reation which he procured for the people operated rather as a spur to industry than a temptation to idleness. Another innovation of a similar nature which is ascribed to him seems also to have been attended with a train of pernicious consequences which he could not have anticipated. He introduced the practice of paying jurors for their attendance on the courts of justice; a provision which, putting out of the question the causes which filled the tribunals with suiters, was no more than equitable. The remuneration which he assigned for the loss of time on these occasions was extremely moderate, and could not have encouraged the taste for litigation which was gradually unfolded to a mischievous excess in the Athenian character; but the sum was afterward tripled, and became one of the heaviest items in the Attic civil list. This, however, was not perhaps the worst effect of the measure, for it seems probable that it suggested another, which has sometimes been erroneously attributed to Pericles himself-the payment of attendance in the popular assembly; a regulation which became more and more pernicious as the burden which it laid upon the state was more sensibly felt.

He

offer, it is true, if it had been accepted, could not have been made good; but it was probably only meant to signify the firm reliance which Pericles placed on the liberality of his countrymen; and it seems to have answered his purpose by reminding them of the lustre which these splendid works reflected on their own renown. was desired to proceed as he had begun, and to draw without sparing from the public treasury. Whether the age of Pericles is not degraded when it is compared with other celebrated periods in the history of mankind which resemble it in the successful cultivation of the arts, and whether, in this respect, it does not stand on an eminence which has never yet been approached, is a question on which opinions may differ; but at least it is distinguished by one very important feature. The magnificence which adorned it was not like that of a Lorenzo, or a Leo; it was not supplied from the coffers either of a wealthy citizen or a prince, to gratify the taste of a small circle of cultivated minds; nor was it like the magnificence of the Cæsars, who expended a part of their immense revenues for the diversion of their slaves; still more strongly was it contrasted with that of the We can understand how Plato, even though selfish and narrow-minded despot, whose whole he was only looking at the remote consequen-life expressed this maxim: I am the state;f ces of these measures, which had become visi- it was not the magnificence of Pericles, but ble in his own day, might introduce Socrates that of the Athenian people. That Pericles saying, "I hear that Pericles made the Atheni- despised this people, even while he was provians a lazy, cowardly, talkative, and money-ding for the least intellectual of its entertainloving people, by accustoming them to receivements, we are as little able to believe, as, when wages." But we find no sufficient ground for we contemplate the remains of the works exea remark of a modern author, that Pericles de- cuted to gratify its taste, it is in our power, spised the multitude whom he pampered. This whatever we may think of its failings or vices, might, indeed, have been the case with Pisis- to despise it. tratus or Cimon; but, as Pericles had nothing to give, and could only persuade the people to dispose of treasure, which, whether by right or wrong, had in fact become its own, so it is certain that in the manner of expenditure his private taste coincided with that of the public. The interest which the Athenians in general took in the master-pieces of art, which even in their ruins still attract the admiration of the civilized world, is evinced by two well-known stories, which show that Pericles followed as well as guided the popular inclination. When the question was agitated in the assembly, whether marble or ivory should be employed in the statue of the goddess, and Phidias, the sculptor, recommended marble as the cheaper material, the assembly on that very ground unanimously decided for ivory. On another occasion, when Thucydides, the rival of Pericles, complained of the enormous expense to which he had subjected the state by the monuments erected at his suggestion, he is said to have offered to defray the cost if he might be allowed to inscribe them with his name. The

* Μισθός δικαστικός.

An obolus, the sixth of a drachma, equivalent to about fourteen pence of our currency, according to the calculation of Col. Leake, Topogr. of Ath., p. 416.

† Μισθὸς ἐκκλησιαστικός. ◊ Gorgias, p. 515. Boeckh, Staatsh, ., 13. The high authority which Boeckh has so well earned by his learning and candour entitles oven a passing, and perhaps hasty remark of his, to inore attention than is due to all the attempts which for the last forty years have been systematically made in our own literature-the periodical as well as the more prominentfor political and other purposes, to vilify the Athenians. But it is not very easy to reconcile Boeckh's remark with the admission which he makes in the next sentence.

