e that appreciated them.
Dionysus decides for AEschylus, and leads him back in triumph to the
upper world.

The 'Ecclesiazusae' or 'Ladies in Parliament,' B.C. 393: apparently a
satire on the communistic theories which must have been current in the
discussions of the schools before they found definite expression in
Plato's 'Republic.' The ladies of Athens rise betimes, purloin their
husbands' hats and canes, pack the Assembly, and pass a measure to
intrust the reins of government to women. An extravagant and licentious
communism is the result.

The 'Plutus,' B.C. 388: a second and much altered edition of a play
represented for the first time in 408. With the 'Ecclesiazusae' it marks
the transition to the Middle Comedy, there being no parabasis, and
little of the exuberant _verve_ of the older pieces. The blind god of
Wealth recovers his eyesight by sleeping in the temple of AEsculapius,
and proceeds to distribute the gifts of fortune more equitably.

The assignment of the dates and restoration of the plots of the
thirty-two lost plays, of which a few not very interesting fragments
remain, belong to the domain of conjectural erudition.

Aristophanes has been regarded by some critics as a grave moral censor,
veiling his high purpose behind the grinning mask of comedy; by others
as a buffoon of genius, whose only object was to raise a laugh. Both
sides of the question are ingeniously and copiously argued in Browning's
'Aristophanes' Apology'; and there is a judicious summing up of the case
of Aristophanes _vs_. Euripides in Professor Jebb's lectures on Greek
poetry. The soberer view seems to be that while predominantly a comic
artist, obeying the instincts of his genius, he did frequently make his
comedy the vehicle of an earnest conservative polemic against the new
spirit of the age in Literature, Philosophy, and Politics. He pursued
Euripides with relentless ridicule because his dramatic motives lent
themselves to parody, and his lines were on the lips of every
theatre-goer; but also because he believed that Euripides had spoiled
the old, stately, heroic art of Aeschylus and Sophocles by incongruous
infusions of realism and sentimentalism, and had debased the "large
utterance of the early gods" by an unhallowed mixture of colloquialism,
dialectic, and chicane.

Aristophanes travestied the teachings of Socrates because his ungainly
figure, and the oddity (_atopia_) attributed to him even by Plato, made
him an excell