'The Acharnians,' B.C. 425, shortly after the Athenian defeat at Delium. The worthy countryman, Dicæopolis, weary of being cooped up within the Long Walls, and disgusted with the shameless jobbery of the politicians, sends to Sparta for samples of peace (the Greek word means also libations) of different vintages. The Thirty Years' brand smells of nectar and ambrosia. He accepts it, concludes a private treaty for himself and friends, and proceeds to celebrate the rural Dionysia with wife and child, soothing, by an eloquent plea pronounced in tattered tragic vestments borrowed from Euripides, the anger of the chorus of choleric Acharnian charcoal burners, exasperated at the repeated devastation of their deme by the Spartans. He then opens a market, to which a jolly Boeotian brings the long-lost, thrice-desired Copaic eel; while a starveling Megarian, to the huge delight of the Athenian groundlings, sells his little daughters, disguised as pigs, for a peck of salt. Finally Dicæopolis goes forth to a wedding banquet, from which he returns very mellow in the company of two flute girls; while Lamachus, the head of the war party, issues forth to do battle with the Boeotians in the snow, and comes back with a bloody coxcomb. This play was successfully given in Greek by the students of the University of Pennsylvania in the spring of 1886, and interestingly discussed in the Nation of May 6th by Professor Gildersleeve. 'The Knights,' B.C. 424: named from the chorus of young Athenian cavaliers who abet the sausage-seller, Agoracritus, egged on by the discontented family servants (the generals), Nicias and Demosthenes, to outbid with shameless flattery the rascally Paphlagonian steward, Cleon, and supplant him in the favor of their testy bean-fed old master, Demos (or People). At the close, Demos recovers his wits and his youth, and is revealed sitting enthroned in his glory in the good old Marathonian Athens of the Violet Crown. The prolongation of the billingsgate in the contest between Cleon and the sausage-seller grows wearisome to modern taste; but the portrait of the Demagogue is for all time.