a celebrated comic poet of Athens. He was contemporary with Plato, Socrates, and Euripides; and most of his plays were written during the Peloponnesian war. His imagination was warm and lively, and his genius particularly turned to raillery. He had also great spirit and resolution; and was a declared enemy to slavery, and to all those who wanted to oppress their country. The Athenians suffered themselves in his time to be governed by men who had no other views than to make themselves masters of the commonwealth. Aristophanes exposed the designs of these men, with great wit and severity, upon the stage. Cleo was the first whom he attacked, in his comedy of the Equites; and as there was not one of the comedians who would venture to personate a man of his great authority, Aristophanes played the character himself, and with so much success, that the Athenians obliged Cleo to pay a fine of five talents, which were given to the poet. He described the affairs of the Athenians in so exact a manner, that his comedies are a faithful history of that people. For this reason, when Dionysius king of Syracuse desired to learn the state and language of Athens, Plato sent him the comedies of Aristophanes, telling him, these were the best representation thereof. He wrote above 50 comedies; but there are only 11 extant which are perfect: these are, Plutus, the Clouds, the Frogs, Equites, the Acharnenses, the Wasps, Peace, the Birds, the Ecclesiazusae or Female Orators, the Thesmophiazusae or Priestesses of Ceres, and Lykurgata. The Clouds, which he wrote in ridicule of Socrates*, is the most celebrated of all his comedies. Madam Dacier tells us, she was so much charmed with this performance, that after she had translated it, and read it over 200 times, it did not become the least tedious to her, which... which she could not say of any other piece; and that the pleasure which she received from it was so exqui- site, that she forgot all the contempt and indignation which Aristophanes deserved for employing his wit to ruin a man, who was wisdom itself, and the greatest ornament of the city of Athens. Aristophanes having conceived some aversion to the poet Euripides, satirizes him in several of his plays, particularly in his Frogs and his Theophorosiazufoa. He wrote his Peace in the 10th year of the Peloponnesian war, when a treaty for 50 years was concluded between the Athenians and the Lacedemonians, though it continued but seven years. The Acharnenses was written after the death of Pericles, and the loss of the battle in Sicily, in order to dissuade the people from intrusting the safety of the common- wealth to such imprudent generals as Lamachus. Soon after, he represented his aves or birds; by which he admonished the Athenians to fortify Decelaea, which he calls by a fictitious name Nepheleococcygia. The Vespae, or Wafts, was written after another loss in Sicily, which the Athenians suffered from the miscon- duct of Chares. He wrote the Lysistrata when all Greece was involved in a war; in which comedy the women are introduced debating upon the affairs of the commonwealth; when they come to a resolution, not to go to bed with their husbands till a peace should be concluded. His Plutus, and other comedies of that kind, were written after the magistrates had given or- ders that no person should be exposed by name upon the stage. He invented a peculiar kind of verse, which was called by his name, and is mentioned by Cicero in his Brutus; and Suidas says, that he also was the in- ventor of the tetrameter and octameter verse.

Aristophanes was greatly admired among the an- cients, especially for the true Attic elegance of his style. The time of his death is unknown; but it is certain he was living after the expulsion of the tyrants by Thrasybulus, whom he mentions in his Plutus and other comedies. There have been several editions and translations of this poet. Nicodemus Frischin, a Ger- man, famous for his classical knowledge, in the 16th century, translated Plutus, the Clouds, the Frogs, the Equites, and the Acharnenses, into Latin verse. Quin- tus Septimus Florens, rendered into Latin verse the Wafts, the Peace, and Lysistrata; but his translation is full of obsolete words and phrases. Madam Dacier published at Paris in 1692, a French version of Plu- tus and the Clouds, with critical notes, and an exami- nation of them according to the rules of the theatre. Mr Lewis Theobald likewise translated these two co- medies into English, and published them with remarks. The most noble edition of this author is that published by Ludolphus Kutter, at Amsterdam, in folio, in 1710, and dedicated to Charles Montague Earl of Halifax.