the fact that appetite and passion are fundamental factors in social life; in that it interferes with these, war is to be brought to an end. Finally the same motives which are behind normal social life are noted as causes of crime, so that under the system of communism proposed in the Ecclesiazousæ crime will cease;[1] moreover, the same distribution of wealth which would check commercial activity would also check crime.[2]
Imitation as a factor in social life is recognized by the poet. In Athens, and in the parody of Athens in the Birds, men are subject to crazes of imitation:
In the time before
There was a Spartan mania, and people went
Stalking about the streets, with Spartan staves,
With their long hair, unwashed and slovenly,
Like so many Socrates's; but, of late,
Birds are the fashion—Birds are all in all—
Their modes of life are grown to be mere copies
Of the birds' habits; rising with the lark,
Scratching and scrabbling suits and informations;
Picking and pecking upon points of law;
Brooding and hatching evidence.[3]
An example of this trait in the Athenian appears in the Ecclesiazousæ (787). Before yielding to the demands of the new communism, the citizen waits to see whether others propose to obey the law before he obeys it and turns in his property.
Aristophanes clearly recognizes that habit and tradition are conservative forces which lend stability to society. The birds lack stability of manner and persistence of purpose,[4] a feature of the bird-city in which the Athenians could not but see reflected a lack of their own.[5] One advantage in the new rule of the women proposed in the Ecclesiazousæ is to be that love of the good old ways which marks women (215), while men are always ready to try some new thing (584 f.). Strepsiades in the opening of the Clouds laments that slaves are no longer under the control of masters, because the old social conditions are dis-
