After this Balaustion asks Aristophanes if he will commemorate Euripides with them. But his sober mood is gone. He looks about the room, sees things that belong to Euripides, and immediately begins stabbing at him. Balaustion objects, and upon the theme of respect to the dead he begins his usual invective against his rivals, but finally ends by giving respect to Euripides, him whose serenity, he declares, could never with his gibes be disturbed. After venting this mood of animosity he begins soberly to discuss the origin of comedy. He traces its growth to the point where he found it, and enlarges on the improvements he has made, touching, as always, upon the criticisms of his opposers, and finally arriving at the chief point of difference between himself and Euripides, which he enlarges upon at great length. Here the incidental music breaks in with talk between Balaustion and Euthukles, in which the former rather tries to excuse herself from relating her reply to Aristophanes. However, she does give her reply, which is conducted in a more truly argumentative fashion than the defence of Aristophanes. She picks up his points and makes her points against him usually by denying the truth of what he has said. Her supreme defence is, however, the reading of the play "Herakles." Aristophanes, touched but not convinced, finally insists that he is Athens' best friend. He is no Thamuris to be punished for seeing beyond human vision. The last characteristic touch is when Aristophanes catches up the psalterion and sings the lyric of Thamuris. Then he departs, and Balaustion rehearses the last days of Athens, with Euthukles' part in delaying the tragedy of the doomed city. By threading one's way thus through the apology, not from the point of view of Aristophanes' arguments, but from the point of view of his moods, one experiences a tremendous sense of the personality of the man. Repetitions which are not required for the full presentation of his case take their place as natural to a man who is not only inordinately vain but is immediately swayed by every suggestion and emotion that comes to him. Owing to his volatile temperament the argument is varied by now a bit of vivid description like that of the archon's feast when Sophocles appeared, now by some merely personal remark to Balaustion.