Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/420

398 398 HISTORY OF THE 1. B.C. 391, or even longer); Pherccrates (who also flourished during the Peloponnesian Avar) ; Ameipsias, who was sometimes a successful rival of Aristophanes ; Leucon, who also frequently contended with Aristophanes ; Diodes, Philyllius, Sannyrion, Stratiis, Theopompus, who flourished towards the end of the Peloponnesian war and subse- quently, form the transition to the middle comedy of the Athenians.* We content ourselves for the present with this brief chronological view of the comic poets of the time, hecause in some respects it is im- possible to characterize these authors, and in others, this cannot be done till we have become better acquainted with Aristophanes, and are able to refer to the creations of this poet. Accordingly, we will take a com- parative glance at some of the pieces of Cratinus, Eupolis, and some others, after we have considered the comedy of Aristophanes : hut must remark here beforehand that it is infinitely more difficult to form a con- ception of a lost comedy from the title and some fragments, than it would be to deal similariy-vPTtrTa lost tragedy. In the latter, we have in the mythical foundation something on which we may depend, and by the conformation of which the edifice to be restored must be regvdated ; whereas comedy, with its greater originality, passes at once from one distant object to another, and unites things Avhich seem to have no con- nexion with one another, so that it is impossible to follow its rapid movements merely by the help of some traces accidentally preserved. § 5. Before we turn to the works of Aristophanes, we must make ourselves acquainted with comedy in the same way that Ave have already done with tragedy, in order that the technical forms into which the poet had to cast his ideas and fancies may stand clearly and definitely before our eyes. These forms are partly the same as in the tragic drama, — as the locality and its permanent apparatus Avere also common to both ; in other respects they are peculiar to comedy, and are intimately con- nected with its origin and development. To begin with the locality, the stage and orchestra, and, on the whole, their meaning, were common to tragedy and comedy. The stage (Proscenion) is, in comedy also, not the inside of a house, but some open space, in the background of which, on the wall of the scene, were represented public and private buildings. Nay, it appeared to the ancients so utterly impossible to regard the scene as a room of a house, that even the new comedy, little as it had to do with actual public life, nevertheless for the sake of representation, as Ave have remarked above, (Chap. XXII. § 5,) made the scenes which it represents public : it endea- Avho lived before Strattis, was likewise a comedian : his y^a.f^iMx.riK-/i roayuiila could not have been a serious tragedy, but must have been a joke ; the object and occa- sion of it, however, cannot easily be guessed at. The old grammarians must have been joking when they asserted that Sophocles and Euripides imitated this youfi^KriKn r£«.yu%'i«, in some piece or other.
 * According to the researches of Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Gracorum. Callias,