Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/348

 826 fflSTORY OF GREECE. ripened into the old comedy. 1 It resembled in many respects the satyric drama of the tragedians, but was distinguished from it by dealing not merely with the ancient mythical stones and persons, but chiefly with contemporary men and subjects of com- mon life ; dealing with them often, too, under their real names, and with ridicule the most direct, poignant, and scornful. "We see clearly how fair a field Athens would offer for this species of composition, at a time when the bitterness of political contention ran high, when the city had become a centre for novelties from every part of Greece, when tragedians, rhetors, and phi- losophers, were acquiring celebrity and incurring odium, and when the democratical constitution laid open all the details of political and judicial business, as well as all the first men of the state, not merely to universal criticism, but also to unmeasured libel. 1 See respecting these licentious processions, in connection with the iambus and Archilochus, vol. iv, of this History, ch. xxix, p. 81. Aristotle (Poetic, c. 4) tells us that these phallic processions, with liberty to the leaders (ol iap%ovTe) of scoffing at every one, still continued in many cities of Greece in his time : see Herod, v, 83, and Semus apud Athenaeum, xiv, p. 622 ; also the striking description of the rural Dionysia in the Acharneis of Aristophanes, 235, 255, 1115. The scoffing was a part of the festival, and supposed to be agreeable to Dionysus : iv rolf Aiovv- trtotf tyeifievov avrb 6pg,v not rb OKufifia pepo? TL sdoKei TTJ ioprri- Kal 6 t?0f tcruf x a <-P Ei > ^tXoyetajf r/f uv (Lucian, Piscator. c. 25). Compare Aris- tophanes, Ranse, 367, where the poet seems to imply that no one has a right to complain of being ridiculed in the -xarpiotf re/leraZf Aioviiaov. The Greek word for comedy nupuS'ia, rb KUfiuS^lv at least in its early sense, had reference to a bitter, insulting, criminative ridicule : A-CJ//U- Jelv KOI /ca/cwf teyeiv (Xenophon, Repub. Ath. ii, 23) /ca/o/yopowrdf re Kal KUfKftdovvrae aAAf/tawf Kal alffxpo/.oyovv-af (Plato de Repub. iii, 8, p 332). A remarkable definition of KufiuSia appears in Bekker's Anecdota Graeca, ii, 747, 10 : Kufiudia ianv rj b> peat*) Aaov Karriyopia, rjyovv dijfio- cieuais " public exposure to scorn before the assembled people :" and this idea of it as a penal visitation of evil-doers is preserved in Platonius and th > anonymous writers on comedy, prefixed to Aristophanes. The defini- tba which Aristotle (Poetic, c. 11) gives of it, is too mild for the primitive comedy ; for he tells us himself that Krates, immediately preceding Aristoph- anes, was the first author who departed from the iafi/BiKr) idea : this " iam- bic vein" was originally the common character. It doubtless included every variety of ridicule, from innocent mirth to scornful contempt and
 * but tha predominant character tended decidedly to the latter.