But he has more than the opulent diction and the singing voice of the poet.  He has the key to fairy-land, a feeling for nature which we thought romantic and modern, and in his lyrics the native wood-notes wild of his own ‘Mousa lochmaia’ (the muse of the coppice).  The chorus of the Mystae in the ‘Frogs,’ the rustic idyl of the ‘Peace,’ the songs of the girls in the ‘Lysistrata,’ the call of the nightingale, the hymns of the ‘Clouds,’ the speech of the “Just Reason,” and the grand chorus of birds, reveal Aristophanes as not only the first comic writer of Greece, but as one of the very greatest of her poets.

Among the many editions of Aristophanes, those most useful to the student and the general reader are doubtless the text edited by Bergk (2 vols., 1867), and the translations of the five most famous plays by John Hookham Frere, to be found in his complete works.

[Illustration:  Signature:  PAUL SHOREY]

     THE ORIGIN OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

     From ‘The Acharnians’:  Frere’s Translation

DICAEOPOLIS

     Be not surprised, most excellent spectators,
     If I that am a beggar have presumed
     To claim an audience upon public matters,
     Even in a comedy; for comedy
     Is conversant in all the rules of justice,
     And can distinguish betwixt right and wrong.

     The words I speak are bold, but just and true. 
     Cleon at least cannot accuse me now,
     That I defame the city before strangers,
     For this is the Lenaean festival,
     And here we meet, all by ourselves alone;
     No deputies are arrived as yet with tribute,
     No strangers or allies:  but here we sit
     A chosen sample, clean as sifted corn,
     With our own denizens as a kind of chaff.

     First, I detest the Spartans most extremely;
     And wish that Neptune, the Taenarian deity,
     Would bury them in their houses with his earthquakes. 
     For I’ve had losses—­losses, let me tell ye,
     Like other people; vines cut down and injured. 
     But among friends (for only friends are here),
     Why should we blame the Spartans for all this? 
     For people of ours, some people of our own,—­
     Some people from among us here, I mean: 
     But not the People (pray, remember that);
     I never said the People, but a pack
     Of paltry people, mere pretended citizens,
     Base counterfeits,—­went laying informations,
     And making a confiscation of the jerkins
     Imported here from Megara; pigs, moreover,
     Pumpkins, and pecks of salt, and ropes of onions,
     Were voted to be merchandise from Megara,
     Denounced, and seized, and sold upon the spot.