Why, ye have wrought the very vilest deed;
Since Plutus yonder got his sight again,
No man doth offer frankincense or bays,
Or honey-cake or victim or aught else,
To us poor gods.
Car. Nay, nor will offer, now;
Ye took poor care of us when we were pious.
Mer. As for the other gods, I care not much;
But ’tis myself I pity.
Car. You’re right there.
Mer. Why, in the good old times, from every shop
I got good things,—rich wine-cakes, honey, figs,
Fit for a god like Mercury to eat;
But now I lie and sleep to cheat my hunger.
Car. It serves you right; you never did much good.
Mer. Oh for those noble cheesecakes, rich and brown!
Car. ’Tis no use calling—cheesecakes an’t in season.
Mer. O those brave gammons that I once enjoyed!
Car. Don’t gammon me—be off with you to—heaven!
Mercury begs him at last, for old acquaintance’ sake, and in remembrance of the many little scrapes which his pilfering propensities would have brought him into with his master, but that he, the god of craft, helped him out of them,—to have a little fellow-feeling for a servant out of place and thrown upon his own finding. Is there no place for him in Chremylus’s household? What? says Cario; would he leave Olympus and take service with mortals? Certainly he would—the living and the perquisites are so much better. Would he turn deserter? asks the other (deserter being a word of abomination to Greek ears). The god replies in words which seem to be a quotation or a parody from some of the tragic poets—
That soil is fatherland which feeds us best.
The dialogue which follows is an amusing play upon the various offices assigned to Mercury, who was a veritable Jack-of-all-trades in the popular theology. The humour is very much lost in any English version, however free:—
Car. What place would suit you, now, suppose we hired you?
Mer. I’ll turn my hand to anything you please;
You know I’m called the “Turner.”
Car. Yes, but now
Luck’s on our side, we want no turns at present.
Mer. I’ll make your bargains for you.
Car. Thankye, no—
Now we’ve grown rich, we don’t much care for bargains.
Mer. But I can cheat—
Car. On no account—for shame!
We well-to-do folks all go in for honesty.
Mer. Let me be Guide, then.
Car. Nay, our godship here
Has got his sight again, and needs no guiding.
Mer. Well, Master of the revels? don’t say no—
Wealth must have pleasures,—music, and all that.
Car. (ironically turning to the audience). Why, what a lucky thing it is to be Jack-of-all-trades!
Here’s a young man, now, who’s sure to make a living!
(To Mercury.) Well—go and wash these tripes,—be quick—let’s see
What sort of training servants get in heaven.
If the gods are suffering from this social revolution in the world below, still more lamentable are its effects upon the staff of officials maintained in their temples. The priest of Jupiter the Protector—one of the most important ecclesiastical functionaries in Athens—enters in great distress.
Priest. Be good enough to tell me, where is Chremylus?
Chr. (coming out). What is it, my good sir?
Priest. What is it?—ruin!
Why, since this Plutus has begun to see,
I’m dying of starvation. Positively,
I haven’t a crust to eat! I, my dear sir,
The Priest of the Protector! think of that!
Chr. Dear me! and what’s the reason, may I ask?
Priest. Why, because everybody now is rich:
Before, if times were bad, there still would come
Some merchant-captain home from time to time,
And bring us thank-offerings for escape from wreck;
Some lucky rogue, perhaps, who had got a verdict;
Or some good man held a family sacrifice,
And asked the priest, of course. But now no soul
Pays either vows or sacrifice, or comes
To the temple—save to shoot their rubbish there.
Car. (half aside). You take your tithe of that, I warrant me.
Chremylus, whose good fortune in entertaining such a desirable guest has put him into good-humour with all the world, comforts the despairing official. The true Father Protector—the deity whom all men acknowledge—is here, he tells him, in the house. They mean to set him up permanently at Athens, in his proper place—the Public Treasury. And he shall be the minister of the new worship, if he likes to quit the service of Jupiter. The priest gladly consents, and an extempore procession is at once formed upon the stage, into which the old lady who has lost her lover is pressed, and persuaded to carry a slop-pail upon her head, to represent the maidens who, on such occasions, bore the lustral waters for the inauguration. Cario and the Chorus bring up the rear in an antic dance, and they proceed to establish at Athens, with all due formalities, the worship of Wealth alone.
This play, as we now have it (for it had been brought out in a different form twenty years before), shows evident signs of a transition in the character of Athenian comedy. It is less extravagant, and more domestic, and so far approaches more nearly to what is called the “New” Comedy, of which we know little except from a few fragmentary remains and from its Roman adapters, but of which our modern drama is the result. Possibly, now that the great war was over, and the spirit as well as the power of Athens was somewhat broken, Aristophanes no longer felt that deep personal interest in politics which has left such a mark on all his earlier pieces. Another reason for the change, independent of the public taste, seems to have been the growing parsimony in the expenditure of public money on such performances. Critics have detected, in the character of the Chorus of ‘The Ecclesiazusæ,’ exhibited five years previously, in which the masks and dresses for a body of old women could have involved but little expense in comparison with the elaborate mounting of such plays as ‘The Birds’ and ‘Wasps,’ an accommodation to this new spirit of economy; and the same remark has been made as to the poverty of the musical portion of the play. The same may be said of the Chorus of rustics in this latter drama. ‘Plutus’ was the last comedy put upon the stage by Aristophanes himself, though two pieces which he had composed, of which we know little more than the titles, were exhibited in his name, after his death, by his son. They appear to have approached still more nearly, in their plot and general character, to our modern notions of a comedy than even ‘Plutus.’ Whether the author made any important alterations in this second edition of the play is not known; but in its present state, the piece seems to want something of his old dash and vigour. He was getting an old man; and probably some young aspirants to dramatic fame remarked upon his failing powers in somewhat the same terms as those in which, thirty-seven years before, he had spoken of his elder rival Cratinus—
“The keys work loose, the strings are slack, the melodies a jar.”[56]