to the man who announces cheap sardines, then to the man who proposes a large public sacrifice in honor of so toward an event),[1] might easily give rise to the belief that the state could supply all the wants of the poor, if only it chose to do it. It should be noted, further, that nothing is said of communism in the opening of the play. Misrule and inequality of property are the evils which the women set out to correct. At first the suggestion is made that the state might fittingly provide for the wants of the poor.[2] Only when the rule of the women is actually under way is the more radical proposition broached. Starting with the theory of equal rights, the women now propose that all property be vested in the state as such, and that the state supply all the wants of all its citizens. In the scene justifying this proposal[3] it is explained that all work will be done by slaves, that the houses will all be thrown into one, that meals will be served in public, and that marriage, or any permanence in the relations of men and women, will be abolished. The promoters of this scheme recognize that it will do away with the value of money and with all commerce as well as with much crime, and further, that it will remove both the necessity of labor and the incentive to labor. The practice of assigning offices by lot, as though they were gifts which the state might bestow on a few citizens, no doubt made it seem more feasible to propose that the state give meals to all its citizens and assign them places at the table by lot. The presentation of this plan, and that through women disguised as men, formed a fitting subject for comedy; to criticise was no part of the poet's purpose. He does, however, suggest the result the shipwreck of the whole plan in the failure to adjust satisfactorily the relations between men and women.
The sources of wealth are enumerated in the Birds (588 f.) as agriculture, mines, commerce, and buried moneys; in regard to each of these the birds profess to be able to help men more than the gods. Crime offers many opportunities of gaining wealth; when a man becomes suddenly rich, as did Chremylus, it is assumed that he did not gain his wealth honestly.[4] In time
