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t^iifcV;: 


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THE 
NEW  GREEK    COMEDY 


THE  LOEB  CLASSICAL  LIBRARY 

Edited  by  E.  CAITS,  Ph.D.,  LL.D. ;   T.  E.  PAGE,  Litt.D. ; 

and  W.  H.  I).  ROUSE,  Litt.D. 

each  Vol.  (cap.  8vo.  400-600  pp.,  clear  type.   Cloth,  5s.  net ;  Leather,  6s.  6d.  net. 

A  series  of  Greek  and  Latin  Texts  with  English  Translations  on  the 
opposite  page.  The  Series  is  to  contain  all  that  is  best  in  Greek  and 
Latin  Literature  from  the  time  of  Homer  to  the  Fall  of  Constantinople. 

VOLUMES   .M.RKAUY    PUBLISHED. 


LATIN  AUTHORS. 

APULEIUS:  THE  GOLDEN  AS.S. 
(Metamorphoses.)  Trans,  by  \V. 
AoDLiNCToN  (1566).  Revised  by  S. 
Gasrlei:. 

CAESAR:  CIVIL  WARS.  Trans,  by 
A.  G.  Peskett. 

CATULLUS.  Tr.-»ns.  by  F.W.  Cornish. 
TIBULLUS.  Trans,  by  J.  P.  Post- 
gate.  PERVIGILIUM  VENERIS. 
Trans,  by  J.  W.  IMackail. 

CICERO:  DE  FINIBUS.  Trans,  by 
H.  Rackham. 

CICERO:  DE  OFFICIIS.  Trans,  by 
Walter  Miller. 

CICERO:  LETTERS  TO  ATTICUS. 
Trans,  by  E.  O.  Winstedt.  3  Vols. 
Vols.  Land  II. 

CONFESSIONS  OF  ST.  AUGUS- 
TINE. Trans,  by  VV.  Watts  (1631). 
2  Vols. 

HORACE:  ODES  AND  ERODES. 
Trans,  by  C.  E.  Bennett. 

OVID:  HEROIDES  AND  AMORES. 
Trans,  by  Grant  Showerman.  2  Vols. 

OVID:  METAMORPHOSES.  Trans, 
by  F.  J.  Miller.     2  Vols. 

PETRONIUS.     Trans,   by   M.    Hesel- 

TiNE.     SENECA:    APOCOLOCYN- 

TOSIS.     Trans,  by  W.  H.  D.  RousE. 

\ind  Ivtpression 

PLAUTUS.  Trans,  by  Paul  Nixon. 
5  Vols.     Vol.  1. 

PLINY  :  LETTERS.  Melmoth's 
Translation  revised  by  W.  M.  L. 
Hutchinson.     3  Vols. 

PROPERTIUS.  Trans,  by  H.  E. 
B  tJTLER.  \_ind  Ivtpression 

SUETONIUS.  Trans,  by  J.  C.  Rolfe. 
2  Vols. 

TACITUS:  DIALOGUS.  Trans,  by 
Sir  William  Peterson.  AGRI- 
COLA  AND  GERMANIA.  Trans, 
by  Maurice  Hutton. 

TERENCE.  Trans,  by  John  Sar- 
ceaunt.     2  Vols.         yitiU  Impression 

VIRGIL.  Trans,  by  H.  R.  Fairclough. 
2  Vols.     Vol.  I. 

GREEK  AUTHORS. 
APPOLLONIUS    RHODIUS.     Trans. 

by  R.  C.  Seaton. 
THE  APOSTOLIC  F.^THERS.   Tr.ins. 
by  KiRsorp  Lake.     2  Vols. 

[2«rf  hnpression 


GREEK  AUTHORS  {contimmi). 
APPIANS        ROMAN        HISTORY. 

Trans,  by  Horace  White.     4  Vols. 
DAPHNIS  AND  CHLOE.  Thornlev's 

Translation  revised  by  J  M.Edmonds  ; 

and   PARTHENIUS.     Trans,   by   S. 

Gaselee. 
DIO  CASSIUS:  ROMAN  HISTORY. 

Trans,  by  E.  Gary.    9  Vols.     V^ols.  I., 

11.,  III.,  and  IV. 
EURIPIDES.    Trans,   by   .K.    S.   Way. 

4  Vols.  {ind  Impression 

GALEN:       ON      THE      NATURAL 

FACULTIES.  Trans.byA.  J.  Brock. 
THE  GREEK  ANTHOLOGY.    Trans. 

by  W.  R.  Paton.     5  Vols.     Vol.  I. 
THE     GREEK     BUCOLIC     POETS 

(THEOCRITUS,       BION,       MOS- 

CHUS).     Trans,  by  J.  M.  Edmonds. 
\,ind  hnpression 
IIESIOD     AND     THE      HOMERIC 

HYMNS.     Trans,  by  H.  G.  Evelyn- 
White. 
JULIAN.      Trans,    by    Wilmer    Cave 

Wright.     3  Vols.     Vols.  I.  and  II. 
LUCIAN.     Trans,  by  A.  M.  Harmon. 

7  Vols.     Vols.  I.  and  11. 
MARCUS  AURELIUS.  Trans,  by  C.  R. 

Haines. 
PHILOSTRATUS  :     THE     LIFE    OF 

APPOLLONIUS       OF        TYANA. 

Trans,  by  F.  C.  Convbeare.  2  Vols. 
PINDAR.  Trans,  by  Sir  J.  E.  Sandys. 
PLATO:    EUTHYPHRO,  APOLOGY, 

CRITO,    PHAEDO,    PHAEDRUS. 

Trans,  by  H.  M.  Fowler. 
PLUTARCH :       THE       PARALLEL 

LIVES.     Tr.-ins.    by    B.    Pbrrin.     11 

Vols.     Vols.  I.,  II. ,  III.,  and  IV. 
PROCOPIUS :    HISTORY    OF    THE 

WARS.     Trans,    by   H.   E.   Dewing. 

7  Vols.     Vols.  I.  and  11. 
QUINTUS   SMVRNAEUS.     Trans,  by 

A.  S.  Way. 
SOPHOCLES.     Trans,  by  F.  Stokr._  2 

Vols.  \^2nd  Impression 

ST.     JOHN      DAMASCENE:     BAR- 

LAAM  AND  lOASAPH.     Tiai.s.  by 

the     Rev.     G.    R.    Woodward     and 

Harold  Mattingly. 
THEOPHRASTUS:  ENQUIRY  INTO 

PLANTS.      Trans,    by    Sir    Arthur 

HoRT,  Bart.     2  Vols. 
XENOPHON  :  CYROPAEDIA.  Trans. 

by  Walter  Miller.     2  \'ols. 


DESCRIPTIVE  PROSPECTUS  ON  APPLICATION. 

LONDON:  WILLIAM    HEINEMANN. 
NEW  YORK:  G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS. 


THE 
NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

KcD/JLcpSia    Nca 

BY 

PH.   E.  LEGRAND 

PROFESSOR    IN   THE   FACULTE    DES   LETTKES   OF   TIlK 
UN'IVEKSITV   OF    LYONS 

TRANSLATED     BY 

JAMES   LOEB,  A.B. 

WITH    AN    INTRODUCTION    BY 

JOHN    WILLIAMS    WHITE,  Ph.D.,  LL.D. 

Original  published  by  the  Annales  dc  I'Uniiersiri   dc  Lyon 


LONDON  :    WILLIAM    HEINEMANN 

NEW  YORK  :  G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

1917 


LoniiOP  ■■    Wil'iam  Htineman".  1017 


TO 

MY    DEAR   COLLEAGUES 

FERNAND    ALLEGRE 

PROFESSOR   OF   GREEK   LANGUAGE    AND    LITERATURE 

« 

AND 

PHILIPPE   FABIA 

PROFESSOR   OF   CLASSICAL   PHILOLOGY 
A    TOKEN    OF    MY    ESTEEM    AND    FRIENDSHIP 


'3i}72  ; 


THE    TRANSLATOR'S 
PREFACE 

ACQUAINTANCE  with  the  Comedies  of  Aristophanes 
very  naturally  makes  the  student  of  Greek  litera- 
ture eager  to  learn  something  about  the  plays  of 
the  comic  writers  who  succeeded  the  great  master  of  this 
style  of  composition.  I  had  the  privilege  of  making 
Professor  Maurice  Croiset's  admirable  book,  Aristophane  et 
les  partis  a  AthSnes,^  accessible  to  American  and  English 
readers  who  are  not  sufficiently  conversant  with  French 
to  derive  full  benefit  from  the  original.  When  I  cast 
about  for  a  work  that  would  afford  a  luminous  and 
comprehensive  view  of  the  later  Comedy,  it  was  again  a 
book  by  a  learned  Frenchman  that  seemed  best  fitted 
for  Anglo-Saxon  needs.  Professor  Philippe  E.  Legrand's 
Daos,  Tableau  de  la  comedie  grecque  pendant  la  periode  dite 
nouvelle — Kcof^icobia  Nea,  which  here  appears  in  an  English 
version,  is,  in  the  French  original,  a  much  bigger  book, 
containing  much  detailed  information  intended  specially 
for  scholars.  My  purpose,  however,  was  to  offer  his  learned 
but  graphic  account  of  this  interesting  period  of  Greek 
literature  to  general  readers  in  America  and  England, 
rather  than  to  specialists,  and  I  ventured  to  suggest  to 
him  the  omission  of  these  details.  With  native  courtesy 
he  accepted  my  suggestion  and  readily  undertook  the 
difficult  and,  I  fear,  ungracious  task  of  adapting  his 
book  to  the  particular  purpose  I  had  in  mind.  Its  size 
has  thus  been  reduced  by  almost  one-third,  but  I  am  con- 
vinced that  the  force  of  the  argument  has  not  been  lessened 
nor  the  effect  of  the  narrative  in  any  way  marred.  I  beg 
to  express  my  grateful  appreciation  of  the  obliging  courtesy 
with  which  Professor  Legrand  assented  to  my  request. 

I  have  also  ventured  to  alter  the  title  of  his  work  to  one 
which  I  feel  is  better  adapted  to  a  translation. 

*  Maurice   Croisot,    Ariatopkanes    and  the   Political  Parties    at   Athena, 
translated  by  James  Loeb.     Macmillan  &  Co.,  Ltd.,  London,   1909. 


viii  THE    TRANSLATOR'S    PREFACE 

In  the  comedies  of  Mcnander  and  of  his  successors  we 
miss  the  wild  flights  of  fancy,  the  rolHcking  humour,  the 
biting  sarcasm,  the  personal  vituperation  and,  above  all, 
tlie  political  satire  that  make  the  plays  of  Aristophanes 
so  racy  and  refreshing.  As  compensation  we  get,  in  the 
plays  of  the  Middle  and  New  Comedy,  a  valuable  and 
interesting  picture  of  the  domestic  life  of  Athens,  of  the 
quarrels  and  intrigues  of  lovers,  of  the  motley  throng  of 
virtuous  or  immoral,  bartering,  bantering  men  and  women, 
who  fill  the  streets,  market-places  and  houses  of  the  city 
on  which  our  imagination  still  loves  to  dwell. 

The  limits  Professor  Legrand  set  himself  in  his  book 
prevented  him  from  including  a  consideration  of  the 
influence  that  these  later  Greek  comedies  and  the  Latin 
plays,  which  were  so  directly  inspired  by  them,  have  had 
upon  French,  Italian,  Spanish  and  English  comedy.  Such 
an  investigation  would  have  led  him  too  far  afield. 
The  attentive  reader  of  these  modern  plays  will  often 
be  reminded  of  incidents  and  scenes  which  are  conscious 
or  accidental  imitations  of  ancient  models,  and  I  can 
conceive  of  no  more  interesting  piece  of  work  than  a 
comprehensive  study  of  these  influences  would  afford. 

If  this  book  yields  its  readers  as  much  profit  and 
pleasure  as  I  found  in  translating  it,  my  pleasant  labour 
will  have  been  amply  repaid. 

I  am  under  great  obligations  to  Dr.  T.  E.  Page  for  the 
trouble  he  has  taken  in  subjecting  my  manuscript  to  a 
critical  reading;  to  Professor  John  Williams  White  for 
the  delightful  and  scholarly  Introduction  with  which  he 
has  enriched  the  book;  and  to  Professor  Edward  Capps 
for  kindly  supervising  the  compilation  of  the  detailed 
Index,  which  I  hope  will  greatly  add  to  the  value  of  the 
book. 

James  Loeb,  A.B. 


INTRODUCTION    TO    THE 
ENGLISH    VERSION 

THE  Greek  world  suffered  greater  changes  in  the 
generation  that  followed  the  battle  of  Chaeronea 
than  in  any  preceding  century  of  its  history. 
Sparta  yielded  leadership  to  Thebes  at  Leuctra,  as  Athens 
had  surrendered  to  Sparta  at  the  disastrous  close  of  the 
Peloponnesian  War,  but  by  the  issue  at  Chaeronea  the  city- 
states  of  all  Greece  were  forced  to  submit  to  the  absolute 
monarch  of  a  land  that  they  had  regarded  with  scorn  as 
barbarian.  Portentous  event  followed  event  with  bewilder- 
ing rapidity,  and  it  was  soon  apparent  that  JMacedonia  had 
become  the  mistress  not  alone  of  Hellas  but  of  the  whole 
world.  Only  eight  years  after  Chaeronea,  but  when  the 
youthful  Alexander  had  already  penetrated  even  to  the 
heart  of  Asia,  the  orator  Aeschines  vividly  portrayed  the 
universal  disaster.  "  What  manner  of  strange  and  un- 
expected event,"  he  asked,  "  has  not  befallen  in  our  time  ? 
We  have  not  lived  the  lives  of  ordinary  men — nay,  we 
were  born  to  be  a  tale  of  wonder  to  those  who  shall  come 
after  us.  Is  not  the  king  of  Persia,  he  who  dug  the  canal 
through  Athos,  who  bridged  the  Hellespont,  who  demanded 
earth  and  water  from  the  Greeks,  who  dared  to  write  to 
us,  '  I  am  the  Lord  of  all,  from  the  rising  to  the  setting  of 
the  sun,'  is  not  he  now^  fighting,  not  for  lordship,  but  for 
his  own  life  ?  And  see  the  fate  of  Greece  !  Thebes, 
our  neighbour  Thebes,  has  been  snatched  from  our  midst 
in  the  space  of  a  single  day.  The  wretched  Lacedaemo- 
nians, who  once  aspired  to  leadership,  are  at  this  moment 
on  their  way  to  Alexander  in  Asia  with  hostages,  the  living 
proofs  of  their  disastrous  fortunes,  there  to  submit  them- 
selves and  theip  country  to  his  will  and  beg  for  mercy 
from  their  incensed  master.  And  we,  men  of  Athens, 
citizens  of  a  great  state  that  once  was  the  common  refuge 
and  saviour  of  the  Greeks,  whither  their  embassies  came 


X     INTRODUCTION   TO    ENGLISH    VERSION 

ill  confident  hope  of  sueeour,  we,  alas  !  are  now  no  longer 
striving  for  leadership  but  are  contending  for  the  very 
soil  of  our  native  land." 

