war in his native state.—Ariston of Chios, a stoic philosopher, who lived about 275 b.c.—Ariston, a peripatetic philosopher of Ceos, lived about 230 b.c.—Ariston of Tyre, a friend of Hannibal during his exile in Asia, lived about 200 b.c.—Ariston of Alexandria, a peripatetic philosopher, who lived about 30 b.c.—Ariston of Pella, a Greek author of the first century.—Ariston, a Greek traveller, who explored the eastern coast of Africa at the command of the Ptolemies.
ARISTON, the son and pupil of Aristides of Thebes. His works were impressed with the same tendency towards exaggeration that characterized the school of his father. A "Satyr with a cup," by this artist, is recorded by Pliny. He was the master of Euphranor. Lived about 330 b.c.—R. M.
ARISTON of Sparta, a sculptor in metals, who, with his brother Telestas, executed the colossal statue of Jupiter, presented by the Cleitorians to the temple of Olympia.
ARISTONICUS. Under this name we notice—Aristonicus of Marathon, an Athenian orator of the anti-Macedonian party, put to death by Antipater in 322 b.c.—Aristonicus of Tarentum, an ancient writer on mythology.—Aristonicus, an illegitimate son of Eumenes II. of Pergamus, engaged in an unsuccessful war against the Romans, and put to death in 129 b.c.—Aristonicus, an Alexandrian grammarian, the contemporary of Strabo, who wrote pedantic notes on the Homeric poems.
ARISTONIDAS, a Greek sculptor, who excelled in the manipulation of castings. Pliny makes especial mention of a statue of Athamas at Thebes, in which this artist, by the mixture of the metals employed, succeeded in giving the appearance of blushing. No precise date is known about Aristonidas.—R. M.
ARISTONIMUS, a Greek poet who succeeded Apollonius as curator of the Alexandrian library.
ARISTONUS, a Greek sculptor of the Æginetan school, was the author of a statue of Jupiter presented by the Metapontians to the temple of Olympia. Date uncertain; probably 475 b.c.
ARISTOPHANES, a celebrated comic writer, and citizen of Athens, who was born about the year b.c. 444. He is the only author of the school of old Greek comedy, whose plays are extant. His father's name was Philip, and he belonged to the tribe Pandionis and the Cydathenæon demos. It is difficult to understand the relation in which he stood to the spirit of the age in which he lived, or to compare him with modern writers. If the best papers of the Tatler and Spectator may be justly compared to the "lost comedies of Menander," the plays of Aristophanes exhibit such a compound of caricature, farce, broad satire, and noble sentiments, served up with a condiment of fun, as reminds us, though presented in a different form, of the wittiest portions of the weekly serial "Punch," and the sketches of Gilray and Doyle. His writings have been called a continued political farce; and the expression is just, if we interpret the word political in the sense of including the caricature of the actual state of public affairs, with so much of private life as could not be separated from that which is public. A public tribunal of character is an actual necessity where a popular government exists; and in the times of Aristophanes, when the press had not been invented, no other tribunal could exist but the theatre. He is said to have been a pupil of Prodicus—a statement which some have doubted, as he speaks of him slightingly. The distinguished merits of his comedies excited so much envy against him, that Cleon, an Athenian demagogue, whom he had lashed without mercy, contested his right to be accounted a citizen of Athens; and because he had an estate in Ægina, his enemies endeavoured to represent him as a stranger. Plato speaks of him as voluptuous in private life, and as spending whole nights in brilliant conviviality. The character given of him in Rymer's Short View of Tragedy is terse and forcible. He is described as "appearing in his function a man of wonderful zeal for virtue and the good of his country, laying about him with undaunted resolution for his faith and religion." In pursuance of this design he attacked the Peloponnesian war, attributing it to Pericles, and to the influence exercised over that statesman by the Hetaira Aspasia. In this fatal war he finds the source of the mischievous influence of such coarse demagogues as Cleon. Nor did the corruptions introduced into the system of public education at Athens by the teaching of the sophists escape the severity of his rebuke. He laughed to scorn their efforts to substitute opinion for truth, to make the arts of persuasion the object of conversation and mutual intercourse, and to introduce everywhere a dreary scepticism in matters of religion. He inveighed with equal vigour against the courts of law, the