Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/98

 80 CLASSIFICATION OF GREEK PLAYS. wanton revellers with their pic-nic feasts, were freely represented in general types and the self-conceited cook, with his parade of culinary science, was a standing character in the Middle Comedy^. Athenian politics were generally avoided ; but these poets did not scruple to make sport of foreign tyrants, like the Dionysii of Syra- cuse and Alexander of Pher^e^. Their style was generally pro- saic'*, and they usually confined themselves to the comic trimeter. But long systems of anapgestic dimeters v/ere sometimes introduced, and in their parodies and travesties they imitated the metres of the poets whom they ridiculed. The New Comedy commenced, as is well known, with the establishment of the supremacy of Philip^, and flourished at Athens during the period distinguished as that of the Macedonian rulers, who are called the DiadocM and Epigoni ; it belongs, there- fore, to the interval between the 110th and 130th Olympiads, i.e. between B.C. 340 and B.C. 260. We can see in Plautus and Terence, who translated or imitated the Greek writers of this class, satisfac- tory specimens of the nature of this branch of Comedy. It corre- sponded as nearly as possible to our own comic drama, especially to that of Farquhar and Congreve, which Charles Lamb calls the Comedy of Manners, and Hurd the Comedy of Character. It arose in all probability from an union of the style and tone of the Euri- pidean dialogue with the subjects and characters of the later form, the Middle Comedy. The particular circumstances of the time had given a new direction to the warlike tendencies of the Greeks. In- stead of serving in the ranks of the national militia and fighting in free warfare at home, the active, restless or discontented citizen found a ready welcome and good pay in the mercenary armies kept up by the Greek sovereigns of Asia and Egypt. Such a soldier or leader of mercenaries, having returned from abroad, with a full purse, an empty head, and a loud tongue, became a standing character in the 1 See the anecdote about Antiphanes, Ath. Xiii. pr. 2 This was the principal character in the jEolosicon, one of the latest plays of Aristophanes, and it is alwaj^s re-appearing. 3 As in the Dionysius of Eubulus and the Dionysalexandrus of the younger Cratinus. iiypavTo ttoltitlkov, Blo. 5^ ttjs awridovs iovres XaAtas XoyLKas ^xoiio-t rds dperdi, cJcrre ffTrdHov 7roL7]TLKbv xo-pa.KTrjpa elvai Trap' avrois. 5 Meineke says (Hist. Crit. Com. p. 435) that he dates the commencement of the new comedy from the period immediately preceding the battle of Chceroneia, and that the anunymous writer on comedy (p. xxxii) is not quite accurate in saying r/ via iirl 'Ae^du5pov eixe ttju &Kp.r}v.
 * Anonym, de Comm. III. : ttjs 5e fJLea-rjs KOifiipSias ol TroiTjral 7rXd(r/x.aror fih ovx