Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/456

434 434 HISTORY OF THE 478, 467.) These chronological data are sufficient to show that the tendency of Epicharmus' comedy could not be political. The safety and dignity of a ruler like Hiero would have been alike incompatible with such a licence of the stage. It does not, however, follow from this, that the plays of Epicharmus did not touch upon or perhaps give a com- plete picture of the great events of the time and the circumstances of the country ; and in fact Ave can clearly point out such references to the events of the day in several of the fragments : but the comedies of Epi- charmus did not, like those of Aristophanes, take a part in the contests of political factions and tendencies, nor did they select some particular political circumstance of Syracuse to be praised as fortunate, while they represented what was opposed to it as miserable and ruinous. The comedy of Epicharmus has a general relation to the affairs of mankind : it ridicules the follies and perversities which certain forms of educa- tion had introduced into the social life of man; and a considerable ele- ment in it was a vivid representation of particular classes and persons from common life ; a large number of Epicharmus' plays seem to have been comedies of character, such as his " Peasant," ('AypwcrrTi'oe,) and " the Ambassadors to the Festival," (Qeapoi ;) we are positively informed that Epicharmus was the first to bring on the stage the Parasite and the Drunkard, — characters which Crates worked up for Athenian comedy. Epicharmus was also the first to use the name of the Parasite,* which afterwards became so common in Greek and Roman plays, and it is likely that the rude, merry features with which Plautus has drawn this class of persons may, in their first outlines, be traceable to Epicharmus. f The Syracusan poet no doubt showed in the invention of such characters much of that shrewdness for which the Dorians were distinguished more than the other Greek tribes ; careful and acute observations of mankind are compressed into a few striking traits and nervous expressions, so that we seem to see through the whole man though he has spoken only a few words. But in Epicharmus this cmality was combined in a very peculiar manner with a striving after philosophy. Epicharmus was a man of a serious cast of mind, variously and profoundly educated. He belonged originally to the school of physicians at Cos, who derived their art from ^Esculapius. He had been initiated by Arcesas, a scholar of Pythagoras, into the peculiar system of the Pythagorean philosophy ; and his comedies xoXax'.; ; but the fact that they constituted the chorus rendered it impossible that they could be made a direct object of comic satire. Alexis, of the middle comedy, was the first who brought the parasite (under this name) on the stage, f Gelasime, salve. — Non id est nomen mihi. — ■ Certo mecastor id fuit nomen tibi. — Fuit disertim ; verum id usu perdidi ; Nunc Miccotrogus nomine ex vero vocor. Plant. Stick, act 1. sc. 3. The name Miccotrogus, by which the parasite in the preceding passage calls himself, is not Attic but Doric, and therefore is perhaps derived from Epicharmus.
 * In the Attic drama of Eupolis the parasites of the rich Callias appeared as