as authors, though every one knew that they were not so. Whatever monetary arrangement the poet eventually made, this process meant the payment of money for the saving of trouble; and, taken in conjunction with his land in Ægîna, and his general dislike for the poor, it warrants us in supposing that Aristophanes was a rich man. He had the prejudices and also the courage of the independent gentleman. His first piece (427 B.C.) was an attack on the higher education of the time, which the satirist, of course, represented as immoral in tendency. The main character was the father of two sons, one virtuous and old-fashioned, the other vicious and new-fashioned. The young poet obtained the second prize, and was delighted. Next year (426) he made a violent attack, with the vigour but not the caution of the Old Oligarch, on the system of the Democratic Empire. The play was called the Babylonians;* the chorus consisted of the allies represented as slaves working on the treadmill for their master Demos. The poet chose for the production of this play the midsummer Dionysia when the representatives of the allies were all present in Athens. He succeeded in making a scandal, and was prosecuted by Cleon, apparently for treason. We do not know what the verdict was. In the Acharnians, Aristophanes makes a kind of apology for his indiscretion, and remarks that he had had such a rolling in dirt as all but killed him. He afterwards reserved his extreme home-truths for the festival of the Lenæa, in early spring, before the season for foreigners in Athens.
The Acharnians was acted at the Lenæa of 425; it is the oldest comedy preserved, and a very good one (see p. 277). It is political in its main purpose, and is directed
