The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 6

"Must you go?

That cousin here again? he waits outside?

Must see you--you, and not with me?"

Here we discover the secret of the soullessness: the fellow has the tailor in his blood, even though the artist is supreme at the fingers' ends. He is but the craftsman after all. Think of Fra Angelico painting his saints and angels on his knees, straining his eyes to catch the faintest glimpse of the heavenly radiance of Our Lady's purity and holiness, feeling that he failed, too dazzled by the brightness of Divine light, to catch more than its shadow, and we shall know why there is soul in the great Dominican painter, and why there is none in the Sarto. Lucrezia, despicable as she was, was not the cause of her husband's failure. His marriage, his treatment of Francis, his allowing his parents to starve, to die of want, while he paid gaming debts for his wife's lover,--all these things tell us what the man was. No woman ruined his soul; he had no soul to ruin!

NOTES.--_Fiesole_, a small but famous episcopal city of Italy, on the crown of a hill above the Arno, about three miles to the west of Florence.

_Morello_, a mountain of the Apennines. _The Urbinate_: Rafael was born at Urbino. _George Vasari_, painter and author of the "Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Painters, Sculptors and Architects." _Rafael_, Raphael Sanzio of Urbino. _Agnolo_: Michel Agnolo is the more correct form of Michael Angelo. _Francis_, King Francis I. of France, the royal patron of Andrea. _Fontainebleau_, a town of France 37 miles S.E. of Paris; its palace is one of the most sumptuous in France. "_The Roman's is the better when you pray._" Catholics, however, do not use the works of the great masters for devotional purposes nearly so much as might be supposed. No "miraculous" picture is by this cla.s.s. _Cue-owls_: The Scops Owl: Scops Giu (Scopoli). Its cry is a ringing "ki-ou"--whence Italian "chiu" or "ciu." "_Walls in the New Jerusalem._" Revelation xxi. 15-17. _Leonard_, Leonardo da Vinci.

=Andromeda.= In _Pauline_, Mr. Browning has commemorated the fascination for his youthful mind which was exercised by an engraving of a picture by Caravaggio of Andromeda and Perseus. This picture was always before him as a boy, and he loved the story of the divine deliverer and the innocent victim which it presented. The lines begin

"Andromeda!

And she is with me,--years roll, I shall change, But change can touch her not."

=Another Way of Love.= See _One Way of Love_, this poem being its sequel.

=Any Wife to Any Husband.= A dying wife finds the bitterest thing in death to be the certainty that her husband's love for her, which, would life but last, she could retain, will fade and wither when she is no longer present to tend it:

"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence."

The great pure love of a wife is a reign of love. Woman's love is more durable and purer than man's, and few men are entirely worthy of being the objects of that which they can so imperfectly understand. Mr. Nettleship, commenting on this poem, very truly says, "The real love of the man is never born until the love of the woman supplements it." The wife of the poem feels that there would be no difficulty in her case about being faithful to the memory of her husband; but she foresees that his love will not long survive the loss of her personal presence. This will be to depreciate the value of his life to him; his love will come back to her again at last, back to the heart's place kept for him, but with a stain upon it. The old love will be re-coined, re-issued from the mint, and given to others to spend, alas! with some alloy as well as with a new image and superscription. She foresees that he will dissipate his soul in the love of other woman, he will excuse himself by the a.s.surance that the light loves will make no impression on the deep-set memory of the woman who is immortally his bride; he will have a t.i.tian's Venus to desecrate his wall rather than leave it bare and cold,--but the flesh-loves will not impair the soul-love.

=Apollo and the Fates.= (See Prologue to _Parleyings_.) Apollo (the Sun G.o.d), having offended Jupiter by slaying the Cyclopes, who forged his thunderbolts by which he had killed aesculapius for bringing dead men to life, had been banished from heaven. He became servant to Admetus, king of Thessaly, in whose employment he remained nine years as one of his shepherds. He was treated with great kindness by his master, and they became true lovers of each other. When Apollo, restored to the favour of heaven, had left the service of Admetus and resumed his G.o.d-like offices, he heard that his old master and friend was sick unto death, and he determined to save his life. Accordingly he descended on Mount Parna.s.sus, and penetrated to the abode of the Fates, in the dark regions below the roots of the mountains, and there he found the three who preside over the destinies of mankind--Clotho with her distaff, Lachesis with her spindle, and Atropos with a pair of scissors about to cut the thread of Admetus'

life--and begins to plead for the life of his friend Admetus, whom Atropos has just doomed to death. The Fates bid Apollo go back to earth and wake it from dreams. Apollo demands a truce to their doleful amus.e.m.e.nt, and requests them to extend the years of Admetus to threescore and ten. The Fates ask him if he thinks it would add to his friend's joy to have his life lengthened, seeing that life is only illusion? Infancy is but ignorance and mischief, youth becomes foolishness, and age churlishness.

Apollo should ask for life for one whom he hates, not for the friend he loves. The Sun's beams produce such semblance of good as exists by simply gilding the evil. Apollo objects that if it were happier to die, men's greeting would not be "Long life!" but "Death to you!" Man loves his life, and he ought to know best. The Fates say this is all the glamour shed by Apollo's rays. Apollo concedes that man desponds when debarred of illusion: "suppose he has in himself some compensative law?" and the G.o.d then produces a bowl of wine, man's invention, of which he invites them to taste. The Fates, after some objection, drink and get tipsy and merry, Atropos even declaring she could live at a pinch! Apollo delivers them a lecture; he tells them Bacchus invented the wine; as he was the youngest of the G.o.ds, he had to discover some new gift whereby to claim the homage of man. He tampered with nothing already arranged, yet would introduce change without shock. As the sunbeams and Apollo had transformed the Fates' cavern without displacing a splinter, so has the gift of Bacchus turned the adverse things of life to a kindlier aspect; man accepts the good with the bad, and acquiesces in his fate; this is the work of Zeus.

He demands of the Fates if, after all, Life be so devoid of good? "Quashed be our quarrel!" they exclaim, and they dance till an explosion from the earth's centre brings them to their senses once more, and the pact is dissolved. They learn that the powers above them are not to be cajoled into interfering with the laws of life and the inevitable decrees of which the Fates are but the ministers. At last they agree to lengthen the life of Admetus if any mortal can be found to forgo the fulfilment of his own life on his account. Apollo protests that the king's subjects will strive with one another for the glory of dying that their king may survive. First in all Pherae will his father offer himself as his son's subst.i.tute. "Bah!"

says Clotho. "Then his mother," suggests Apollo; "or, spurning the exchange, the king may choose to die." With the jeers of the three the scene closes. Mr. Browning's lovely poem _Balaustion's Adventure_ should be read next after this, as the Prologue to the _Parleyings_ has little or no relation to the rest of the volume.

