improbability that Alcibiades would be introduced under the circumstances the play itself contains no ground for supposing that he is introduced; and (2) that the notion about Gorgias is as unsupported by internal, as it confessedly is by external, evidence. With regard, then, to Alcibiades-In the first place I cannot do better than quote the words of an author, perhaps the only one whose opinion Prof. Süvern would admit to be of equal weight with his own: "Some commentators have, indeed, attempted to draw a comparison between Peisthetairos in this play, and Alkibiades ; but this is totally without foundation; the former is no warloving commander, but the faithful counseller of the public, who unites the volatile, fickle people of the birds, and explains to them the power they would possess, if they would combine together in a well-fortified city, which being constructed midway between the gods and the men, would make both dependent upon them. He then directs the foundation of the city, and the ordinary affairs of the community, whilst the foreign relations, the forts, and garrisons are attended to by Epops, as commanderin-chief; he thus succeeds in securing to the birds the service of mankind, and recovers for them from the gods the sovereignty which they had lost. Here is a demagogue and commander of a very different character from that of Alkibiades; and whilst Peisthetairos, instead of exerting himself to destroy the democracy, makes minced meat of the anti-democratical birds (v. 1584), Alkibiades finished his career by the overthrow of the democratic constitution of his country." This passage, with which I cordially agree, occurs in Professor Süvern's Essay on the "Clouds" (p. 58, Eng. Tr.), and was published just one year before the production of the Essay on the "Birds." In the former Essay, his object was to prove that Pheidippides meant Alcibiades; in the latter Essay, that proposition is discreetly ignored: it would be too glaringly absurd to say that Pheidippides and Peisthetarus were derived from the same prototype. But further, Alcibiades was in the prime of life, Peisthetærus is an elderly man; cf. 320, φήμ' ἀπ ̓ ἀνθρώπων ἀφῖχθαι δεῦρο πρεσβύτα δύο. Alcibiades was distinguished for restless activity, and entered with hearty enjoyment into all the busy phases of Athenian life; Peisthetærus, disgusted with the same life, for sakes Athens to seek for τόπον ἀπράγμονα, 44. It is true that Peisthetærus finds anything but what he seeks in the course of the play; but if the Poet had intended any allusion to Alcibiades, he would not have thus bewildered his audience at the outset. Again, the alarm as to the Salaminia above quoted is expressed not by Peisthetarus but Euelpides; for whom indeed we might make out quite as good a claim to the honour of being Alcibiades in disguise. Lastly, the words où σoßoûvros oùdevòs, if they have a serious meaning, seem to have been added expressly to warn the audience that the two wanderers now soliciting their applause, did not belong to the band of exiles deservedly proscribed for their gross impiety. These discrepancies, then, prove that Peisthetærus does not represent Alcibiades. Now with regard to Gorgias. In this case it cannot be expected that we should find so many points of opposition between the Dramatic Person and his supposed prototype; because of Gorgias's character we have very little information, and that little is not always traceable to any trustworthy sources. We know from Plato (Hipp. Maj. p. 282. b) that Gorgias was sent by the Leontini as one of the ambassadors to Athens in the year 427 B.C. That he subsequently revisited Greece is certain; that he spent some time in Athens, very probable; but that he ever made Athens his permanent abode is an assumption of Süvern's entirely unsupported hy evidence. What evidence we have makes against it. Cicero, Orator, LII. 176, says, "Isocrates, quum tamen audivisset in Thessalia adolescens senem jam Gorgiam...." Now if Gorgias had been a permanent resident in Athens, he might have heard him at home without going to Thessaly. Isocrates was about twenty-two years old, adolescens, when this play was produced. Moreover, if Gorgias had ever possessed a house of his own at Athens, Plato would scarcely have introduced him as the guest of Callicles (Gorg. p. 447. d). That he ever occupied so important a place in public estimation as that a miscellaneous audience would recognize him when introduced on the stage under a false name, ovk éέŋkaσμévos, and combined with another person, is quite incredible. For his popularity at Athens, Süvern relies upon an obscure Scholiast, whose words are ἐλθόντος δὲ Γοργίου εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας ἐπεδείξατο ἐκεῖ λόγον καὶ εὐδοκίμησε πάνυ, ὥστε ἡνίκα ἐπεδείκνυτο λόγον ὁ Γοργίας ἑορτὴν ἄπρακτον ἐποίουν Ἀθηναῖοι. Who does not see that this is a stupid matter-of-fact misconception of Plato's joke at the beginning of the Gorgias ? Ἀλλ ̓ ἦ, τὸ λεγόμενον, κατόπιν ἑορτῆς ἥκομεν καὶ ὑστεροῦμεν; καὶ μάλα γε ἀστείας ἑορτῆς ̇ Πολλὰ γὰρ καὶ καλὰ Γοργίας ἡμῖν ὀλίγον πρότερον ἐπεδείξατο. I may remark, by the way, that the Professor seems to have no notion that one piece of evidence differs from another in historical value. He places precisely the same reliance upon an anecdote, whether gleaned from Plutarch, or the PseudoPlutarch, or Philostratus, as upon a statement of Thucydides. Now I maintain that these anecdotes cannot possibly be relied on as containing even a nucleus of fact. For on what authority do they come to us? Collected and repeated by the compilers of iñoμvýμaтα, who abounded in the Alexandrian and Augustan times, a class of persons who had no more power or inclination to sift fact from fiction than our own Mr Joseph Miller, "And chewed by blind old Scholiasts o'er and o'er," they cannot be converted into history by the endorsement of the most respectable name 600 years after date. They were