Imperial  Athens  had  fallen,  never  to  be  restored,  what- 
ever vain  hopes  may  have  been  cherished  by  Demosthenes 
and  Lyeurgus.  Shorn  of  all  power  of  resistance,  she 
sullenly  but  contemptuously  accepted  the  deification  of 
Alexander,  but  her  very  contempt  is  evidence  that  she 
failed  to  understand  the  deep  political  significance  of 
Alexander's  mandate  to  all  Greece.  On  his  death,  the 
event  for  which  her  citizens  had  hardly  dared  to  hope, 
she  led  the  revolt  against  Macedonian  suzerainty,  but 
with  fatal  results  :  a  Macedonian  garrison  was  settled  in 
the  Piraeus  and  her  democratic  constitution  was  modi- 
fied by  a  restriction  of  the  franchise  that  established  an 
oligarchy.  This  garrison  maintained  for  many  a  year 
the  rule  of  Demetrius  of  Phalerum,  whom  Cassander  had 
appointed  governor  and  whom  his  fellow-citizens  regarded 
as  a  tyrant.  The  democracy  was  restored  by  force  of 
arms  towards  the  end  of  the  century  by  another  Macedonian 
baron,  Demetrius  the  Besieger,  but  the  spirit  of  true 
democracy  was  dead.  The  Athenians  gave  the  youthful 
Demetrius  and  his  father  the  title  of  king,  created  two 
new  tribes  and  named  them  after  them,  deified  the  father 
and  son  and  paid  them  divine  honours.  Demetrius  was 
ill  fitted  for  the  part  :  he  took  up  his  quarters  in  the 
Parthenon,  the  shrine  of  the  Maiden  Goddess,  and  turned 
it  into  a  brothel. 

During  this  momentous  generation  Athens  lay  in  the 
backwater  of  current  events,  undisturbed  except  for  two 
brief  periods,  just  after  Chaeronea  and  just  after  Alexander's 
death,  by  the  swift  onward  rush  of  the  world's  doings. 
This  time  of  enforced  peace  was  for  her  an  interval  of 
great  material  prosperity.  During  the  twelve  years  of 
the  financial  administration  of  the  state  by  Lyeurgus, 
commerce  again  flourished  in  the  city  that  once  had  been 
the  centre  of  trade  of  the  ancient  world,  the  silver  mines 
of  Laurium  were  reopened,  industries  prospered,  private 


INTRODUCTION   TO    ENGLISH    VERSION    xi 

fortunes  accumulated,  and  the  revenues  of  the  state  were 
trebled.  The  Panathenaic  stadium  and  the  gymnasium 
in  the  Lyceum  were  built,  and  the  great  theatre  was 
reconstructed  and  completed.  Nor  did  Athens  lack  even 
then  statesmen  who  steadfastly  cherished  the  hope  of  her 
restoration  to  power  and  prepared  her  in  these  years  of 
peace  for  war,  loyal  men  whose  very  patriotism  obscured 
their  vision.  The  fortifications  of  the  Piraeus  were 
strengthened,  new  docks  were  built,  the  navy  was  increased, 
the  war  department  reconstructed,  and  the  principle  was 
then  first  adopted  of  universal  military  training  of  citizens 
for  obligatory  service  at  the  call  of  the  state. 

The  ten  years  of  the  regency  of  Demetrius  of  Phalerum, 
the  pupil  of  Theophrastus  and  the  intimate  friend  of 
Menander,  were  also  in  the  main  years  of  peace  and  material 
prosperity.  The  public  revenues  were  maintained  at  the 
amount  realised  in  the  administration  of  Lycurgus.  Com- 
merce suffered  little  decrease,  although  new  centres  of 
trade  had  been  gradually  establishing  themselves  in  the 
East  under  the  impulse  of  Alexander's  conquests,  and 
probably  the  private  wealth  of  the  country  was  greater 
when  the  regime  of  Demetrius  came  to  an  end  in  307  than 
it  had  been  at  any  previous  period  in  this  century.  But 
the  military  power  of  Athens  was  now  but  the  shadow 
of  what  it  had  been  in  the  preceding  decade.  She  had  lost 
her  fleet  off  Amorgos  in  the  year  following  the  death  of 
Alexander,  and  her  native  forces  had  been  greatly  dimin- 
ished, since  only  citizens  possessed  of  the  franchise  were 
subject  to  conscription  for  military  service,  and  the  con- 
stitutional changes  introduced  in  the  same  year  had 
reduced  the  number  of  voters  to  less  than  one  half  of 
the  entire  citizen  population.  The  circle  of  her  influence 
had  been  gradually  contracted,  she  withdrew  more  and 
more  within  herself,  wealth  bred  luxurious  habits  of  life, 
and  morals  became  loose.  The  best  evidence  of  her  moral 
decadence  is  found  in  the  sumptuary  laws  promulgated 
by  Demetrius  and  enforced  by  a  board  of  special  magis- 
trates  invested   with   inquisitorial    powers.      This   legisla- 


xii    INTRODUCTION    TO    ENGLISH    VERSION 

tion  was  intended  to  check  ostentation,  extravagance,  and 
dc})aiicliery. 

Sucli  in  brief  were  the  political  and  social  conditions 
under  which  the  New  Greek  Comedy  develojied  and  at- 
tained its  highest  expression  in  the  plays  of  Menander, 
who  brought  out  his  first  comedy  in  the  year  in  which 
Cassander's  Macedonian  troops  garrisoned  the  Piraeus, 
and  died  in  the  first  decade  of  the  following  century. 

The  New  Comedy  is  the  final  manifestation  of  genuine 
creative  power  in  Attic  literature.  Poets  were  still  writing 
tragedy  at  Athens  in  the  time  of  Menander,  and  the  public 
flocked  to  the  theatre  to  hear  their  plays,  but  their  art 
had  degenerated  into  mere  imitation  of  great  originals, 
and  lacked  vitality.  The  themes  of  these  later  tragedies, 
notwithstanding  Aristotle's  warning,  were  still  drawn  from 
ancient  legend,  and  had  been  treated  again  and  again. 
With  lifeless  conventionality,  even  the  form  of  the  earlier 
tragedy  was  maintained.  The  public  thronged  to  the 
theatre  to  hear  these  new  plays,  one  would  think,  chiefly 
from  curiosity  to  learn  what  possible  variations  on  a  trite 
theme  the  aspiring  poet  had  been  able  to  invent,  and,  as 
if  to  facilitate  comparison,  a  play  of  one  of  the  early  tra- 
gedians was  reproduced  at  the  same  festival.  Aeschylus, 
Sophocles,  and  Euripides  were  still  supreme.  The  legisla- 
tion of  Lycurgus  protecting  the  text  of  their  tragedies  is 
evidence  of  the  reverent  esteem  in  which  these  old  masters 
of  the  tragic  art  were  still  held. 

The  relation  of  the  New  Comedy  to  the  Old  was  alto- 
gether different.  No  poet  of  the  Old  Comedy  had  the 
honour  of  reproduction  intact  in  the  period  of  the  New. 
That  this  would  have  been  impossible — unless  the  audience 
had  been  furnished  with  a  copiously  annotated  libretto — 
marks  the  contrast  between  the  two  styles.  Comedy  is 
a  humorous  reflection  of  the  life  of  the  men  and  women  of 
its  day ;  it  may  be  extravagant,  but  must  ring  true  to 
experience.  Now  the  conditions  of  life  and  the  outlook 
upon  life  were  as  different  as  possible  in  the  times  re- 
spectively   of    Aristophanes    and    Menander.     The    New 


INTRODUCTION    TO    ENGLISH    VERSION    xiii 

Comedy  was  a  development  from  the  Old  through  the 
mediating  period  of  the  Middle  Comedy,  as  it  has  been 
called,  and  although  the  remaining  fragments  of  some 
fourteen  hundred  Greek  comedies  known  to  us  by  name  are 
scanty,  we  can  still  trace  the  great  stages  of  its  evolution 
with  fair  confidence ;  but  a  new  comedy  had  come  in  the 
course  of  a  hundred  years  and  more  to  be  as  unlike  a  play 
of  Cratinus  as  Athens  in  the  regency  of  Demetrius  was 
unlike  the  Athens  of  Pericles.  Even  the  form  had  changed  : 
parabasis,  parode,  and  debate,  the  primitive  parts  of 
comedy,  had  all  disappeared ;  in  Aristophanes  the  structural 
elements  of  the  play,  although  clearly  differentiated,  are 
so  skilfully  linked  that  connection  of  part  with  part  is 
never  obtrusive,  but  a  new  comedy  was  divided  into 
acts  and  the  mechanism  was  apparent ;  the  chorus  of 
twenty-four  of  the  old  play,  whose  songs  composed  in 
many  rhythms  are  an  inherent  part  of  it  and  whose  leaders 
participate  intimately  in  the  dialogue,  had  declined  in 
the  new  into  a  company  of  revellers  or  the  like  that  came 
upon  the  scene  in  the  entr^acte  as  if  by  chance  and  then 
disappeared, — an  inartistic  although  possibly  an  amusing 
stopgap. 

Eleven  plays  of  Aristophanes  happily  are  still  extant  and 
all  the  world  may  learn  the  nature  and  contents  of  an  old 
Greek  Comedy.  We  are  not  so  fortunate  in  the  case  of  the 
New  Comedy;  no  complete  play  of  Menander  or  of  any 
of  his  immediate  fellow-craftsmen  has  been  preserved  in  the 
original.  Students  of  literature,  therefore,  are  especially 
indebted  to  Professor  Legrand  for  the  comprehensive  and 
authoritative  work  of  which  Mr.  Loeb  has  made  so  engaging 
a  translation.  Here  we  find  all  available  sources  of 
information  analysed  with  scientific  precision  and  with  the 
sympathetic  appreciation  of  a  man  of  letters.  The  ordered 
results  of  this  detailed  investigation  are  most  instructive. 

One  striking  characteristic  of  the  New  Comedy  emerges 
conspicuously,  the  extreme  narrowness  of  its  range — 
"  c'est  toujours  la  meme  chose  !  " 

"  Fabula  iucundi  nulla  est  sine  amore  ilenandri." 


xiv    INTRODUCTION    TO    ENGLISH    VERSION 

What  old  comedy  has  a  love  intrigue  as  the  basis  of  its 
plot  ?  We  are  surprised  at  this  apparent  laek  of  invention 
in  the  poets  of  the  New  Comedy,  The  eastern  world  in 
IMenander's  time  was  seething  with  unrest.  Men  were 
lighting  everywhere;  political  relations  were  constantly 
shifting;  colonists  racially  unconnected  were  uniting  in 
founding  scores  of  new  cities ;  life  was  in  commotion  and 
confusion  and  full  of  adventure.  Here,  we  should  think, 
an  imaginative  poet  might  have  found  themes  in  plenty. 
But  these  stirring  events  lay  apart,  and  Attic  comedy 
in  all  its  periods  was  local,  so  local  that  its  conventional 
scene  was  Athens.  Tales  of  these  great  happenings  abroad 
did  reach  Athens  and  were  humorously  referred  to  in 
the  theatre  by  foreigners  and  gasconading  mercenaries, 
introduced  as  persons  of  the  play.  When  Athens  herself 
was  drawn  as  an  active  and  independent  factor  within 
the  circle  of  events,  as  just  after  Alexander's  death,  the 
situation  precluded  a  comedy  composed  on  the  model 
of  the  old  political  plays.  Aristophanes  wrote  at  least 
three  comedies  in  which  he  ridiculed  the  party  bent  on 
continuing  the  long  and  fratricidal  war  with  Sparta,  but 
a  Peace  play  in  tacit  support  of  the  policy  of  Phocion 
and  Demades  in  the  spring  of  322,  when  Greece,  on  the 
pan-Hellenic  call  of  Athens,  was  at  grips  with  Anti- 
pater,  would  have  been  hooted  from  the  theatre.  Even 
Phocion  patriotically  took  the  field  when  the  fighting 
began. 

At  other  times  during  the  entire  period  of  the  New 
Comedy  political  comedy  was  precluded  b}^  fear  of  the 
strong  arm  of  the  Macedonian  rulers.  What  comic  poet 
would  have  dared  publicly  to  ridicule  Cassander,  Demetrius 
Poliorcetes,  or  Antigonus  Gonatas  ?  Even  mere  references 
to  persons  of  political  importance  are  extremely  rare — 
there  are  a  bare  dozen  in  the  Greek  fragments — and  nearly 
all  of  them  are  casual  and  refer  gibingly  to  personal  habits. 
The  only  serious  case  is  the  attack  in  301  of  Philippides  on 
Stratocles,  the  notorious  demagogue  who  openly  imitated 
Cleon.     The  poet  assailed  him  for  bringing  the  gods  into 


INTRODUCTION    TO    ENGLISH    VERSION     xv 

contempt,  for  altering  the  calendar,  for  turning  the  Par- 
thenon into  a  brothel,  all  obvious  references  to  proposals 
made  by  Stratocles  in  honour  of  Demetrius  Poliorcetes; 
but  the  latter  was  at  this  time  in  Asia,  engaged  in  a  fatal 
struggle  with  enemies  far  more  dangerous  than  a  comic 
poet,  and  Philippides,  who  was  by  profession  a  politician 
as  well  as  poet,  left  Athens  immediately  after  the  play — 
in  fear  of  the  vengeance  of  Stratocles,  We  need  only 
recall  the  freedom  with  which  poet  after  poet  of  the  Old 
Comedy  had  attacked  Pericles  and  Cleon  to  realise  how 
comedy  had  changed.  There  are  other  traces  of  the  criticis- 
ing spirit  in  the  New  Comedy,  reprehension  of  luxury  and 
lawlessness,  of  corruption  in  the  courts,  of  the  arrogance  of 
philosophers,  but  the  censorial  element,  which  constitutes 
so  considerable  a  part  of  the  Old  Comedy,  is  here  so  in- 
considerable as  hardly  to  be  noticeable.  The  prevailing 
theme  of  these  new  comedies  is  love,  but  generally  love 
of  a  stereotyped  form.  The  girl  is  the  victim  of  untoward 
happenings ;  the  lover  is  one  of  the  jeunesse  doree  of  Athens ; 
at  the  end  of  the  play  we  witness  a  recognition  and  a 
reconciliation  or  marriage.  Grant  the  difference  between 
ancient  and  modern  social  conditions,  and  Menander's 
comedies  are  nearer  akin  to  the  modern  novel  than  to  the 
plays  of  the  Old  Comedy. 

