VIII FAMILY A NT D NEIGHBOURS 2CKJ

a good soldier.1 The grotesque right of the birds to beat their
fathers is contrasted with the duty of feeding the old ones.2
In the Frogs the beating of mother and father ranks with
crimes like perjury and offences against hospitality, but it
seems to have been no less frequent. 3 We must ask the mean-
ing of all this outside the realm of mere caricature

At first sight, the whole thing seems to have been little
more than an attempt to prove the monstrous nature of all
this breaking of family bonds, and thus to reduce it to ab-
surdity. However, there is perhaps something more in it than
that. The parricide's desires are prompted by pure avarice/
and money plays the leading part also in the quarrel between
Strep siades and Pheidippides. To 'throttle' the father, in a
financial sense of course, is typical of the 'sons of our times'.5
The law grants the father the right to expel his son from the
community of the family, on the other hand, in case of mental
infirmity, it allows the father to be declared incapable of
managing his affairs and the son to take over the whole pro-
perty.6 We recall the story of how the old Sophokles was
accused by his sons. It seems that both procedures had be-
come frequent by the last decades of the fifth century,7 In
comedy more drastic methods are used. The whole motif is
both primitive and burlesque, and it is difficult to take it
seriously, though there is doubtless some real background to
it. It reflects not only avarice, which played an important part,
but also a more profound hostility which was due to different
methods of training and education.

In earlier times boys were taught by a teacher^ and men by
poets In the Frogs 9 Euripides, being both a poet and a
sophist5 still approves of this arrangement which is set forth
by Aischylos.8 Everything, however, had been changed by
the teaching of the sophists who were chiefly interested in
political and forensic rhetoric Older men now frequently saw
themselves disregarded by the modern young men cThe lads

1 B i337fF ' B 7575 i34-7ff - 1355*

3 F 1465" 4B.i3$2

7 Earl} evidence for the former action, the corOKilpJ^iS, is scant}, but seems
certain In general, cf J H Lipsius, Amsches Reckt n. Rechtsverfokrex,
502ff, S Luna, Aegyptus, VII (1926). 268
8 F