Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/273

Rh Greek cities, and the recall of exiles. Phocion was condemned to death, and the democracy fancied itself restored. But Cassander was too strong to be ousted. Retaining his hold on Munychia and Piraeus, he placed Athens under the rule of Demetrius of Phalerum, a poet, orator, and man of letters, under whose mild sway the city had ten years of peace and content (B.C. 317–307), though without the old strenuous life and activity. Participation in public affairs became unfashionable, and few were willing to bear state burdens. Yet its ancient reputation as a seat of literature and philosophy did not disappear at once. The poets of the New Comedy were either Athenians or lived for many years in Athens, as being the place where they could obtain and enjoy the widest fame and the most favourable opportunities. The greatest of them all—Menander (B.C. 342–290)—was a native Athenian. Philemon of Syracuse (B.C. 388–292) was early in life granted citizenship at Athens, where he lived for the greater part of his long life; and of the other twenty or twenty-four poets of the New Comedy quoted or named by later writers, the majority were Athenians or residents at Athens. But Comedy was no longer political and personal, statesmen were no longer worth attacking, or it was no longer safe to touch on public affairs. It was a comedy of manners, and its characters were intriguing youths, girls virtuous or the reverse, cunning slaves, greedy parasites, stern or indulgent fathers. The society represented was that pictured in the “Characters” of Theophrastus, the successor of Aristotle (B.C. 372–287)—a society of