The Peloponnesian War lasted for twenty-nine years--during most of the time for which our dramatist held possession of the stage. Nearly all his comedies which have come down to us abound, as we should naturally expect, in allusions to the one absorbing interest of the day. But three of them--‘The Acharnians,’ ‘The Peace,’ and ‘Lysistrata,’--are founded entirely on what was the great public question of the day--How long was this grinding war to continue? when should Athens see again the blessings of peace? Treated in various grotesque and amusing forms, one serious and important political moral underlies them all. THE ACHARNIANS. ‘The Acharnians’ might indeed have fairly claimed the first place here, on the ground that it was the earliest in date of the eleven comedies of Aristophanes which have been preserved to us. Independently of its great literary merits, it would have a special interest of its own, as being the most ancient specimen of comedy of any kind which has reached us. It was first acted at the great Lenæan festival held annually in honour of Bacchus, in February of the year 425 B.C., when the war had already lasted between six and seven years. It took its name from Acharnæ, one of the “demes,” or country boroughs of Attica, about seven miles north of Athens; and the Chorus in the play is supposed to consist of old men belonging to the district. Acharnæ was the largest, the most fertile, and the most populous of all the demes, supplying a contingent of 3000 heavy-armed soldiers to the Athenian army. It lay right in the invader’s path in his march from the Spartan frontier upon the city of Athens: and when, in the first year of the war, the Spartan forces bivouacked in its corn-fields and olive-grounds, and set fire to its homesteads, the smoke of their burning and the camp of the destroying enemy could be seen from the city walls. The effect was nearly being that which the Spartan king Archidamus had desired. The Athenians--and more especially the men of Acharnæ, now cooped within the fortifications of the capital--clamoured loudly to be led out to battle; and it needed all the influence of Pericles to restrain them from risking an engagement in which he knew they would be no match for the invaders. The Acharnians, therefore, had their national hostility to the Spartans yet more imbittered by their own private sufferings. Yet it was not unnatural that a sober-minded and peaceful yeoman of the district, remembering what his native canton had suffered and was likely to suffer again, should strongly object to the continuance of a war carried on at such a cost. His zeal for the national glory of Athens and his indignation against her enemies might be strong: but the love of home and property is a large component in most men’s patriotism. He was an Athenian by all means--but an Acharnian first.