Note 527 — Chapter LXVII · THE DRAMA. — RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS. — THE SOPHISTS.

See about the effect on the estimation of Sokratês, Ranke, Commentat. de Vitâ Aristophanis, p. cdxli.

Compare also the remarks of Cicero (De Repub. iv, 11; vol. iv, p. 476, ed. Orell.) upon the old Athenian comedy and its unrestrained license. The laws of the Twelve Tables at Rome condemned to death any one who composed and published libellous verses against the reputation of another citizen.

Among the constant butts of Aristophanês and the other comic composers, was the dithyrambic poet Kinesias, upon whom they discharged their wit and bitterness, not simply as an indifferent poet, but also on the ground of his alleged impiety, his thin and feeble bodily frame, and his wretched health. We see the effect of such denunciations in a speech of the orator Lysias; composed on behalf of Phanias, against whom Kinesias had brought an indictment, or graphê paranomôn. Phanias treats these abundant lampoons as if they were good evidence against the character of Kinesias: Θαυμάζω δ᾽ εἰ μὴ βαρέως φέρετε ὅτι Κινησίας ἐστὶν ὁ τοῖς νόμοις βοηθὸς, ὃν ὑμεῖς πάντες ἐπίστασθε ἀσεβέστατον ἁπάντων καὶ παρανομώτατον γεγονέναι. Οὐχ οὖτός ἐστιν ὁ τοιαῦτα περὶ θεοὺς ἐξαμαρτάνων, ἃ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις αἰσχρόν ἐστι καὶ λέγειν, τῶν κωμῳδιδασκάλον δ᾽ ἀκούετε καθ᾽ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν; see Lysias, Fragm. 31, ed. Bekker; Athenæus, xii, p. 551.

Dr. Thirlwall estimates more lightly than I do the effect of these abundant libels of the old comedy: see his review of the Attic tragedy and comedy, in a very excellent chapter of his History of Greece, ch. xviii, vol. iii, p. 42.