Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/216

 198 THE COMEDIANS 375 B.C., stood on the debateable ground between the middle and new Comedy, and to judge from the fragments in Athenseus, who quotes more than fifty of his comedies by name, he must have written plays of both sorts. He composed in the whole 104 comedies. Antiphanes was born in E-hodes in b. c. 404, began to exhibit about B.C. 383, and died in Chios in B.C. 330. He composed 260 or 280 Comedies, and the titles of 130 of these have come down to us. It appears from these names and from the numerous frag- ments, that the Comedies of Antiphanes were generally of the critical kind, but sometimes approximated to the Comedy of Man- ners^. Anaxandrides, of Camirus in Rhodes, flourished about the year 376 B.c.^ He wrote sixty-five Comedies. To judge from the twenty-eight titles which have come down to us, we should infer that they were all of the second class ; as, however, we are told that he introduced intrigues and love-affairs on the stage, we must presume that, like his countryman Antiphanes, he made an advance towards the third class of Comedy. Cham^eleon tells us^, that he was a tall handsome man, and fond of fine dresses ; he gives as a proof of his want of temper, that he used to destroy, or sell for waste paper, all his unsuccessful comedies. He lived to a good old age. Alexis, of Thurium, wrote 245 Comedies ; the titles of 113 of them are known to us. The Parasite, one of his Comedies, seems from the name to belong to the New Comedy. He flourished from the year 356 to the year 306, and was more than one hundred years old when he died^. We know nothing of him, except that he was an epicure^, and the uncle and instructor of Menander^. TiMOCLES, to whom twenty-seven Comedies are attributed, was a writer of very considerable vigour, and occasionally recurred to the political invective of the older Comedy. Demosthenes was some- 1 On Antiphanes and his fragments, see Clinton, Phil. Mus. i. pp. 558 fol. 2 Parian Marble, No. 71, and Suidas. ^ Athenseus, ix. p. 374 A. -1 Clinton, F. H. ii. p. 175. ^ Athenseus, Viii. p. 334 C. « Prolegom. Aristoph. p. xxx, and Suidas, where we must read irdrpios.