Yet  these  comedies  were  not  monotonous,  witness  their 
vogue  in  ancient  and  modern  times.  This  was  due  to 
the  art  of  half  a  dozen  poets  of  distinction,  who  developed 
their  common  theme  with  infinite  variety  of  detail,  subtly 
conceived,  but  true  to  life,  in  language  that  was  simple 
but  finely  expressive  of  the  most  delicate  shades  of  meaning. 
The  audience  was  highly  cultivated.  Athens  had  lost  her 
military  and  political  significance,  but  was  still  the  literary 
and  intellectual  centre  of  the  world,  the  gathering-place 
of  men  of  letters  and  students  of  art,  philosophy,  and 
science.  Alexander  and  his  successors  in  Asia  had  dealt 
gently  with  her.  When  the  elder  Antigonus  was  urged 
to  hold  her  under  firm  control,  he  magnanimously  replied 
that  he  was  content  with  her  good  will.     "  For  Atlieui;," 


xvi    INTRODUCTION    TO    ENGLISH    VERSION 

he  said,  "  is  the  beacon-tower  of  the  world,  and  will 
quickly  Hash  the  glory  of  my  deed  abroad  to  all  mankind." 
The  Athenians  in  the  audience  were  chiefly  of  the 
propertied  classes,  for  the  free  admission  of  poor  citizens 
to  the  theatre  was  withdrawn  during  at  least  a  part  of 
this  period — men  of  wit  and  refinement,  cultivated  but 
luxurious,  aristocrats  in  feeling  but  indulgent  to  the  outer 
world,  maintaining,  if  I  may  venture  a  parallel,  the 
Brahminical  attitude  of  good  Bostonians  about  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  who  entertained  no  doubt 
whatever  that  Boston  was  then  the  centre  of  culture  in 
America,  and,  confident  of  their  own  superiority,  accepted 
as  of  right  the  wondering  admiration  of  those  beyond  the 
pale.  The  comedies  that  pleased  this  great  audience  were  a 
simple  but  faithful  picture  of  one  phase  of  contemporary  life 
in  Athens,  in  the  period  of  its  decay,  if  you  will,  although 
still  resplendent — but  they  were  more  than  that.  Strip 
them  of  the  conventions  of  time  and  place  and  circumstance 
and  they  portray  sentiments,  emotions,  passions  as  old — 
and  as  young — as  the  race  of  men,  and  are  of  universal 
appeal.  So  it  is  that  they  have  become  through  Plautus 
and  Terence  an  inherent  and  permanent  part  of  the 
literature  of  Europe,  and  as  Moliere's  Amphitryon  and 
UAvare  and  Shakespeare's  Comedy  of  Errors  and  plays  of 
many  other  poets  testify — still  amuse  and  charm  on  the 
modern  stage  the  men  and  women  of  our  own  day. 

John  Williams  White. 

Harvard  University, 
September  1, 1916, 


CONTENTS 

PAQB 

TRANSLATOR'S   PREFACE vii 

INTRODUCTION    BY    JOHN    WILLIAMS     WHITE, 

Ph.D.,  LL.D ix 


INTRODUCTION 
PLAN  AND  SCOPE   OF  THIS  WORK 1 

PART   I 

THE   SUBJECT   MATTER  OF  NEW   COMEDY 

CHAPTER  I 

WHAT   NEW   COMEDY   REJECTED 23 

§  1.  Personal  Invective,  23;  §  2.  Mythical  Elements,  the  Super- 
natural, 31. 

CHAPTER   II 

THE  SOURCES  OF  OUR  KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  SUBJECT 
MATTER  OF  NEW  COMEDY— EXAMINATION  OF  THE 
CHIEF  SOURCES 36 

CHAPTER  III 

THE  DRAMATIS   PERSONAE 52 

§  1.  Foreigners — Rustics,  52;  §  2.  Poor  and  Rich — Sycophants  and 
Parasites,  63;  §  3.  Types  of  Professional  People,  78;  §  4.  Slaves, 
104;  §  5.  The  Family,  116;  §  6.  Lovers,  142;  §  7.  Characters 
and  Individual  Figures,  163. 

CHAPTER   IV 
ADVENTURES 184 

CHAPTER  V 

RECAPITULATION— REALISM    AND    IMAGINATION    IN    NEW 

COMEDY— LITERARY  SOURCES   AND   REPETITIONS     .     206 

§  1.  Customs,  206;  §  2.  Psychology,  240;  §  3.  Language,  256. 

x\ii 


xviii  CONTENTS 

PART    II 
THE  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  PLAYS  OF  NEW  COMEDY 


CHAPTER   I  PAQK 

THE  EXTENT  TO  WHICH  THE  LATIN  COMEDIES  ENLIGHTEN 

US  ABOUT  THE  COMPOSITION  OF  THEIR  PROTOTYPES     275 

§  J.  Contamination,  Additions,  Omissions,  and  Substitutions,  275; 
I;  2.  Violations  of  the  Law  of  Five  Acts  and  of  the  Rule  of  Three 
Actors,  289. 

CHAPTER   II 

INTERNAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  COMEDIES-THE  PLOT  OR 

ACTION 298 

§  \.  Structure  of  the  Plot — Digressions,  298;  §  2.  Simplicity  or 
Intricacy  of  the  Plot,  304;  §  3.  Mainsprings  of  the  Action,  312. 


CHAPTER   III 

EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  OF  THE    COMEDIES— STAGE  CON- 
VENTIONS      328 

5  1.  (Conventions  regarding  the  Opening  of  the  Play — Soliloquies  and 
Asides,  328;  §  2.  Conventions  regarding  Length  of  the  Plays— 
The  Entr'actes,  334;  §  3.  Conventions  regarding  Stage  Setting — 
Unity  of  Place,  340. 


CHAPTER  IV 

EXTERNAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  COMEDIES— PECULIARITIES 

OF  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 371 

§  1.  Division  into  Five  Acts,  37 1 ;  §  2.  Prologue  and  Exposition,  387 ; 
§  3.  Some  Methods  used  to  make  the  Plot  Intelligible,  421. 


PART    III 

PURPOSE   OF   NEW  COMEDY  AND  THE   CAUSES 
OF   ITS   SUCCESS 

CHAPTER   I 

DIDACTIC   PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE  OF  NEW  COMEDY     439 

§  1.  Plays  with  a  Thesis  and  Moral  Precepts,  439;  §  2.  Edifying 
and  (Jfiensive  Subjects,  453. 


CONTENTS  xix 

CHAPTER  II  PAGE 

COMIC   ELEMENTS 463 

§  1.  Gross  Fun  and  Refined  Fun,  403;  §2.  Comic  Cliuracters  and 
Situations,  495. 

CHAPTER   III 

PATHETIC     ELEMENTS     IN     NEW     COMEDY— EXTENT     AND 

DIVERSITY    OF  THEIR  DOMAIN 603 

CONCLUSION oia 

INDEX 633 


THE    NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 
INTRODUCTION 

PLAN    AND    SCOPE    OF    THIS    WORK 

THERE  already  exist  several  comprehensive  works  on 
Menander  and  New  Comedy  {xcujucpdia  vea) — for 
instance,  C.  Benoit's  Essai  historique  et  litteraire 
sur  la  Comedie  de  MSnandre  (1854),  and  Guillaume  Guizot's 
Menandre,  etude  historique  et  litteraire  sur  la  Comedie  et  la 
Societe  grecques  (1855),  several  cnapters  of  Denis'  Histoire  de 
la  Comedie  grccque  (1886,  Vol.  II.,  Ch.  XIX-XXI),  a  chapter 
of  Maurice  Croiset's  Histoire  de  la  Litterature  grecque  (1899, 
Vol.  III.,  Ch.  XIII) — and  had  I  not,  in  composing  this 
volume,  made  use  of  other  material  than  my  predecessors, 
my  labour  would  no  doubt  have  been  in  vain.  But  thanks 
to  recent  discoveries  and  to  the  constant  progress  of  philo- 
logical research,  possibly  also  as  a  result  of  a  somewhat 
reckless  disposition,  I  have  been  able — or  have  thought 
myself  able — to  place  reliance  on  a  larger  amount  of 
documentary  evidence.  I  intend  to  make  my  description 
of  New  Comedy  fuller  and  more  complete  than  the  earlier 
descriptions,  and  I  earnestly  hope  that  authorities  on  the 
subject  will  not  think  it  any  the  less  accurate. 

Two  kinds  of  documents  enable  us  to  form  an  idea  of 
what  the  vea  was :  first,  the  original  fragments,  taken  in 
connection  with  certain  items  of  criticism  and  informa- 
tion by  ancient  authors;  and  then,  more  or  less  faithful 
imitations  and  derivative  works,  both  Greek  and  Latin. 

Our  store  of  original  fragments  has  recently  been  con- 
siderably enlarged. 1  Especially  during  the  past  ten  years 
important  bits  of  several  of  Menander's  plays  have  been 
published,  as  well  as  remnants  of  other  comedies  by 
unknown  authors,   which  are  much  more  extensive  and 

^  For  the  older  known  fragments  I  shall  quote  the  collection  made  by 
Th.  Kock,  Comicorum  atticorum  fragmenta,  three  vols.,  1880-1888. 
B 


2  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

more  interesting  from  a  dramatic  point  of  view  than  the 
meagre  seraps  in  Kock's  collection.^ 

None  the  less,  the  documents  of  tlic  second  kind  still 
constitute  our  chief  material.  The  authors  whose  names 
I  have  mentioned  have  been  rather  too  sparing  in  their 
use  of  them.  I,  on  the  contrary,  draw  generously  from 
them.  I  have,  however,  practically  only  made  use  of 
writings  whose  derivation  from  the  New  Comedy  is  not 

1  I  shall  not  attempt  to  enumerate  all  these  finds  and  much  less 
to  cite  all  the  literature  concerning  them.  The  following  are  the  most 
important — 

I.  Fragments  of  Menander  :  fragments  published  by  Jernstedt  in  1891 
[Fragments  de  comedies  attiques  de  Porphyre  Uspensky,  in  Russian),  one 
of  which  must  belong  to  the  'EiriTpeirovTes  and  another  to  the  "too-yua  (the 
latter  has  been  discussed  by  Kock  in  the  Rheinisches  Museum,  1893, 
pp.  225  et  seq.,  and  by  K5rte  in  the  Berliner  Philologische  Wochenschrift, 

1907,  pp.  649-650);  fragments  of  the  TfwpySs  published  by  Nicole  from 
a  papjTus  at  Geneva  (Le  Lahoureur  de  Minandre,  Bale  and  Geneva,  1898), 
and  again  by  Grenfell  and  Hunt  (Menander's  TeaipySs,  A  Revised  Text  of 
the  Geneva  Fragment,  Oxford,  1898);  fragments  of  the  UepiKeipo/j.ev7]  and 
of  the  K(^Aa|,  in  the  Oxyrhyncus  Papyri,  Vol.  II.  (1899),  No.  211,  and 
Vol.  III.  (1903),  No.  409;  long  passages  of  the  "Hpois,  the  'T-TnTpiirovTis, 
the  TleptKfipofxeuTi,  the  2a,ui'a,  published  by  Lefebvre  (Fragments  d'un 
manuscrit  de  Menandre,  Cairo,  1907),  revised  by  Korte  (Berichte  der  k. 
sdchsischen  Gesellschaft  der  Wisseyischaften,  LX.,  1908,  p.  87  et  seq.);  a 
fragment  of  the  UepiKupop-ivri  published  by  Korte  (ibid.,  p.  145  et  seq.); 
a  fragment  which  seems  to  belong  to  the  Uepiveia  (Oxyrhynchus  Papyri, 
Vol.  VI.  (1908),  No.  855;  regarding  its  being  a  part  of  the  UfpLvOia  see 
Korte,  Hermes,  XLIV.,  1909,  p.  309  et  seq.). 

In  quoting  from  the  "Hpccs,  the  'ETrfTpeVorTes,  the  YlfptKftpofxevT]  and  the 
'S.afj.la,  I  shall  follow  the  numbers  given  by  van  Leeuwen,  second  edition 
(Menandri  quatuor  fabularum  fragmenta,  iterum  edidit  van  Leeuwen, 
Leyden,  1908) ;  in  quoting  from  the  TeupySs  and  the  Ko'Aa|,  those  given 
by  Kretschmar,  who,  in  a  dissertation  (De  Menandri  reliquiis  nuper  repertis, 
Leipzig,  1906)  has  collected  the  fragments  of  Menander  discovered  between 
1886  and  1906  (with  the  exception  of  four  short  and  unimportant  frag- 
ments, edited  from  a  manuscript  at  Athens  in  the  Gdttinger  Nachrichten, 
1896,  p.  315  and  317-318,  which  have  been  omitted). 

II.  Fragments  of  unknown  authors  :  fragment  of  a  prologue,  edited 
by  Kaibel  from  a  papyrus  at  Strassburg  (Gdttinger  Nachrichten,  1899, 
p.  549  et  seq.) ;  fragments  numbered  10  and  11  in  the  Oxyrhyyichus  Papyri, 
Vol.  I.  (1898);  fragments  numbered  5  and  6  in  the  Hibeh  Papyri,  Vol.  I. 
(1906);  fragments  edited  by  Jouguet  from  the  papyri  of  Ghoran  (Bull, 
de  Corr.  hellen.,  XXX.,  1906,  p.  124  et  seq.);  cf.  Korte,  Hermes,  XLIIL, 

1908,  p.  38  et  seq.);  two  fragments,  one  of  which  possibly  belongs  to  the 
Ki6apiffri\s  by  Menander,  published  as  number  19  in  Vol.  V.  of  the  Berliner 
^'-'■assikertexte  (2nd  part,  1907). 


PLAN    AND    SCOPE    OF    THIS    WORK      8 

doubted  by  any  one,  sueh  as  the  palliatae,^  Lucian's 
Dialogue  of  the  Courtesans,  and  the  "  amorous "  and 
"  parasitic  "  Epistles  of  Alciphron.^  To  determine  how 
Plautus  and  Terence,  how  Alciphron  and  Lucian,  imitated 
the  comic  writers  of  the  fourth  and  third  centuries,  is  a 
complex  and  dchcate  task,  to  which  many  scholars  have 
for  years  devoted  themselves.  This  is  not  the  place  to 
record  the  results  of  their  investigations  or  to  deal  with 
the  question  as  a  whole.  Were  I  to  do  so,  I  should,  by 
entering  upon  a  discussion  of  sources,  anticipate  the 
substance  of  a  considerable  part  of  this  book.  As  we 
proceed,  I  shall  show,  either  at  the  beginning  of  each 
chapter  or  in  the  course  of  the  discussion  itself,  why  I 
have  thought  it  proper  to  include  certain  features  borrowed 
from  such  and  such  derivative  work.  Too  often — I  admit 
it  in  advance — I  rely  solely  upon  my  personal  views.  The 
reader  must  not  take  umbrage  at  this  apparent  presump- 
tion. I  think  that  when  a  man  has  devoted  several  years 
of  close  study  to  a  group  of  writings  he  may  be  excused 
for  imagining  that  he  feels  certain  qualities,  characters 
and  relations  for  whose  existence  he  can  adduce  no  proof. 
If  I  make  mistakes,  they  are  made  in  good  faith  and  are 
not  due  to  carelessness. 

