or shock the most fastidious. We ought not, therefore, to blame too
severely the Comic Poet, who after all was only following in this respect
the habits of his age; and if his pictures are often repulsively bestial,
let us lay most blame to the account of a state of society which deserved
to be painted in such odiously black colours. Doubtless Aristophanes
might have given less Prominence to these cynical representations,
instead of revelling in them, as he really seems to have done; men of
taste and refinement, and there must have been such even among his
audience, would have thought all the better of him! But it was the
populace filled the bulk of the benches, and the populace loved coarse
laughter and filthy words. The Poet supplied what the majority demanded;
he was not the man to sacrifice one of the easiest and surest means of
winning applause and popularity.

Aristophanes enjoyed an ample share of glory in his lifetime, and
posterity has ratified the verdict given by his contemporaries. The
epitaph is well-known which Plato composed for him, after his death: "The
Graces, seeking an imperishable sanctuary, found the soul of
Aristophanes." Such eulogy may appear excessive to one who re-peruses
after the lapse of twenty centuries these pictures of a vanished world.
But if, despite the profound differences of custom, taste and opinion
which separate our own age from that of the Greeks, despite the obscurity
of a host of passages whose especial point lay in their reference to some
topic of the moment, and which inevitably leave us cold at the present
day--if, despite all this, we still feel ourselves carried away, charmed,
diverted, dominated by this dazzling _verve_, these copious outpourings
of imagination, wit and poesy, let us try to realize in thought what must
have been the unbounded pleasure of an Athenian audience listening to one
of our Author's satires. Then every detail was realized, every nuance of
criticism appreciated; every allusion told, and the model was often