These works served two main ends, which were important enough to have justified the application of the treasure expended on them, had it but come by fair means into the hands of the Athenians; and even the fugitive amusements which were shared by the whole people under the superintendence of Pericles contributed, at least, towards one of these ends. All of them tended continually to refine that matchless purity of taste by which the Athenians were long distinguished, and which must have been an important element in their political prosperity, through the influence which it could not fail to exert on their manufactures and commerce. But the public buildings answered a still higher end, by exalting and endearing the state in the eyes of its citizens. Their exceeding magnificence, the more striking from its contrast to the extreme simplicity of all private dwellings,‡ expressed the majesty of the commonwealth, before which the greatness of the most eminent individual shrank into nothing. They were at the same time monuments of the past and pledges of the future. The Parthenon and the Propylæa might be considered as trophies of

* It is construed in a very different manner by Drumann, Geschichte des Verfalls der Griechischen Staaten, p. 238, as a low, impudent trick, an interpretation for which we can find no better ground than the violent aversion which this writer takes every opportunity of expressing to the character and conduct of Pericles.

† L'état, c'est moi. The reader who wishes to feel rightly on this subject should compare Plutarch's Pericles, 12, 13, with Saint Simon's remarks on the magnificence of Louis XIV. Mémoires, tom. xi., p. 84-90.

Demosthenes, Aristocr., p. 689. Compare Meid., p. 565, foll.

Marathon and Salamis. They displayed the long enough to celebrate the triumphs of the fruits of the patience and fortitude with which Persian war in his old age. His younger conAthens had resisted the barbarians. They in- temporaries, Bacchylides and Pindar, were the dicated the new station to which she had risen, latest of the lyrical poets whom the judgment and the abundance of the means she possessed of all ages, so long as their works were prefor maintaining it. It is probable that the com- served, set apart from the rest as of a superior placency with which the Athenians contem- order. The Theban poet Pindar, if he was not plated them from this point of view was seldom the greatest of them all, has been the most forimbittered by the reflection that this magnifi-tunate; for his merits are beyond dispute and cence was, in great part, founded upon wrong comparison. Even of his countrywoman Coand robbery. It is true, that in the account rinna, who both guided his youthful genius by which all nations have to render at the bar of her precepts and quickened it by emulation, history, there is probably not one which can having five times carried away the prize from appear with clean hands to impeach the Athe-him in a poetical contest,* not a specimen is nians on this head. We must not, however, left either to vindicate the taste of her age or on this account, shut our eyes upon the real nature of their conduct; and it may be useful to remember that not only their greatness was unstable in proportion as it rested on violence and fraud, but, as one of the most splendid monuments of the Medicean age was the occasion of an irreparable calamity to the power which raised it, so the great works with which the Athenians now adorned their city both contributed to alienate and provoke the allies at whose expense they were executed, and to elate the people with that extravagant pride and confidence in its own strength and fortune which hurried it on to its ruin.

to show how far she was inferior to her scholar. He no doubt experienced the animating influence of that joyful and stirring time which followed the defeat of the barbarian invader, though, as a Theban patriot, he could not heartily enjoy a triumph by which Thebes as well as Persia was humbled. But, like Simonides, he loved to bask in the sunshine of a court, and his grateful muse was cherished by the munificence of the sovereigns of Syracuse and Cyrene, and of the noble and wealthy families of Thessaly and Locris, Corinth, Ægina, and Rhodes, and others whose names he has rescued from oblivion. Yet Athens also shared Before the Persian war, Athens had contribu- his praises, though all his prejudices were adted less than many other cities, her inferiors in verse to her rising greatness; and she requited magnitude and in political importance, to the him with extraordinary favours. He died at intellectual progress of Greece. She had pro- an advanced age, when the Attic drama had duced no artists to be compared with those of just attained its full maturity. All that we Argos, Corinth, Sicyon, Ægina, Laconia, and hear of lyrical poetry after him indicates that it of many cities both in the eastern and western soon began to degenerate; that the decay of colonies. She could boast of no poets so cele-strength was betrayed by extravagance, and brated as those of the Ionian and Eolian schools. the poverty of invention by an artificial, conBut her peaceful glories quickly followed and ventional diction. outshone that of her victories, conquests, and political ascendency. In the period between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars both literature and the fine arts began to tend towards Athens as their most favoured seat; for here, above all other parts of Greece, genius and talents were encouraged by an ample field of exertion, by public sympathy and applause, as well as by the prospect of other rewards, which, however, were much more sparingly bestowed. Accordingly, it was at Athens that architecture and sculpture reached the highest degree of perfection which either ever attained in the ancient world, and that Greek poetry was enriched with a new kind of composition, the drama, which united the leading features of every species before cultivated in a new whole, and exhibited all the grace and vigour of the Greek imagination, together with the full compass and the highest refinement of the form of the language peculiar to Attica. The social and intellectual condition of the two or three centuries preceding the Persian war had been highly favourable to the cultivation of lyrical poetry; the drama itself, as we have already noticed, grew out of one of its forms; and for the greater part of a century the lyrical element continued to predominate in it. Simonides of Ceos, whose powerful and flexible genius is just sufficiently attested by few fragmentary remains to justify a deep regret for the loss of his multifarious works, lived