It  may  be  that,  when  expanded  as  I  propose  to  expand 
it,  the  study  of  the  New  Comedy  will  appear  to  overlap 
other  studies,  particularly  that  of  the  palUata.  The  only 
new  feature  of  my  work  may  perhaps  be  thought  to 
consist  in  repeating,  under  the  heading  of  Philemon, 
Menander,  Diphilus  or  Apollodorus,  what  has  often  been 
said  under  the  heading  of  Terence  or  Plautus,  Lucian  or 
Alciphron.  Nor  is  there  any  denying  that  such  a  criticism 
would  not  be  entirely  wide  of  the  mark,  but  I  cannot 
admit  its  justice  without  making  certain  reservations.     If 

^  I  shall  quote  the  comedies  of  Plautus  according  to  Leo's  edition  (1895- 
1896);  those  of  Terence,  according  to  Dziazko's  edition  (1884);  the 
fragments  of  the  Latin  comedy-writers  according  to  Ribbeck's  edition 
(Comicorum  romanorum  jragtmnta,  3rd  edition,  1898). 

'   Alciphronis  Epiatulae,  ed.  Schepers,  1905. 


4  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

I  were  dealing  with  Plautus  or  with  Terence  I  should 
make  an  effort  to  describe  all  the  resources,  all  the  methods, 
of  tlicir  art ;  I  sliould  endeavour  to  point  out  their  peculiar 
qualities  and  their  peculiar  faults.  But  as  I  am  dealing 
with  the  vea,  I  shall  proceed  in  a  different  way.  The 
Latin  comedies  and  their  authors  will  only  interest  me 
from  a  special  point  of  view  :  in  so  far  as  they  are  copies 
and  interpreters  of  lost  originals.  Far  from  insisting  on 
the  features  which  give  them  a  particular  character  and  a 
kind  of  originality,  I  shall  disregard  this  side  of  the  question 
as  much  as  possible.  Further,  I  shall  not  pay  attention 
to  all  the  plays,  nor  to  all  the  Dialogues  of  the  Courtesans, 
nor  to  all  the  amorous  or  parasitic  Epistles.  From  these 
various  works  I  shall  select,  rightly  or  wrongly,  certain 
elements  which  will  help  me  to  reconstruct  the  vea,  while 
I  shall  exclude  others.  Moreover,  I  am  fully  aware  that 
my  book  is,  to  a  very  large  extent,  a  work  of  repetition 
and  compilation.  But  compilations  are  not  always  use- 
less. Indeed,  it  is  necessary  for  the  convenience  of 
students  that,  from  time  to  time,  such  a  compilation 
covering  each  important  subject  should  be  made.  Though 
the  book  I  am  about  to  publish  may  bring  me  no  glory, 
it  may  be  of  service  to  others,  and  I  ask  from  it  nothing 
more. 

I  have  repeatedly  used  the  term  New  Comedy.  I  must 
define  exactly  what  I  mean  by  it.  It  has  long  since  been 
generally  accepted,  on  the  testimony  of  ancient  docu- 
ments, that  the  history  of  Greek  comedy  must  be  divided 
into  three  periods  :  ancient  comedy  {dgxata),  during  the 
fifth  century ;  middle  comedy  {jueorj),  during  the  first  two- 
thirds  of  the  fourth  century ;  new  comedy  {vea),  beginning 
with  the  time  of  Alexander — say,  for  the  sake  of  estab- 
lishing a  date,  from  about  330 — up  to  the  time  when 
this  style  of  composition  ceases  to  exist.  In  our  days 
the  correctness  of  this  division  has  been  called  in 
question.  Fielitz  has  maintained  that  it  was  made  in 
comparatively   recent   times  —  in   Hadrian's    reign  —  and 


PLAN    AND    SCOPE    OF    THIS    WORK      5 

without  sufficient  reason,  by  some  pedantic  or  careless 
grammarian.^ 

Others  have  thought  that  the  person  who  first  used  the 
term  xiofjuodla  jiceorj  did  not  use  it  in  a  chronological 
sense,  and  that  middle  comedy  was  middle,  not  in  the 
order  of  time,  but  from  the  point  of  view  of  quality ;  ^ 
and  tliis  statement  calls  for  a  short  examination.^ 

The  passages  which  support  the  view  that  xco/ncodia  jueorj 
is  equivalent  to  xaj/ncpdia  f.iixry'j,  without  any  reference  to 
time,  are  very  few  in  number.  An  anonymous  treatise 
IleQi  xco/LiMdtag  mentions  the  /udarj  in  the  third  place, 
after  the  via  :  Feyovaoi  de  fj,exa(iolal  xajjuajdiag  roetg  •  xal  f] 
juev  aQxoiioL,  ^  <5£  vea,  f]  de  /bieorj^  Perhaps,  however,  this 
arrangement  can  be  explained  on  the  ground  that  the 
division  into  three  periods  was  subsequently  introduced 
into  a  statement  which  originally  recognised  but  two,  or 
perhaps  the  redactor,  owing  to  considerations  of  logic, 
did  not  wish  to  mention  the  tniddle  before  the  two 
extremes  by  which  it  was  determined.  However  that 
may  be,  the  word  jusTaf^oXai  proves  that  he  was  thinking 
of  periods  of  time.^  Furthermore,  in  the  list  of  poets  who 
illustrated  each  of  the  three  kinds  of  comedy,  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  jueor]  are  mentioned  between  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  dgxaia  and  those  of  the  vea  (§  12  et  seq.) ; 
the  only  one  whose  name  has  survived — Antiphanes — is 
more  recent  than  the  former  and  earlier  than  the  latter. 
Middle  comedy  is  likewise  mentioned  in  the  third  place 
in  a  sentence  of  a  proeme  by  Tzetzes  :  xal  ndXiv  xaO'  eregav 
Siaigeoiv  rfji;  xcojucoSiag  x6  fxev  eoxiv  agxalov,  to  de  veov, 
TO   de   [xeoov ;  ^  but   nothing   in   what   follows   corresponds 

^  Fielitz,  De  Atticorum  comoedia  bipartita  (Diss.  Bonn,  1866),  pp.  70-71. 

*  Cf.  Von  Wilamowitz,  Euripides^  Herakles,  I.  p.  134,  n.  21;  De  trihus 
carminibxis  latinis  (Ind.  Schol.  GOttingen,  1893-1894),  p.  24. 

'  I  shall  quote  the  ancient  texts  concerning  the  history  of  comedy  as 
they  appear  in  Diibner's  edition  (Scholia  graeca  in  Aristophanem,  cum 
prolegomenis grammaticontm, Didot,  \855)andKaiheVsCo7nicorumgraecoru7n 
fragmenta,  I.,  1899.  *  An.  III.  Diibner,  p.  14  =  Kaibel,  p.  7  (§  2). 

Cf.  Arist.  Poet.,  p.    1449a  :  al  fiiv  oiiv  ttjs  rpaywSias  yueTajSatreis  kui  5i'  S>v 
iyevovro  ou  KeKrjdacri  kt\. 

«  Anon.  V.  Diibner  and  IXa,  p.  xviii,  67  et  seq.  =  Kaibel,  p.  17. 


6  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

to  the  words  to  <5e  jueoov,  and  these  words  were  probably 
introduced  where  they  are  found  by  an  interpolator.  We 
have,  finally,  to  consider  a  unique  notice,  the  last  sentence 
in  the  "  Coislin  Treatise":  rfjg  Hco/xcodiag  nalaid,  r]  nleovd- 
^ovoa  rep  yeXoUp  '  vea,  i)  rovxo  juev  nQois/uevr},  Tcgog  de  to  oejLivov 
QETiovoa  '  jiieat],  t)  an  dficpolv  juejuiyjU£V7].^  Here  there  can 
be  no  question  but  that  the  /ueorj  is  described  as  a 
mixed  class.  Are  we  obliged  to  assume  that  the  Coislin 
Treatise  is  the  only  one  that  contains  the  true  doctrine, 
and  that  so  many  other  passages  in  which  jueoj]  is,  without 
a  doubt,  used  in  a  chronological  sense,  simply  repeat  a  mis- 
interpretation ?  I  maintain  that  this  supposed  misinter- 
pretation would  have  been  a  most  natural  one.  Meooq, 
which  is  frequently  enough  used  to  designate  the  third 
item  in  a  list  of  three  things  when  the  third  item  is  midway 
between  the  other  two  and  shares  the  nature  of  each,  is 
also  used,  and  not  less  generally,  to  designate  a  middle 
term  chronologically  speaking  (for  example  :  [.leori  rjXiyua) ; 
and  associated  with  dgxaia  and  with  via,  /nem],  in  the 
expression  xcojuMdia  juearj,  could  not  fail  to  be  understood 
in  this  latter  way.  But  just  because  this  misunder- 
standing was  practically  unavoidable,  and  because  it 
ought  to  have  been  easy  to  foresee  it,  we  have  a  right  to 
think  that  the  inventor  of  the  term  would  not  have  ex- 
posed the  public  to  it ;  had  he  wished  to  designate  a  mixed 
class,  he  would  no  doubt  have  preferred  some  other 
epithet  to  the  adjective  jueor],  one  that  was  as  much  used 
in  similar  cases  and  which  did  not  lend  itself  to  ambiguity 
— juixrrj.  Rather  than  see  a  misinterpretation  in  all  the 
ancient  texts  where  "  middle  comedy "  means  comedy 
that  flourished  between  the  aqxata  and  the  via,  I  prefer 
to  regard  the  interpretation  contained  in  the  Coislin 
Treatise  as  an  exceptional  one. 

We  have  seen,  then,  that  in  ancient  times  the  history 
of  Greek  comedy  was  thought  to  be  susceptible  of  a 
division  into  three  periods,  one  of  which  begins  with  the 
time  of  Alexander.     Now  let  us  see  whether  it  is  probable 

1  Kaibel,  p.  53. 


PLAN    AND    SCOPE    OF    THIS    WORK       7 

that  this  view  arose  as  late  as  Fielitz  maintains.  It  seems 
to  me  that  he  makes  improper  use  of  the  argument  ex 
silentio,  in  order  to  prove  liis  thesis.  Velleius  Paterculus 
expresses  surprise  somewhere  in  his  writings  at  the  fact 
that  the  most  ilhistrious  representatives  of  a  branch  of 
hteraturc  were  often  found  united  by  fate  within  a  very 
limited  period  of  time,  and  among  the  writers  of  ancient 
comedy  [prisca  ilia  et  veins  comoedia)  he  mentions  Cratinus, 
Aristophanes  and  Eupolis ;  among  writers  of  New  Comedy 
{nova  comoedia),  Menander,  Philemon  and  Diphilus;  he 
makes  no  mention  of  Middle  Comedy.^  Does  it  follow  that 
he  does  not  admit  its  existence  ?  I  do  not  think  this  con- 
clusion inevitable,  and  I  believe  that  the  inferior  quality 
of  the  representatives  of  the  jiiear}  may  well  be  sufficient 
explanation  of  his  silence  regarding  them.  The  passages 
in  Plutarch, 2  Dion  ^  and  Quintilian  ^  (following  Dionysius 
of  Halicarnassus),  in  which  likewise  only  two  kinds  of 
comedy  are  mentioned,  the  old  and  the  new,  are  not 
any  more  convincing.  They  express  the  opinions  of 
rhetoricians  or  moralists  who  looked  at  the  matter  from 
special  points  of  view,  regarded  from  which  the  division 
into  three  periods  would  have  had  no  interest  for  them; 
they  are  not  writing  chapters  of  literary  history.  Fielitz 
was  again  led  into  error  by  his  too  ready  belief  that  the 
evidence  which  was  unfavourable  to  his  view  came  solely 
from  the  authors — or  the  compilers — in  whose  works  he 
found  it,  while,  in  point  of  fact,  it  is  in  part  derived  from 
a  far  earlier  source.  When,  for  example,  Athenaeus,  in 
discussing  the  comic  writer  Sotades,  describes  him  in  the 
following  terms  :  ovxl  6  rcov  icoviKcbv  aojudrcov  7ioi}]r))g  6 
MaQ(X)vsLrr]Q,  dlA'  6  rfjg  /iieorjg  xcojuwdiag  nou]Tt]q,^  this  learned 
remark  is,  without  a  doubt,  not  from  the  pen  of  Athenaeus 
himself ;  he  took  it,  we  know  not  whence,  but  most  prob- 
ably from  some  book  that  was  already  old  in  his  day. 
The  title  of  a  work  by  a  certain  Antiochus  of  Alexandria, 

1  Veil.  Paterc,  I.  16,  2.  «  Plut.,  Quacst.  Srjmpos.,  VII.  8,  3,  4-10. 

'  Dion  Chrys.,  XVIII.  (Tlepl  \6yov  acrKricreccs),  p.  477  R. 

*  Quint.,  X.  1,  66  et  seq.  «  ^th.,  p.  293  A. 


8  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

preserved  by  the  same  Athenaeus — IIeqI  t&v  ev  xf]  jusor] 
xcop(odiq  xMjjicpdovfxevoyv  noii]x6jv — suggests  similar  reflec- 
tions. Ficlitz  exerted  himself  to  prove  that  the  above- 
mentioned  work  may  have  been  written  a  short  time 
before  the  Deipnosophists ;  but  that  is  not  very  plausible. 
The  minute  erudition  which  the  title  implies,  the  great 
number  of  texts  and  commentaries  that  were  necessary 
to  fulfil  what  it  promised,  were  not  to  be  found  together 
anywhere  in  all  probability,  except  at  Alexandria  during 
the  best  period  of  Hellenistic  philology.  It  was  in  those 
surroundings  that  the  expression  xcojuo^dca  /.leor]  which 
Antiochus  uses,  and  the  division  into  three  periods  to 
which  that  expression  refers,  must  have  originated. 

