Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/221

 WHO SUCCEEDED ARISTOPHANES. 203 wrote prologues to his dramas, which were probably very like the prologues of the Latin comedians, though they were, we think, originally boiTOwed (like all the New Comedy) from the tragedies of Euripides. Apollodoeus, of Gela in Sicily is also called a contemporary of Menander. He is often confused with Apollodorus of Carystus in Euboea, whom Suidas calls an Athenian, probably because he had the Athenian franchise, but who flourished between B.C. 300 and 260. For he is said to have been a contemporary of Machox, who was a Corinthian or Sicyonian by birth, who resided at Alexandria, and gave instructions in Comedy to Aristophanes of Byzantium, and whose Comedies obtained for him a place among the Alexandrian poets immediately after those of the Pleiad^. Of twenty-four Comedies, which are mentioned under the name of Apollodorus, four are ascribed to the earlier poet, six to the latter, and four to both. The remaining ten are quoted under the name of Apollodorus without any ethnic distinction ^. The later Apollo- dorus was much the more distinguished writer of the two, and there can be little doubt that it is he, and not the Geloan, who is mentioned as one of the six chief poets of the New Comedy The Phormio of Terence is a translation from his 'Fj7nBc/ca^6/jL€vo<;, and the Heci/ra, which is said in the didascalia to have been taken from Menander, was, according to a recently discovered fragment, also borrowed from this poet^. POSIDIPPUS, the son of Cyniscus of Cassandreia, wrote thirty Comedies ; the titles of fifteen of these are known, and some of them were Latinized like those of the three last mentioned poets ^. He began to exhibit in 289 B.C., two years after the death of Me- nander^. ^ On the two comedians of this name see Clinton, F. H. III. pp. 521, 2; Meineke, HiM. CHt. Com. pp. 459 sqq. ^ Athenjeus, p. 664 A (cf. vr. p. 241 f) : ■r]v 5' dyaObs Toirjrris et ris aXXoj tQv fMera tovs eirTo,. The author of the article on Apollodorus of Carystus, in Smith's Dictionary of Biography, applies to Apollodorus what Athenaeus says of Machon. 3 Clinton's F. H. ill. yjp. 521, 2. ■* Meineke, p. 462. ^ Mai, Frar/m. Plant, et Terent. p. 38: 'Tabula ejus [Terentii] exstant quatuor e Menandro translata, Andria, Eunuchus, Adelphee et Heautontimorumenos ; duse ex Apollodoro Caricio [sic] Hecyra et Phormio." ^ Aul. Gell. II. 23. '^ Suidas, lioaelbiinros.