title="10"/> History,”[1] informs us that at one time, among the pictures exhibited in the Forum at Rome, there was one in which a Gaul was represented, “thrusting out his tongue in a very unbecoming manner.” The Egyptian Typhons had their exact representations in ancient Greece in a figure of frequent occurrence, to which antiquaries have, I know not why, given the name of Gorgon. The example in our cut No. 8, is a figure in terra-cotta, now in the collection of the Royal Museum at Berlin.[2]

No. 8. Gorgon.

In Greece, however, the spirit of caricature and burlesque representation had assumed a more regular form than in other countries, for it was inherent in the spirit of Grecian society. Among the population of Greece, the worship of Dionysus, or Bacchus, had taken deep root from a very early period—earlier than we can trace back—and it formed the nucleus of the popular religion and superstitions, the cradle of poetry and the drama. The most popular celebrations of the people of Greece, were the Dionysiac festivals, and the phallic rites and processions which accompanied them, in which the chief actors assumed the disguise of satyrs and fawns, covering themselves with goat-skins, and disfiguring their faces by rubbing them over with the lees of wine. Thus, in the guise of noisy bacchanals, they displayed an unrestrained licentiousness of gesture and language, uttering indecent jests and abusive speeches, in which they spared nobody. This portion of the ceremony was the especial attribute of a part of the performers, who accompanied the procession in waggons, and acted something like dramatic performances, in which they uttered an abundance of loose extempore satire on those who passed or who accompanied the procession, a little in the style of the modern carnivals. It became thus the occasion for an unrestrained publication of coarse pasquinades. In the time of Pisistratus, these performances are assumed to have been reduced to a little more order by an individual named Thespis, who is said to have invented masks as a better disguise than dirty faces, and is looked upon as the father of the Grecian drama. There can be no doubt, indeed, that the drama arose out of these popular ceremonies, and it long bore the unmistakable marks of its origin. Even the name of tragedy has nothing tragic in its derivation, for it is formed from the Greek word tragos (τράγος), a goat, in the skins of which animal the satyrs clothed themselves, and hence the name was given also to those who personated the satyrs in the processions. A tragodus (τραγῳδὸς) was the singer, whose words accompanied the movements of a chorus of satyrs, and the term tragodia was applied to his performance. In the same manner, a comodus (κωμωδὸς) was one who accompanied similarly, with chants of an abusive or satirical character, a comus (κῶμος), or band of revellers, in the more riotous and licentious portion of the performances in the Bacchic festivals. The Greek drama always betrayed its origin by the circumstance that the performances took place annually, only at the yearly festivals in honour of Bacchus, of which in fact they constituted a part. Moreover, as the Greek drama became perfected, it still retained from its origin a triple division, into tragedy, comedy, and the satiric drama; and, being still performed at the Dionysiac festival in Athens, each dramatic author was expected to produce what was called a trilogy, that is, a tragedy, a satirical play, and a comedy. So completely was all this identified in the popular mind with the worship of Bacchus, that, long afterwards, when even a tragedy did not please the audience by its subject, the common form of disapproval was, τί ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον—“What has this to do with Bacchus?” and, οὐδὲν πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον—“This has nothing to do with Bacchus.”

We have no perfect remains of the Greek satiric drama, which was, perhaps, of a temporary character, and less frequently preserved; but the early Greek comedy is preserved in a certain number of the plays of Aristophanes, in which we can contemplate it in all its freedom of character. It represented the waggon-jesting, of the age of Thespis, in its full development. In its form it was burlesque to a wanton degree of extravagance, and its essence was personal vilification, as well as general satire. Individuals were not only attacked by the application to them of abusive epithets, but they were represented personally on the stage as performing every kind of contemptible action, and as suffering all sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful treatment. The drama thus bore marks of its origin in its extraordinary licentiousness of language and costume, and in the constant use of the mask. One of its most favourite instruments of satire was parody, which was employed unsparingly on everything which society in its solemn moments respected—against everything that the satirist considered worthy of being held up to public derision or scorn. Religion itself, philosophy, social manners and institutions—even poetry—were all parodied in their turn. The comedies of Aristophanes are full of parodies on the poetry of the tragic and other writers of his age. He is especially happy in parodying the poetry of the tragic dramatist Euripides. The old comedy of Greece has thus been correctly described as the comedy of caricature; and the spirit, and even the scenes, of this comedy, being transferred to pictorial representations, became entirely identical with that branch of art to which we give the name of caricature in modern times. Under the cover of bacchanalian buffoonery, a serious purpose, it is true, was aimed at; but the general satire was chiefly implied in the violent personal attacks on individuals, and this became so offensive that when such persons obtained greater power in Athens than the populace the old comedy was abolished.

Aristophanes was the greatest and most perfect poet of the Old Comedy, and his remaining comedies are as strongly marked representations of the hostility of political and social parties in his time, as the caricatures of Gillray are of party in the reign of our George III., and, we may add, even more minute. They range through the memorable period of the Peloponnesian war, and the earlier ones give us the regular annual series of these performances, as far as Aristophanes contributed them, during several years. The first of them, “The Acharnians,” was performed at the Lenæan feast of Bacchus in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war, the year 425 B.C., when it gained the first prize. It is a bold attack on the factious prolongation of the war through the influence of the Athenian demagogues. The next, “The Knights,” brought out in B.C. 424, is a direct attack upon Cleon, the chief of these demagogues, although he is not mentioned by name; and it is recorded that, finding nobody who had courage enough to make a mask representing Cleon, or to play the character, Aristophanes was obliged to perform it himself, and that