Still another piece of the "godlike insolence of youth," though less offensive in its implications, is the farce, _Goetter, Helden, und Wieland_, written in the autumn of the same year, 1773. At an earlier period Wieland had been one of the gods of Goethe's idolatry, but Wieland was now the most distinguished champion of those French models against which Goethe and the youths associated with him had declared irreconcilable war. Moreover, in a journal recently started by Wieland, there had appeared an unfriendly review of _Goetz von Berlichingen_. By the publication of a play, _Alceste_, in which he foolishly challenged comparison with Euripides' drama of the same name, Wieland gave the enemy his opportunity. On a Sunday afternoon, with a bottle of Burgundy beside him, as he tells us, Goethe tossed off his skit at one sitting. As a piece of improvisation, it certainly contains excellent fooling. We are introduced to the lower world, where the four characters in Euripides' play, Admetus, Alcestis, Hercules, and Mercury, as well as its author, are represented as in a state of high indignation at the liberties which Wieland has taken with them in his _Alcestes_. Summoned before them, Wieland appears in his nightcap, and has to run the gauntlet of their several reproaches--the purport of them all being that he has foolishly misunderstood the Greek world which he had undertaken to portray. Against Goethe's wish the satire was published in the following year, and rapidly ran through four editions, but Wieland had a genteel revenge. With that _Lebensweisheit_ which Goethe long afterwards marked as his characteristic, he published in his review a notice of the burlesque, in which it is recommended as "a masterpiece of persiflage and of sophistical wit." "Wieland has turned the tables on me," was Goethe's own admission; "Ich bin eben prostituiert."[142] [Footnote 142: Max Morris, _op. cit._ iv. 81.]