THE ARGUMENT.
Of the date of the Ecclesiazusæ we are not informed by any Didascalia. We learn, however, from a note of the Scholiast on vs. 193, that it was brought on the stage two years after the league with the Bœotians; consequently, in the spring of the year 392, B. C.; and, (as may be inferred from the Scholiast on the Frogs, vs. 404,) at the Great Dionysia. The Ecclesiazusæ is, like the Lysistrata, a picture of woman's ascendency, but one much more depraved than the other. In the dress of men the women steal into the public assembly, and by means of the majority of voices which they have thus surreptitiously obtained, they decree a new constitution, in which there is to be a community of goods and of women. This is a satire on the ideal republics of the philosophers, with similar laws. Protagoras had projected such before Plato. This comedy appears to labour under the very same fault as the Peace: the introduction, the secret assembly of the women, their rehearsal of their parts as men, the description of the popular assembly, are all handled in the most masterly manner; but towards the middle the action stands still. Nothing remains but the representation of the perplexities and confusion which arise from the different communities, especially the community of women, and from the prescribed equality of rights in love both for the old and ugly, and for the young and beautiful. These perplexities are pleasant enough, but they turn too much on a repetition of the same joke.
