail! thou first, O bright and blessed sun,
And thou, fair plain, where awful Pallas dwells,
And this Cecropian land, henceforth mine home!
I blush to mind me of my past estate—
Of the vile herd with whom I long consorted;
While those who had been worthy of my friendship
I, poor blind wretch! unwittingly passed by.
But now the wrong I did will I undo,
And show henceforth to all mankind, that sore
Against my will I kept bad company.
[Enter Chremylus, surrounded and followed by a crowd of congratulating friends, whom he thrusts aside right and left.]
Chr. To the devil with you all—d’ye hear, good people!
Why, what a plague friends are on these occasions!
One hatches them in swarms, when one gets money.
They nudge my sides, and pat me on the back,
And smother me with tokens of affection;
Men bow to me I never saw before;
And all the pompous dawdlers in the Square
Find me the very centre of attraction!
Even his wife is unusually affectionate; and the welcome guest is ushered into the house with choral dance and song—highly burlesque, no doubt; but both are lost to us, and such losses are not always to be regretted.
The scene which follows introduces Cario in a state of great contentment with the new order of things. It is possible that, as in ‘The Knights,’ there was an entire change of scenery as well as of dresses at this point of the performance; that the ancient country grange has been transmuted into a grand modern mansion, with all the appliances of wealth and luxury. At all events, Cario (who from a rustic slave has now become quite a “gentleman’s gentleman”) informs the Chorus, who listen to him open-mouthed, that such has been the result of entertaining Plutus.
Cario (stroking himself). Oh what a blessed thing, good friends, is riches!
And with no toil or trouble of our own!
Lo, there is store of all good things within,
Yea, heaped upon us—yet we’ve cheated no one!
Our meal-chest’s brimming with the finest boltings,
The cellar’s stocked with wine—of such a bouquet!
And every pot and pan in the house is heaped
With gold and silver—it’s a sight to see!
The well runs oil—the very mustard-pot
Has nothing but myrrh in it, and you can’t get up
Into the garret, it’s so full of figs.
The crockery’s bronze, the wooden bowls are silver,
And the oven’s made of ivory. In the kitchen,
We play at pitch-and-toss with golden pieces;
And scent ourselves (so delicate are we grown) with—garlic.[55]
As to my master, he’s within there, sacrificing
A hog and a goat and a ram, full drest, good soul!
But the smoke drove me out—(affectedly)—I cannot stand it.
I’m rather sensitive, and smoke hurts my eyelids.
The happy results of the new administration are further shown in the cases of some other characters who now come upon the scene. An Honest Man, who has spent his fortune on his friends and met with nothing but ingratitude in return, now finds his wealth suddenly restored to him, and comes to dedicate to the god who has been his benefactor the threadbare cloak and worn-out shoes which he had been lately reduced to wear. A public Informer—that hateful character whom the comic dramatist was never tired of holding up to the execration of his audience—has now found his business fail him, and threatens that, if there be any law or justice left in Athens, this god who leaves the poor knaves to starve shall be made blind again. Cario—quite in the spirit of the clown in a modern pantomime—strips him of his fine clothes, puts the honest man’s ragged cloak on him instead, hangs the old shoes round his neck, and kicks him off the stage, howling out that he will surely “lay an information.” An old lady who has lost her young lover, as soon as under the new dispensation she lost the charms of her money, in vain appeals to Chremylus, as having influence with this reformed government, to obtain her some measure of justice. Not only the world of men, but the world of gods, is out of joint. In the last scene, Mercury knocks at the door of Chremylus. He has brought a terrible message from Jupiter. He orders Cario to bring out the whole family—“master, mistress, children, slaves—and the dog—and himself—and the pig,” and the rest of the brutes, that they may all be thrown together into the Barathrum—the punishment inflicted on malefactors of the deepest dye. Cario answers the Olympian messenger with a courtesy as scant as his own; under the new régime, he and his master are become very independent of Jupiter. “You’d be none the worse for a slice off your tongue, young fellow,” says the mortal servant to him of Olympus; “why, what’s the matter?” “Matter enough,” answers Mercury:—