NOTES.--_Parna.s.sus_, a mountain of Greece, sacred to the Muses and Apollo and Bacchus. _Dire ones_, the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.

_Admetus_, the husband of Alcestis, whose wife died to save his life. _The Fates_, the Destinies, the G.o.ddesses supposed to preside over human life: _Clotho_, who spins the thread of life; _Lachesis_, who determines the length of the thread; _Atropos_, who cuts it off. _Woe-purfled_, embroidered with woe. _Weal-prankt_, decked out with prosperity. _Moirai_, the Parcae, the Fates. _Zeus_, Jupiter, the Supreme Being. _Eld_, old age.

_Sweet Trine_, the Three, the Trinity of Fates. _Bacchus_, the Wine-G.o.d.

_Semele's Son_: Semele was the daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia; when Zeus appeared to her in his Divine splendour she was consumed by the flames and gave birth to Bacchus, whom Zeus saved from the fire and hid in his thigh.

Bacchus, when made a G.o.d, raised her to heaven under the name of Thyone.

_Swound_, a swoon. _c.u.mmers_, gossips, female acquaintances. _Collyrium_, eye-wash. _Pherae_, a town in Thessaly, where King Pheres reigned, who was the father of Admetus.

=Apparent Failure.= (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864.) Mr. Ruskin has laboured hard to save St. Mark's, Venice, from the destroying hand of the restorer.

Mr. Browning wrote this poem to save from complete destruction a much less important, though a celebrated building, the Paris Morgue, the deadhouse wherein are exposed the bodies of persons found dead, that they may be claimed by their friends. The Doric little Morgue is close to Notre Dame, on the banks of the Seine, and is one of the sights of Paris--repulsive as it is--which everybody makes a point of seeing. The poet entered the building and saw behind the great screen of gla.s.s three bodies exposed for identification on the copper couch fronting him. They were three men who had killed themselves, and the poet mentally questions them why they abhorred their lives so much. You "poor boy" wanted to be an emperor, forsooth; you "old one" were a red socialist, and this next one fell a prey to misdirected love. The three deadly sins of Pride, Covetousness, and l.u.s.t had each its victim. And before them stands the poet of optimism, not staggered in his doctrine even by this sad sight. Not for a moment does his faith fail that "what G.o.d blessed once can never prove accurst."

His optimism in this poem is at high-water mark; where some weak-kneed believers in humanity would have found a breaking link in the chain, Mr.

Browning sees but "apparent failure," and declines to believe the doom of these poor wrecks of souls to be final.

=Apparitions.= (Introduction to _The Two Poets of Croisic_, 1878.) This exquisite poem is a tribute to the charm exercised by a human face, from which looks out G.o.d's own smile, gladdening a cold and scowling prospect as a burst of May soon dispels the lingering chills of winter.

=Appearances.= (_Pacchiarotto, with other Poems_, 1876.) Metaphysicians would explain this poem by an essay on the a.s.sociation of ideas; strong as imagination is, it can never exceed experience which has come to us through sight. Feelings are a.s.sociated with one another according as they have been operant in more or less frequent succession. Reasoning may a.s.sociate ideas, but for force and permanence our actual sight, and contact are the wonder-workers in this department of soul-life. Nothing can beautify the place where we have in the past suffered some great mental distress or wrong; so no place can ever be unbeautiful where the true lover wins his life's prize. When the upholsterer's art does more for a room than the memory of a first love, that love is not of the eternal sort our poet sings.

=Aprile.= The Italian poet who sought to love, as Paracelsus sought to know. He represents the Renaissance spirit in its emotional aspect, as Paracelsus represents the spirit of the Reformation in its pa.s.sion for knowledge. As Mr. Browning says, they were the "two halves of a dissevered world." (_Paracelsus._)

=Arcades Ambo.= (_Asolando_, 1889.) If a man runs away in battle when the b.a.l.l.s begin to fly, we call him a coward. He may excuse himself by the argument that man must at all risks shun death. This is the excuse made by the vivisector: he is often a kind and amiable man in every other relation of life than in that aspect of his profession which demands, as he holds, the torture of living animals for the advancement of the healing art.

Health of the body must be preserved at all costs; the moral health is of little or no consequence in comparison with that of the body; above all we must not die, death is the one thing to be avoided, hide therefore from the darts of the King of Terrors behind the whole creation of lower animals. Mr. Browning says this is cowardice exactly parallel with that of the soldier who runs away in battle; the principle being that at all costs life is the one thing to be preserved. The Anti-Vivisectionist principles of Mr. Browning were very p.r.o.nounced. He was for many years a.s.sociated with Miss F. P. Cobbe in her efforts to suppress the practice of torturing animals for scientific purposes, and was a Vice-President of the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection at the time of his death. See my _Browning's Message to his Time_ (chapter on "Browning and Vivisection").

=Aristophanes=, the celebrated comic poet of Athens, was born probably about the year 448 B.C. His first comedy was brought out in 427 B.C. Plato in his _Symposium_ gives Aristophanes a position at the side of Socrates.

The festivals of Dionysus greatly promoted the production of tragedies, comedies and satiric dramas. The greater Dionysia were held in the city of Athens in the month of March, and were connected with the natural feeling of joy at the approach of summer. These Baccha.n.a.lian festivals were scenes of gross licentiousness, and the coa.r.s.eness which pervades much of the work of the great Greek comedian was due to the fact that the popular taste demanded grossness of allusion on occasions like these. The Athenian dramatist of the old school was entirely unrestrained. He could satirise even the Eleusinian mysteries, could deal abundantly in personalities, burlesque the most sacred subjects, and ridicule the most prominent persons in the republic. Professor Jebb, in his article on Aristophanes in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, says: "It is neither in the denunciation nor in the mockery that he is most individual. His truest and highest faculty is revealed by those wonderful bits of lyric writing in which he soars above everything that can move to laughter or tears, and makes the clear air thrill with the notes of a song as free, as musical and as wild as that of the nightingale invoked by his own chorus in the _Birds_. The speech of Dikaios Logos in the _Clouds_, the praises of country life in the _Peace_, the serenade in the _Eccleziazusae_, the songs of the Spartan and Athenian maidens in the _Lysistrata_; above all, perhaps, the chorus in the _Frogs_, the beautiful chant of the Initiated,--these pa.s.sages, and such as these, are the true glories of Aristophanes. They are the strains, not of an artist, but of one who warbles for pure gladness of heart in some place made bright by the presence of a G.o.d. Nothing else in Greek poetry has quite this wild sweetness of the woods. Of modern poets Shakespeare alone, perhaps, has it in combination with a like richness and fertility of fancy." Fifty-four comedies were ascribed to Aristophanes. We possess only eleven: these deal with Athenian life during a period of thirty-six years. The political satires of the poet, therefore, cannot be understood without a knowledge of Athenian history, and an acquaintance with its life during the period in which the poet wrote. "Aristophanes was a natural conservative," says Professor Jebb; "his ideal was the Athens of the Persian wars. He detested the vulgarity and the violence of mob-rule; he clove to the old worship of the G.o.ds; he regarded the new ideas of education as a tissue of imposture and impiety. As a mocker he is incomparable for the union of subtlety with wit of the comic imagination.

