Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/468

446 44G HISTORY OF T1IK actors by the looser structure of his sentences and the weaker connexion of his periods, whereas Philemon's pieces, by their more connected and periodic style, were better suited for the closet than for the stage.* The Latin comedians, Plautus, for instance, gave a great deal more of bur- lesque than they found in their models, availing themselves perhaps of the Sicilian comedy of Epicharmus, as well as of the comedy of their own country. The elevated poetic tone must have been lost with the choruses, of which we have no sure traces even in the middle comedy ;f the connexion of lyric and dramatic poetry was limited to the employ- ment by the actors of lyric measures of different kinds, and they ex- pressed their feelings at the moment by singing these lyrical pieces, and accompanying them with lively gesticulations : in this the model was rather the monodies of Euripides than the lyrical passages in Aris- tophanes. We have now brought down the history of the Attic drama from Mschylus to Menandcr, and in naming these two extreme points of the series through which dramatic poetry developed itself, we cannot refrain from reminding our readers what a treasure of thought and life is here unfolded to us ; what remarkable changes were here effected, not only in the forms of poetry, but in the inmost recesses of the con- stitution of the Greek mind ; aiid what a great and significant portion of the history of our race is here laid before us in the most vivid delineations. CHAPTER XXX. $ 1. The Dithyramb becomes the chief form of Athenian lyric poetry. Lasus of Hermione. § 2. New style of the dithyramb introduced by Melanippides. Phi- loxenus. Cinesias. Phrynis. Timotheus. Polyeidus. § 3. Mode of producing the new dithyramb : its contents and character. § 4. Reflective lyric poetry. § 5. Social and political elegies. The Lyde of Antimachus essentially different from these. § 6. Epic poetry. Panyasis, Chcerilus, Antimachus. § 1. The Drama was so well adapted to reflect the thoughts and feelings of the people of Attica in the mirror of poetry, that other sorts of metrical composition fell completely into the back-ground, and for -j According to Platonius, the middle comedy had no parabases, because thero ■was no chorus. The JEolosicon was quite without choral songs. The new come- dians, in imitation of the older writers, wrote XOPOS at the end of the acts ; pro- bably the pause was filled up by the performance of a flute-player. At any rate, such was the custom at Rome. Evanthius (de Comced., p. lv. in "VYesterton's Terence) seems to mean the" same.
 * According to a remark of the so named Demetrius P/ialer. de Elocnt., § 193.