Aspasia for impiety'. His brother MYRTILUS was also a comedian2. 421 B.C. EUPOLIS was not much older than Aristophanes. It is stated by Suidas that he was seventeen years old when he began to exhibit; and if we may conclude from another statement3, that he produced his first comedy in the archonship of Apollodorus, he must have been born about the year 446 B.C.1 The success of his comedy, called Novμnvíaι, in 425 B.C. has been already mentioned. Two of his comedies, the Mapukas and the Kóλakes appeared in The AUTÓλUKOs came out in the following year, when perhaps he wrote the 'Aσrpáтevтo also, for that play appears to have preceded the Eipnun of Aristophanes, which was acted in 419 B. c. According to one account, he was thrown overboard by Alcibiades on his way to Sicily in 415 B. C., in consequence of some invectives against that celebrated man, which he had introduced into one of his comedies. The story is improbable in itself; and is, besides, refuted by two circumstances: Eratosthenes adduced some comedies which he had written after the year 415 B. C., and Pausanias tells us that his tomb was on the banks of the Asopus in the territory of Sicyonians7. According to another account, he fell in a sea fight in the Hellespont; and Ægina is said to have been the place of his burial. The titles of twenty-four of his comedies have been preserved. Eupolis was very personal and scurrilous, and almost every one of his plays seems to have been written to caricature and lampoon some obnoxious individual. The Μαρικάς was a professed attack upon the demagogue Hyperbolus: in the AUTÓλukos he ridiculed the handsome pan 1. Plutarch. Pericles, cxxxi, xxxii. This was about the year 432 B.C. 2. Suid. Μυρτίλος. 4. Clinton, F. H. II. p. 63. 3. Prolegom. Aristoph. p. xxix. 5. See Clinton, under these years. Autolycus was a sort of Agathon; like Agathon he obtained a victory at the public games, and is the hero of a symposium (Athen. v. 187. F. 217. D. and Xenoph. Symposium); and like Agathon he was courted for his personal attractions. Athen. p. 188. A. 6. Quis enim non dixit, Euroλi, tòv tñs άpxaías, ab Alcibiade, navigante in Siciliam, dejectum esse in mare? Redarguit Eratosthenes. Adfert enim, quas ille post id tempus fabulas docuerit.-Cicero ad Att. vi. 1. 7. Pausan. ii. 7, 3. 9. 8. Fabricius, II. p. 445. Harles. Schol. Nub. 591. ἐδιδάχθη καθ ́ Υπερβόλου μετὰ τὸν Κλέωνος θανατον. See also the passage from the 'Is quoted below. cratiast of that name'; in the Αστράτευτοι, which was probably a pasquinade, a pasquinade, directed against the useless and cowardly citizens of Athens, Melanthus was denounced as an epicure2: the Barтal seems to have had a similar object3, and in the Λακεδαίμονες, he inveighed against Cimon, both in his public and private character, because that statesman was thought to incline too much to the Spartans, and shewed in every action a desire to counteract the democratical principle, which was at work in the Athenian constitution': Aristophanes, too, seems to have been on bad terms with Eupolis, whom he charges with having pillaged the materials for his Μαρίκας from the Ιππης, and with making scurrilous jokes on his premature baldness". Eupolis appears to have been a warm admirer of Pericles as a statesman and as a man', as it was reasonable that such a Comedian should be, if it is true that he owed his unrestrained license of speech to the patronage of that celebrated minister. 1. Athen. v. 216. D. where Eupolis is said to have brought out this piece under the name of Demostratus, probably the same as Demopoetus, a comic poet mentioned by Suidas v. χάραξ. 2. Schol. Aristoph. Pax, 808. 3. Id. ibid. The words of Juvenal, ii. 91. if they refer to this Comedy, would imply that the obscene rites of Cotytto were the objects of his censure— Talia secretâ coluerunt orgia tædâ Cecropiam soliti Baptæ lassare Cotytto. 4. Plutarch. Cim. xv. With regard to the name of the Comedy, we may remark, that Cimon had called his son Lacedamonius, (see Thucyd. i. 45.) and that the name of the son was often an epithet of the father. Müller, Dor. i. 3. §. 10. note (f). 5. 6. οὗτοι δ ̓ ὡς ἅπαξ παρέδωκεν λαβὴν Ὑπέρβολος, ἐκστρέψας τοὺς ἡμετέρους Ιππέας κακὸς κακώς, προσθεὶς αὐτῷ γραῦν μεθύσην, τοῦ κόρδακος ούνεχ', ἣν Φρύνιχος πάλαι πεποίηχ ̓, ἣν τὸ κῆτος ἤσθιεν.—Nubes 551. seqq. See the Schol. on Nub. 532, 7. Eupolis. Δήμοις οὐδ ̓ ἔσκωψε τοὺς φαλάκρους. Κράτιστος οὗτος ἐγένετ ̓ ἀνθρώπων λέγειν. