so different from the present) in which
she related the first.

It was the night on which Athens received the news that Euripides was
dead: Euthykles had brought this home to her from the theatre. They were
pondering it gravely, but not sadly, for their poet was now at rest, in
the companionship of AEschylus, safe from the petty spites which had
frothed and fretted about his life. He had lived and worked, to the end,
true to his own standard of right, heedless of the reproach that he was
a man-hater and a recluse, without regard for civic duty, and with no
object but his art. He had left it to Sophocles to play poet and
commander at the same time, and be laughed at for the result. He had
first taken the prize of "Contemplation" in his all but a hundred plays;
then, grasping the one hand offered him which held a heart, had shown at
the court of Archelaus of Macedon whether or not the power of active
usefulness was in him. His last notes of music had also been struck for
that one friend.

Even Athens did him justice now. The reaction had set in; one would have
his statue erected in the theatre; another would have him buried in the
Piraeus; etc. etc. Not so Euthykles and Balaustion. His statue was in
their hearts. Their concern was not with his mortal vesture, but with
the liberated soul, which now watched over their world. They would hail
this, they said, in the words of his own song, his "Herakles."

The reading was about to begin, when suddenly there was torch-light--a
burst of comic singing--and a knocking at the door; Bacchus bade them
open; they delayed. Then a name was uttered, of "authoritative" sound,
of "immense significance;" and the door was opened to--Aristophanes. He
was returning from the performance of his "Thesmophoriazusae,"[34] last
year a failure, but this time, thanks to some new and audacious
touches, a brilliant success. His chorus trooped before him--himself no
more sober than was his wont--crowned, triumphant, and drunk; a group of
flute-boys and dancing-girls making up the scene. All these, however,
slunk away before Balaustion's glance, Aristophanes alone confronting
her. And, as she declares, it was "no ignoble presence." For the broad
brow, the flushed cheek, the commanding features, the defiant attitude,
all betokened a mind, wantoning among the lower passions, but yet master
of them.

He addresses Balaustion in a tone of mock deference; banters her on her
poetic name, her dignified mien,