As a poet he is immortal." The momentous period in the history of Greece during which Aristophanes began to write, forms the groundwork, more or less, of so many of his comedies, that it is impossible to understand them, far less to appreciate their point, without some acquaintance with its leading events. All men's thoughts were occupied by the great contest for supremacy between the rival states of Athens and Sparta, known as the Peloponnesian War. It is not necessary here to enter into details; but the position of the Athenians during the earlier years of the struggle must be briefly described. Their strength lay chiefly in their fleet; in the other arms of war they were confessedly no match for Sparta and her confederate allies. The heavy-armed Spartan infantry, like the black Spanish bands of the fifteenth century, was almost irresistible in the field. Year after year the invaders marched through the Isthmus into Attica, or were landed in strong detachments on different points of the coast, while the powerful Botian cavalry swept all the champaign, burning the towns and villages, cutting down the crops, destroying vines and olive-groves,--carrying this work of devastation almost up to the very walls of Athens. For no serious attempt was made to resist these periodical invasions. The strategy of the Athenians was much the same as it had been when the Persian hosts swept down upon them fifty years before. Again they withdrew themselves and all their movable property within the city walls, and allowed the invaders to overrun the country with impunity. Their flocks and herds were removed into the islands on the coasts, where, so long as Athens was mistress of the sea, they would be in comparative safety. It was a heavy demand upon their patriotism; but, as before, they submitted to it, trusting that the trial would be but brief, and nerved to it by the stirring words of their great leader Pericles. The ruinous sacrifice, and even the personal suffering, involved in this forced migration of a rural population into a city wholly inadequate to accommodate them, may easily be imagined, even if it had not been forcibly described by the great historian of those times. Some carried with them the timber framework of their homes, and set it up in such vacant s.p.a.ces as they could find. Others built for themselves little "chambers on the wall," or occupied the outer courts of the temples, or were content with booths and tents set up under the Long Walls, which connected the city with the harbour of Piraeus. Some--if our comic satirist is to be trusted--were even fain to sleep in tubs and hen-coops. Provisions grew dear and scarce. Pestilence broke out in the overcrowded city; and in the second and third years of the war the great plague carried off, out of their comparatively small population, about 10,000 of all ranks. But it needed a pressure of calamity far greater than the present to keep a good citizen of Athens away from the theatre. If the times were gloomy, so much the more need of a little honest diversion. The comic drama was to the Athenians what a free press is to modern commonwealths. It is probable that Aristophanes was himself earnestly opposed to the continuance of the war, and spoke his own sentiments on this point by the mouth of his characters; but the prevalent disgust at the hardships of this long-continued siege--for such it practically was--would in any case be a tempting subject for the professed writer of burlesques; and the caricature of a leading politician, if cleverly drawn, is always a success for the author. The _Thesmophoriazusae_ is a comedy about the fair s.e.x, whose whole point--like that also of the comedy of the _Frogs_--lies in a satire upon Euripides. Aristophanes never wearied of holding this poet up to ridicule. Why this was so is not to be discovered: it may have been that the conservative principles of Aristophanes were offended by some new-fashioned ideas of his brother poet. The _Thesmophoria_ was a festival of women only, in honour of Ceres and Proserpine. Euripides was reputed to be a woman-hater: in one of his tragedies he says,

"O thou most vile! thou--_woman!_--for what word That lips could frame, could carry more reproach?"

He can hardly, however, have been a woman-hater who created the beautiful characters of Iphigenia and Alcestis. In this comedy the Athenian ladies have resolved to punish Euripides, and the poet is in dismay in consequence, and takes measures to defend himself. He offers terms of peace to the offended fair s.e.x, and promises never to abuse them in future.

=Aristophanes' Apology=; including a Transcript from Euripides, being the last adventure of Balaustion. London, 1875.--As Aristophanes' Apology is the last adventure of Balaustion, it is necessary to read _Balaustion's Adventure_ (_q.v._) before commencing this poem. Balaustion has married Euthukles, the young man whom she met at Syracuse. She has met the great poet Euripides, paid her homage to his genius, and has received from his own hands his tragedy of _Hercules_. The poet is dead, and Athens fallen.

She returns to the city after its capture by the Spartans, but she can no longer remain therein. Athens will live in her heart, but never again can she behold the place where ghastly mirth mocked its overthrow and death and h.e.l.l celebrated their triumph. She has left the doomed city, now that it is no longer the free Athens of happier times, and has set sail with her husband for Rhodes. The glory of the material Athens has departed. But Athens will live as a glorious spiritual ent.i.ty--

"That shall be better and more beautiful, And too august for Sparte's foot to spurn!"

She and Euthukles are exiles from the dead Athens, not the living: "That's in the cloud there, with the new-born star!" As they voyage, for her consolation she will record her recollections of her Euripides in Athens, and she bids her husband set down her words as she speaks. She must "speak to the infinite intelligence, sing to the everlasting sympathy." There are dead things that are triumphant still; the walls of intellectual construction can never be overthrown; there are air-castles more real and permanent than the work of men's hands. She will tell of Euripides and his undying work. She recalls the night when Athens was still herself, when they heard the news that Euripides was dead--"gone with his Attic ivy home to feast." Dead and triumphant still! She reflected how the Athenian mult.i.tude had ever reproached him: "All thine aim thine art, the idle poet only." It was not enough in those times that thought should be "the soul of art." The Greek world demanded activity as well as contemplation. The poet must leave his study to command troops, forsake the world of ideas for that of action, otherwise he was a "hater of his kind." The world is content with you if you do nothing for it; if you do aught you must do all. But when Euripides was at rest, censorious tongues ceased to wag, and the next thing to do was to build a monument for him! But for the hearts of Balaustion and her husband no statue is required: he stood within their hearts. The pure-souled woman says, "What better monument can be than the poem he gave me? Let him speak to me now in his own words; have out the Herakles and re-sing the song; hear him tell of the last labour of the G.o.d, worst of all the twelve." And lovingly and reverently the precious gift of the poet was taken from its shrine and opened for the reading.