* P. 210.

a

The drama was the branch of literature which peculiarly signalized the age of Pericles; and it belongs to the political no less than to the literary history of these times, and deserves to be considered in both points of view. The steps by which it was brought through a series of innovations to the form which it presents in its earliest extant remains, are still a subject of controversy among antiquarians; and even the poetical character of the authors by whom these changes were effected, and of their works, is involved in great uncertainty. We have reason to believe that it was no want of merit or of absolute worth which caused them to be neglected and forgotten, but only the superior attraction of the form which the drama finally assumed. Of Phrynichus in particular, the immediate predecessor of Æschylus, we are led to conceive a very favourable opinion, both by the manner in which he is mentioned by the ancients who were acquainted with his poems, and by the effect which he is recorded to have produced upon his audience. It seems clear that Eschylus, who found him in undisputed possession of the public favour,|| regarded him as a worthy rival, and was, in part, stimulated

*Elian, V. H., xiii., 25. Paus., ix., 22, 23.

+ If we may believe Isocrates, dvr:d, p. 461, Bekker, with tophanes may be alluding to this, Acharn, 612, Bek. the title of proxenus, and 10,000 drachmas. Perhaps ArisB.C. 438. The Antigone of Sophocles was represented B.C. 440. ◊ See p. 240. Η Aristophanes, Ran., 908, λαβὼν παρὰ Φρυνίχῳ τρα φέντας.

by emulation to unfold the capacities of their | tragedy became a very heavy charge, which fell common art by a variety of new inventions.* almost entirely upon wealthy individuals; but These, however, were so important as to enti- the charm of the entertainment increased in tle their author to be considered as the father proportion, and was the more generally felt. of Attic tragedy. This title he would have de- Eschylus-who himself, according to a longserved if he had only introduced the dialogue established custom, bore a part in the represenwhich distinguished his drama from that of the tation of his own plays-not only superintended preceding poets, who had told the story of each the evolutions of his choruses with the most piece in a series of monologues. So long as anxious attention, but is recorded to have inthis was the case, the lyrical part must have vented several minute additions to the theatricreated the chief interest; and the difference cal wardrobe; and at Athens this was not between the Attic tragedy and the choral songs, thought unworthy of honourable mention in the which were exhibited in a similar manner in life of a man who is known to us as one of the the Dorian cities, was perhaps not so striking most sublime and original of poets. as their agreement. The innovation made by Eschylus altered the whole character of the poem; raised the purely dramatic portion fromed, it is properly only from one specimen that a subordinate to a principal rank, and expanded it into a richly-varied and well-organized composition. With him, it would seem, and as a natural consequence of this great change, arose the usage, which to us appears so singular, of exhibiting what was sometimes called a trilogy, which comprised three distinct tragedies, at the same time.†

Though out of seventy tragedies which he is said to have written, seven have been preservwe can form a judgment on the full compass of his genius and his art; for it is evident that the same poem must appear in a very different light, according as it is considered as a part of a great whole, or as complete in itself. In the tripartite drama, founded on the crimes and sufferings of the royal house of Mycena, each of the three tragedies is independent of the rest, and yet, to be rightly estimated, must be viewed in its connexion with them. If we might venture to look upon this, not as an experiment which, though eminently successful, was never repeated, but as an example of his usual method, we should be led to conclude that his skill in the manage

the grandeur of his conceptions. The sublimity of his characters and his diction is universally acknowledged; the boldness and novelty of his creations astonished his contemporaries; and even if, as is the case with many of them, they had been known to us only through description, they would have been sufficient to support his reputation. His prominent figures are all colossal; the Homeric heroes themselves appear more majestic and terrible in his scene; he is not satisfied with bringing the most revered persons of the popular mythology into action, and exhibiting them in new situa

