He had the Comic
poet's gift of common-sense--which does not always include political
intelligence; yet his political tendency raised him above the Old Comedy
turn for uproarious farce. He abused Socrates, but Xenophon, the disciple
of Socrates, by his trained rhetoric saved the Ten Thousand. Aristophanes
might say that if his warnings had been followed there would have been no
such thing as a mercenary Greek expedition under Cyrus. Athens, however,
was on a landslip, falling; none could arrest it. To gaze back, to uphold
the old times, was a most natural conservatism, and fruitless. The aloe
had bloomed. Whether right or wrong in his politics and his criticisms,
and bearing in mind the instruments he played on and the audience he had
to win, there is an idea in his comedies: it is the Idea of Good
Citizenship.
He is not likely to be revived. He stands, like Shakespeare, an
unapproachable. Swift says of him, with a loving chuckle:
'But as for Comic Aristophanes, The dog too witty and too profane is.'
Aristophanes was 'profane,' under satiric direction, unlike his rivals
Cratinus, Phrynichus, Ameipsias, Eupolis, and others, if we are to
believe him, who in their extraordinary Donnybrook Fair of the day of
Comedy, thumped one another and everybody else with absolute heartiness,
as he did, but aimed at small game, and dragged forth particular women,
which he did not.
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