Suddenly torchlight, knocking at the door, a cry "Open, open! Bacchos bids!" and a sound of revelry and the drunken voices of girl dancers and players, led by Aristophanes, the comic poet of Greece. A splendid presence, "all his head one brow," drunk, but in him sensuality had become a rite. Mind was here, pa.s.sions, but grasped by the strong hand of intellect. Balaustion rose and greeted him. "Hail house," he said, "friendly to Euripides!" and he spoke flatteringly, but in a slightly mocking tone, as men who are sensual defer to spiritual women whom they rather affect to pity while they admire. Balaustion loves genius; to her mind it is the n.o.blest gift of heaven: she can bow to Aristophanes though he is drunk. (Greek intoxication was doubtless a very different thing from Saxon!) The comic poet had just achieved a great triumph: his comedy had been crowned. The "Women's Festival" (the _Thesmophoriazusae_ as it was called in Greek) was a play in which the fair s.e.x had the chief part. It was written against Euripides' dislike of women, for which the women who are celebrating the great feast of Ceres and Proserpine (the Thesmophoria) drag him to justice. And so, with all his chorus troop, he comes to the home of Balaustion, as representing the Euripides whom he disliked and satirised, to celebrate his success. The presence of Balaustion has stripped the proper Aristophanes of his "accidents," and under her searching gaze he stands undisguised to be questioned. She puts him on his defence, and hence the "Apology." He recognises the divine in her, and she in him. The discussion, therefore, will be on the principles underlying the works of Euripides, the man of advance, the pioneer of the newer and better age to come, and those of the conservative apologist of prescription, Aristophanes the aristocrat. He defends his first _Thesmophoriazusae_, which failed; his _Gra.s.shopper_, which followed and failed also. There was reason why he wrote both: he painted the world as it was, mankind as they lived and walked, not human nature as seen though the medium of the student's closet. "Old wine's the wine; new poetry drinks raw." The friend of Socrates might weave his fancies, but flesh and blood like that of Aristophanes needs stronger meat. "Curds and whey"

might suit Euripides, the Apologist must have marrowy wine. The author of the _Alkestis_, which Balaustion raved about, was but a prig: he wrote of wicked kings. Aristophanes came nearer home, and attacked infamous abuses of the time, and scourged too with tougher thong than leek-and-onion plait. He wrote _The Birds_, _The Clouds_, and _The Wasps_. The poison-drama of Euripides has mortified the flesh of the men of Athens, so nothing but warfare can purge it. The play that failed last year he has rearranged; he added men to match the women there already, and had a hit at a new-fangled plan by which women should rule affairs. It succeeded, and so they all flocked merrily to feast, and merrily they supped till something happened,--he will confess its influence upon him. Towards the end of the feast there was a sudden knock: in came an old pale-swathed majesty, who addressed the priest, "Since Euripides is dead to-day, my choros, at the Greater Feast next month, shall, clothed in black, appear ungarlanded!" Sophocles (for it was he) mutely pa.s.sed outwards and left them stupefied. Soon they found their tongues and began to make satiric comment, but Aristophanes swore that at the moment death to him seemed life and life seemed death. The play of which he had made a laughingstock had meaning he had never seen till now. The question who was the greater poet, once so large, now became so small. He remembers his last discussion with the dead poet, two years since, when he said, "Aristophanes, you know what kind's the n.o.bler--what makes grave or what makes grin!" He pointed out why his Ploutos failed: he had tried, alas! but with force which had been spent on base things, to paint the life of Man. The strength demanded for the race had been wasted ere the race began. Such thoughts as these, long to relate, but floating through the mind as solemn convictions are wont to do, occupied him till the Archon, the Feast-Master, divining what was pa.s.sing in his mind, thought best to close the feast. He gave "To the good genius, then!" as a parting cup. Young Strattis cried, "Ay, the Comic Muse"; but Aristophanes, stopping the applause, said, "Stay! the Tragic Muse" (in honour of the dead Tragic Poet), and then he told of all the work of the man who had gone from them. But he had mocked at him so often that his audience would not believe him to be serious now, and burst into laughter, exclaiming, "The unrivalled one! He turns the Tragic on its Comic side!" He felt that he was growing ridiculous, and had to repair matters; so he thanked them for laughing with him, and also those who wept rather with the Lord of Tears, and bade the priest--president alike over the Tragic and Comic function of the G.o.d,--

"Help with libation to the blended twain!"

praising complex poetry operant for body as for soul, able to move to laughter and to tears, supreme in heaven and earth. The soul should not be unbodied; he would defend man's double nature. But, even as he spoke, he turned to the memory of "Cold Euripides," and declared that he would not abate attack if he were to encounter him again, because of his principle--"Raise soul, sink sense, Evirate Hermes!" And so, as they left the feast, he asked his friends to accompany him to Balaustion's home, to the lady and her husband who, pa.s.sionate admirers of Euripides, had not been present on his triumph-day. When they heard the night's news, neither, he knew, would sleep, but watch; by right of his crown of triumph he would pay them a visit. Balaustion said, "Commemorate, as we, Euripides!" "What?" cried the comic poet, "profane the temple of your deity!--for deity he was, though as for himself he only figured on men's drinking mugs. And then, as his glance fell on the table, he saw the Herakles which the Tragic Poet had given to Balaustion. "Give me the sheet," he asks. She interrupted, "You enter fresh from your worst infamy, last instance of a long outrage--throw off hate's celestiality, show me a mere man's hand ign.o.bly clenched against the supreme calmness of the dead poet." Scarcely noticing her, he said, "Dead and therefore safe; only after death begins immunity of faultiness from punishment. Hear Art's defence. Comedy is coeval with the birth of freedom, its growth matches the greatness of the Republic. He found the Comic Art a club, a means of inflicting punishment without downright slaying: was he to thrash only the cra.s.s fool and the clownish knave, or strike at malpractice that affects the State? His was not the game to change the customs of Athens, lead age or youth astray, play the demagogue at the a.s.sembly or the sophist at the Debating Club, or (worst and widest mischief) preach innovation from the theatre, bring contempt on oaths, and adorn licentiousness. And so he new-tipped with steel his cudgel, he had demagogues in coat-of-mail and cased about with impudence to chastise; he was spiteless, for his attack went through the mere man to reach the principle worth purging from Athens. He did not attack Lamachos, but war's representative; not Cleon, but flattery of the populace; not Socrates, but the pernicious seed of sophistry, whereby youth was perverted to chop logic and worship whirligig. His first feud with Euripides was when he maintained that we should enjoy life as we find it instead of magnifying our miseries.

Euripides would talk about the empty name, while the thing's self lay neglected beneath his nose. Aristophanes represented the whole Republic,--G.o.ds, heroes, priests, legislators, poets--all these would have been in the dust, pummelled into insignificance, had Euripides had his way. To him heroes were no more, hardly so much, as men. Men were ragged, sick, lame, halt, and blind, their speech but street terms; and so, having drawn sky earthwards, he must next lift earth to sky. Women, once mere puppets, must match the male in thinking, saying, doing. The very slave he recognised as man's mate. There are no G.o.ds. Man has no master, owns neither right nor wrong, does what he likes, himself his sole law. As there are no G.o.ds, there is only "Necessity" above us. No longer to Euripides is there one plain positive enunciation, incontestable, of what is good, right, decent here on earth. And so Euripides triumphed, though he rarely gained a prize. And Aristophanes, wielding the comic weapon, closed with the enemy in good honest hate, called Euripides one name and fifty epithets. He hates "sneaks whose art is mere desertion of a trust."