assignats without assets when first issued, and it is only by fraud or folly that they are current now. The good sense of Plutarch discards those which bear falsehood on their front; he admits, without enquiry, all which are vraisemblable. It does not follow that we are bound to admit them as true. How seldom we can rely upon an anecdote even of our own time! They are invented for the most part, like fables, as a convenient vehicle for the transmission of a moral lesson or a good saying; sometimes great men, warriors, politicians, authors, are the interlocutors, sometimes lions, foxes, owls; and I no more believe that Pericles and Alcibiades actually said the good things assigned to them, than I accept Phædrus and Lafontaine as historians. Some of the Greek anecdotes probably come from misunderstood jests of comic dramatists; some, perhaps, may have a basis of fact, and be derived from continuous tradition; but which these are we have no means of testing*. We may use of each and all the words Athenæus (p. 506. ß) applied to one: TOUTO & TEр OUTWs ἀληθείας ἔχει, θεὸς ἂν εἰδείη. How comes it that our Professor, who accepts every anecdote for fact, and finds some allusion thereto in the play, overlooked the eminently Aristophanic and appropriate story of Gorgias and the swallow told in the Rhetoric of Aristotle (III. 3)? We may observe that in these anecdotes literary men assume an importance which they by no means held in the estimation of their contemporaries. Literature magnifies its office unduly. That Gorgias was ever a prominent personage in the eyes of the Athenian people, we have no proof. The emirápios λóyos of ἐπιτάφιος λόγος which we read, was probably a rhetorical exercise never spoken at any real funeral. At Athens such an office was, so far as we know, never assigned to any but an illustrious citizen. Still less is there any ground for the supposition that it was spoken over the Athenians who fell at Orneæ, 415 B.C.* It is not even proved that any Athenians fell at all (cf. Thuc. vI. 7). Gorgias is only twice mentioned in Aristophanes, both times in conjunction with one Philippus, of whom nothing more is known, once cursorily in the "Wasps" (421), and again in this play, to which I shall refer presently. He was, at all events, a foreigner, and Peisthetærus and his companion expressly claim to be true Athenians, bred and born (33, 34): ἡμεῖς δὲ φυλῇ καὶ γένει τιμώμενοι ἀστοὶ μετ ̓ ἀστῶν οὐ σοβοῦντος οὐδενὸς Again, in 1700 sqq., the chorus denounces in a parenthetic song, the teachers of rhetoric, who fill their belly with their tongue; βάρβαροι δ ̓ εἰσὶν γένος Γοργίαι τε καὶ Φίλιπποι, and immediately after, greets the triumphant Peisthetærus with an enthusiastic epithalamium. What more convincing proof could we have of the fact that Peisthetærus and Gorgias are not at all connected in the idea of the poet, or meant to be connected in that of the spectators? The whole question may be thus briefly summed up: Peisthetærus is an Athenian, therefore he is not Gorgias; Peisthetærus is an elderly man, therefore he is not Alcibiades; therefore he is neither one nor the other. "Therefore," says Süvern, "he is both :" a conclusion which common logic and common sense utterly repudiate. But Prof. Süvern will tell us, that Gorgias and Alcibiades had the sophistical element in common, which is reproduced in Peisthetærus. * The vagueness of Philostratus's words (Vit. Soph. 1. 9) εlρптαι pèv èπì τοῖς ἐκ τῶν πολέμων πεσοῦσιν seems to shew that no particular battle was mentioned in the oration. That Alcibiades can be called a Sophist in any proper sense of the word, I utterly deny. His speeches, as reported in Thucydides, are not a whit more sophistical than those of Pericles or Nicias. They represent the headstrong, impetuous, bold, and unscrupulous man he was. His contemporaries, whom he loved to dazzle and amaze by his bravery, magnificence and recklessness, would have been astonished to hear him coupled with Gorgias as a Sophist. Aristophanes would have been as much astonished as any. Again, I deny that Peisthetærus has any claim to be called Sophist. The words "sophist," "sophistical," occur hundreds of times in the Essay, applied to so many persons and things, that it is difficult to get a notion of the sense in which they are used. We may be permitted to suppose that, having no very definite sense, they are found very convenient to mask a halting argument, or hazy conception. If Peisthetærus is a Sophist, because he is never at a loss for words, and uses any argument good or bad, in jest or earnest, to refute or overpersuade his opponents, then are Dicæopolis, and Trygæus, and Bdelycleon, and Lysistrate, also Sophists; even Mercutio, and Prince Hal, and Benedick and Beatrice, will hardly escape the like imputation. "But," says the Professor, "Peisthetærus and Euelpides are announced to the birds in three passages as Sophists." We turn to these three passages. In 1. 318, they are called λεπTÒ λογιστὰ; in 409, ξένω σοφῆς ἀφ ̓ Ἑλλάδος; in 429, one is πυκνότατον κίναδος, σόφισμα, κύρμα, τρίμμα, παιπάλημ ̓ ὅλον. We are less surprised to find that one who can translate all these words into "sophists," translates opvoeńpa, "sophists," too. (62). I would ask, does Peisthetærus act like a Sophist when he beats Meton, himself a σopiors in the language of the Athenian people, (1019), and those two humbugs, the Government Surveyor and the Act-of-Parliament Vendor, (1045 sqq.), when he gives such salutary counsel to the would-be parricide (13621369), and when he administers such deserved chastisement to the Sycophant (1465)? In truth, he differs very little in language or spirit from Dicæopolis or Chremylus, or Trygæus-he belongs to the ordinary type of heroes of comedy. The sympathies of author and audience go with him from the beginning to the end. He is an Athenian citizen "of the right sort," endowed with qualities much admired in ancient Athens, viz. cleverness, |