Moreover,  it  is  only  a  matter  of  minor  interest  to  deter- 
mine when  the  term  "  middle  comedy  "  was  first  used ;  the 
most  important  thing  is  the  question  of  the  competence  of 
those  who  first  used  it.  The  fact  cannot  be  disguised  that 
in  none  of  the  documents  in  which  a  threefold  division 
appears  are  the  jueorj  and  the  vea  seriously  differentiated. 
In  most  of  them  it  is  stated  that  ancient  comedy  made  fun 
of  people  openly  {(pavsgcog,  anaQaxalvnxaiq,  ngod'^Xcog),  middle 
comedy  in  a  disguised  fashion  {alviy^arcodojg,  ovju^oXixaJg, 
ioxrjjuaxiojUEvojg),  and  that  New  Comedy  no  longer  attacked 
any  one  except  foreigners,  slaves  and  beggars.  Now 
foreigners  and  beggars  appear  to  have  played  a  very  small 
part  in  the  vea ;  slaves  held  a  larger  place,  but  still  not  so 
large  a  one  as  this  classification  would  have  it  appear.  In- 
deed, the  difference  indicated  between  the  jiieor]  and  the  vea  is 
really  artificial  and  futile.  But  too  much  importance  must 
not  be  attached  to  these  statements.  The  various  passages 
in  question  probably  belong  to  a  very  ancient  work,  earlier 
than  the  most  flourishing  period  of  what  we  call  the  via ;  and 
in  it,  consequently,  only  two  periods  were  distinguished  : 
the  aQxaia  and,  under  the  name  of  new  comedy  {vea,  vecoxega), 
that  which  we  call  the  jueorj.  The  grammarians  who  took 
note  of  this  work — and  before  them,  the  original  author, 
perhaps  a  contemporary  of  Menander  or  of  his  immediate 
successors — knowing  of  the  existence  of  three  periods  and 


PLAN  AND  SCOPE  OF  THIS  WORK   9 

wishing  to  corroborate  it,  thought  that  in  differentiating 
the  two  latter  they  could  rely  upon  the  same  criterion 
which  had  previously  served  to  differentiate  the  first  :  the 
Aristotelian  criterion  —  the  difference  between  XoidoQia, 
aloxQoloyia  (open  scurrility)  and  vnovoia  or  eju(paoig  (innu- 
endo). This  accounts  for  the  combination  which  I  have 
criticised.  This  combination  is,  apparently,  not  the 
original  statement  of  the  theory  of  the  three  periods;  it 
presupposes  the  existence  of  that  theory  and  tries  to 
bring  it  into  agreement  with  other,  still  older,  theories  ;  ^ 
it  does  not  discover  the  true  principle.  It  is,  therefore, 
still  possible  that  this  principle  was  sound.  We  must  not 
forget  that  the  division  into  three  periods,  even  if  it  did  not 
arise  before  the  time  of  Hadrian,  was  the  work  of  scholars 
who  knew  Greek  comedy  infinitely  better  than  we  do ; 
Athenaeus  says  that  he  had  read  eight  hundred  plays  of 
the  middle  period.^  To  reject,  in  our  dense  ignorance,  the 
judgment  of  people  who  were  so  well  informed  would  be 
singularly  audacious ;  I  shall  certainly  not  do  so  a  priori. 

Moreover,  quite  apart  from  considerations  of  tradi- 
tion, another  very  practical  reason  obliges  me  to  dis- 
regard comedy  prior  to  330  :  for  we  have  hardly  any 
records  of  it.^  In  Kock's  collection  the  fragments  which 
can  properly  be  dated  as  belonging  to  the  middle  period 
occupy  relatively  little  space ;  they  are  collected  in  the 
second  volume — the  smallest  of  the  three — before  the 
fragments  of  Philemon.  Furthermore,  not  everything 
that  comes  before  them  need  be  taken  into  account. 
Certain  poets  whom  Kock  regarded  as  representatives  of 
the  /.leor]  now  appear  to  us,  thanks  to  inscriptions  which 
have  been  better  elucidated,  as  poets  of  the  new  period ; 
for  example,   Simylus,   of  whom  really   nothing  but  his 

^  i.  e.  theories  based  upon  the  bipartite  division,  Old  and  New. 

*  Ath.,  p.  336  D. 

^  For  the  chronology  of  the  Greek  comedy-writers,  see  particularly 
Wagner,  Symbolaruyn  ad  comicoruni  graecorum  historiam  criticam.  Capita  IV. 
(Leipzig,  1905);  Wilhelm,  Urkunden  dramatischer  Auffiihrungen  in  Athen, 
(Vienna,  1908) ;  Capps,  articles  in  the  A77ierican  Journal  of  Philology 
(1900  and  1907). 


10  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

name  has  survived,  and  Diodorus,  the  brother  and  con- 
temporary of  Diphilus.  Of  the  fragments  attributed  to 
the  celebrated  Antiphanes,  who  was  born  between  408 
and  405,  and  died  between  334  and  331,  one  must  set 
aside  those  which  belong  to  Antiphanes  the  younger,  the 
son  of  Panaetius,  who  lived  a  generation  later.  The 
scraps  which  appear  under  the  names  of  Nicostratus  and 
Epigenes  should,  in  each  instance,  be  divided  between 
two  men  of  the  same  name,  one  of  whom  lived  in  the 
time  of  the  via.  Some  notable  authors,  who,  in  the  collec- 
tion, precede  Philemon  and  Diphilus,  were  as  a  matter  of 
fact  still  writing  when  the  latter  were  flourishing;  this 
must  have  been  the  case  with  Dionysius  and  Timocles, 
and  possibly  also  with  Amphis  and  some  others.  Above 
all  it  is  the  case  with  Alexis.  If  fragment  244  is  by  him, 
this  poet,  whose  first  victories  are  possibly  not  earlier 
than  355  and  may  have  been  youthful  victories,  must 
have  lived  until  after  the  marriage  of  Ptolemy  Philadelphus 
with  his  sister  Arsinoe  and  until  the  time  of  the  Chremoni- 
dean  war;  the  greater  portion  of  this  interminable  career 
would  therefore  coincide  with  the  so-called  new  period.  No 
doubt  some  authors,  whose  style  was  already  fixed  about 
the  year  330,  may  subsequently,  for  a  decade  or  more,  have 
remained  true  to  their  original  style  of  writing.  For  this 
reason  we  still  include  writers  like  Amphis  and  Timocles  in 
the  jueorj.  It  is  less  admissible  that  Alexis  should,  during  a 
period  of  time  which  exceeded  half  a  century,  have  obstin- 
ately disregarded  any  new  phase  in  the  development  of 
comedy.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  he  is  generally  re- 
presented as  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  middle  period,  we  may, 
I  believe,  occasionally  borrow  certain  features  from  him. 

Thus,  in  recent  years,  critical  study  tends  to  rob  the 
jueor]  of  a  portion  of  what  for  a  long  time  appeared  to 
belong  to  its  domain.  Must  we,  by  a  contrary  process, 
restore  certain  texts  to  it  which  are  commonly  attributed 
to  the  via  ?     A  new  fragment  of  Philemon  ^  has  led  to 

1  Fragment  of  the  AieoyKvcpos,  preserved  by  Didymus,  in  his  Commentary 
to  Demosthenes,  X.  70. 


PLAN    AND    SCOPE    OF    THIS    WORK     11 

the  plausible  conjecture  that  this  poet,  who  was  born 
between  365  and  360,  was  writintv  as  early  as  the  year 
342.  But  his  successes  are  of  much  later  date;  at  the 
great  festival  of  Dionysus  he  first  gained  a  prize  in  327; 
at  the  Lenaea,  probably  not  before  320.  In  the  course  of 
a  life  which  was  almost  twice  as  long  as  that  of  Menander, 
Philemon  did  not  write  as  many  comedies  as  his  rival, 
and  yet  he  does  not  appear  to  have  ceased  writing  in  his 
old  age,  so  that  we  are  justified  in  surmising  that  his 
youthful  writings  were  few  in  number.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  apart  from  the  new  fragment,  nothing  of  what 
remains  of  his  writings  seems  to  be  earlier  than  330.  In 
spite  of  the  time  of  his  birth  and  of  his  first  productions, 
Philemon  should  properly  be  regarded  as  an  author  of 
the  new  period.  I  should  be  more  inclined  to  claim  for 
the  i-ieor]  several  poets  of  inferior  rank,  to  whom  Kock 
gives  a  later  date  :  for  instance,  Dioxippus,  about  whose 
date  we  have  no  exact  knowledge ;  Strato,  placed  by  Suidas 
in  the  middle  period ;  and  Sosipatrus,  who  mentions  a 
certain  cook  Chariades  as  among  the  living,  of  whom 
Euphron  later  speaks  as  though  he  were  dead.  As  to 
Stephanus,  the  son  of  Antiphanes,  and  author  of  a  play 
called  OdoXdxcov,  it  is  very  difficult  to  make  up  one's 
mind ;  according  as  one  identifies  the  Oovqia,  of  which 
he  speaks,  with  the  Messenian  city  or  wuth  the  country 
of  Thurii,  the  ^aodevg,  whom  he  introduces,  with  a  king 
of  Sparta,  with  Alexander  of  Molossus  or  with  Pyrrhus, 
Stephanus  will  belong  more  probably  to  the  one  or  the 
other  period ;  I  incline  to  placing  him  in  the  vea.  With 
the  exception  of  these  three  or  four  poets,  Meineke's 
classification,  which  Kock  generally  retained,  should,  I 
think,  be  followed. 

On  the  other  hand,  modern  discoveries  almost  exclu- 
sively concern  the  New  Comedy,  comedy  after  330.  Only  a 
few  endings  of  lines  from  the  'AvOgcojioyovLa  by  Antiphanes  ^ 
and  two  fragments  of  the  "Hqcoeq  and  of  the  'Ixagioi  by 
Timocles,    of    the    same    date    as    the    new    fragment    of 

1  Oxyrh.  Pap.,  111.  No.  427. 


12  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

Philemon,^  can  with  certainty  be  attributed  to  the  middle 
period.  A  few  of  the  fragments  from  Ghoran  are,  accord- 
ing to  Blass,  written  in  a  style  which  is  not  that  of  the 
vea.  They  are  the  shorter  and  more  mutilated  ones.  The 
others,  if  they  are  not  by  Menander  (as  the  first  editors 
were  inclined  to  think),  or  even  if  they  do  not  belong 
to  the  best  period  of  the  New  Comedy,  are  the  work 
of  an  imitator  and  not  of  a  forerunner.  As  to  the  frag- 
ment published  in  Volume  VI  of  the  Oxyrhynchus  Papyri, 
Korte's  investigations  seem  to  establish  that  it  is  not 
earlier  than  the  time  of  IMenander,  as  was  formerly  thought, 
but  that  it  belongs  to  a  work  of  the  master  of  the  via 
himself — to  the  UeQivdla.  The  fragments  in  Volume  II, 
the  Strassburg  prologue,  and  the  long  Berlin  fragment  (if 
it  is  not  a  bit  of  Menander's  Kidagiortjg),  are  of  a  doubtful 
period.  The  fragment  in  the  Hibeh  Papyri  belongs  to  a 
play  the  scene  of  which  was  laid  in  Egypt  and  must  have 
been  written  at  a  time  when  Egypt  had  been  Hellenised. 

So  much  for  the  original  documents.  I  shall  now  turn 
to  the  imitations ;  the  closest  and  most  numerous  of 
which — the  Latin  comedies — have  nearly  all  been  dated 
approximately.^ 

Without  entering  into  the  details  of  the  argument  I 
shall  point  out  what,  in  each  case,  warrants  our  considering 
them  the  product  of  the  vea.  Now  it  is  the  name  of  the 
author,  now  some  feature  or  features  from  which  we  can 
reach  a  terminus  post  quern.  We  know  on  unimpeachable 
authority  that  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos  is  a  copy  of 
the  play  of  the  same  name  by  Menander,  and  that  the 
Stichus — or  rather,  as  we  shall  see  later  on,  the  beginning 
of  the  Stichus — is  a  copy  of  his  'AdeXcpol  a  ;  that  the  Andria, 
the  Eunuchus,  the  Adelphi  were  chiefly  based  on  three 
of  the  same  poet's  comedies — the  'Avdgta,  the  Evvov^oq 
and   the   'Adslcpol  ^' — and,  secondarily,   on   the   IIsQivdia 

^  Didymus'  Commentary  to  Demosthenes,  X.  70. 

*  See  especially  for  the  prototj^es  of  Plautus  :  Hiiffner,  De  Plauti 
comoediaru7n  exemplis  atticis  quaestiones  maxime  chronologicae.  Diss. 
Gottingen,  1894;  Schanz,  Gesch.  der  ramischen  Litteratur,  I.  (4th  ed.), 
pp.  72  et  seq. 


PLAN    AND    SCOPE    OF    THIS    WORK     13 

and  the  KoXai,  also  by  Menander,  and  the  I^vvanoOvfjoxovreQ 
by  Diphilus;  that  the  Mercator  and  the  Trinummus 
are  imitations  of  works  of  Philemon — the  "EjtmoQog  and 
the  OrjoavQoq;  and  the  Casina  and  Rudens  imitations  of 
works  by  Diphilus — the  K?.rjQov/nsvoi,  and  a  play  whose 
title  is  unknown ;  that  the  Ilecyra  and  Fhormio  are  imita- 
tions of  works  of  Apollodorus  of  Carystus — the  'ExvQa  and 
the  '"EnidiyMCojUEvog.  A  comparison  of  the  Menander  frag- 
ments 125  and  126  with  verses  816-817,  308-309  of  the 
Bacchides  proves  that  this  comedy  is  an  imitation  of 
the  Atg  e^anaxwv.  The  Cistellaria,  in  which  another  frag- 
ment of  Menander — No.  558 — is  translated  almost  word 
for  word  (89-93)  must  have  been  an  imitation  of  the  play 
of  which  this  fragment  is  a  part.  In  the  Aulularia,  one 
of  the  forms  of  stinginess  attributed  to  Euclio  (300-301) 
closely  recalls  a  similar  trait  which  Menander  attributed 
to  the  (pdoLQyvQog  Smierines.  This  gives  us  some  warrant 
for  the  belief  that  Menander  furnished  the  model  for  the 
Aulularia.  At  any  rate,  this  model,  which  apparently 
made  mention  of  the  yvvaixovojuoi,^  was  not  earlier  than 
the  government  of  Demetrius  of  Phalerum.  The  proto- 
type of  the  Mostellaria  was  written  during  the  lifetime  of 
Philemon  and  of  Diphilus,^  after  the  death  of  Alexander 
and  of  Agathocles  (289) ;  ^  there  is  every  likelihood  that 
it  was  the  0dofj,a  by  Philemon.  The  'Ovayog,  the  prototype 
of  the  Asinaria,  was  the  work  of  a  certain  Demophilus, 
of  whom  we  know  nothing.  In  modern  times  it  has  been 
thought  that  lines  712-713  made  fun  of  the  divine  honours 
and  of  the  epithet  ZoizriQ  granted  to  several  of  the 
Diadochi ;  that  lines  68  et  seq.  alluded  to  the  plot  of  some 
earlier  comedy,  possibly  the  NavxlrjQog  by  Menander. 
Nor  are  these  surmises  without  plausibility,  but  as  Demo- 
philus had  no  great  reputation,  Plautus  would,  certainly, 
not  have  dreamt  of  imitating  him,  if,  at  the  time  when 
he  wrote,  the  plays  of  the  Greek  poet  were  already  anti- 
quated.    In  the  Amphitryon  there  is  an  indication  of  its 

1  AuL,  504. 

*  Most.,  1149:  Si  amicus  Diphilo  aut  Philemoni  es.  .  .         '  Ibid.,  115. 