It is a question still agitated by learned men, but one as to which we can scarcely expect to find any decisive evidence, whether, as in one instance furnished by his remaining works, he always, at least after an early period in his dramatic career, constructed the three tragedies of each trilogy into one great whole, whichment of his subjects was not much inferior to might be compared to some of Shakspeare's historical plays. The supposition is, at least, perfectly conformable to his genius, fills up a chasm which would otherwise be mysterious in the history of the drama, and, as far as it can, is confirmed by the remains of the poet's numerous lost works. Eschylus paid no less attention to the exhibition of tragedy as a spectacle, for the purpose of heightening the effect of his poetry by scenic illusion. It was for him that Agatharchus painted the first scene which had ever been made to agree with the rules of linear perspective, and thus led to a scientific investigation of its principles. It need not, how-tions; the gods of Olympus are not great and ever, be supposed that the imagination of an Athenian audience was less capable of apprehending the poet's description, and of filling up his outlines with colours of its own, than that of Shakspeare's contemporaries. But the more fastidious taste of the Athenians seems to have required that, while the higher faculties were gratified, the eye and the ear should perceive nothing which tended to disturb this impression. They were, perhaps, the less easily satisfied in this respect, the more familiar they became with the master-pieces of sculpture, and the difficulty was greater, as the scene was exposed to the broad light of day. Thus the decorations of

Aristoph., Ran, 1295, Eva μù rdv avròv povix du μῶνα Μουσῶν ἱερὸν ὀφθείην δρέπων.

So much, at least, seems clear, notwithstanding the widely different interpretations given to the statement of the Scholiast of Aristoph., Ran, 1122, about Aristarchus and Apollonius, by Welcker, Eschylische Trilogie, p. 504, and by Gruppe, Ariadne (the quaint title of an interesting book on the history of Greek tragedy), p. 41.

Vitruvius, Præf., lib. vii. This seems to contradict Aristotle, who, Poet., c. 10, attributes the introduction of scene painting to Sophocles. Hence it has been supposed that Agatharchus may have been employed for one of the latest representations of Eschylus. But it is possible that his was a first essay which was carried to perfection in the time of Sophocles.

awful enough for him; he loves to revive the mysterious traditions which represented them as a race of upstarts and usurpers, and from the depths of the remotest antiquity to evoke the gigantic, shadowy, melancholy forms of an earlier dynasty, which they overthrew and oppressed, but were unable to humble and subdue. The thought and words which he assigns to them are worthy of such personages; the men of Marathon and Salamis could endure them; but they were too ponderous for the feebler criticism of the next generation, which complained that his language was not human.* But a reader only familiar with the modern drama, especially that of the romantic school, will be more apt to feel wearied by the extreme simplicity and languid movement of several of his plays, and, perhaps, may sometimes be startled by abrupt transitions, and unexpected turns in the dialogue. It is possible that this impression is in part a consequence of the loss we have suffered, which may have prevented us from reading most of his remaining works in their original connexion and order, as acts of a more complicated drama. Yet, admitting this to be the case, we must still

• Aristoph., Ran., 1056.

believe that he was more capable of sketching a vast outline than of filling up all its parts with a steady and delicate hand. He seems to content himself with bringing forward a few groups of superhuman dimensions by a profusion of bold and vivid touches, and to leave the rest to the spectator's imagination. Hence, too, perhaps, rather than from the want of a mastery over all the resources of his language, arose the harshness and obscurity which frequently interrupt the enjoyment of his most magnificent passages.

