That liberty is still more offensive to us, who are born, and live under a monarchical government, which is far from being favourable to licentiousness. But without intending to justify the conduct of Aristophanes, which is certainly inexcusable, I think, to judge properly of it, it would be necessary to lay aside the prejudices of birth, nations, and times, and to imagine we live in those remote ages in a state purely democratical. We must not fancy Aristophanes to have been a person of little consequence in his republic, as the comic writers generally are in our days. The king of Persia had a very different idea of him.(200) It is a known story, that in an audience of the Greek ambassadors, his first inquiry was after a certain comic poet (meaning Aristophanes) that put all Greece in motion, and gave such effectual counsels against him. Aristophanes did that upon the stage, which Demosthenes did afterwards in the public assemblies. The poet’s reproaches were no less animated than the orator’s. In his comedies he uttered the same sentiments as he had a right to deliver from the public rostrum. They were addressed to the same people, upon the same occasions of the state, the same means of success, and the same obstacles to their measures. In Athens the whole people were the sovereign, and each of them had an equal share in the supreme authority. Upon this they were continually intent, were fond of discoursing upon it themselves, and of hearing the sentiments of others. The public affairs were the business of every individual, on which they were desirous of being fully informed, that they might know how to conduct themselves on every occasion of war or peace, which frequently offered, and to decide upon their own, as well as upon the destiny of their allies or enemies. Hence rose the liberty taken by the comic poets, of discussing affairs of the state in their performances. The people were so far from being offended at it, or at the manner in which those writers treated the principal persons of the state, that they conceived their liberty in some measure to consist in it. Three poets(201) particularly excelled in the old comedy; Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes. The last is the only one of them, whose pieces have come down to us entire; and, out of the great number which he composed, eleven are all that remain. He flourished in an age when Greece abounded with great men, and was contemporary with Socrates and Euripides, whom he survived. During the Peloponnesian war, he made his greatest figure; less as a writer to amuse the people with his comedies, than as a censor of the government, retained to reform the state, and to be almost the arbiter of his country.