be an Athenian: he hated the mob-orators of his time, not only for their principles but for their vulgar origin, with an intensity which he did not care to disguise, and which, had not his wit and his boldness made him a popular favourite, rather in spite of his opinions than because of them, would have brought him into even more trouble than it actually did. He began to write for the stage at a very early age—so early, that he was not allowed by law to produce his two first pieces (now unfortunately lost) in his own name. Some of the old commentators would have us believe that he wrote his first comedy when he was only eighteen, but this, from internal evidence, seems improbable; he must have been five or six years older. He supplied the dramatic festivals with comedies, more or less successful, for at least thirty-seven years (from B.C. 427 to 390); but of the forty plays which he is known to have produced we have only eleven, and some of them in a more or less imperfect form. For the preservation of these, according to ancient tradition, we are indebted to one who might have seemed a very unlikely patron for this kind of pagan literature—no other than St John Chrysostom. That worthy father of the Church is said to have slept with a manuscript of Aristophanes under his pillow; it is at least certain that he had studied his plays and admired them, since he has not unfrequently imitated their language in his own writings.
Some enthusiastic admirers of Aristophanes would have us regard him not only as a brilliant humorist, but as a high moral teacher, concealing a grand design under the mask of a buffoon. They seem to think