And so he doses each culprit with comedy, doctors the word-monger with words. Socrates he nicknames chief quack, necromancer; Euripides--well, he acknowledges every word is false if you look at it too close, but at a distance all is indubitable truth behind the lies. Aristophanes declares the essence of his teaching to be, Accept the old, contest the strange, mis...o...b.. every man whose work is yet to do, acknowledge the work already done. Religion, laws, are old--that is, so much achieved and victorious truth, wrung from adverse circ.u.mstance by heroic men who beat the world and left their work in evidence. It was Euripides who caused the fight, and Aristophanes has beaten him; if, however, Balaustion can adduce anything to contravene this, let her say on." Balaustion replies that she is but a mere mouse confronting the forest monarch, a woman with no quality, but the love of all things lovable. How should she dare deny the results he says his songs are pregnant with? She is a foreigner too. Many perhaps view things too severely, as dwellers in some distant isles,--the Ca.s.siterides, for example,--ignorant and lonely, who seeing some statue of Phidias or picture of Teuxis, might feebly judge that hair and hands and fashion of garb, not being like their own, must needs be wrong. So her criticism of art may be equally in fault as theirs, nevertheless she will proceed if she may. "Comedy, you say, is prescription and a rite; it rose with Attic liberty, and will fall with freedom; but your games, Olympian, Pythian and the others, the G.o.ds gave you these; and Comedy, did it come so late that your grandsires can remember its beginning? And you were first to change buffoonery for wit, and filth for cleanly sense. You advocate peace, support religion, lash irreverence, yet rebuke superst.i.tion with a laugh. Innovation and all change you attack: with you the oldest always is the best; litigation, mob rule and mob favourites you attack; you are hard on sophists and poets who a.s.sist them: sn.o.bs, scamps, and gluttons you do not spare,--all these n.o.ble aims originated with you!

Yet Euripides in Cresphontes sang Peace before you! Play after play of his troops tumultuously to confute your boast. No virtue but he praised, no vice but he condemned ere you were boy! As for your love of peace, you did not show your audience that war was wrong, but Lamachos absurd, not that democracy was blind, but Cleon a sham, not superst.i.tion vile but Nicias crazy. You gave the concrete for the abstract, you pretended to be earnest while you were only indifferent. You tickled the mob with the idea that peace meant plenty of good things to eat, while in camp the fare is hard and stinted. Peace gives your audience flute girls and gaiety. War freezes the campaigners in the snow. And so, with all the rest you advocate; do not go to law: beware of the Wasps! but as for curing love of lawsuits, you exhibit cheating, brawling, fighting, cursing as capital fun! And when the writer of the new school attacks the vile abuses of the day, straightway to conserve the good old way, you say the rascal cannot read or write, is extravagant, gets somebody to help his sluggish mind, and lets him court his wife; his uncle deals in crockery, and himself--a stranger! And so the poet-rival is chased out of court. And this is Comedy, our sacred song, censor of vice and virtue's safeguard! You are indignant with sophistry, and say there is but a single side to man and thing; but the sophists at least wish their pupils to believe what they teach, and to practise what they believe; can you wish that? a.s.sume I am mistaken: have you made them end the war? Has your antagonist Euripides succeeded better? He spoke to a dim future, and I trust truth's inherent kingliness. 'Arise and go: both have done honour to Euripides!'" But Aristophanes demands direct defence, and not oblique by admonishment of himself. Balaustion tells him that last year Sophocles was declared by his son to be of unsound mind, and for defence his father just recited a chorus chant of his last play. The one adventure of her life that made Euripides her friend was the story of Hercules and Alcestis. When she met the author last, he said, "I sang another Hercules; it gained no prize, but take it--your love the prize! And so the papyrus, with the pendent style, and the psalterion besides, he gave her: by this should she remember the friend who loved Balaustion once. May I read it as defence? I read." [The HERAKLES, or Raging Hercules of Euripides, is translated literally by Mr. Browning on the principles which he laid down in the preface to the Agamemnon. In Potter's _Translation of the Tragedies of Euripides_ we have the following from the introduction to the play: "The first scenes of this tragedy are very affecting; Euripides knew the way to the heart, and as often as his subject leads him to it, he never fails to excite the tenderest pity. We are relieved from this distress by the unexpected appearance of Hercules, who is here drawn in his private character as the most amiable of men: the pious son, the affectionate husband, and the tender father win our esteem as much as the unconquered hero raises our admiration. Here the feeling reader will perhaps wish that the drama had ended, for the next scenes are dreadful indeed, and it must be confessed that the poet has done his subject terrible justice, but without any of that absurd extravagance which, in Seneca becomes _un tintamarre horrible qui se pa.s.se dans le tete de ce Heros devenu fou_.

From the violent agitation into which we are thrown by these deeds of honour, we are suffered by degrees to subside into the tenderest grief, in which we are prepared before to sympathise with the unhappy Hercules by that esteem which his amiable disposition had raised in us; and this perhaps is the most affecting scene of sorrow that ever was produced in any theatre. Upon the whole, though this tragedy may not be deemed the most agreeable by the generality of readers, on account of the too dreadful effects of the madness of Hercules, yet the various turns of fortune are finely managed, the scenes of distress highly wrought, and the pa.s.sions of pity, terror and grief strongly touched. The scene is at Thebes before the palace of Hercules. The persons of the Drama--Amphitryon, Megara, Lycus, Hercules, Iris, Lyssa (the G.o.ddess of madness), Theseus, Messenger; Chorus of aged Thebans."] They were silent after the reading for a long time. "Our best friend--lost, our best friend!" mused Aristophanes, "and who is our best friend?" He then instances in reply a famous Greek game, known as _kottabos_, played in various ways, but the latest with a sphere pierced with holes. When the orb is set rolling, and wine is adroitly thrown a figure suspended in a certain position can be struck by the fluid; but its only chance of being so hit is when it fronts just that one outlet. So with Euripides: he gets his knowledge merely from one single aperture--that of the High and Right; till he fronts this he writes no play. When the hole and his head happen to correspond, in drops the knowledge that Aristophanes can make respond to every opening--Low, Wrong, Weak; all the apertures bring him knowledge; he gets his wine at every turn; why not? Evil and Little are just as natural as Good and Great, and he demands to know them, and not one phase of life alone. So that he is the "best friend of man." No doubt, if in one man the High and Low could be reconciled, in tragi-comic verse he would be superior to both when born in the Tin Islands (as he eventually was in the person of Shakespeare). He will sing them a song of Thamyris, the Thracian bard, who boasted that he could rival the Muses, and was punished by them by being deprived of sight and voice and the power of playing the lute. Before he had finished the song, however, he laughed, "Tell the rest who may!" He had not tried to match the muse and sing for G.o.ds; he sang for men, and of the things of common life. He bids this couple farewell till the following year, and departs. In a year many things had happened. Aristophanes had produced his play, _The Frogs_. It had been rapturously applauded, and the author had been crowned; he is now the people's "best friend." He had satirised Euripides more vindictively than before; he had satirised even the G.o.ds and the Eleusinian Mysteries; and, in the midst of the "frog merriment," Lysander, the Spartan, had captured Athens, and his first word to the people was, "Pull down your long walls: the place needs none!" He gave them three days to wreck their proud bulwarks, and the people stood stupefied, stonier than their walls.

