i and the
Koleophoroi) are recorded during this period--plays which probably
approached comedy without answering to its legal definition. It might
be that the difficulty rigidly to enforce the law against the spirit
of the times and the inclination of the people was one of the causes
that led to the repeal of the prohibition.

[330] Since that siege lasted nine months of the year in which the
decree was made.

[331] Aristophanes thus vigorously describes the applauses that
attended the earlier productions of Cratinus. I quote from the
masterly translation of Mr. Mitchell.

"Who Cratinus may forget, or the storm of whim and wit,
Which shook theatres under his guiding;
When Panegyric's song poured her flood of praise along,
Who but he on the top wave was riding?"

* * * * * * *

"His step was as the tread of a flood that leaves its bed,
And his march it was rude desolation," etc.
Mitchell's Aristoph., The Knights, p. 204.

The man who wrote thus must have felt betimes--when, as a boy, he
first heard the roar of the audience--what it is to rule the humours
of eighteen thousand spectators!

[332] De l'esprit, passim.

[333] De Poet., c. 26.

[334] The oracle that awarded to Socrates the superlative degree of
wisdom, gave to Sophocles the positive, and to Euripides the
comparative degree,

Sophos Sophoclaes; sophoteros d'Euripoeaes;
'Andron de panton Sokrataes sophotatos.

Sophocles is wise--Euripides wiser--but wisest of all men is Socrates.

[335] The Oresteia.

[336] For out of seventy plays by Aeschylus only thirteen were
successful; he had exhibited fifteen years before he obtained his
first prize; and the very law passed in honour of his memory, that a
chorus should be permitted to any poet who chose to re-exhibit his
dramas, seems to indicate that a little encouragement of such
exhibition was requisite. This is still more evident if we believe,
with Quintilian, that the poets who exhibited were permitted to
correct and polish up the dramas, to meet the modern taste, and play
the Cibber to the Athenian Shakspeare.

[337] Athenaeus, lib. xiii., p. 603, 604.

[338] He is reported, indeed, to have said that he rejoiced in the
old age which delivered him from a severe and importunate taskmaster.
--Athen., lib. 12, p. 510. But the poet, nevertheless, appears to
have retained his amorous propensit