Alcibiades, long the popular favourite, has recently been banished, and is now living privately in Thrace;—shall he be recalled? Both answer enigmatically; but the advice of the elder poet plainly tends to the policy of recall, which was no doubt the prevailing inclination of the Athenians. In vain does Euripides remind Bacchus that he had come there purposely to bring him back, and had pledged his word to do so. The god quotes against him a well-known verse from his own tragedy of 'Hippolytus,' with the sophistry of which his critics were never tired of taunting him—
It was my tongue that swore.
And Æschylus, crowned by his decision as the First of Tragedians, is led off in triumphal procession in the suite of the god of the drama, with Pluto's hearty approbation. He leaves his chair in the Shades to Sophocles,—with strict injunctions to keep Euripides out of it.
This very lively comedy, the humour of which is still so intelligible, seems to have supplied the original idea for those modern burlesques upon the Olympian and Tartarian deities which were at one time so popular. For some reason it was not brought out in the author's own name; but it gained the first prize, and was acted a second time, probably in the same year—an honour, strange to say, very unusual at Athens.
