408 HISTORY OF THE dragged CaUistratus* before the council of the Five Hundred, (which, as a supreme tribunal, had also the superintendence of the festival amuse- ments,) and overwhelmed him with reproaches and threats. With re- gard to Aristophanes himself, it is probable that Cleon made an indirect attempt to bring him into danger by an indictment against him for as- suming the rights of a citizen without being entitled to them, (yp«</n) ££j'/ct£.) There is no doubt that the poet successfully repelled the charge, and victoriously asserted his civic rights. f § 3. In the following year, (01. 88, 3. b. c. 425,) at the Lensea, Aristophanes brought out the Acharnians, the earliest of his extant dramas. Compared with most of his plays, the Acharnians is a harm- less piece : its chief object is to depict the earnest longing for a peacefid country life on the part of those Athenians who took no pleasure in the babbling of the market-place, and had been driven into the city against their will by the military plans of Pericles. Along with this, a few lashes are administered to the demagogues, who, like Cleon, had inflamed the martial propensities of the people, and to the generals, who, like Lamachus, had shown far too great a love for the war. We have also in this play an early specimen of his literary criticism, directed against Euripides, whose overwrought attempts to move the feelings, and the vulgar shrewdness with which he had invested the old heroes, were highly offensive to our poet. In this play we have at once all the pecu- liar characteristics of the Aristophanic comedy ; — his bold and genial ori- ginality, the lavish abundance of highly comic scenes with which he has filled every part of his piece, the surprising and striking delineation of character which expresses a great deal with a few master-touches, the vivid and plastic power with which the scenes are arranged, the ease with which he has disposed of all difficulties of space and time. In- deed, the play possesses its author's peculiar characteristics in such perfection and completeness, that it may be proper in this place to give such an analysis of this, the oldest extant comedy, as may serve to illus- trate not merely the general ideas, which we have already given, but also the whole plot and technical arrangement of the drama. The stage in this play represents sometimes town and sometimes country, and was probably so arranged that both were shown upon it at once. When the comedy begins, the stage gives us a glimpse of the Pnyx, or place of public assembly ; that is to say, the spectator saw the
- We say CaUistratus, because, as ^o^«S(Sa<r»aXo; and protagonist in the Acharnians,
he acted the part of Dicjeopolis, and because the public could not fail to understand the words alro; T if/.avTov vvo KXia/vo; a 'vccfov, Iwiirricfiai, V. 377 foil., as spoken of the performer himself. In the iroinrh; of the parabasis in the Acharnians we do not hesitate to recognize Aristophanes, whose talents could not have remained unknown to the public for three years. f Schol. Acharn. 377. It was on this occasion, according to the author of the Vita Aristojihanis, that Aristophanes quoted that verse of Homer, (Odyss. I. 216,) o!) ynp vu ti; my yoiov ciro; aviyitii.
