Aristophanes was the greatest and most perfect poet of the Old Comedy, and his remaining comedies are as strongly marked representations of the hostility of political and social parties in his time, as the caricatures of Gillray are of party in the reign of our George III., and, we may add, even more minute. They range through the memorable period of the Peloponnesian war, and the earlier ones give us the regular annual series of these performances, as far as Aristophanes contributed them, during several years. The first of them, "The Acharnians," was performed at the Lenæan feast of Bacchus in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war, the year 425 B.C., when it gained the first prize. It is a bold attack on the factious prolongation of the war through the influence of the Athenian demagogues. The next, "The Knights," brought out in B.C. 424, is a direct attack upon Cleon, the chief of these demagogues, although he is not mentioned by name; and it is recorded that, finding nobody who had courage enough to make a mask representing Cleon, or to play the character, Aristophanes was obliged to perform it himself, and that he smeared his face with lees of wine, in order to represent the flushed and bloated countenance of the great demagogue, thus returning to the original mode of acting of the predecessors of Thespis. This, too, was the first of the comedies of Aristophanes which he published in his own name. "The Clouds," published in 423, is aimed at Socrates and the philosophers. The fourth, "The Wasps," published in B.C. 422, presents a satire on the litigious spirit of the Athenians. The fifth, entitled "Peace" (Ἔιρηνη), appeared in the year following, at the time of the peace of Nicias, and is another satire on the bellicose spirit of the Athenian democracy. The next in the list of extant plays comes after an interval of several years, having been published in B.C. 414, the first year of the Sicilian war, and relates to an irreligious movement in Athens, which had caused a great sensation. Two Athenians are represented as leaving Athens, in disgust at the vices and follies of their fellow citizens, and seeking the kingdom of the birds, where they form a new state, by which the communication between the mortals and the immortals is cut off, and is only opened again by an arrangement between all the parties. In the "Lysistrata," believed to have been brought out in 411, when the war was still at its height, the women of Athens are represented as engaging in a cunning and successful plot, by which they gain possession of the government of the state, and compel their husbands to make peace. "The Thesmophoriazusæ," appears to have been published in B.C. 410; it is a satire upon Euripides, whose writings were remarkable for their bitter attacks on the character of the female sex, who, in this comedy, conspire against him to secure his punishment. The comedy of "The Frogs" was brought out in the year