sure, to a mere vulgar ambition.

Moreover his genius, pre-eminently Greek as it is, has an instinctive
horror of all excesses, and hits out at them wherever he marks their
existence, whether amongst the great or the humble of the earth.
Supposing the Aristocracy, having won the victory the Poet desired, had
fallen in turn into oppression and misgovernment, doubtless Aristophanes
would have lashed its members with his most biting sarcasms. It is just
because Liberty is dear to his heart that he hates government by
Demagogues; he would fain free the city from the despotism of a clique of
wretched intriguers that oppressed her. But at the same time the
Aristocracy favoured by our Author was not such as comes by birth and
privilege, but such as is won and maintained by merit and high service to
the state.

In matters of morality his satires have the same high aims. How should a
corrupted population recover purity, if not by returning to the old
unsullied sources from which earlier generations had drawn their
inspiration? Accordingly we find Aristophanes constantly bringing on the
stage the "men of Marathon," the vigorous generation to which Athens owed
her freedom and her greatness. It is no mere childish commonplace with
our poet, this laudation of a past age; the facts of History prove he was
in the right, all the novelties he condemns were as a matter of fact so
many causes that brought about Athenian decadence. Directly the citizen
receives payment for attending the Assembly, he is no longer a perfectly
free agent in the disposal of his vote; besides, the practice is
equivalent to setting a premium on idleness, and so ruining all proper
activity; a populace maintained by the state loses all energy, falls into
a lethargy and dies. The life of the forum is a formidable solvent of
virtue and vigour; by dint of speechifying, men forget how to act.