The time expired, and when Lysander saw they had done nothing, he ordered all Athens to be levelled in the dust. Then stood forth Euthukles, Balaustion's husband, and "flung that choice flower," a s.n.a.t.c.h of a tragedy of Euripides, the _Electra_; then--

"Because Greeks are Greeks, though Sparte's brood, And hearts are hearts, though in Lusandros' breast, And poetry is power, and Euthukles Had faith therein to, full face, fling the same-- Sudden, the ice thaw!"

And the a.s.sembled foe cried, "Reverence Elektra! Let stand Athenai!" and so, as Euripides had saved the Athenian exiles in Syracuse harbour, now he saved Athens herself. But her brave long walls were destroyed, destroyed to sound of flute and lyre, wrecked to the kordax step, and laid in the dust to the mocking laughter of a Comedy-chorus. And so no longer would Balaustion remain to see the shame of the beloved city. "Back to Rhodes!"

she cried. "There are no G.o.ds, no G.o.ds! Glory to G.o.d--who saves Euripides!" [The long walls of Athens consisted of the wall to Phalerum on the east, about four miles long, and of the wall to the harbour of Piraeus on the west, about four and a half miles long; between these two, at a short distance from the latter and parallel to it, another wall was erected, thus making two walls leading to the Piraeus, with a narrow pa.s.sage between them. The entire circuit of the walls was nearly twenty-two miles, of which about five and a half miles belonged to the city, nine and a half to the long walls, and seven miles to Piraeus, Munychia, and Phalerum.]

Plutarch, in his life of Lysander, tells how Euripides saved Athens from destruction and the Athenians from slavery:--"After Lysander had taken from the Athenians all their ships except twelve, and their fortifications were delivered up to him, he entered their city on the sixteenth of the month Munychon (April), the very day they had overthrown the barbarians in the naval fight at Salamis. He presently set himself to change their form of government; and finding that the people resented his proposal, he told them 'that they had violated the terms of their capitulation, for their walls were still standing after the time fixed for the demolishing of them was pa.s.sed; and that, since they had broken the first articles, they must expect new ones from the council.' Some say he really did propose, in the council of the allies, to reduce the Athenians to slavery; and that Erianthis, a Theban officer, gave it as his opinion that the city should be levelled with the ground, and the spot on which it stood turned to pasturage. Afterwards, however, when the general officers met at an entertainment, a musician of Phocis happened to begin a chorus in the _Electra_ of Euripides, the first lines of which are these--

'Unhappy daughter of the great Atrides, Thy straw-crowned palace I approach.'

The whole company were greatly moved at this incident, and could not help reflecting how barbarous a thing it would be to raze that n.o.ble city, which had produced so many great and ill.u.s.trious men. Lysander, however, finding the Athenians entirely in his power, collected the musicians of the city, and having joined to them the band belonging to the camp, pulled down the walls, and burned the ships, to the sound of their instruments."

NOTES. [The pages are those of the complete edition, in 16 vols.]--P. 3, _Euthukles_, the husband of Balaustion, whom she met first at Syracuse. p.

4, _Kore_, the daughter of Ceres, the same as Proserpine. p. 6, _Peiraios_, the princ.i.p.al harbour of Athens, with which it was connected by the long walls; "_walls, long double-range Themistoklean_": after Themistocles, the Athenian general, who planned the fortifications of Athens; _Dikast_ and _heliast_: the Dikast was the judge (_dike_, a suit, was the term for a civil process); the heliasts were jurors, and in the flourishing period of the democracy numbered six thousand. p. 7, _Kordax-step_, a lascivious comic dance: to perform it off the stage was regarded as a sign of intoxication or profligacy; _Propulaia_, a court or vestibule of the Acropolis at Athens; _Pnux_, a place at Athens set apart for holding a.s.semblies: it was built on a rock; _Bema_, the elevated position occupied by those who addressed the a.s.sembly. p. 8, _Dionusia_, the great festivals of Bacchus, held three times a year, when alone dramatic representations at Athens took place; "_Hermippos to pelt Perikles_": Hermippos was a poet who accused Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, of impiety; "_Kratinos to swear Pheidias robbed a shrine_": Kratinos was a comic poet of Athens, a contemporary of Aristophanes; _Eruxis_, the name of a small satirist. (Compare "_The Frogs_" ll.

933-934.) _Momos_, the G.o.d of pleasantry: he satirised the G.o.ds; _Makaria_, one of the characters in the _Heraclidae_ of Euripides: she devoted herself to death to enable the Athenians to win a victory. p. 9, "_Furies in the Oresteian song_"--Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera: they haunted Orestes after he murdered his mother Clytemnestra: "_As the Three_," etc., the three tragic poets, aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

_Klutaimnestra_, wife of Agamemnon and mother of Orestes, Iphigenia, and Electra: she murdered her husband on his return from Troy; _Iocaste_, Iocasta, wife of Laius and mother of dipus; _Medeia_, daughter of Aetes: when Jason repudiated her she killed their children; _Choros_: the function of the chorus, represented by its leader, was to act as an ideal public: it might consist of old men and women or maidens; dances and gestures were introduced, to ill.u.s.trate the drama. p. 10, _peplosed and kothorned_, robed and buskined. _Phrunicos_, a tragic poet of Athens: he was heavily fined by the government for exhibiting the sufferings of a kindred people in a drama. (Herod., vi., 21.) "_Milesian smart-place_,"

