No history of the gradual formation of comedy has come down to us, but in the time of Aristophanes we find her possessed of most extraordinary privileges, and availing herself of them to the extremity of licence. To laugh was the grand object of the audience, and any thing was tolerated which led to this conclusion. The slang of the port and the market, the pleadings of the law courts, the peculiar language of handicrafts, were all carefully studied and profusely introduced, in combination with the grossest buffoonery and indecency, and the most unsparing personal abuse. In a town like Athens, the population of which, though large, was crowded within a narrow space and almost living in the open air, a joke directed against the peculiarities, corporeal or moral, of any person of any sort of notoriety, was pretty sure to be understood, and if understood, quite sure to be relished. Masks were always worn by the actors, and if a living character was brought on the stage the mask was a portrait. Unlucky poets, public defaulters, peculators, and notorious profligates, formed the stock in trade common to all comedians; and a more exceptionable source of amusement was found in the unrestrained indulgence of private malevolence. Even the sacred persons of the gods were fair game; and Bacchus, the patron of the festival, was made to minister to the amusement of his riotous worshippers as the earliest Captain Bohadil upon record.[86] Such are the features of the elder Grecian comedy, confirmed by, and indeed mainly derived from the works of Aristophanes, the only comedian of whom a perfect specimen remains.[87]