Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/350

 328 HISTORY OF GUEECi!,. former, while -be bitterly derided and viuperated tbe latter Hermippus, Telekleides, and most of the contemporary comic writers followed the same political lins in assailing that great man, together with those personally connected with him, Aspasia and Anaxagoras: indeed, Hermippus was the person who in- dicted Aspasia for impiety before the dikastery. But the testi- mony of Aristophanes l shows that no comic writer, of the time of Perikles, equalled Kratinus, either in vehemence of libel or in popularity. It is remarkable that, in 440 B.C., a law was passed forbidding comic authors to ridicule any citizen by name in their composi- tions ; which prohibition, however, was rescinded after two years, an interval marked by the rare phenomenon of a lenient comedy from Kratinus. 2 Such enactment denotes a struggle in the Athenian mind, even at that time, against the mischief of making the Dionysiac festival an occasion for unmeasured libel against citizens publicly named and probably themselves present. And there was another style of comedy taken up by Krates, distinct from the iambic or Archilochian vein worked by Kratinus, in which comic incident was attached to fictitious characters and woven into a story, without recourse to real individual names or direct personality. This species of comedy, analogous to that which Epicharmus had before exhibited at Syracuse, was con- tinued by Pherekrates as the successor of Krates. Though for a long time less popular and successful than the poignant food served up by Kratinus and others, it became finally predominant after the close of the Peloponnesian war, by the gradual transi- tion of what is called the Old Comedy into the Middle and New Comedy. But it is in Aristophanes that the genius of the old libellous comedy appears in its culminating perfection At least we have 1 Aristophan. Equit. 525, seq. another of his comedies, 'Apx&oxoi). It had a chorus, as one of the Frag- ments shows, but few or no choric songs ; nor any parabasis, or address by the chorus, assuming the person of the poet, to the spectators. See Bergk, De Reliquiis Comccd. Antiq. p. 142, scq.; Meineke, Frag. Crn- tini, vol. ii, p. 93, 'Odvaaetc : compare also the first volume of 1 4e sam work, p. 43: also Runkel, Cratini Fragm. p. 38 (Leip. 1827).
 * A comedy called 'Odvaaelf (plur. numb, corresponding to the title of