Nor did the witty, rollicking Greeks confine their satire to the immortals. Of the famous mirth-provokers of the world, such as Cervantes, Ariosto, Molière, Rabelais, Sterne, Voltaire, Thackeray, Dickens, the one that had most power to produce mere physical laughter, power to shake the sides and cause people to roll helpless upon the floor, was the Greek dramatist Aristophanes. The force of the comic can no farther go than he has carried it in some of the scenes of his best comedies. Even to us, far removed as we are, in taste as well as in time, from that wonderful Athens of his, they are still irresistibly diverting. This master of mirth is never so effective as when he is turning into ridicule the philosophers and poets for whose sake Greece is still a dear, venerable name to all the civilized world. In his comedy of "The Frogs" he sends Bacchus down into Hades with every circumstance of riotous burlesque, and there he exhibits the two great tragic poets, Æschylus and Euripides, standing opposite each other, and competing for the tragic throne by reciting verses in which the mannerism of each, as well as familiar passages of their plays, is broadly burlesqued. Nothing in literature can be found more ludicrous or less becoming, unless we look for it in Aristophanes himself. In his play of "The Clouds" occurs his caricature of Socrates, of infinite absurdity, but not ludicrous to us, because we read it as part of the story of a sublime and affecting martyrdom. It fills our minds with wonder to think that a people among whom a Socrates could have been formed could have borne to see him thus profaned. A rogue of a father, plagued by an extravagant son, repairs to the school of Socrates to learn the arts by which creditors are argued out of their just claims in courts of justice. Upon reaching the place, the door of the "Thinking Shop" opens, and behold! a caricature all ready for the artist's pencil. The pupils are discovered with their heads fixed to the floor, their backs uppermost, and Socrates hanging from the ceiling in a basket. The visitor, transfixed with wonder, questions his companion. He asks why they present that portion of their bodies to heaven. "It is getting taught astronomy alone by itself." "And who is this man in the basket?" "HIMSELF." "Who's Himself?" "Socrates!" The visitor at length addresses the master by a diminutive, as though he had said, "Socrates, dear little Socrates." The philosopher speaks: "Why callest thou me, thou creature of a day?" "Tell me, first, I beg, what you are doing up there." "I am walking in the air, and speculating about the sun; for I should never have rightly learned celestial things if I had not suspended the intellect, and subtly mingled Thought with its kindred Air." All this is in the very spirit of caricature. Half of Aristophanes is caricature. In characterizing the light literature of Greece we are reminded of Juvenal's remark upon the Greek people, "All Greece is a comedian."