40 OLDCOMEDY I
of reality is the link joining together the real and the unreal
can perhaps help us to surmount one last difficulty, the problem
of 'types' in comedy.1 Even those who know Old Comedy
only slightly will agree that the persons represented are not
individual beings, not 'characters'. They have much less indi-
viduality than the mythical men and women of tragedy who,
though with little justification, have been denied that quality.
Citizen and slave, sophist and peasant, man and woman, mor-
tals and gods, rich and poor, young and old: all these can be
types in comedy, depicted or caricatured m mere outlines 2
Even historical persons suffer this fate, for example Kleon as
the Paphlagonian in the Knights^ or Sokrates in the Clouds^ or
Euripides in the Thesmophonozousa^. The type, once fixed,
needed little change or improvement. There was no need to
create it anew; it existed and had early become a permanent
factor in comedy. This applies even to such specialized types
as the rude doorkeeper, or the slave who carries his master's
baggage (see Plate XIV£) 3
The complete range of types was not crystallized till the
time of Menander. But already in the first comedy of Aristo-
phanes, the DazfaleSy two pairs of types appear: the good and
the bad son, and (as later in the Clouds] the conservative father
and his modern-minded son.4 This shows that not only single
persons, but also pairs or, less commonly, social groups could
become typical, and so lead to the creation of stock motifs and
scenes Moreover, the use of types is closely connected with
the limitations imposed by the number of masks available.5
While it is legitimate to make clear the links which con-
1 Terracotta statuettes, representing types of comedy M Bieber, The History of
the Greek and Roman Theatre (1939), fig 95 ff Archaeological evidence also
confirms the existence of Middle Comedy and its types Bieber, fig I22ff
2 See Plates I, III, XIV - Cf the excellent paper by K Remhardt, Ansto-
phanes und Athen Europ Revue XIV (1938), 754fF — An example of a mono-
graph on one of the comic types is H G Gen, Der Typ der komtschen AI ten in
d.gnech. Komodie (Basle, 1948)
3 P iSoff, F 464*1" - F I2ff, frg 323, cf Xen mem III, 13, 6
4 Cf. F Wehrh, Motivstudien zur gnech Komodie, 49 and elsewhere, who
should be consulted also for what follows. His conclusions about Aristophanes,
however, go too far. Cf also W Suss, Gnomon XIII (1937), 602
5 Cf. F. M. Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy, ctu VIII, but this argument
must not be over-emphasized, as it was quite common for new and original masks
to be used in comedy (cf T B L Webster, Bull of the John Ry lands Libr
XXXII 194.9, 3ff)