But it is hard to believe that too many difficulties were settled by 'Justice,' and too few by force, even in the last quarter of the fifth century. Nor is it necessary to conclude that Aristophanes would really have liked a return to the more primitive methods which the growth of Athenian law had superseded. The Wasps probably[1] won the first prize. Its political tendency is visible in the names of the insane old judge Philocleon and his wiser son Bdelycleon—'Love-Cleon' and 'Loathe-Cleon' respectively. And the sham trial got up for the entertainment of Philocleon is a riddle not hard to read: the dog Labes is vexatiously prosecuted by a dog ('Kuôn') from Kydathenaion for stealing a cheese, just as the general Laches had been prosecuted by Cleon from Kydathenaion for extortion. The various ways in which Philocleon's feelings are worked upon, his bursts of indignation and of pity, look like a good parody of the proceedings of an impulsive Athenian jury. Racine's celebrated adaptation, Les Plaideurs, does not quite make up by its superior construction for its loss of 'go' and naturalness. The institutions of the Wasps are essentially those of its own age.
In 421 Aristophanes produced the Peace, a weak rechauffé of the Acharnians, only redeemed by the parody of Euripides's Bellerophon* with which it opens. The hero does not possess a Pegasus, as Bellerophon did, but he fattens up a big Mount Etna beetle—the huge beast that one sees rolling balls in the sandy parts of Greece and Italy—and flies to heaven upon it, to the acute annoyance of his servants and daughters. The Peace won the second prize.
After 421 comes a gap of seven years in our records.
- ↑ The 'Hypothesis' is corrupt. Cf. Leo in Rh. Mus. xxxiii. 20
