act in the dramatic exhibitions, or by some other means which are not clearly explained. Nor can we make out in what way the poet met him, though it appears that finding less public sympathy than he thought himself entitled to, he made an apology without intending to be bound by it.[1] Certain it is, that his remaining plays subsequent to the Knights, though containing some few bitter jests against Kleon, manifest no second deliberate set against him.
The battle of Amphipolis removed at once the two most pronounced individual opponents of peace, Kleon and Brasidas. Athens too was more than ever discouraged and averse to pro- longed fighting; for the number of hoplites slain at Amphipolis doubtless filled the city with mourning, besides the unparalleled disgrace now tarnishing Athenian soldiership. The peace-party under the auspices of Nikias and Laches, relieved at once from the internal opposition of Kleon, as well as from the foreign enterprise of Brasidas, were enabled to resume their negotiations with Sparta in a spirit promising success. King Pleistoanax, and the Spartan ephors of the year, were on their side equally bent on terminating the war, and the deputies of all the allies were con- voked at Sparta for discussion with the envoys of Athens. Such discussion was continued during the whole autumn and winter after the battle of Amphipolis, without any actual hostilities on either side. At first, the pretensions advanced were found very
conflicting ; but at length, after several debates, it was agreed to treat upon the basis of each party surrendering what had been
- ↑ See the obscure passage, Vespæ, 1285, seqq.; Aristoph. Vita Anonymi, p. xiii, ed. Bekker : Demosthen. cont. Meid. p. 532.It appears that Aristophanes was of Æginetan parentage (Acharn. 629); so that the (
Greek characters) (indictment for undue assumption of the rights of an Athenian citizen) was founded upon a real fact. Between the time of
the conquest of Ægina by Athens, and the expulsion of the native inhabitants in the first year of the Peloponnesian war (an interval of about twenty years), probably no inconsiderable number of Æginetans became intermingled or intermarried with Athenian citizens. Especially men of poetical talent in the subject-cities would find it their interest to repair to Athens :
Ion came from Chios, and Achacus from Eretria; both tragic composers.The comic author Eupolis seems also to have directed some taunts against the foreign origin of Aristophanês, if Meineke is correct in his interpretation of a passage (Historia Comicor. Græc. i, p. 111).
