Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/236

 Athenian life, completed the humanising process begun by Euripides in tragedy, gave up the choral form altogether; and even the Middle Comedy, which preceded the New, according to a remark of Platonius "had no parabasis because there was no chorus."

This disappearance of the chorus in comedy may, no doubt, have been hastened by the inability of the State or the wealthier citizens to meet the choral expenses in the days of Athenian decline; but that the impoverishment of Athens is in itself no sufficient explanation of the disappearance of the chorus, is clear from the fact that in the age when comedy and tragedy began and were developed in their choral forms Athens was a far poorer city than in the days of the Middle and New Comedy. The rise and fall of the choral form in comedy as well as in tragedy are to be explained by causes more deeply connected with average Athenian character than the presence or absence of wealth; and one notable feature of the old comedy serves as a guide-post to such causes. This feature is the constant use of allegorical and abstract personages throughout the Aristophanic comedy; and we shall now illustrate this usage at some length.

§ 57. In the earliest play of Aristophanes, the Dætaleis, or Feasters, so called after its chorus, "the chorus were conceived as a company of revellers who had banqueted in a temple of Hercules (in whose worship eating and drinking bore a prominent part), and were engaged in witnessing a contest between the old frugal and modest system of education and the frivolous and talkative education of modern times, in the persons of two young men, Temperate and Profligate . Brother Profligate was represented, in a dialogue between him and his aged father, as a despiser