tration, has not advanced an atom of proof in support of this all-important assumption. I say, all-important, because if it can be disproved, all the theory, so far as Alcibiades is concerned, falls to the ground. That the Salaminia had already been sent, is obvious from lines 145 sqq.: οι μοι μηδαμώς ἡμῖν γε παρὰ θάλατταν ἵν ̓ ἀνακύψεται Now I do not dwell on the manifest improbability that this long play had been written and studied by the actors and performed in the interval between the sending of the Salaminia and its return-a month, I suppose, at most; I think it can be shewn that the Salaminia had not only been sent, but come back, and Alcibiades in all probability condemned to death, phun din, before the production of the play. The This The first ὑπόθεσις prefixed to the play tells us ἐδιδάχθη ἐπὶ χαβρίου ἐν ἄστει ; the second says the same, καθῆκεν εἰς ἄστυ, with the additional information that he produced the 'Aμpiápaos at the Lenæan festival of the same year. There is no ground for questioning that this statement is derived from the didaσkadiai: it has never been questioned by any one. The Birds then was first performed at the city Dionysia in the year 414 B. C. city Dionysia were celebrated at the very close of winter. is proved (if proof were necessary) by a multitude of passages, among others, by Thucyd. v. 20: Αὗται αἱ σπονδαὶ ἐγένοντο τελευτῶντος τοῦ χειμῶνος ἅμα ἡρι ἐκ Διονυσίων εὐθὺς τῶν ἀστικῶν, κ. τ. λ. Thucydides, as we know, divides the year into two seasons only, the summer and the winter, assigning to the latter about five months, ending with the vernal equinox, or thereabouts. Its length might vary by a few days or even weeks, according as the weather was more or less favourable for the continuance or resumption of military operations on a great scale. The winter in question must have been of the average length at least, to allow time for the incidents related by Thucydides from ch. 63 to 93 of B. VI. (inclusive). There is the expedition to Syracuse, and the battle under its walls, the return to Naxos and Catana, the attempt upon Messene, where the Athenians remained thirteen days, and then returned to Naxos. After this a trireme is dispatched to Athens requesting that money and horses may be sent by the beginning of spring. The vote is passed; the money and horses are collected and arrive in Sicily immediately after the resumption of active hostilities, ἅμα τῷ ἦρι εὐθὺς ἀρχομένῳ. The winter therefore cannot well have commenced later than the beginning of November. Again, the summer was not ended when Alcibiades was sent for home. Thucydides, after recounting summarily the flight of Alcibiades and his subsequent condemnation as events which succeeded each other at no long interval, proceeds in the 62d chapter to relate the operations of the two remaining generals, (μerà dè taûta, K.T.λ.), the division of the forces into two parts, the expedition to Egesta, the fruitless attempt upon Himera, and capture of Hykkara, the return to Catana, the sale of the captives, the failure before Hybla, &c. for which we must at least allow four or five weeks. And then the summer endedκαὶ τὸ θέρος ἐτελεύτα. From this I conclude that the Salaminia arrived at Catana with the summons for Alcibiades not later than the beginning of October. The intelligence of his flight would be reported at Athens by that swift-sailing trireme perhaps before the end of the month. His speech at Sparta was probably delivered before the end of January, (vid. Thuc. vI. 88 sqq.) So far, then, from Aristophanes having any occasion in the middle of March to warn his countrymen against the growing power of Alcibiades at Athens, he had been for five months an exile, had been condemned to death for what appeared to the people in their then temper the most revolting of crimes, and was known to be most zealous in the service of the enemy. That there should be no further reference throughout the play to an event which must have profoundly affected the Athenian mind, need not surprise us. It was a subject too dangerous for a jest, and the number of those implicated in the same accusation was too great to admit of its being a fit topic for the buffooneries of comedy in the presence of a miscellaneous audience. I think that the Poet's regard for the success of his piece, and for his own personal safety, would be quite sufficient to deter him from jesting on this subject, therefore I hesitate to accept Droysen's notion (Mus. Rhen. IV. p. 60) that the mention of it was specially prohibited by the enactment moved by Syracosius, although Meineke (II. p. 948) gives in his adhesion. If Droysen's opinion be correct, what becomes of Süvern's? His theory is then not only contrary to probability, and (as I have shewn) disproved by chronology, but absolutely prohibited by law. We have already convicted him οἱ ἀναχρόνισμος, we may now file a γραφὴ παρανόμων. I proceed briefly to examine some of the principal details of Süvern's allegory. 1. "The Birds represent the Athenian people." According to my view, the Birds represent the Birds, and nothing else. There is positively no reason for supposing that the scene represented the Athenian Pnyx, except the occurrence of the word Térрa! In lines 10 and 11 we are expressly told that Attica was not even visible; Euelpides says (30 sqq.) that he and his companion have left Athens in search of a quiet life. When the Herald returns to announce the reception of his message by mankind, it is its effect at Athens on which he especially dwells (1277 sqq.) Again, the Birds (as Süvern has himself remarked) are frequently proposed as models for men in general and Athenians in particular. These multiplied incongruities do not disturb the Professor. His is the most "headstrong allegory" on record. The said incongruities were intended, it seems, "to throw a veil over the fundamental idea of the poem." Truly the veil is so thick that I am sure not one of the ten thousand spectators could see through it. Whether is it more probable that Aristophanes, after constructing an elaborate allegory, intentionally and deliberately violated and falsified it in a hundred instances, or that he sketched a general plot, the scene of which being in fairy-land admitted all kinds of fantastic vagaries, and then gave full play to his imagination and allowed his fun to run riot? On the latter hypothesis, the inconsistencies are natural, on the former, unaccountable. 