the Persian conquest of Miletus. p. 11, _Lenaia_, a festival of Bacchus, with poetical contentions, etc.; _Baccheion_, a temple of Bacchus; _Andromede_, rescued from a sea-monster by Perseus; _Kresphontes_, one of the tragedies of Euripides; _Phokis_, a country of northern Greece, whence came the husband of Balaustion, who saved Athens by a song from Euripides; _Bacchai_, a play by Euripides, not acted till after his death. p. 12, _Amphitheos_, a priest of Ceres at Athens, ridiculed by Aristophanes to annoy Euripides. p. 14, _stade_, a single course for foot-races at Olympia--about a furlong; _diaulos_, the double track of the racecourse for the return. p. 15, _Hupsipule_, queen of Lemnos, who entertained Jason in his voyage to Colchis: "_Phoinissai_" (_The Phnician Women_), t.i.tle of one of the plays of Euripides; "_Zethos against Amphion_": Zethos was a son of Jupiter by Antiope, and brother to Amphion; _Macedonian Archelaos_, a king of Macedonia who patronised Euripides. p. 16, _Phorminx_, a harp or guitar; "_Alkaion_," a play of Euripides; _Pentheus_, king of Thebes, who refused to acknowledge Bacchus as a G.o.d; "_Iphigenia in Aulis_," a play by Euripides; _Mounuchia_, a port of Attica between the Piraeus and the promontory of Sunium; "_City of Gapers_," Athens--so called on account of the curiosity of the people; _Kopaic eel_: the eels of Lake Copais, in Botia, were very celebrated, and to this day maintain their reputation. p. 17, _Arginousai_, three islands near the sh.o.r.es of Asia Minor; _Lais_, a celebrated courtesan, the mistress of Alcibiades; _Leogoras_, an Athenian debauchee; _Koppa-marked_, branded as high bred; _choinix_, a liquid measure; _Mendesian wine_: Wine from Mende, a city of Thrace, famous for its wines; _Thesmophoria_, a women's festival in honour of Ceres, made sport of by Aristophanes. p. 18, _Krateros_, probably an imaginary character. _Arridaios_ and _Krateues_, local poets in royal favour; _Protagoras_, a Greek atheistic philosopher, banished from Athens, died about 400 B.C.; "_Comic Platon_," Greek poet, called "the prince of the middle comedy," flourished 445 B.C.; _Archelaos_, king of Macedonia.

p. 19, "_Lusistrate_" a play by Aristophanes, in which the women demand a peace; _Kleon_: Cleon was an Athenian tanner and a great popular demagogue, 411 B.C., distinguished afterwards as a general; he was a great enemy of Aristophanes. p. 20, _Phuromachos_, a military leader; _Phaidra_, fell in love with Hippolytus, her son-in-law, who refused her love, which proved fatal to him. p. 21, _Salabaccho_, a performer in Aristophanes'

play, _The Lysistrata_, acting the part of "Peace"; _Aristeides_, an Athenian general, surnamed the Just, banished 484 B.C.; _Miltiades_, the Athenian general who routed the armies of Darius, died 489 B.C.; "_A golden tettix in his hair_" (a gra.s.shopper), an Athenian badge of honour worn as indicative that the bearer had "sprung from the soil"; _Kleophon_, a demagogue of Athens. p. 22, _Thesmophoriazousai_, a play by Aristophanes satirising women and Euripides, B.C. 411. p. 23, _Peiraios_, the seaport of Athens; _Alkamenes_, a statuary who lived 448 B.C., distinguished for his beautiful statues of Venus and Vulcan; _Thoukudides_ (Thucydides), the Greek historian, died at Athens 391 B.C. p. 24, _Herakles_ (Hercules), who had brought Alcestis back to life: the subject of a play by Euripides. p.

25, _Eurustheus_, king of Argos, who enjoined Hercules the most hazardous undertakings, hoping he would perish in one of them; _King Lukos_, the son of an elder Lukos said to have been the husband of Dirke; _Megara_, daughter of Creon, king of Thebes, and wife of Hercules; _Thebai_--_i.e._, of Creon of Thebes; _Heracleian House_, the house of Hercules. p. 26, _Amphitruon_, a Theban prince, foster-father of Herakles, _i.e._, the husband of Alkmene the mother of Herakles by Zeus; _Komoscry_, a "Komos"

was a revel; _Dionusos_, _Bacchos_, _Phales_, _Iacchos_ (all names of Bacchus): the goat was sacrificed to Bacchus on account of the propensity that animal has to destroy the vine. p. 27, _Mnesilochos_, the father-in-law of Euripides, a character in the _Thesmophoriazousai_; _Toxotes_, an archer in the same play; _Elaphion_, leader of the chorus of females or flute-players. p. 30, _Helios_, the G.o.d of the Sun; _Pindaros_, the greatest lyric poet of Greece, born 552 B.C.; "_Idle cheek band_"