triumph. In the poetry of Sophocles this tendency is still more conspicuous; their dim forebodings brighten into a more cheerful hope, or suggest instructive warnings-the more efficacious, as his persons are not too far removed from the common level of humanity-to rebuke the excesses of passion, the wantonness of power, the presumption of security, in which men forget their mortal condition, and trample upon laws human or divine. We have already mentioned an instance in which Æschylus employed the drama as a political engine to support the In the general harmony of his compositions, sinking authority of the Areopagus. There in the equable diffusion of grace and vigour were, perhaps, few cases in which a tragic poet throughout every part, in the unlimited com- so distinctly disclosed a political object; still mand over all the power and all the charm of fewer in which he aimed at affecting the course expression which the Greek language supplied, of events. Eschylus seems to have been the his younger rival, Sophocles, though in some re- last who ventured to bring the men of his own spects a genius of a lower order, undoubtedly time upon the stage. In the play which celesurpassed him; and it was chiefly by these ad- brated the battle of Salamis he had followed vantages that he supplanted him in the public the example of Phrynichus, who was not deestimation, and became the favourite poet of the terred by the reception he met with when he age of Pericles, as his works most vividly reflect exhibited the fall of Miletus, from treating anits intellectual character. The contest in which other contemporary subject more grateful to the Sophocles with his first exhibition gained the feelings of his audience. But Eschylus seems victory over the elder poet-who is said to have not to have been content with the simple theme been so wounded by his defeat that he with- of his extant drama; there is ground for susdrew to Sicily, perhaps to the court of Hiero-pecting that he connected it on the one hand was signalized by Cimon's appearance in the with the earliest struggles between Europe and theatre, on his return from the expedition in Asia, on the other with the recent victory gainwhich he brought the relics of Theseus to Ath-ed by the Sicilian Greeks over the Carthaginiens; and the interest excited by the competition between the old master of the scene and his young antagonist was so strong, that the victorious general and his colleagues, who had come to pay their official devotions to the god of the festival, were induced by the presiding magistrate to stay and award the prize. This story is the counterpart of another, equally repugnant to our habits and feelings, but no less accordant with those of the Athenians; that Sophocles was rewarded for one of his successful tragedies with the rank of general, and in that capacity accompanied Pericles in the Samian war. He died full of years and of glory; but not before he had himself experienced the mutability of the public taste in the growing preference given to Euripides, who died a year sooner, but in the character of his poetry belongs entirely to the latest period of the life of Sophocles.

The Attic tragedy was not merely a spectacle for the multitude, or a study for the lovers of literature and art, but was capable of being applied to moral, or religious, and political purposes. The general impression which AschyJus appears to aim at, if we may properly attribute any such objects to him, is rather of a religious than a moral nature. His persons are, for the most part, raised too far above the sphere of real life to awaken much moral sympathy. He sometimes represents man as the helpless sport of an inscrutable destiny; sometimes as the victim of a struggle between beings of a superior race; and such views may inspire an undefined sense of religious awe, but cannot convey any practical lesson. Yet even his darkest scenes are not without some gleams of light, which seem to fall from a higher and clearer region, and disclose partial intimations of a providential order of compensation and retribution, in which truth and justice will finally

ans at Himera, and represented both events as the fulfilment of ancient prophecies, and as pledges of the lasting triumph which fate had decreed to Greece over all the power of the barbarians. With these few exceptions, the scene of Greek tragedy was always laid in the heroic age, and its subjects were almost wholly confined to the circle traced by the epic poets. Yet allusions to living persons and passing occurrences were by no means rare, and were easily introduced. No extraordinary dexterity was needed to adapt the ancient legends to the new relations between Athens and other Greek states, and to cherish the feelings which happened to prevail in the public mind by an historical parallel. But in all these cases the object seems to have been rather to display the poet's ingenuity than to produce any practical effect on his audience, or to influence the management of public affairs.

If the limitations which custom prescribed to this branch of the drama transported the spectator to the remote past, and to a state of things widely different from that in which he lived, and allowed only a few indirect and obscure allusions to the present, comedy was entirely free from such restrictions. Its field lay within the walks of daily life; its main business was with the immediate present; and there was no class of persons or things which could engage public attention that might not be brought within the range of its representations. The Athenians possessed another kind of ludicrous drama called the satyrical, which was totally distinct from their comedy in its form and its object. It had been introduced in compliance with ancient usage for the sake of those who, in the improved state of the drama, were still unwilling to lose the chorus of satyrs, which once formed a main part of the Dionysiac entertainments; and it exhibited the highest persons of tragedy

thus attended, and under circumstances which to the leading objects of the piece; and, on the were humorously contrasted with the solemnity of their character. But this kind of burlesque could scarcely be said to have any other end than that of unbending the spectator, after his mind had been kept on the stretch by scenes of heroic action or suffering, with the sportive sallies of a mere animal nature. One of these exhibitions commonly followed each tragic performance, and it was always furnished by the tragic poet himself. It is remarkable that Eschylus was accounted no less a master of the light than of the serious drama;* an effect, perhaps, of the very grandeur and severity of his tragic style. But there does not appear to have been any instance in which a tragic poet tried his powers in comedy.

