Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/214

 CHAPTER II. SECTION III. THE COMEDIANS WHO SUCCEEDED ARISTOPHANES. / coUivatori della commcdia seguirono Vesempio di questi primi, come essi aveano pur seguito quello degli antichi, senza che ne gli uni ne gli altri, impediti da una servile imiiazione, avessero soffocato il propria genio o negletto i costumi del paese e del tempo loro. Salfi. ALTHOUGH, as we have already remarked^ the writers of the Old and Middle Comedy are not easily distinguished, and although we have been obliged to indicate several of the old come- dians as having tended rather to the middle form of Comedy, writers on the subject have always attempted a distinct classifica- tion of the comedians rather than of their plays; and perhaps it may be said with truth that those who never wrote in the flourish- ing period of Athenian democracy, and whose earliest plays exhibit the characteristics of the final efforts of Aristophanes, may be re- garded as belonging distinctively to the Middle Comedy. According to this distinction, the Middle Comedy is represented by a list of thirty-seven writers, — nearly as many as those of the Old Comedy, — and by more than double the number of the plays attributed to the former school — Eubulus, Antiphanes, and Alexis having among them contributed more than 600 plays to the cata- logue ! The following are the names of the Middle Comedians : 1. Antiphanes. 2. Eubulus. 3. Anaxandrides. 4. Alexis. 5. Araros, son of Aristophanes. 6. Philippus, brother of the 1 On these authors and their works, see Meineke, QucBStiones Scenicce Spec. III. and his Historia Critica, pp. 303 sqq. and 445 sqq. ; also Muller, Hist. Lit. Gr. 11. ch. xxix.