Although the sites of the courts are uncertain, we know what went on in them. The Athenian passion for litigation is a commonplace. Lucian’s Icaromenippus, looking down from the moon on the kingdoms of the classic world, characterizes the inhabitants thus: “I could see the nomad Scyths in their wagons; the Egyptian farming; the Cilician buccaneering; the Spartan flogging; and the Athenian pettifogging.” So, in the newly organized Bird-town of Aristophanes, one of the first visitors, following hard after the parricide, is a Law-suit-hatcher. He “cannot dig,” but is not ashamed of his blackmailing trade. He comes to the birds for wings to bear him around among the Isles as “Summoner.” The “Wasps” is a comedy directed against this frailty of the Athenians. The old Philocleon (demagogue-lover), on account of his inordinate passion for sitting on juries, is forcibly detained at home by his son who, to console his father, arranges a trial of the dog Labes (Snap) who has rushed into the kitchen and devoured a Sicilian cheese. The trial is conducted with detailed and rigorous conventionality. The defendant is finally acquitted, thanks to the puppies, who are brought into court and “whining beg him off, entreat and weep!”—a parody on the common but illegal method of influencing a jury, which Socrates scorned to adopt when on trial for his life. With the exception of the Acropolis itself, the great Dionysiac Theatre perhaps offers most to allure the visitor. Although in its present state, with the later disfigurements of Roman times, we can only with difficulty form a detailed picture of its structure even in the fourth century, yet the slight traces of the circular orchestra, now identified beneath it, entitle the visitor to associate with this site the classic drama and to give free play to not unnatural sentiment. It is an epitome of the Athenian drama. It interprets, and is interpreted by, a wide range of literature. Here, too, in later times were gathered popular assemblies. Here, looking over plain and sea, sat generations of citizens and guests to be moved to laughter or to tears. Here the “Shameless Man” of Theophrastus managed to get himself and his children in for nothing by manipulating the places which he had purchased for his foreign visitors. And not only could the philosopher Theophrastus find subjects for his character sketches among the theatre-goers, and turn the critics into material for his critique, but his friend, the playwright Menander, could in his comedy use the dramatic troupe as matter for his sententious characterization. Already in the time of Aristophanes the chorus was unequally constituted: some members trained as star performers to take a more active part, others to move as mutes in the background. Menander utilizes this custom to illustrate, in a fragment preserved to us, the workers and the drones of life:—