litigious spirit of his countrymen, and the insolence and exaggerated claims of the public judges. The following is a list of his comedies at present extant:—1. "The Hippeis, Horsemen, or Knights;" 2. "Acharnians;" 3. "Clouds;" 4. "Wasps;" 5. "Peace;" 6. "Birds;" 7. "Lysistrata;" 8. "Thesmophoriazusæ; "9. "Frogs;" 10. "Ecclesiazusæ;" 11. "Plutus." He wrote several others, which, unhappily, are lost. Among these were—1. "The Daitaleis," or "Banqueters," produced before Aristophanes was of sufficient age to contend for a prize in his own name, and therefore brought out under the name of Philonides. This comedy, exhibited in the fifth year of the Peloponnesian war (or as others say, the fourth), holds up to public contempt the character of the spendthrift, and attacks, as producing that character, the new system of education, which the Ionian and Eleatic philosophy promoted, and which the sophists conducted. The chorus consists of banqueters in the temple of Hercules, and the point of the whole drama is a recommendation to return to the severe gymnastics, which had formed so large a part of the ancient education of Athens. 2. "The Babylonians." The anonymous life of Aristophanes informs us, that when the demagogue Cleon questioned the poet's right to be a citizen of Athens, because he had lampooned Cleon in that play, Aristophanes did not make use of his unrivalled talent for sarcasm in reply to the doubt cast on his parentage or birthplace, but simply quoted the two verses of Telemachus in the Odyssey:—"That is, I take my mother's word: my mother vows 'twas he; I know not: who can swear he knows?" The attack on him was unsuccessful. Aristophanes wrote, in all, fifty-four dramas. Of the remainder which have been lost, all that we know leads us to conclude that they touched on the same topics, ridiculed the same theories, and were full of the same bold and spirited humour as those that survive. Instead of analysing the latter separately, we prefer to recommend to the general reader the literal translation of them published in Bohn's classical library. Mr. Cotton of Rugby has written a fine scholarly account of them in Dr. Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography." They are replete with quaint and wild buffoonery, and wisdom taught in fun. In one the hero goes up to heaven on the back of a dung-beetle, and finds Mars pounding the Greek states in a mortar. Another finishes with a word of 170 letters. We find in one place a chorus of frogs; birds build cities in the clouds; a dog is tried for stealing a Sicilian cheese; and an iambic verse is formed of the grunts of a pig. Whether these dramas exercised much influence on the opinions and conduct of the Athenian people, may be doubted. The orators, after all, were the men who "wielded at will the fierce democracy of Athens." The incredible shamelessness with which Aristophanes mocks all the gods of his country, must have rendered him a most questionable supporter of religion. It is rather to be presumed, that he purposely defended the popular superstitions in a way more likely to injure them, than any direct attack. Who, as Heeren observes, could appear with reverent devotion at the altar of Jove, after laughing at him in the "Clouds?" Of his gross and profligate indecency, nothing can be said in extenuation, except that it was in accordance with the spirit of the age in which he lived, and hardly surpasses the jokes of Harlequin, among the nations of the south of Europe, especially in his extemporaneous performances. Plato admired the writings of Aristophanes so much, as models of pure Attic, that they are said to have been found under his pillow after his death. Aristophanes died about 380 b.c. There are numerous editions of his plays. The first was "The Aldine," Venice, 1498, folio, omitting the Thesmophoriazusæ and Lysistrata. Kuster's edition, Amsterdam, folio, 1710, contains valuable Scholia, and was partly edited by Richard Bentley, the celebrated critic. That of Bekker, in 5 vols. 8vo, London, 1829, is founded on the collation of two MSS. from Ravenna and Venice, unknown to former editors. Dindorf has published the "Scholia on Aristophanes" in 3 vols., Leipsic, 1826. Mitchell has published five plays, and translated the first three of them into English verse:—namely, the "Acharnians," "Knights," "Wasps, "Clouds," and "Frogs." Mr. Hickie gives us a literal translation of all the plays, in 2 vols., London, 1853. Mr. Cookesley has edited the "Birds," and "Plutus," with English notes. Cumberland translated the "Clouds," 1797. Fielding and Young, the "Plutus;" and some anonymous writers, also, separate plays. Voss, Brunswick, 1821, and Droyson, Berlin, 1835-1838, have translated all into German. Wieland.