other hand, not only was the presence of the spectators often recognised in the dialogue, but a direct address to them became a prominent and almost an essential member of every comedy. With such instruments at their absolute disposal, the comic poets assailed every kind of vice and folly which was sufficiently notorious to render their ridicule intelligible. And they never suffered their attacks to miss the mark through any ambiguity in their descriptions. The simplicity, or, as we should call it, the coarseness of the Attic manners, even in their best period, seems to have permitted the grossest things to be publicly spoken of in the grossest language; and whatever restraints may have been imposed upon this privilege by a sense of decency on other occasions, were entirely removed in the theatre by the sacred license of the festive season. It is unfortunate with regard to our estimate of the tone of Athenian society, that we have no decisive evidence on the question whether women were present at the dramatic exhibitions.* It seems, however, the more probable opinion that they were excluded, either by law or custom, from the comic, though not from the tragic spectacles; and their absence may have contributed to encourage the freedom with which the comic poets made their works reflect the licentiousness of their age in its most revolting features, a freedom to which antiquity affords no parallel, unless in the Roman satirists; who, however, can as little give an adequate conception of the homeliness or indecency of the Attic comedy, as they can of the sublimity-for such is the impression which it produces-of its wit, humour, and fancy.

Comedy was not, in the same sense as tragedy, an Attic invention. It was an application of the dramatic form first introduced by Thespis, and afterward employed to regulate the rude jests and natural outbreakings of simple mirth and of personal ridicule, which in Attica, as elsewhere, were freely indulged during the festive season, which in this respect bore some resemblance to a modern carnival. But this application seems to have been first made at Megara - probably during the period of democratical license which followed the downfall of Theagenes-and to have been thence imported by its author, Susarion, into Attica, where, how ever, it appears to have been neglected, and to have yielded no fruits of much value for nearly a century. Nor was it at Athens, but at Syracuse, chiefly through the philosophical poet Epicharmus, who flourished at the court of Hiero, that comedy first assumed a regular form. But Epicharmus probably did not suffer his comic vein to transport him beyond the bounds of the Dorian gravity, or to expose him to the loss of his patron's favour. The subjects of his pieces appear to have been mostly drawn from the ancient mythology; so that they approached nearer to the character of the satyrical drama than to that of the Attic comedy, which cannot, therefore, have been much indebted to them. It owed its importance and popularity not more to the genius of the poets than to the unbounded freedom which they enjoyed. They were under the safeguard of the god whose festival they cheered; and the privileges of the mask were much larger than those of the cap and bells among our ancestors. No objects or persons, not even the gods, and among them the god of the festival himself, were exempt from Such a censorship, as it has been appropritheir most unsparing ridicule. They did not ately termed, one so unlimited in its range and confine themselves to hints and allusions, nor in its processes, may, at first sight, appear the even to the most direct mention of living per- most formidable engine ever wielded in a state sons. There was no Athenian, whatever might by private hands; and it excites our curiosity be his rank and station, if he was only of suffi- to inquire whether it produced effects worthy cient importance, who might not see himself of its seemingly irresistible force. It is not brought upon the stage, with the most ludicrous without surprise that we find it to have been, exaggeration of his personal appearance, and though not absolutely powerless, yet, on the exposed for some hours to the laughter of thir- whole, feeble and insignificant in its operation, ty thousand spectators. While, however, the and this notwithstanding the consummate abilpersons were frequently taken from real life, ity of the minds by which it was directed. We the poets exercised their humour, and preserv- have no reason to believe that it ever turned ed the purely poetical character of the enter the course of public affairs, or determined the tainment, by devising situations and incidents, bias of the public mind, or even that it considerain which nature and probability were designed-bly affected the credit and fortunes of an obnoxly sacrificed, by the most extravagant fictions, ious individual. The surprise, however, which

As we have no entire composition remaining of more than one comic poet, Aristophanes, who belongs to a later period, we cannot ascertain the exact relation in which he stood to his predecessors. But their subjects undoubtedly bore a general resemblance to his; and if their practice was similar, the failings and excesses of private life formed but very subordinate objects of their ridicule. The character and conduct of public men, and the administration of the public affairs, were, we know, always exposed to their unreserved animadversion, and, therefore, were probably their principal theme; and this must have led them very early to point their satire against the people itself ip its collective capacity of sovereign, if not, as was afterward done, to personify it on the stage.

* Paus., ii., 13, 6.

*See F. Schlegel, Werk., iv., p. 140.