duced at a time when the Athenians, puffed up with vanity, confidently looked for the reduction of Sicily and the dominion of Greece. Aristophanes alone, at this critical period, ventured to raise the note of warning, and satirize their foolish ambition. The choruses in this drama ring with the sweet music of the wild woods; they were rendered by twenty-four performers plumed so as to represent as many different kinds of birds. The Hoopoe thus calls his fellows to a mass-meeting: For an envoy, queer and shrewd, For the welfare of the state. With a hurry, scurry, Hurry to the meeting and attend to the debate." FRERE. STYLE OF ARISTOPHANES.—In weighing the merits of Aristophanes, it must be remembered that many of his peculiar beauties cannot be translated, and that we lose his local hits from our inability to see things from an Athenian standpoint. He is often indelicate in his allusions; he is as ready with town slang and the cant of the shop as with the most elegant phrase. But Attic salt seasons the whole, and none ever handled the versatile Greek tongue more deftly. In his command of language, he is equalled only by Plato, who felt the comic poet's power when he said that in the soul of Aristophanes the Graces sought an imperishable shrine. Amid all his humor and buffoonery sparkles genius of the highest order. His aim seems to have been to elevate his art. Some of the improvements he claimed to have introduced, are thus set forth in an address which he puts into the mouth of the leader of the chorus in his "Peace :" "It was he that indignantly swept from the stage the paltry ignoble device Of a Hercules needy and seedy and greedy, a vagabond sturdy and stout, Now baking his bread, now swindling instead, now beaten and battered about. And freedom he gave to the lacrimose slave who was wont with a howl to rush in, And all for the sake of a joke which they make on the wounds which disfigure his skin. Such vulgar contemptible lumber at once he bade from the drama depart, And then, like an edifice stately and grand, he raised and ennobled THOROLD ROGERS. the art." COMEDIES OF ARISTOPHANES. 221 Aristophanes outlived the license of the old comedy, which died with liberty. When in 404 B.C. the popular government was overthrown, and Thirty Tyrants, supported by Sparta, lorded it over Athens, a statute was passed making personal attacks on the stage capital offences; an actor who defied the law was actually starved to death. Thenceforth the comic poet dared not individualize the object of his satire; he tilted against vice and folly in general, or thrust at his intended victims indirectly under assumed names. Aristophanes died about 380 B.C. No other comic poet could vie with him during his lifetime; none worthy to be his successor arose after his death, for "Nature broke the mould in which he was cast. eleven remain entire. THE ACHARNIANS... THE KNIGHTS... THE CLOUDS.. THE WASPS.... The persons constituting the chorus were girt in tightly about the waist, to make them as wasp-like as possible in appearance; skewers did service as stings. PEACE.... THE BIRDS... LYSISTRATA....... THE WOMEN CELEBRATING Of fifty-four comedies from his pen, THE FEAST OF CERES.. 411. " Ridicule of Euripides is the staple of this play. Here again Euripides is the THE WOMEN MET IN ASSEM- Certain strong-minded fe- made up of 77 syllables and PLUTUS.... HISTORY. 405 B.C. 392 " 388" During this halcyon age of Greek poetry, prose also was cultivated, and in the century following the Persian Wars it was brought to maturity. After the victories that secured her freedom, Greece felt the need of a national historian to record the story of her struggles and triumphs. The earliest narrators, as has been shown, confined themselves to mythology and tradition: the times now demanded an artist who could paint with faithful pencil on living canvas those scenes that were the glory of Hellas-and in Herodotus of Halicarnassus that artist appeared. Herodotus (born 484 B.C.).—Halicarnassus was the capital of a Dorian confederacy of states in southern Asia Minor. Its queen Artemisia supported Xerxes in his quarrel with Greece; and although the Athenians, provoked that a woman should take the field against them, offered an immense reward for her capture, she escaped the perils of war, and carried her kingdom safely through the political troubles of the time. The parents of Herodotus were persons of rank and property. His writings prove him to have been well read in the literature of his country. Though not an Ionian born, he adopted the Ionic dialect-the dress in which Greek prose first appeared. Herodotus spent the best twenty years of his life in travel-. ling over the greater part of the known world, studying the history, geography, and customs of the countries he visited. Thebes and Memphis, Tyre and Jerusalem, Babylon and Ecbat'ana-with all he made personal acquaintance, extending his tour as far west as the Greek settlements in Italy, and as far south as the first cataract of the Nile. The marvellousness of the stories he collected brought down upon Herodotus the ridicule of his fellow-citizens; so quitting Halicarnassus when about thirty-seven years of age, he settled at Athens. Here, it is related, he read his history, still in the rough, to the admiring people, who voted him a handsome reward. Here also he seems to have become intimate with Sophocles and his great contemporaries; and here, perhaps, his ambition was kindled to add another star to the galaxy that made Athens the glory of the world. Not long, however, did Herodotus remain at the capital. As one of a band of colonists sent out by Pericles in 443 B.C., he crossed to Italy, and aided in founding the town of Thurii, near the ruins of Syb'aris (see Map, p. 304). At Thurii he spent his last years in revising, enlarging, and polishing his history; yet we are not to believe that he ceased to indulge his passion for travelling when Sicily and southern Italy lay so invitingly before him. He died at the age of sixty, leaving the great work of his life unfinished. The main subject of our author's work is the Græco-Persian War and the triumph of his country. His narrative is from time to time relieved by delightful episodes. Indeed, we owe to him not a few of those romantic tales that invest ancient history with its peculiar charm; while modern research has verified many of the wonder-stories that provoked the derision of his countrymen. Nor do his digressions mar the unity of his history, which is planned and developed as skilfully as a drama of Sophocles. The style of Herodotus is poetical, clear, familiar, fascinating, and marked by a pleasing variety. "His animation," says Macaulay, "his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue, and the pure sweet flow of his language, place him at the head of narrators." His history is the first work of its kind that has descended to us entire. It is divided into nine books, said to have been read by the author at the Olympic Games, and there to have received the names of the Nine Muses, which they still bear.* Certainly no names could have been more appropriately connected with a work that has entitled its author to be called through all time "the Father of History."-Extracts follow : : * An epigram of later date thus accounted for their names:— "The Muses to Herodotus one day came, nine of them, and dined; |