Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/182

 CHAPTER II. ON THE GREEK COMEDIANS. SECTION I. THE COMEDIANS WHO PKECEDED OR WERE CONTEMPORARY WITH ARISTOPHANES. Qtiorwm Comosdia prisca virorum est. HOEATIUS. FROM the first exhibition of Epicharmus to the last of Posi- dippus, the first and last of the Greek comedians, is a period of about 250 years ; and between these two poets, one hundred and four authors are enumerated^, who are all said to have written Comedies. The claims of some of these, however, to the rank of comedians are very doubtful, and two who are contained in the list, Sophron and his son Xenarchus, were mimographers, and as such, were not only not comedians, but hardly dramatists at all, in the Greek sense of the word. It has been already mentioned that Greek Comedy did not attain to a distinct literary form until it became Athenian ; and that, in its Attic form, it presents itself in three successive varieties — the Old, the Middle, and the New Comedy. The Sicilian Comedy, which, in some of its features, resembled the Middle, rather than the Old Comedy, found its origin in the same causes as the latter, being immediately connected with the old farces of Megara and the rustic buffooneries, which were common to the whole of Greece. The absence, indeed, of a distinct political reference deprived it of that ingredient which gave its greatest significance to the plays of Aristophanes and his principal Athenian contemporaries during ^ By Clinton, F. II. ir. pp. xxxvi — xlvii.