2O8 FAMILY A X D NEIGHBOURS
behind the commonplaces and the jokes we easily discern the
opinion that age and youth are incompatible. This again is an
obvious truth, and it remains true although Łthe old' are not
necessarily old in our sense of the word The Greeks had no
word for middle-aged people of either sex While we normally
think of three generations alive at the same time, the Greeks
talk of two only It is the contrast of these that naturally con-
cerns everybody, but in many cases creates no problem at all.
It is most likely to become a problem where the bonds are
closest and strongest, that is between parents and children.
It has been shown that the relation between father and son
was a stock motif of comedy almost from its beginnings; it
appears again and again, and in New Comedy it has become
one of the paramount motifs of the plot.1 It will be wiser, just
because of its frequency, not to over-estimate the significance
of the actual problem, nor to consider it as especially character-
istic of our period. The rivalry, for instance, between father
and son for the love of the same girl is simply a typical comic
situation.2 On the other hand, the very fact that the relation
between father and son became a typical feature of comedy,
shows that a question of general importance is touched upon
here Each age will view this question m a new and different
light. The relations between the generations do not always
imply opposition and struggle. We may say that in general the
opposition grows stronger in proportion to the extent to which
change and revolution, internal as well as extei nal, are charac-
teristic of the age.
On one occasion Aristophanes says of an ungrateful son-
'You don't provide for your father being clothed' — a remark
which, of course, reveals the son's general, not only this par-
ticular, obligation.3 It is somewhat surprising that elsewhere
it seems to be a question of real importance whether a son is
allowed to beat his father. In the Clouds the son, in spite, or
perhaps because, of his sophistic arguments, is proved entirely
in the wrong.4 In the Birds, on the other hand, the parricide,
though moved to stop beating and indeed killing his father,
is not maltreated as the other rascals are who come to Cloud-
cuckooborough; his eagerness to beat someone turns him into
1 Cf F Wehrli, Mottvstudten znrgnecL Komodie, $6f
2 Pherekr. 71-73 3 frg 17 D
4 C 1409$, Cf Hemimann, Nomosu PAy sis (1945), 122