The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]

Drinking Horns

The corruption of the Athenian courts of justice probably began with that great extension of their business which took place when the greater part of the allies had lost their independence and were compelled to resort to Athens for the determination of all important causes. At the same time the increase of wealth and the enlargement of commerce, multiplied the occasions of litigation at home. The taste of the people began to be more and more interested in forensic proceedings, even before it was attracted towards them by any other inducement. The pay of the jurors introduced by Pericles strengthened this impulse by a fresh motive, which, when Cleon had tripled its amount, acted more powerfully, and on a larger class. A considerable number of citizens then began to look to the exercise of their judicial functions as a regular source both of pleasure and profit.

Fortune

(After Hope)

But the prevalence of this frivolous habit was not the worst fault of the Athenian courts. In the most important class of cases, the criminal prosecutions, they were seldom perfectly impartial, and their ordinary bias was against the defendant. The juror in the discharge of his office did not forget his quality of citizen, and was not indifferent to the manner in which the issue of a trial might affect the public revenue, and thus he leaned towards decisions which replenished the treasury with confiscations and pecuniary penalties, while they also served to terrify and humble the wealthy class, which he viewed with jealousy and envy. On this notorious temper of the courts was grounded the power of the infamous sycophants who lived by extortion, and generally singled out, as the objects of their attacks, the opulent citizens of timid natures and quiet habits, who were both unable to plead for themselves, and shrank from a public appearance. Such persons might indeed procure the aid of an advocate, but they commonly thought it better to purchase the silence of the informer, than to expose themselves to the risk and the certain inconvenience of a trial. The resident aliens were not exempt from this annoyance; and, though they were not objects of fear or jealousy, they were placed under many disadvantages in a contest with an Athenian prosecutor. But the noble and affluent citizens of the subject states, above all, had reason to tremble at the thought of being summoned to Athens, to meet any of the charges which it was easy to devise against them, and to connect with an imputation of hostile designs or disloyal sentiments, and were ready to stop the mouths of the orators with gold.

There is no room for doubt as to the existence of the evils and vices we have been describing, though the most copious information we possess on the subject is drawn not from purely historical sources, but from the dramatic satires of Aristophanes. But there may still be a question as to the measure of allowance to be made for comic exaggeration, or political prejudices, in the poet; and it seems probable that the colours in which he has painted his countrymen are in some respects too dark. That the mass of the people had not sunk to this degree of depravity, may we think be inferred from the grief and indignation which it is recorded to have shown on some occasions, where it had been misled into an unjust sentence, by which it stained itself with innocent blood: as Callixenus, who however was not worse than other sycophants, though he was among those who returned after the expulsion of the Thirty, and enjoyed the benefit of the amnesty, died, universally hated, of hunger.

ARISTOPHANES

[ca. 425-400 B.C.]

The patriotism of Aristophanes was honest, bold, and generally wise. He was still below the age at which the law permitted a poet to contend for a dramatic prize, and was therefore compelled to use a borrowed name, when, in the year after the death of Pericles, he produced his first work, in which his chief aim seems to have been to exhibit the contrast between the ancient and the modern manners. In his next, his ridicule was pointed more at the defects or the perversion of political institutions, and perhaps at the democratical system of filling public offices by lot. In both, however, he had probably assailed many of the most conspicuous persons of the day, and either by personal satire, or by attacks on the abuses by which the demagogues throve, he provoked the hostility of Cleon, who endeavoured to crush him by a prosecution. Its nominal ground was, it seems, the allegation, that the poet, who in fact according to some accounts was of Dorian origin, was not legally entitled to the franchise. But the real charge was that in his recent comedy he had exposed the Athenian magistracy to the derision of the foreign spectators. Cleon, however, was baffled; and though the attempt was once or twice renewed, perhaps by other enemies of Aristophanes, it failed so entirely, that he seems to have been soon left in the unmolested enjoyment of public favour; and he not only was encouraged to revenge himself on Cleon by a new piece, in which the demagogue was exhibited in person, and was represented by the poet himself,—who it is said could not find an actor to undertake the part, nor even get a suitable mask made for it,—but he at the same time ventured on an experiment which it seems had never been tried before on the comic stage.

Aristophanes

The people had been accustomed to see the most eminent Athenian statesmen and generals brought forward there and placed in a ludicrous light; but it had never yet beheld its own image set before its eyes as in a mirror, which reflected the principal features of its character, not indeed without the exaggeration which belonged to the occasion, but yet with a truth which could not be mistaken or evaded. This was done in the same play which exposed Cleon’s impudence and rapacity; and the follies and faults of the assembled multitude, which appears under its proper name of Demos, as an old dotard, not void of cunning, though incapable of governing himself, are placed in the strongest relief by the presence of its unworthy favourite, who is introduced, not indeed by name, but so as to be immediately recognised, as a lying, thievish, greedy, fawning, Paphlagonian slave. The poet’s boldness was so far successful, that instead of offending the audience he gained the first prize: but in every other respect he failed of attaining his object; for Cleon, as we have seen, maintained his influence unimpaired to the end of his life, and the people showed as little disposition to reform its habits, and change its measures, as if the portrait it had seen of itself had been no less amiable than diverting. But the issue of this attempt did not deter him from another, which, but for the applause which had crowned the first, might have appeared equally dangerous. As in the Knights he had levelled his satire against the sovereign assembly; in the Wasps, which he exhibited in the year before Cleon’s death, he attacked the other stronghold of his power, the courts of justice, with still keener ridicule.

The vehicles in which Aristophanes conveyed his political lessons, strange as they appear to us, were probably judiciously chosen, as well with the view of pointing the attention of the audience more forcibly to his practical object, as of relieving the severity of his admonitions and censures. As time has spared only a few fragments of the earlier and the contemporary productions of the comic drama, it is only from the report of the ancient critics that we can form any notion of the relation in which he stood to his theatrical competitors. He is said not only to have introduced several improvements in the structure of the old political comedy, by which he brought it to its highest perfection, but to have tempered the bitterness and the grossness of his elder rival Cratinus, who is described as the comic Æschylus. It is not quite clear in what sense this account is to be understood, for it is difficult to conceive that the satire of Cratinus can have been either freer or more licentious. But the difference seems to have consisted in the inimitable grace with which Aristophanes handled every subject which he touched. We are informed, indeed, that even in this quality he was surpassed by Eupolis, who is also said to have shown more vigour of imagination in the invention of his plots. Yet another account represents Eupolis as more nearly resembling Cratinus in the violence and homeliness of his invectives; and the testimony of the philosopher Plato, who in an epitaph called the soul of Aristophanes a sanctuary of the Graces, studied his works as a model of style for the composition of his own dialogues, and honoured him with a place in one of his masterpieces, seems sufficient to prove that at least in the elegance of his taste, and the gracefulness of his humour, he had no equal.