Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/300

276 one strictly philosophical poem, On Nature.* We hear that the comedies were rapid and bustling; but, of course, the remnants that have survived owe their life merely to some literary quality, whether pithiness of thought or grammatical oddity. His description of a parasite—the thing existed in his time, though not the word—is excellent. It is interesting to find him using puns of the most undisguised type, as where one speaker describes Zeus as, and the other hears as , and supposes that the god fed his guest on a crane. A typical piece of conversation is the following: "A. After the sacrifice came a feast, and after the feast a drinking-party. B. That seems nice. A. And after the drinking-party a revel, after the revel a swinery, after the swinery a summons, after the summons a condemnation, and after the condemnation fetters and stocks and a fine." The other side of the man is represented by his philosophical sayings: "Mind hath sight and Mind hath hearing; all things else are deaf and blind"; "Character is destiny to man"; or, one of the most frequently-quoted lines of antiquity, "Be sober, and remember to disbelieve: these are the sinews of the mind." The metre of Epicharmus is curiously loose; it suggests the style of a hundred years later, but his verbose and unfinished diction marks the early craftsman. He often reminds one of Lucilius and Plautus.

The Attic comedy was developed on different lines, and, from about 460 onwards, followed in the steps of tragedy. The ground-form seems to be a twofold division, with the 'parabasis' between. First comes a