Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/458

436 4S6 HISTORY OF THE furnished by the scenes in Aristophanes which seem to have, the same tone and feeling : such as that in which Prometheus appears as the mal- content and intriguer in Olympus, and points out the proper method of depriving the gods of their sovereignty ; and then the embassy of the three gods, when Hercules, on smelling the roasted birds, forgets the interests of his own party, and the voice of the worst of the three ambas- sadors constitutes the majority ; this shows us what striking pictures fur situations of common life and common relations might be borrowed from the supposed condition of the gods. At any rate, we may also see from this how the comic treatment of mythology differed from that in the satyric drama. In the latter, the gods and heroes were introduced among a class of beings in whom a rude, uncultivated mode of life pre- dominated : in the former they descended to social life, and were subject to all the deficiencies and infirmities of human society. § G. The Sicilian comedy in its artistic developement preceded the Attic by about a generation; yet the transition to the middle Attic comedy, as it is called, is easier from Epicharmus than from Aristophanes, who appears very unlike himself in the play which tends towards the form of the middle comedy. This branch of comedy belongs to a time when the democracy was still moving in unrestrained freedom, though the people had no longer such pride and confidence in themselves as to ridi- cule from the stage their rulers and the recognized principles of state policy, and at the same time to prevent themselves from being led astray by such ridicule. The unfortunate termination of the Peloponnesian war had damped the first fresh vigour of the Athenian state ; freedom and democracy had been restored to the Athenians, and even a sort of mari- time supremacy ; but their former energy of public life had not been restored along with these things ; there were too many weaknesses and defects in all parts of their political condition, — in their finances, in the war-department, in the law-courts. The Athenians, perhaps, were well aware of this, but they were too indolent and fond of pleasure to set about in earnest to free themselves from these, inconveniences. Under such circumstances, satire and ridicule, such as Aristophanes indulged in, would have been quite intolerable, for it would no longer have pointed out certain shadows in a bright and glorious picture, but would have exhibited one dark picture without a single redeeming ray of light, and so would have lacked all the cheerfulness of comedy. Accordingly, the comedians of this time took that general moral tendency which we have pointed out in the Megarian comedy and in all that is connected with it ; they represented the ludicrous absurdities of certain classes and condi- tions in society,* and in their diction kept close to the language of common in the JEolosicon of Aristophanes. We may infer what influence the Megarian and Sicilian comedy had in the formation of regular standing characters, from the
 * A bragging cook, a loading personage in miiMle comedy, was the chief character