14  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

date  in  a  few  lines  of  Sosia's  speech,  deseribing  the  miUtary 
nianccuvres  of  the  time  of  the  Diadoehi.^  Its  Greek  proto- 
type was  not,  tlierefore,  as  has  been  sometimes  main- 
tained, a  comedy  of  the  middle  period,  and  it  has  been 
suggested  that  it  may  have  been  a  play  by  Philemon,  the 
Nv^,  of  which  the  actual  title  was  probably  Nv^  juay.Qu. 
The  original  of  the  Curculio,  to  judge  by  lines  394-395, 
was  later  than  a  siege  of  Sicyon,  which  was  either  the 
siege  of  303  or  one  that  took  place  ten  years  earlier.  The 
original  of  the  Eyidicus,  performed  immediately  after  a 
campaign  of  the  Athenians  against  Thebes,  probably  dates 
from  the  year  292  or  289,  In  the  Miles,  the  name  Seleucus, 
and  in  the  Truculentus,  the  reference  to  a  "  Babylonian  " 
soldier  who  conquered  Syria  and  carried  on  war  in  Phrygia, 
Arabia  and  the  Pontus,  takes  us  back  to  the  time  of 
Alexander's  successors.  Lines  411-412  of  the  Menaechmi, 
which  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  regard  as  an  addition  by 
Plautus,  point  to  a  period  subsequent  to  the  accession  of 
Hiero  (275  or  270).  The  chief  model  for  the  Pseudolus, 
in  view  of  line  533,  must  have  been  contemporaneous 
with  the  most  brilliant  successes  of  Agathocles  (309-308 
or  302).  The  KaQxn^ovioq,  from  which  the  Poeniilus  got  its 
name,  was  written  after  the  death  of  Apelles  (line  1271); 
on  the  other  hand,  lines  663-665  of  the  Latin  play  appear 
to  me  to  contain  an  allusion,  obscured  and  mutilated  by 
Plautus,  to  the  events  subsequent  to  the  battle  of  Sellasia 
(221  ).2  As  for  the  Captivi,  the  very  fact  that  the  scene  is 
laid  in  Aetolia  obliges  us  to  place  the  original  in  a  time 
when  the  people  of  Aetolia  played  an  important  part  in 
the  affairs  of  Greece,  which  was  only  the  case  from  the 
time  of  Alexander.  The  date  of  the  war  between  Aetolia 
and  Elis  which  forms  the  basis  of  the  plot,  cannot,  I 
believe,  be  definitely  fixed,  and  I  should  be  inclined  to 
place  it  in  the  third  century,  preferably  in  the  second  half. 
Which,  then,  of  the  works  of  Plautus  and  of  Terence 
belong  to  the  middle  period?  Of  entire  plays,  there  is 
none  but  the  Persa.     In  this  comedy  the  Persians  are 

1  Amfh.,  242  et  seq.         *  Cf.  Rev.  Et.  Gr.,  XVI.  (1903),  pp.  365-366. 


PLAN    AND    SCOPE    OF    THIS    WORK     15 

spoken  of  as  being  still  an  independent  people  (line  506) ; 
the  Greek  original  was  therefore  written  before  the  con- 
quests of  Alexander.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  possible 
that  in  the  "  contaminated  "  plays,  certain  parts,  to  which 
the  preceding  remarks  do  not  extend,  were  copies  of 
originals  older  than  other  parts  of  the  context.  For 
example,  the  middle  and  the  end  of  the  Stichus,  a  few 
scattered  scenes  of  the  Pseiidolus  and  of  the  Triiculcntus, 
and  that  part  of  the  Miles  where  Sceledrus  is  made  sport 
of.  But  we  have  no  means  of  dating  the  secondary  models 
upon  which  these  parts  were  based;  at  least  an  attempt 
to  do  so  would  be  subject  to  grave  doubts  and  can  be 
made  only  on  the  strength  of  literary  considerations. 

The  sources  of  the  Latin  fragments  are  naturally  less 
clear  than  those  of  complete  or  almost  complete  comedies. 
Still,  we  are  in  a  position  to  note  some  facts  about  them. 
The  greater  part  of  them  is  derived  from  about  one  hundred 
and  thirty  palliatae  of  which  the  titles  are  preserved.  Of 
these  titles,  sixty  repeat  the  known  titles  of  Greek  comedies. 
Furthermore,  more  than  fifty  of  them  have  equivalents 
in  the  repertory  of  the  vea  or  in  that  of  Alexis,  a  poet  of 
the  period  of  transition,  and  many  of  them  have  no  equiva- 
lent elsewhere.  As  regards  the  comedies  for  whose  titles 
equivalents  are  found  only  in  the  repertory  of  the  /ueor), 
we  can  name  barely  more  than  four  or  five.  These 
statistics  are  not  without  an  interest  of  their  own,  and 
on  a  number  of  points  where  they  afford  somewhat  vague 
evidence,  more  precise  testimony  can  be  adduced.  Terence, 
Cicero  and  Aulus  Gellius  expressly  say  that  Plautus' 
Commorientes  was  an  imitation  of  Diphilus'  ^  Zvvcmo- 
Ov/]oy.ovreg;  that  the  Phasma  by  Luscius  Lanuvinus,  the 
Plocium  and  the  Synephebi  by  Caecilius,  were  imitations 
of  plays  with  similar  titles  by  Menander.^  The  prologue 
of  the  Eunuchus  seems  to  show  that  two  comedies  of 
Menander  supplied  the  models  for  the  Colax  by  Naevius,  the 

^  Ad.,  prol.  6-7. 

*  Eun.,  prol.  9;  Cic,  De  finibus,  I.  2,  4 ;  De  opt.  gtn.  or.,  18;  Gell.,  II. 
23;   III.  10,  3. 


16  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

Colax  by  Plautus  and  the  Thensaurus  by  Luscius.^  The 
juxtaposition  of  the  names  of  Menander  and  Turpilius  in 
a  sentence  of  Servius  regarding  Phaon,  proves  that  the 
Leucadia  of  Turpihus  was  a  copy  of  a  play  by  Menander.^ 
Turpihus'  Epiclerus,  Hke  Menander's,  brought  upon  the 
stage  a  person  who,  through  lack  of  sleep,  becomes  garru- 
lous, and  a  son  who  is  chosen  as  arbiter  by  his  father 
and  mother ;  ^  here  again  Turpilius  imitated  Menander. 
He  also,  as  I  believe,  imitated  him  in  the  Paedion;  frag- 
ments 372  and  373  of  Menander's  Ilaidiov  are  the  best 
possible  comment  to  fragment  VIII  of  the  Latin  play; 
moreover,  in  both  plays  there  is  question  of  a  marriage. 
The  Titthe  by  Caecilius  contains  the  story  of  the  sub- 
stitution of  a  child,  just  as  Menander's  play  does.*  In 
his  Karine,  jewels  are  mentioned  as  in  Menander's  play.^ 
In  the  Synaristosae,  he  praises  the  power  of  love,  just  as 
Menander  praises  it  in  a  fragment  of  the  ZwagiozMoai.^ 
This  leads  me  to  infer  that  he  copied  him  in  each  of  these 
three  instances.  The  Gladiolus,  by  Livius  Andronicus, 
appears  to  have  contained  a  swaggering  soldier ;  "^  this  is 
probably  also  true  of  Philemon's  ^  "EyxeiQidiov,  and  this 
resemblance  is  doubtless  not  accidental.  Nor  is  it  an 
accident  that  a  fragment  of  Turpilius,  belonging  to  his 
Demetrius,  translates  a  sentence  of  Alexis'  Arji^i^xQioQ;^ 
nor  that  a  line  of  Naevius,  author  of  the  Ariolus,  repeats 
a  line  of  Philemon,  author  of  the  'AyvQXTjg;  ^^  nor  that  the 
fragments  of  Naevius'  Glaucoma  and  of  Alexis'  'AneyXav- 
KOifievoQ  both  deal  with  a  cook.^^ 

Thus  we  have  a  certain  number  of   points  of  contact 

1  Eun.,  prol.  25  and  30,  10.  »  (Servius)  ad  Aeneid.,  III.  279. 

'  Turpilius,  Epiclerus,  fr.  I.  and  Men.,  fr.   164;  Turpilius,  fr.  III.  .     I 
Rhetor,  anon.  Spengel,  I.  p.  432,  17. 

*  Caecilius,  Titthe,  fr.  I.,  IV.  and  Men.,  fr.  461;    Caecilius,  inc.  fab.  fr. 
XXIII.  and  Men.,  fr.  460. 

^  Caecilius,  Karine,  fr.  I.,  II.  and  Men.,  fr.  258. 

*  Caecilius,  inc.  fab.  fr.  XV.  and  Men.,  fr.  449. 

'  See  the  only  extant  fragment.  *  Philem.,  fr.  21. 

*  Turpilius,  Demetrius,  fr.  V.  and  Alexis,  fr.  46. 

10  Naevius,  inc.  fab.  fr.  I.  and  Philemon,  fr.  133  (cf.  fr.  2-3). 
^^  Naevius,  Glaucoma,  fr.  I.  and  Alexis,  fr.  15. 


PLAN    AND    SCOPE    OF    THIS    WORK    17 

which  force  themselves  upon  us,  or  which  can  be  estab- 
Hshcd,  between  the  fragments  of  the  palliatae  and  those 
of  the  new  period.  Were  we  to  attempt  to  establish 
similar  relations  in  respect  of  the  jtieo)],  we  should  not  be 
able  to  do  so  —  a  still  further  reason  to  believe  that 
the  Latin  comedy-writers  strove  particularly  and  almost 
exclusively  to   imitate  the  vea. 

As  regards  Alciphron  and  Lucian,  it  is  very  difficult 
to  fix  even  an  approximate  date  for  the  comedies  from 
which  they  drew  their  inspiration,  for  they  did  not,  like 
the  Latin  poets,  in  each  case  follow  a  definite  comedy. 
The  Dialogues  and  Epistles  are  clever  variations  executed 
on  themes  of  the  repertory,  rather  than  imitations  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word,  and  the  reminiscences  in  which 
they  abound  may  be  derived  from  works  varying  widely 
from  one  another.  Doubtless  Lucian  was  acquainted  with 
at  least  some  authors  of  the  middle  period ;  he  quotes 
Alexis  1  and  alludes  to  the  MalOdy.rj  by  Antiphanes.^ 
Possibly  he  borrowed  from  Antiphanes  the  setting  and 
several  ideas  of  the  Timon.  In  Dialogue  II,  a  detail — 
the  mention  of  the  vavrodixai — takes  us  back  to  a  time 
earlier  than  the  beginnings  of  the  via;  but  other  features 
point — though  not  precisely — to  the  time  of  Alexander's 
successors.  A  scholiast  maintains  that  Lucian  borrowed 
the  entire  subject  matter  of  his  Dialogues  from  the  comic 
repertory,  and  particularly  from  the  plays  of  Menander.^ 
It  would  appear  as  though  the  more  general  statement 
were  correct,  or  nearly  so,*  and  this  leads  me  to  believe 
that  the  more  specific  statement  is  also  correct.  This 
affirmation  by  the  scholiast  is,  moreover,  not  in  any  way 
>ur  alsing;  the  renown  of  Menander,  the  prince  of  comedy 
ana  .le  creator  of  the  immortal  Thais,  render  him  naturally 
enough  an  object  of  Lucian's  especial  interest. 

For  similar  reasons  one  is  tempted  to  admit  a  priori 
that  Alciphron  harked  back  to  the  comic  writers  of  the 

1  De  lapsu  in  salut.,  6.  *  Rhetor,  praec,  12. 

^  Scholia  i)i  Lucianum  (ed.  Rabo,  190(5),  p.  275. 
*  Cf.  Rev.  Et.  Or.,  XXI.  (1908),  p.  75. 
C 


18  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

new  period  rather  than  to  their  less  distinguished  pre- 
decessors. Like  the  Dialogues  of  Lucian,  various  details 
of  his  Epistles  fit  into  the  vea.  Several  of  the  courtesans 
with  whom  he  deals  (Lamia,  Leontion)  arc  historical 
characters  of  that  epoch.  He  wrote  two  letters  in  the 
name  of  Mcnander's  Glycera  (IV,  2  and  19),  another  in 
Menander's  own  name  (IV,  18),  and  gave  the  lover  of 
one  of  his  heroines  the  name  Diphilus  (IV,  10).  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  Phryne  and  Hyperidcs — the  latter  died 
in  322 — take  up  considerable  space  in  the  amorous  corre- 
spondence (IV,  3,  4,  and  5)  and  Praxiteles  also  plays  a 
part  therein  (IV,  1).  As  to  the  writers  of  the  parasitic 
epistles  and  the  persons  to  whom  they  are  addressed,  they 
represent  a  type  which,  as  we  may  now  affirm,  was  at 
least  as  much  in  favour  at  the  time  of  the  fjieorj  as  later 
on.  In  the  writings  of  Alciphron,  chronological  evidence 
is  therefore  less  exact  and,  above  all,  less  unequivocal  than 
it  was  in  Lucian's  writings.  Such  evidence  as  he  furnishes 
can  only  be  applied  with  a  great  deal  of  care  in  a  special 
study  of  New  Comedy. 

In  any  case,  however,  it  is  clear  that  between  the  fieoi] 
and  the  vea,  defined,  as  I  have  done,  chronologically,  the 
documentary  material  is  very  unevenly  divided,  and  as 
I  shall  limit  my  investigations  to  the  latter  period,  I  have 
the  greater  part  of  it  at  my  disposal.  Moreover,  I  need 
hardly  say  that  I  have  by  no  means  a  preconceived  intention 
of  discovering  only  differences  and  contrasts  between  the 
comedy  before  330  and  that  of  a  later  date.  I  shall  quite 
as  gladly  point  out  the  features  which  the  vea  took  over 
from  earlier  comedy,  as  those  which  are  peculiar  to  itself, 
or  which  seem  to  me  to  be  so.  Wherever  there  is  evidence 
of  the  continuity  of  comedy,  I  shall  not  fail  to  give  it 

consideration. 

