CONCLUSION 367
people and the democratic State. Later the tendencies we
have characterized, above all the quietisf ideal defined again
and again in the middle of a terrible war, show the path which
comedy took, a path which led finally to a somewhat dull and
wholly unpolitical atmosphere The two latest extant plavs of
Aristophanes, and especially the Ploutosy with their narrow and
materialistic dreams based on 'wishful thinking', are witnesses
to a period of weakening and transition. The fantastic and
Utopian exaggeration of reality In Old Comedy has vanished,
while the artistic subtlety and the deeper psychology of New
Comedy have not yet been achieved So the historians of
literature divined or discovered the existence of Middle
Comedy which, seen from a general point of view, includes the
period when poetry had left the sphere of politics. In a world
in which, even at its best, wealth, good manners, and intel-
lectual education had replaced the old standards of austerity,
physical prowess and patriotism, comedy too had to change in
manner as well as in matter. The topical question, for instance,
of whether rhetorical or philosophical training provided the
better kind of education, was no subject for the comedians
who turned against every kind of intellectual education. Con-
sciously or not, they adapted themselves to a new bourgeois
audience and its standards of decency, materialism and private
interests.
Aristophanes opposed a development in which he was him-
self unconsciously involved. This development with its doubt-
ful and tragic as well as its more positive features went further.
The social demands of a stratum of petty citizens, partly
almost proletarians, gained ground, and men accustomed
themselves more and more to new economic ideas and methods.
The whole change in social life, both in the material and in the
psychological sphere, proved to be an important, indeed an
inevitable, stage of historical development. With the increase
of the economic dependence of the citizens on the State,
Athens undoubtedly went beyond the boundaries of sound
social and financial policy. This process, however^ did not go
so far as is often supposed, and the effects were balanced to
some extent by the fact that contempt for trade and craft
decreased rather than increased. The vast majority of the
people continued to live by these pursuits3 and, on the other
hand, State and citizens derived much advantage from the