The first extant play, (The Acharniany 425, turns on the fancy of a militant pacifist s establishing a private peace for himself while the state is at war. This happy thought is hotly debated in the first half of the play, and in the second half illustrated by farcical scenes of contrast between the riotous living of the pacifist and the bread ticket diet of the war party. This way of composition gives the formula of many Aristophanic comedies.
(The Clouds' (423, 2d. ed., 422) is a gross caricature of Socrates treated as representa tive of sophistry, the new education, atheism, and the new science of nature. The chorus of clouds symbolizes the mists of the new thought. In the second edition Aristophanes bitterly re proaches the audience for not giving the prize to this cleverest of his comedies. See CLOUDS, THE The happy thought of Wasps) (422) is the institution of a court in a private house to satisfy the litigious mania of an old profes sional juryman, Love-Cleon, whose dashing son Hate-Cleon has vainly attempted all other means of restraint. The first case brought before the court is the trial of the house dog for stealing a Sicilian cheese, a motive borrowed by Ben Jonson. The chorus of wasps symbolizes jury men and native children of the soil as they ex plain: " Do you wonder, 0 spectators, thus to see me spliced and braced, Like a wasp in form and figure, tapering inwards at the waist ? We on whom this stern-appendage, this portentous tail is found, Are the genuine old Autochthons, native children of the ground:" (Rogsrs) Many of the scenes are pure farce. In its larger purport the play may be a conservative satire on that palladium of advanced democ racy, the huge popular courts in which from 500 to 2,000 jurymen as judges of both law and fact gave irresponsible decisions according to their own good pleasure and the plausibility of the orators.
After (The Birds) (414) the year 411 yields two comedies with similar motives. In• (The Lysistrata' the women of all Greece plot to enforce a peace by divorce from bed and board. In (The Thesmophoriazusa,) a licen tious picture of the women celebrating the festival of Demeter is converted into a liter ary satire of Euripides, whom the women con demn for his well-known misogynism and whose representative caught spying upon them, they arrest and hold as a hostage. After (The Frogs) (405), (The Ecclesiazusx) or (Ladies in Parliament) (393) portrays the women of Athens seizing the reins of government and establishing a communism and community of wives, the relation of which to Plato's (Repub lic) has been endlessly discussed.