Nor were cartoons missing, for the grotesque pictures were as important a factor as the verbal or written words. The Old Comedy is marked by political satire of a virulent personality. This is prohibited in the Middle Comedy, and replaced by literary and philosophical criticism of the ways of the citizens. The New Comedy, more repressed still, is the comedy of manners, and its influence continued to the Roman stage and further. Of the Old Comedy, save for a few lesser lights, Aristophanes is the sole representative. At the festivals of the god Dionysus, two elements were present. One the solemn rites, which developed into tragedy, and the other the grotesque and ribald orgies which were equally in evidence and which culminated in the idea of comedy. The license of these symbolic representations was unbridled and all rules of decorum and decency were violated in the frenzied antics. Doubtless many writings now lost to us were filled with the broad humor of the day, but we have only the plays of Aristophanes left. Of the life of this Athenian not much is known. He was born after 450 B.C. and it was after the Peloponnesian War that he wrote his plays. The principal and best known of his eleven extant plays is _The Frogs_. Of this, two clever translations are given. One, is thus introduced by a writer in _The Quarterly Review_: “One of the temples or theatres appropriated to the service of Bacchus in Athens, and in which the scenic performances of the old Greeks took place, was situated near a part of that metropolis usually called ‘The Marshes,’ and those who know by experience what tenants such places commonly harbour in more southern climates will think it not impossible that the representatives of the stage, and more particularly in theatres which were generally without a roof, were occasionally disturbed, to the great annoyance of the dramatists, by the noisy vociferations of these more ancient and legitimate Lords of the Marshes. One of them was not a man to be offended with impunity by biped or quadruped; and wherever the foes of Aristophanes were to be found, on land or in water, he had shafts both able and willing to reach them. “In his descent to the lower world, the patron of the stage is accordingly made to encounter a band of most pertinacious and invincible frogs; and the gradations through which the mind of Bacchus runs, after the first moments of irritation have subsided, from coaxing to bullying, from affected indifference to downright force, are probably a mere transcript of the poet’s own feelings under similar circumstances.” SCENE.--_The Acherusian Lake_--BACCHUS _at the oar in_ CHARON’S _Boat_ --CHARON--_Chorus of Frogs--In the background a view of Bacchus’s Temple or Theatre, from which are heard the sounds of a Scenic Entertainment._ _Semich._ 1. Croak! croak! croak! _Semich._ 2. Croak! croak! croak!