2. "The Gods represent the Spartans and Peloponnesians, together with the principal states in alliance with them." Because, forsooth, "the balance of power was leaning to the Spartan side," and, "the political weight and credit of the Athenians was sunken by the defeats at Oropus and Delium, and by the advances made by the Spartans on the frontiers of Thrace." This is a monstrous perversion of historical fact. Nothing so "sophistical" can be detected in Peisthetærus even by a German Professor predetermined to find "sophistry" everywhere. The Athenians had indeed suffered serious checks and severe defeats at Oropus, Delium, Amphipolis, and elsewhere; but no one who reads the history of the Peloponnesian war, without a preconceived theory to maintain, can fail to see that their affairs were to all appearance more prosperous at the commencement of the year 414, than they were when the war began. They had destroyed the prestige of the Spartan name, had detached Argos from her alliance, and in fact felt themselves so secure at home that they conceived the idea of employing their superabundant strength in the Sicilian expedition. It is impossible not to assent to the truth of Grote's remark, that the Melian Dialogue is introduced by Thucydides to illustrate the overweening insolence of the Athenians in this the culminating period of their prosperity: to point the moral, so striking to the Greek mind, that pride goes before a fall, exactly in the same spirit as the Poet's, when he makes Agamemnon walk over purple to the House of Death. No Athenian audience would have tolerated at any time, least of all at this time, a drama which represented themselves as gaping, light-minded, feeble birds, and their enemies as Olympian Gods. What says Alcibiades (Thucyd. VI. 17)? Kaì vôv OUTE ἀνέλπιστοί πω μᾶλλον Πελοποννήσιοι ἐς ἡμᾶς ἐγένοντο, κ.τ.λ.*; an assertion which, sanguine and vainglorious as he was, he would * Mr Grote's interpretation of this passage seems to me quite untenable. "As to the Peloponnesians, powerful as they were, they were not more desperate enemies than they had been in former days:" and in a note he explains ȧvéλπιστοι to mean "enemies beyond our hopes of being able to deal with," referring to Thuc. VII. 4, and VII. 47. (Grote, Hist. Gr. Vol. VII. p. 210). Now, in the first place, the Athenians did not consider the Peloponnesians "desperate enemies" at any time of their history till after the battle of Ægos Potami, least of all at this time. Again, if this be the meaning of the clause, how can the following elтe kal πάνυ ἔῤῥωνται be translated at all? The two passages referred to do not justify Mr Grote's interpretation, because the word is, in both, neuter. VII. 4, ὁρῶν τὰ ἐκ τῆς γῆς σφίσιν . . . ἀνελπιστότερα ὄντα. VII. 47, τά τε ἄλλα ὅτι ἀνέλπιστα αὐτοῖς ἐφαίνετο. I do not know of a single instance of ȧvéλTOTOs as applied to persons having the passive signification. The sense therefore is: "In the first place (TE) the Peloponnesians never were so hopeless of success against us; and, secondly, (TE) supposing them to be in ever such good heart, they can but invade us by land, and that we cannot prevent in any case, while we shall always leave a scarcely have ventured to make if he had not been sure of being borne out by the general sense of the assembly. Nicias, at all events, is a witness perfectly unexceptionable. His language is quite clear as to the fact, that the war hitherto had resulted in unlooked-for success to Athens, and had raised her hopes as much as it had depressed the prestige and credit of Sparta. (Thucyd. VI. 11): ὅπερ νῦν ὑμεῖς ὦ Αθηναῖοι ἐς Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ τοὺς ξυμμάχους πεπόνθατε· διὰ τὸ παρὰ γνώμην αὐτῶν πρὸς ἃ ἐφοβεῖσθε τὸ πρῶτον περιγεγενῆσθαι καταφρονήσαντες ἤδη καὶ Σικελίας ἐφίεσθε· χρὴ δὲ μὴ πρὸς τὰς τύχας τῶν ἐναντίων ἐπαίρεσθαι, ἀλλὰ τὰς διανοίας κρατήσαντες θαῤῥεῖν· μηδὲ Λακεδαιμονίους ἄλλο τι ἡγήσασθαι ἢ διὰ τὸ αἰσχρὸν σκοπεῖν ὅτῳ τρόπῳ ἔτι καὶ νῦν, ἢν δύνωνται, σφήλαντες ἡμᾶς τὸ σφέτερον ἀπρεπὲς εὖ θήσονται, κ.τ.λ. I do not think it worth while to refute this assertion of Süvern's at greater length; it is enough to appeal to any history of the period ever written from Thucydides to Grote. 3. "The men represent the smaller Greek states, collectively." Not a shadow of proof is adduced in support of this notion, which indeed Süvern seems only to have taken up as a pis aller, because it was necessary to find some prototype for oi äveρwоi cursorily mentioned in the play. It is sufficiently refuted by the speech of the Herald (1277 sqq.) above referred to, in which, while professing to relate how men in general had received the commands of Peisthetærus, he relates only how the Athenians had received them. I assert positively that there is not a line in the whole play whereby a spectator could divine that the poet meant by "men," the smaller states of Greece. When he says "men," he means "men"-voilà tout. 4. "Peisthetærus combines the chief characteristics of Alcibiades and Gorgias." This strange statement appears to me to be implicitly refuted (so far as concerns Alcibiades) by what I have urged respecting the interval between the mission of the Salaminia and the production of the play. It will, however, be worth our while to examine the question more closely, in order to shew (1) that-besides the à priori sufficient naval force at home to prevent their attacking us by sea." Little errors become important in a work whose au thority is paramount, like that of Mr Grote. |