* 
*     * 

The  original  of  the  Captivi,  as  has  already  been  pointed 

out,  was  probably  written  in  the  second  half  of  the  third 

century;   that  of  the  Poenulus  at  the  time  of  the  battle 

of  Sellasia,  that  is  to  say,  in  221.     After  this  date  we  have 


PLAN    AND    SCOPE    OF    THIS    WORK    19 

no  remnants  of  Greek  comedy  save  a  few  names  of  authors 
and  a  few  titles  of  plays.  Still,  the  study  upon  which  we 
are  embarking  will  cover  the  space  of  a  whole  century  of 
comedy.  During  this  lapse  of  time  several  generations 
of  poets  succeeded  one  another,  and  many  comic  writers, 
all  of  whom  may  not  have  had  the  same  tastes  or  prac- 
tised the  same  art,  lived  and  wrote  contemporaneously 
or  followed  one  another  in  quick  succession.  Is  it  not 
a  futile  and  unreasonable  undertaking  to  bring  together 
into  a  single  picture  features  scattered  among  the  writ- 
ings of  so  many  authors,  in  so  many  works  of  different 
dates?  It  docs  not  seem  so  to  me.  Notwithstanding 
the  growth  of  our  knowledge,  the  time  has  not  yet  come, 
if  indeed  it  will  ever  come,  when  the  various  poets  of  the 
vea  can  appear  before  us  as  distinct  literary  individualities. 
The  monographs  which  have  been  devoted  to  some  of 
them  have  as  yet  yielded  rather  meagre  results  in  the 
way  of  differentiating  between  them — results  to  which  I 
shall  call  attention  when  occasion  offers.  In  regarding 
Menander,  his  contemporaries  and  successors  during  the 
entire  third  century,  generally  speaking,  as  representatives 
of  one  and  the  same  style  of  literary  composition,  I  believe 
that  I  am  alive  to  the  demands  and  limitations  of  the 
present  state  of  our  knowledge. 


PART   I 

THE    SUBJECT    MATTER    OF    NEW    COMEDY 


CHAPTER    I 

WHAT    NEW    COMEDY    REJECTED 

IN  the  first  part  of  my  study,  I  wish  to  point  out  what 
constituted  the  subject  matter  of  comedy  during  the 
new  period.  This  first  part  will  be  essentially  an 
inventory.  But  before  passing  in  review  those  elements  of 
which  the  presence  in  the  repertory  can  be  established, 
or  at  least  suspected,  I  must  call  attention  to  a  few 
elements  which  the  vsa  rejected,  though  they  were  regarded 
with  favour  when  it  began  its  career. 

§  1. 
Personal  Invective 

First  among  these,  if  we  may  trust  the  ancient  critics, 
is  personal  abuse.  We  are  told  that  New  Comedy  no  longer 
vilified  men  of  wealth  or  of  station;  it  refrained  from 
making  even  a  veiled  attack  on  any  individuals  except 
foreigners,  slaves  and  beggars.^  This  is  not  absolutely 
correct.  The  writers  of  the  vea,  Meineke  rightly  remarks,^ 
did  not  always  refrain  from  having  their  say  about  public 
affairs.  A  comic  character  congratulates  Demetrius  of 
Phalerum  on  having  driven  out  the  philosophers.^  Others 
speak,  not  without  irony,  of  a  new  law  limiting  the  number 
of  guests  who  are  allowed  to  assemble  at  a  banquet.^ 
Another  character  empties  his  cup  in  honour  of  King 
Ptolemy,  of  the  sister-queen  Arsinoe,  of  peace  re-estab- 
lished among  the  Greeks.^  Another  drinks  to  the  health 
of  Antigonus,  of  young  Demetrius  and  his  wife  Phile,  and 
rejoices  at  their  recent  victory.*'  Criticism  is  levelled  at 
Lamia,  the  mistress  of  Poliorcetes,  who  levies  a  regular 
war-tax  at  Athens  in  order  to  give  her  lover  a  banquet.' 

^  Schol.  Dionys.  Thrac,  p.  15,  Kaibel ;  Treatise  IV.  Diibn.,  irepl  Kwfi(f>5ias 
(Kaibel,  p.  13).     Cf.  J.  Tzetzes,  p.  21,  28,  37,  Kaibel. 

*  Historia  critica,  pp.  436  et  seq.  '  Alexis,  fr.  94. 

*  Timocles,  fr.  32 ;  Men.,  fr.  272.  »  Alexis,  fr.  24. 

6  Alexis,  fr.  111.  '  Cf.  Pint.,  Dem.,  27  {=  fr.  adesp.,  303). 

23 


2t  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

Fun  is  made  of  the  mystery  that  surrounds  the  treaty 
conekidcd    by    Antigonus    and    Pyrrhus.^     And   it    is   not 
only  foreign  princes,   like  Magas  of  Cyrene,  Dionysius  of 
Heraclea,  and  Seleucus  Nicator,  who  are  roughly  handled 
or    ridieuled.2     In   order   to   be    agreeable   to    Antipater, 
Archcdicus  attacks  Democharcs,  nephew  of  Demosthenes 
and  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  nationalist  party,  with  a 
degree  of  virulence  such  as  is  not  found  in  any  of  the 
fragments  of  the  middle  period.^     Philippides  had  a  better 
inspiration  when  he  raised  his  voice  against  Stratocles,  a 
favourite  of  Poliorcetes,  "  who  has  turned  the  Acropolis 
into  an  evil  resort  and  has  introduced  prostitutes  into  the 
temple  of  the  Maiden  Goddess.     It  is  owing  to  him  that 
the  frost  has  bitten  our  vines,  it  is  because  of  his  godless- 
ness  that  the  sacred  peplus  is  torn  in  two,  because  he 
rendered  divine  honours  to  men.     This  is  what  undermines 
the  commonwealth,  not  comedy."  *    Tavxa  xaxalvei  dfjjuov,  ov 
xcoucpdla.     Note  this  last  expression.     It  seems  to  indicate 
that  at  the  time  when  Philippides  wrote,  at  the  very  end 
of  the  fourth  century,  comedy  had  not  renounced  politics. 
Perhaps  the   difference   between   the  fieori  and  the  via 
lay  not  so  much  in  the  kind  of  people  it  attacked  as  in 
the   greater   or   lesser   frequency   of   its   attacks.     In  the 
fragments  of  Menander,  of  his  contemporaries  or  of  his 
successors,  the  shafts  of  satire  hurled  at  living  persons — 
of  course,  I  take  no  account  of  mere  inoffensive  remarks — 
are    certainly    rarer   than    in   the    earlier   fragments.     In 
Alciphron,  Glycera  writes  to  her  friend  Bacchis,  "  I  would 
give  a  great  deal  not  to  lose  the  love  of  Menander.     If 
we  had  any  tiff  or  any  quarrel,  I  should  have  to  undergo 
the  bitter  insults  of   a  Chremes  or  of  a  Pheidylus  in  the 
theatre."  ^     As  far  as  we  know,  there  is  no  good  reason 
for  Glycera's  fears.     It  is  in  the  writers  of  the  middle 

^  Phoenicides,  fr.  1. 

*  Philem.,  fr.  144;   Men.,  fr.  21-23;  fr.  adesp.,  450  (Dionysius). 

'  Archedicus,  fr.  4.  *  Philippides,  fr.  25. 

'  Ale,  IV.  2.  Similarly,  if  we  are  to  believe  Machon,  Gnathaena  feared 
that  Diphilus  might  make  her  pay  for  her  infidelity  by  reproducing  it  upon 
the  stage  (Ath.,  p.  579  E). 


WHAT    NEW    COMEDY    REJECTED        25 

period  —  Antiphanes,  Philetaerus,  Amphis,  Anaxilas, 
Epicrates,  Alexis,  Timocles  and  Theophilus — that  we  hear 
raihng  at  famous  courtesans,  denunciation  of  their  covet- 
ousness,  their  shamelessness  and  their  bad  behaviour, 
spiteful  tales  of  their  intrigues,  criticism  of  their  physical 
imperfections,  disclosures  about  their  advancing  years, 
and  pitiless  mockery  at  their  old  age.  Neither  Menander 
nor  the  other  poets  of  the  vea  appear  to  have  followed 
such  examples.  Archedicus  gives  a  fantastic  explanation 
of  the  nickname  Zxozodivr]  of  a  certain  Nicostrata ;  oxi 
dlvov  not'  'fiQEv  dgyvgovv  iv  rep  okoxco.^  Philippides  tells  a 
rather  naughty  story  about  Gnathaena :  how,  when  swal- 
lowing some  oQxeiQ,  she  said  that  they  were  a  dainty  dish.^ 
These  two  attacks  were  not  very  malicious,  and  they  are 
the  liveliest  bits  in  the  fragments  of  the  new  period  that 
refer  to  fashionable  favourites.  Menander  does  indeed 
mention  some  such  women,  but  he  neither  insults  them  nor 
makes  fun  of  them.  It  appears  that  into  one  of  his  comedies 
he  introduced  his  mistress  Glycera.^  But  if  we  may  trust 
Alciphron,  to  whom  we  owe  this  bit  of  information,  he 
did  it  without  malice,  for  Glycera  insists  upon  the  play 
being  performed  before  the  King  of  Egypt,  so  that,  in 
taking  it  to  Alexandria,  Menander  should  carry  with  him 
the  portrait  of  his  beloved.  Surely  she  would  not  have 
been  so  insistent  had  the  portrait  been  a  repulsive  one. 

Nor  were  the  courtesans  of  the  day  abused  in  Philemon's 
comedies ;  as  far  as  we  know,  the  only  time  that  this  poet 
speaks  of  one  of  them,  he  does  so  in  order  to  sing  her 
praises  !  * 

The  men  about  town  and  the  parasites  had  to  suffer 
rather  more.  Philemon,  Euphron  and  Menander  levelled 
some  shafts  against  Callimedon-Carabus,  a  great  amateur 
of  fish,  as  also  against  his  son  Agyrrhius.^  Menander  and 
Apollodorus  of  Gela  made  sport  of  Chaerephon,  a  rare 
spunger.^     Other  spungers  appear  now  and  again  :    Philo- 

1  Arched.,  fr.  1.  »  Philipp.,  fr.  5.  »  Ale,  IV.  19,  20. 

«  Philem.,  fr.  215.  »  Philem.,  fr.  42;  Euphr.,  fr.  9;  Men.,  fr.  319. 

•  Men.,  fr.  56,  277,  320,  364;   2a/ii'a,  258-259;  Apollod.,  fr.  24,  26. 


26  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

xenus-Pternocopis  and  the  infinitely  slim  Philippidcs  in 
Mcnandcr ;  ^  Phocnicides,  Corydus,  Neilus,  Phyromachus, 
in  Euphron ;  ^  Chacrippus,  in  Phoenicides ;  ^  "  Lightning  " 
Damippus,  in  Anaxippus.*  Both  Diphilus  and  Menander 
branded  the  prodigality  of  Ctesippus,  son  of  Chabrias,  who 
went  so  far  as  to  sell  the  stones  of  his  father's  monument.^ 
Note  that  the  majority  of  these  persons  were  notorious 
before  330  and  that  they  had  already  called  forth  the  wit 
of  other  comic  writers.  Philippides  is  repeatedly  men- 
tioned by  Aristophon  and  by  Alexis.  Callimedon-Carabus 
was  a  contemporary  of  Demosthenes;  and  Antiphanes, 
Eubulus,  Alexis  and  Timocles  had  a  great  deal  of  fun  at 
his  expense.  Chaerephon  served  as  a  butt  for  several 
authors  of  the  jjLeori,  such  as  Antiphanes,  Nicostratus, 
Alexis,  Timotheus  and  Timocles ;  he  was  one  of  the  friends 
of  Cyrebion,  the  brother-in-law  of  the  orator  Aeschines. 
Corydus  is  ridiculed  by  Cratinus  the  younger,  who  may 
possibly  have  begun  to  write  in  the  last  years  of  the  fifth 
century.  In  Alexis  he  appears  in  connection  with  Carabus 
and  Cyrebion,  who  have  already  been  mentioned,  and  with 
the  wealthy  Blepaeus,  of  whom  Demosthenes  speaks; 
he  also  appears  in  Timocles.  Phoenicides  is  mentioned  by 
Antiphanes  together  with  a  certain  Taureas,  whom  Phile- 
taerus,  the  son  of  Aristophanes,  also  ridiculed.  Phyro- 
machus appears  in  Alexis  in  connection  with  the  courtesan 
Nannion,  who  was  already  notorious  about  345-340. 
Neilos,  to  whom  Timocles  refers,  must  belong  to  the  same 
period.  Ctesippus,  at  the  time  when  Menander  and 
Diphilus  attacked  him,  was  not  less  than  fifty,  and  I 
imagine  that  his  behaviour  had  for  a  long  time  been  a 
source  of  scandal.  In  a  word,  at  the  beginning  of  the  new 
period,  the  men  about  town  and  the  spungers  of  whom 
we  have  just  spoken  had  established  a  certain  rank,  so 
to  speak,  in  the  personnel  of  comedy,  and  they  were  not 
suddenly  dismissed.  But  their  places  were  not  taken  by 
others. 

1  Men.,  fr.  276,  365.  ^  Euphr.,  fr.  8.  '  Phoenic,  fr.  3. 

*  Anaxippus,  fr.  3.  *  Diph.,  fr.  38;   Men.,  fr.  363. 


WHAT    NEW    COMEDY    REJECTED        27 

But  matters  stood  otherwise  with  another  class  of  men 
whom  the  neor]  often  brought  on  the  boards — the  philo- 
sophers. Several  of  them  who  did  not  flourish  until  after 
330 — Stilpo,  Crates,  Monimus,  Epicuinis,  Cleanthes,  Zeno — 
are  named  or  clearly  aimed  at  in  a  certain  number  of 
fragments.  But  the  fragments  rarely  tell  us  about  the 
individual  peculiarities  of  these  wise  men  or  about  the 
details  of  their  lives.  Generally  it  is  only  of  their  ideas 
that  they  speak.  Fun  is  made  of  Zcno's  "  new  philosophy," 
which  teaches  one  how  to  be  hungry ;  ^  the  wisdom  of 
Epicurus  is  belauded  for  making  good  consist  in  pleasure ;  * 
ironical  commendation  is  bestowed  upon  the  metaphysics 
of  Monimus,  for  whom  everything  was  smoke;  ^  the  argu- 
ments of  an  interlocutor  are  compared  with  the  "  stoppers  " 
which  Stilpo  puts  in  the  mouth  of  his  adversaries.*  Refer- 
ences of  this  kind  are  no  longer  what  can  properly  be  called 
personalities. 

