"While the philosophers, therefore, querulously maintained that man was the joke and plaything of the gods, the comic poet reversed the picture, and made the gods the playthings of men; in his hands, indeed, everything was upon the broad grin: the gods laughed, men laughed, and animals laughed. Nature was considered as a sort of fantastic being, with a turn for the humorous; and the world was treated as a sort of extended jest-book, where the poet pointed out the bon-mots [Footnote: French; pronounced bong-mos.] and acted in some degree as corrector of the Press. If he discharged this office sometimes in the sarcastic spirit of a Mephistopheles, this, too, was considered as part of his functions. He was the Ter'roe Fil'ius [Footnote: Terroe Filius, son of the earth; that is, a human being.] of the day; and lenity would have been considered, not as an act of discretion, but as a cowardly dereliction of duty." It was in the time of Pericles that the comedy just described first dealt with men and subjects under their real names; and in one of the plays of Crati'nus--under whom comedy received its full development--Cimon is highly eulogized, and his rival, Pericles, is bitterly derided. With unmeasured and unsparing license comedy attacked, under the veil of satire, not only all that was really ludicrous or base, but often cast scorn and derision on that which was innocent, or even meritorious. For the reason that the comic writers were so indiscriminate in their attacks, frequently making transcendent genius and noble personality, as well as demagogism and personal vice, the butt of comic scorn; their writings have but little historical value except in the few instances in which they are corroborated by higher authority. ARlSTOPH'ANES. Among the contemporaries of Cratinus were Eu'polis and Aristophanes, the latter of whom became the chief of what is known as the Old Attic Comedy. Of his life little is known; but he was a member of the conservative or aristocratic party at Athens, directing his attacks chiefly against the democratic or popular party of Pericles, and continuing to write comedies until about 392 B.C. While his comedies are replete with coarse wit, they are wonderfully brilliant, and contain much, also, that is pure and beautiful. As a late writer has well said, "Beauty and deformity came to him with equal abundance, and his wonderful pieces are made up of all that is low and all that is pure and lovely." The Muses, seeking for a shrine Whose glories ne'er should cease, Found, as they strayed, the soul divine Of Aristophanes. --PLATO, trans. by MERIVALE.