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. p. 794. Dindorf. Other writers of the Old Comedy are mentioned as the predecessors or contemporaries of Aristophanes; but we know little more of them than their names; though it is probable that many of them (for instance, AMEIPSIAS, who twice conquered Aristophanes) were, at least in the opinion of their contemporaries, by no means deficient in merit. CHAPTER VI. SECTION II. ARISTOPHANES. le suys, moyennant ung peu de Pantagruelisme (vous entendez que c'est certaine guayeté desperit conficte en mepriz des choses fortuites) sain et degourt; prest a boyre, si voulez-RABELAIS. Of the works of the other comedians we possess only detached fragments; but eleven of the plays of ARISTOPHANES have come down to us complete. This alone would incline us to wish for a fuller account of the writer, even though the intrinsic value of his remaining comedies were not so great as it really is; unfortunately, however, we know much less about Aristophanes than any other of his distinguished contemporaries, and the materials for his biography are so scanty and of so little credit, that we willingly turn from them to his works, in which we see a living picture of the man and his times. The following are the few particulars which are known regarding his personal history'. His father's name was Philippus, not Philippides, as has been inferred from the inscription on a bust supposed to represent him3. Of the rank and station of his father we know nothing; 1. The reader will find a full and accurate discussion of all questions relating to the life of Aristophanes down to the representation of the "Clouds" in Ranke's Commentatio de Aristophanes Vitâ, prefixed to Thiersch's edition of the "Plutus." 2. This is stated by all the authorities of his life—namely, his anonymous biogra pher, the writer on Comedy in the Greek prolegomena to Aristophanes, the Scholiast on Plato, and Thomas Magister. 3. The inscription is 'Apioтopávns Þiλiñπídov. That this statue is not genuine is now generally agreed. See Winckelmann, ii. p. 114. The fact that his son's name was Philippus, is an evidence that it was also his grandfather's name. Ranke CLXXxiv. it is presumed, however, from his own silence and that of his enemies, that it was respectable. More than one country claims the honor of being his birth-place. The anonymous writer on Comedy says merely that he was an Athenian; the author of his life, and Thomas Magister, add that he was of the Cydathenæan Deme, and Pandionid Tribe. Suidas tells us, that some said he was from Lindus in Rhodes, or from Camirus; that others called him an Egyptian', and others an Æginetan. All this confusion seems to have arisen from the fact, that Cleon, in revenge for some of the invectives with which Aristophanes had assailed him, brought an action against the poet with a view to deprive him of his civic rights (ξενίας γραφή). Now the defence which Aristophanes is said to have set up on this occasion, shews the object of Cleon was to prove that he was not the son of his reputed father Philippus, but the offspring of an illicit intercourse between his mother and some person who was not an Athenian citizen. Consequently his nominal parents are tacitly admitted to have been Athenian citizens, and, as Cleon failed to prove his illegitimacy, he must have been one likewise. That he was born at Athens cannot but be evident to every one who has read his comedies. Would a mere resident alien have laboured so strenuously for the good of his adopted country? Would one who was not a citizen by birth have ventured to laugh at all who did not belong to the old Athenian Opaτpía?? and how are we otherwise to account for the purely Athenian spirit, language, and tone which pervade every line that he wrote ? It would not be difficult to explain why these different countries have been assigned as the birth-places of Aristophanes. With regard to the statement that he was a Rhodian: he is very often confounded with Antiphanes, and Anaxandrides, the former of whom was, according to Dionysius, a Rhodian, and the latter, according to Suidas, born at Camirus. The notion that he was an Egyptian may very well have arisen from the many allusions which he makes to the people of that country, and their peculiar customs. With regard to the statement of Heliodorus that he was from Naucratis, it is possible that writer may be alluding to some commercial residence of his ancestors in that city, but his words do not imply that either 1. Heliodorus Teрi AкроTÓλews, (apud Athen. vi. p. 229. E.) says that he was of Naucratis in the Delta. 2. Ran. 418. Aves. 765. |