refers to a support for the cheeks worn by trumpeters; _Cuckoo-apple_, the highly poisonous tongue-burning Cuckoo-pint (_Arum maculatum_); _Thasian_, Thasus, an island in the aegean Sea famous for its wine; _threttanelo_ and _neblaretai_, imitative noises; _Chrusomelolonthion-Phaps_, a dancing girl's name. p. 31, _Artamouxia_, a character in the _Thesmophoriazousai_ of Aristophanes; _Hermes_ == Mercury; _Goats-breakfast_, improper allusions, connected with Bacchus; _Archon_, a chief magistrate of Athens; "_Three days' salt fish slice_": each soldier was required to take with him on the march three days' rations. p. 32, _Archinos_, a rhetorician of Athens (Schol. in Aristoph. Ran.); _Agurrhios_, an Athenian general in B.C. 389: he was a demagogue; "_Bald-head Bard_": this describes Aristophanes, and the two following words indicate his native place; _Kudathenaian_, native of the Deme Cydathene; _Pandionid_, of the tribe of Pandionis; "_son of Philippos_": Aristophanes here gives the names of his father and of his birthplace; _anapaests_, feet in verse, whereof the first syllables are short and the last long; _Phrunichos_ (see on p. 10); _Choirilos_, a tragic poet of Athens, who wrote a hundred and fifty tragedies. p. 33, _Kratinos_, a severe and drunken satirist of Athens, 431 B.C.; "_Willow-wicker-flask_," _i.e._, "Flagon," the name of a comedy by Kratinos which took the first prize, 423 B.C.; _Mendesian_, from Mende in Thrace. p. 36, "_Lyric sh.e.l.l or tragic barbiton_," instruments of music: the barbiton was a lyre; sh.e.l.ls were used as the bodies of lyres; _Tuphon_, a famous giant chained under Mount Etna. p. 38, _Sousarion_, a Greek poet of Megara, said to have been the inventor of comedy; _Chionides_, an Athenian poet, by some alleged to have been the inventor of comedy. p. 39, "_Gra.s.shoppers_," a play of Aristophanes; "_Little-in-the-Fields_," suburban or village feasts of Bacchus. p. 40, _Ameipsias_, a comic poet ridiculed by Aristophanes for his insipidity; _Salaminian_, of Salamis, an island on the coast of Attica. p. 41, _Archelaos_, king of Macedonia, patron of Euripides. p. 42, _Iostephanos_ (violet-crowned), a t.i.tle applied to Athens; _Dekeleia_, a village of Attica north of Athens; _Kleonumos_, an Athenian often ridiculed by Aristophanes; _Melanthios_, a tragic poet, a son of Philocles; _Parabasis_, an address in the old comedy, where the author speaks through the mouth of the chorus; "_The Wasps_," one of the famous plays of Aristophanes. p. 43, _Telekleides_, an Athenian comic poet of the age of Pericles; _Murtilos_, a comic poet; _Hermippos_, a poet, an elder contemporary of Aristophanes; _Eupolis_: is coupled with Aristophanes as a chief representative of the old comedy (born 446 B.C.); _Kratinos_, a contemporary comic poet, who died a few years after Aristophanes began to write for the stage; _Mullos_ and _Euetes_, comic poets of Athens; _Megara_, a small country of Greece, p. 44, _Morucheides_, an archon of Athens, in whose time it was ordered that no one should be ridiculed on the stage by name; _Sourakosios_, an Athenian lawyer ridiculed by the poets for his garrulity; _Tragic Trilogy_, a series of three dramas, which, though complete each in itself, bear a certain relation to each other, and form one historical and poetical picture--_e.g._, the three plays of the _Oresteia_, the _Agamemnon_, the _Choephorae_, and the _Eumenides_ by aeschylus. p. 45, "_The Birds_," the t.i.tle of one of Aristophanes' plays. p. 46, _Triphales_, a three-plumed helmet-wearer; _Trilophos_, a three-crested helmet-wearer; _Tettix_ (the gra.s.shopper), a sign of honour worn as a golden ornament; "_Autochthon-brood_": the Athenians so called themselves, boasting that they were as old as the country they inhabited; _Taugetan_, a mountain near Sparta. p. 47, _Ruppapai_, a sailor's cry; _Mitulene_, the capital of Lesbos, a famous seat of learning, and the birthplace of many great men; _Oidipous_, son of Laius, king of Thebes, and Jocasta: he murdered his own father; _Phaidra_, who fell in love with her son Hippolytus; _Auge_, the mother of Telephus by Hercules; _Kanake_, a daughter of aeolus, who bore a child to her brother Macareus; _antistrophe_, a part of the Greek choral ode. p. 48, _Aigina_, an island opposite Athens. p. 49, _Prutaneion_, the large hall at Athens where the magistrates feasted with those who had rendered great services to the country; _Ariphrades_, a person ridiculed by Aristophanes for his filthiness; _Karkinos_ and his sons were Athenian dancers: supposed here to have been performing in a play of Ameipsias. p. 50, _Parach.o.r.egema_, the subordinate chorus; _Aristullos_, an infamous poet; "_Bald Bard's hetairai_," Aristophanes' female companions. p. 51, _Murrhine_ and _Akalanthis_, chorus girls representing "good-humour" and "indulgence"; _Kailligenia_, a name of Ceres: here it means her festival celebrated by the woman chorus of the _Thesmophoriaxousai_; _Lusandros_ == Lysander, a celebrated Spartan general; _Euboia_, a large island in the aegean Sea; "_The Great King's Eye_," the nickname of the Persian amba.s.sador in the play of _The Acharnians_; _Kompolakuthes_, a puffed-up braggadocio. p. 52, _Strattis_, a comic poet; _klepsudra_, a water clock; _Sphettian vinegar_ == vinegar from the village of Sphettus; _silphion_, a herb by some called masterwort, by some benzoin, by others pellitory; _Kleonclapper_, _i.e._, a scourge of Cleon; _Agathon_, an Athenian poet, very lady-like in appearance, a character in _The Women's Festival_ of Aristophanes; "_Babaiax!_" interjection of admiration. p. 54, "_Told him in a dream_" (see Cicero, _Divinatione_, xxv); _Euphorion_, a son of aeschylus, who published four of his father's plays after his death, and defeated Euripides with one of them; _Trugaios_, a character in the comedy of _Peace_: he is a distressed Athenian who soars to the sky on a beetle's back; _Philonides_, a Greek comic poet of Athens; _Simonides_, a celebrated poet of Cos, 529 B.C.: he was the first poet who wrote for money: he bore the character of an avaricious man; _Kallistratos_, a comic poet, rival of Aristophanes; _Asklepios_ == aesculapius; _Iophon_, a son of Sophocles, who tried to make out that his father was an imbecile. p. 58, _Maketis_, capital of Macedonia; _Pentelikos_, a mountain of Attica, celebrated for its marble. p. 60, _Lamachos_: the "Great Captain" of the day was the brave son of Xenophanes, killed before Syracuse B.C. 414: satirised by Aristophanes in _The Acharnians_; _Pisthetairos_, a character in Aristophanes' _Birds_; _Strepsiades_, a character in _The Clouds_ of Aristophanes; _Ariphrades_ (see under p. 49). p. 63, "_Nikias, ninny-like_," the Athenian general who ruined Athens at Syracuse--was very superst.i.tious. p. 64, _Hermai_, statues of Mercury in the streets of Athens: we have one in the British Museum. p. 67, _Sophroniskos_, was the father of Socrates. p. 75, _Kephisophon_, a friend of Euripides, said to have afforded him literary a.s.sistance. p. 79, _Palaistra_, the boy's school for physical culture. p. 82, _San_, the letter S, used as a horse-brand. p. 81, _Aias_ == Ajax. p. 82, _Pisthetairos_, an enterprising Athenian in the comedy of the _Birds_. p. 83, "_Rocky-ones_" == Athenians; _Peparethian_, famous wine of Peparethus, on the coast of Macedonia. p.

85, _Promachos_, a defender or champion, name of a statue: the bronze statue of _Athene Promachos_ is here referred to, which was erected from the spoils taken at Marathon, and stood between the Propylaea and the Erechtheum: the proportions of this statue were so gigantic that the gleaming point of the lance and the crest of the helmet were visible to seamen on approaching the Piraeus from Sunium (Seyffert, _Dict. Cla.s.s.

Ant._); _Oresteia_, the trilogy or three tragedies of aeschylus--the _Agamemnon_, the _Choephorae_, and the _Eumenides_. p. 86, _Kimon_, son of Miltiades: he was a famous Athenian general, and was banished by the _Boule_, or council of state; _Prodikos_, a Sophist put to death by the Athenians about 396 B.C., satirised by Aristophanes. p. 87, _Kottabos_, a kind of game in which liquid is thrown up so as to make a loud noise in falling: it was variously played (_see_ Seyffert's _Dict. Cla.s.s. Ant._, p.

165); _Choes_, an Athenian festival; _Theoros_, a comic poet of infamous character. p. 88, _Brilesian_, Brilessus, a mountain of Attica. p. 89, "_Plataian help_," prompt a.s.sistance: the Plataeans furnished a thousand soldiers to help the Athenians at Marathon; _Saperdion_, a term of endearment; _Empousa_, a hobgoblin or horrible sceptre: "Apollonius of Tyana saw in a desert near the Indus an empousa or ghul taking many forms"

(_Philostratus_, ii., 4); _Kimberic_, name of a species of vestment. p.