ease with which it is understood. Something perhaps is due to the fact
that Greece had now reached the highest point of her prosperity, and
that a certain amount of lawlessness prevailed as her brilliancy began
to tremble and fade. From whatever cause it arose, Aristophanes stands
before us as one of the first to introduce this base ornamentation. The
most remarkable circumstance connected with it is that he assigns a
large part of his coarse language to women. His object was to amuse a
not very refined audience, and one that relished something
preposterous.

Thus Aristophanes lowered his style to the level of his audience, but in
his brighter moments, forgetting his failings and exigencies, he disowns
expedients unworthy of the comic art. He says he has not like
"Phrynicus, Lycis, and Amisias" introduced slaves groaning beneath their
burdens, or yelping from their stripes; he comes away, "a year older
from hearing such stage tricks." "It is not becoming," he observes in
another place for a dramatic poet to throw figs and sweetmeats to the
spectators to force a laugh, and "we have not two slaves throwing nuts
from a basket." In _his_ plays "the old man does not belabour the person
next him with a stick." He claims that he has made his rivals give up
scoffing at rags and lice, and that he does not indulge in what I have
termed optical humour. He has not, like some of his contemporaries,
"jeered at the bald head," and not danced the Cordax. He seems in the
following passage even to despise animal illustrations--

_Bdelycleon._ Tell me no fables, but domestic stories about men.

_Philocleon._ Then I know that very domestic story, "Once on a time
there was a mouse and a weazel."