Page:Comedies of Aristophanes (Hickie 1853) vol2.djvu/144

According to the notice of the ancient Didascalia, this play was acted at the Lenæan festival, January, b. c. 405, in the Archonship of Callias. It was brought out in Philonides' name, who gained the first prize, Phrynichus the second with his "Muses," and Plato the third with his "Cleophon." The Frogs was so much admired on account of its parabasis, that it was acted a second time; — very probably in the March of the same year, at the Great Dionysia. The Frogs has for its subject the decline of the Tragic Art. Bacchus has a great longing for Euripides, and determines to bring him back from the infernal world. In this he imitates Hercules, but although furnished with that hero's lion-skin and club, in sentiments he is very unlike him, and as a dastardly voluptuary affords much matter for laughter. He rows himself over the Acherusian lake, where the frogs merrily greet him with their melodious croakings. The proper Chorus, however, consists of the shades of those initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. Æschylus had hitherto occupied the tragic throne in the world below, but Euripides wants to eject him. Pluto presides, but appoints Bacchus to determine this great controversy. The two poets, the sublimely wrathful Æschylus, and the subtle and conceited Euripides, stand opposite each other, and deliver specimens of their poetical powers; they sing, they declaim against each other; and their peculiar traits are characterized in masterly style. At last a balance is brought, and separate verses of each poet are weighed against each other. Notwithstanding all the efforts of Euripides to produce ponderous lines, those of Æschylus always make the scale of his rival to kick the beam. Bacchus in the mean time has become a convert to the merits of Æschylus, and although he had sworn to Euripides to take him back with him to the upper world, he dismisses him with a parody of one of his own verses in the Hippolytus:

Consequently Æschylus returns to the living world, and resigns the tragic throne in his absence to Sophocles. The scene is first laid at Thebes; afterwards it changes to the nether shore of the Acherusian lake; and finally to the infernal world, with the palace of Pluto in the background.