Hitherto  my  search  has  not  been  very  successful.  If 
I  add  a  joke  of  Menander's  about  Androcles,  who  refuses 
to  grow  old  ^ — a  character  that  appears  to  have  been 
bequeathed  by  the  middle  comedy  ^ — and  the  passage 
from  Epinicus  in  which  fun  is  made  of  Mnesiptolemus,  an 
absurd  author,'^  I  shall,  I  believe,  have  enumerated  about 
all  the  satirical  attacks  on  individuals  which  the  fragments 
afford  after  the  year  330.  As  we  see,  their  number  is 
small. 

Apart  from  the  fragments,  certain  titles  of  comedies 
furnish  some  hints — titles  consisting  of  the  name  of  a  man 
or  of  a  woman ;  for  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  the  person 
from  whom  a  comedy  was  named  ordinarily  played  a  con- 

»  Philem.,  fr.  85.     Cf.  Posid.,  fr.  15. 

*  Baton,  fr.  3,  5;  Damoxenus,  fr.  2;  Hegesippus,  fr.  2.  Cf.  fr.  adesp., 
127,  305. 

»  Men.,  fr.  249.  *  Diph.,  fr.  23.  ^  Men.,  :S.aiJLia,  261-263. 

'  I  believe  that  it  is  the  same  character  from  whom  a  play  of  Sophilus 
derived  its  title,  the  wealthy  man  for  whom  were  written,  about  340-345, 
the  speech  of  the  pseudo-Demosthenes  against  Lacritus  (cf.  Men.,  I.e.  : 
iroAu  irpamTai).     He  was  very  old  when  Menander  spoke  of  him. 

'  Epinicus,  fr.  I. 


28  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

siderable  part  in  it.    The  repertory  of  the  jjleoyi  abounds  in 
titles  of  this  sort.^    Doubtless  many  of  them  are  the  names 
of  fictitious  persons,  created  by  the  poet's  fancy;    others 
must   designate   real   persons — contemporaries   who   were 
made  fun  of  on  the  stage.     As,  however,  we  have  no  de- 
tailed knowledge  of  Athenian  events  of  that  period,  we 
are  not  able  to  distinguish  between  the  two  categories 
with  any  degree  of  certainty,  and  it  will  be  prudent  not 
to  include  a  name  in  the  second  category  unless  we  have 
some  reason  to  believe  that,  at  the  time  when  the  play 
was  written,  it  was  borne  by  a  man  of  a  kind  to  interest 
the  comic  writers,  or  if  the  name  is  too  commonplace.    Foi 
instance,  I  am  not  prepared  to  admit  that  Eubulus'  IIdjU(pdog 
took  its  title  from  the  name  of  a  contemporary.     Philotis 
is  a  name  suitable  for  a  courtesan,  but  we  know  of  no 
famous  courtesan  of  the  fourth  century  who  bore  it.     I 
am,  therefore,  not  willing  to  believe  without  further  proof 
that  Antiphanes'  0dd>Tfg  introduced  some  notorious  woman. 
This  applies  to  many  such  titles,  so  that  there  is  great  un- 
certainty about  them.     We  are,  however,  justified  in  con- 
sidering some  of  them  as  names  of  contemporary  characters. 
Foremost    among    these    are    the    names    of     courtesans  : 
Anteia,  Bacehis,  Clepsydra,  [Anti]-lais,  Lampas,  Nannion, 
Neaera,  Neottis,  Opora,  Plangon,  Philyra,  Chrysis;    then 
the  name  Polyeuctus,  borne  by  a  politician;    that  of  the 
philosopher  Plato ;   that  of  the  cook  Nereus,  who  supplied 
two  plays  with  their  titles ;   that  of  the  parasite  Moschion ; 
of  the  flute-player  Batalus;    of  Androcles,  the  banker  or 
usurer ;   and  that  of  Autocleides,  the  paederast.     To  these 
we  may  add  the  names  of  two  foreign  princes,  Philip  of 
Macedon  and  Dionysius,  tyrant  of  Syracuse.     That  makes 
nearly  thirty  comedies  in  which  satirical  attacks  on  an 
individual  must  have  played  a  large  part.     Still  others, 
whose  titles  are  realistically  descriptive  names  or  such  as 

^  More  than  sixty  titles,  some  of  which  are  common  to  several  plays. 
A  careful  examination  of  these  titles  has  recently  been  made  by  Breiten- 
bach  in  a  dissertation,  De  genere  quodam  titulorum  comoediae  atticae  (Bale, 
1908). 


WHAT    NEW    COMEDY    REJECTED        29 

never  occurred  among  the  names  in  common  use  in  the 
theatre,  might,  without  too  great  rashness,  be  added  to 
the  Hst  :  thus  the  0dioxog  by  Antiphanes,  the  Odcovcdrjg 
by  Aristophon,  the  Acogidi^g  by  Alexis,  the  plays  entitled 
'Afiq^iKQaxrig,  'AQXiozgdrr],  Evdvdixog,  KaUcovidrjg,  KXeocpdviqg, 
Aecovidrjg,  Midcov,  Zojoinnog,  KdUaioxQog,  Ae^idr]jiu8r]g, 
Neonxoleiiog;  or  the  diminutives,  which  possibly  betray 
a  satirical  purpose :  "AvxvXlog,  Aenxiviaxog,  Avmoxog, 
Jlag/xEvioxog. 

What  material  docs  the  new  period  afford  us  for  a  similar 
enumeration  ?  At  most  ten  or  eleven  titles,  three  or  four 
of  which  designate  foreigners  :  Philemon's  Jlvgoog,  unless 
indeed  this  word  simply  means  "  the  red-headed  man  " ;  ^ 
Diphilus'  "AjLiaoxQig,  the  name  of  a  niece  of  Darius  who  was 
successively  the  wife  of  Craterus,  of  Dionysius  of  Heraelea, 
and  of  king  Lysimachus ;  Zwcogig,  the  name  of  a  courtesan ; 
possibly  Teleaiag,  which  is  supposed  to  be  the  name  of  a 
parasite.  In  Menander  we  find  Oatg  and  0aviov,  names  ol 
courtesans ;  in  Hipparchus  Oatg ;  in  Anaxippus,  Keqavvog, 
surname  of  a  spungcr ;  in  Strato,  if  it  be  at  all  permissible 
to  quote  him  here,  0oivixidr]g,  the  name  of  a  famous 
gourmet ;  in  Posidippus,  'A  goivorj,  probably  the  name  of  a 
Lagid  or  a  Seleucid  princess ;  in  Epinicus,  Mvrjoinxoh^uog, 
the  name  of  the  writer  of  the  history  of  Antioehus  the 
Great.  It  may  be  that  even  this  list  is  too  long.  It  is 
particularly  open  to  question  whether  Athenaeus  was  not 
mistaken  in  recognising  an  historical  personage  in  Menan- 
der's  Thais.  The  real  Thais  followed  Alexander  to  Asia 
and  was  subsequently  the  mistress  of  Ptolemy  Soter  : 
so  she  was  not  the  favourite  of  all  Athens  at  the  time 
Menander  wrote. ^ 

In  a  word,  it  is  not  improbable  that  between  the  middle 
period  and  the  new  period  the  importance  of  the  satirical 

^  Breitenbach  suggests  that  in  Stobaeus  we  should  read — instead  of 
^iX-n/jLovos  iK  Uvppov — ^iKvixovos  iK  nvp<<p6>pov.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
quotation  which  follows  is  taken  from  the  Tlvpcpipos. 

*  Menander's  Qats  was  apparently  imitated  by  Afranius ;  but  that 
does  not  imply  that  it  contains  any  very  pointed  satire  of  a  particular 
person. 


30  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

element,  which  had  already  become  much  slighter  in 
Aristotle's  ^  time,  continued  to  diminish.  Such  examples 
of  this  style  as  we  have  in  the  works  of  the  principal  poets 
of  the  vea  are  generally  derived  from  their  earliest  comedies. 
It  was  quite  at  the  beginning  of  his  career,  more  than  ten 
years  before  330,  that  Philemon  branded  Aristomedes  the 
thief;  it  must  have  been  before  318  that  he  tormented 
Carabus;  it  may  have  been  after  308  onwards  that  he 
spoke  ill  of  Magas.  The  plays  of  Menander  from  which 
I  have  taken  most  of  the  examples  are,  almost  all  of  them, 
youthful  works ;  the  'Ogytj,  written,  at  the  very  latest,  in 
316,  and  possibly  as  early  as  321 ;  the  " AvdQoyvvoQ,  which 
must  have  been  written  shortly  after  the  Lamian  War; 
the  KexQvcpaXog,  in  which  the  gynaeconomoi  are  spoken 
of  as  officials  recently  created ;  ^  the  Medrj,  earlier  than  the 
disappearance  of  Carabus  in  318;  the  Zajuia,  which  the 
name  Androcles  prevents  us  from  dating  too  late;  the 
MAtetg,  written,  I  believe,  before  the  death  of  Dionysius 
of  Heraclea — that  is  to  say,  before  305 — and  not  neces- 
sarily towards  the  end  of  his  life,  at  a  time  when  the  royal 
treasury  at  Cyinda  was  still  well  filled.  Diphilus' 
'EvayiCovreg,  in  which  Ctesippus  is  abused,  is  likewise 
early  in  the  list  of  that  author's  writings,  and  must  be 
contemporaneous  with  the  'Ogyij.  The  "AjuaoxQig  was 
possibly  contemporaneous  with  the  'AhEtQ.  Thus  the  taste 
for  personalities  was  not  from  the  start  foreign  to  the 
great  comic  writers  of  the  third  period.  Their  prede- 
cessors of  the  earliest  periods  had  left  it  to  them  as  an 
heritage,  but  they  gave  it  up  more  or  less  completely,  and 
it  never  revived.  It  would  appear  that  Menander  in 
particular  abandoned  the  old  traditions.  Athenaeus  says 
of  him :  rjxiord  y  mv  XoidoQog.^  No  doubt  Aristotle's 
theory,  which  distinguished  between  comedy  and  iambic 

»  Arist.,  Poet.,  IX.  3,  p.  1451  B,  11  et  seq.  Eth.  Nic,  IV.  14,  p.  1128  A, 
20  et  seq. 

*  The  creation  of  the  gynaeconomoi  probably  dates  from  the  first  years 
of  the  reign  of  Demetrius  of  Phalerum  (cf.  Gilbert,  Griechische  Staatsalterth., 
P,  p.  178,  n.  2). 

3  Ath.,  p.  549  C. 


WHAT    NEW    COMEDY    REJECTED       31 

poetry,!  a  theory  which  the  poet,  a  pupil  of  Theophrastus, 
must  have  known,  had  something  to  do  with  this.- 

§  2. 
Mythical  Elements,  the  Supernatural 

Personal  invective  is  not  the  only  kind  of  resource' which 
the  via  renounced.  As  early  as  the  fifth  century  comic 
writers  had  occasionally  brought  the  adventures  of  gods 
and  heroes  upon  the  stage ;  in  the  fourth  century  this  kind 
of  travesty  became  the  rage.  The  comedy  of  the  middle 
period,  says  Platonius,  "  made  a  business  of  ridiculing 
the  stories  told  by  the  poets."  ^  We  are  still  in  a  position 
to  judge  of  the  correctness  of  this  assertion  :  Meineke  fills 
more  than  a  page  and  a  half  of  his  Ilistoria  Comicorum  * 
with  extant  titles  of  mythological  plays  written  between 
400  and  330.  In  the  repertory  of  the  vea,  on  the  contrary, 
mythological  subjects  apparently  played  a  small  part. 
The  Amphitryon  is  an  example  of  this  type,  but  a  unique 
example  among  extant  comedies;  and  as  far  as  one  can 
judge  from  the  titles  and  fragments  of  the  lost  plays,  the 
proportion  of  mythological  plays  among  them  was  likewise 
very  insignificant. 

It  is  only  in  Diphilus'  comedies  that  titles  which  indi- 
cate, or  seem  to  indicate,  a  legendary  character,  are  rather 
frequent:  'Avdyvgog,  Aavatdeg,  'Exdrrj,  'HgaxXrjg,  "Hgcog, 
0r]oevg,  Atjjuviai  (Turpilius  :  Lemniae),  neXiddeg  and  Zcm(pd>. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  find  but  three  among  Philemon's 
titles  :  "Hgcoeg,  MvQfxidoveg  and  Ilala/Liijdrjg.  Menander 
supplies  four  :  Adgdavog  (Caecilius  :  Dardanus),  "Hgcog, 
TQocpmviog,  Tevdrioa-Afjg.  Among  the  less  known  writers  of 
the  new  period  we  find  less  than  ten  such  titles  :  KevtavQog 
(Lyneeus,  Theognetus),  Ziovcpog  and  Wevdaiag  (Apollodorus 
of  Gela),  'Afxcpidqeoig  (Agipllodorus  of  Carystus,  Philippides), 
' EqfJLacpQodiTog  and  MvQ/ur]^  ^  (Posidippus),  Oecov  dyoQd  and 

1  Arist.,  Poet.,  V.  3,  p.  1449  B,  8;   IX.  3,  p.  1451,  14. 

*  Diog.  Laert.,  V.  2.  ^  Uepl  Sia<popus  KwfxifUwv,  §  11  (Kaibel,  p.  5). 

*  pp.  283-284. 

*  Myrmex  was  the  name  of  an  Attic  hero;    cf.  Roscher's  Lexikon. 


32  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

Movoai  (Eupliron),  IJdv  (Timostratus).  I  may  add,  at 
random,  eight  titles  supplied  by  comic  writers  aetatis 
incertae  and  one  of  a  palliata :  ZauoOgaxeg  (Athenion), 
Aiovvoog  and  'EUvrj  ( Alexandras),  '^^eAwog  (Demonicus), 
MavexrcoQ  and  possibly  'Eg/Liiovr]  (Menecrates),  KexQcojieg 
(Menippus),  'Edeidvia  (Nicomachus),  Aethrio'^  (Caecilius). 
We  thus  get  a  list  of  about  thirty  titles,  more  than  half  of 
which  had  already  been  employed.     It  is  not  much. 

Moreover,  it  must  be  admitted  that  not  all  the  comedies 
which  bore  these  titles  were  mythological  plays.  The  plot 
of  one  of  Menander's  comedies,  now  known  to  be  the  "Hqojq, 
has  survived;  there  was  nothing  legendary  about  this 
comedy,  which  merely  took  its  title  from  the  character  who 
recited  the  prologue — "Hqojq  Oeoq.  Possibly  this  was  also 
the  case  with  other  works  whose  title  was  the  name  of 
a  god.  Sometimes  the  god's  name  may  have  implied  that 
the  play  contained  references  to  his  worship,  or  to  some 
occurrences,  some  episodes  of  daily  life,  over  which  that 
god  presided.  I  am  quite  ready  to  believe  that  in  the  come- 
dies that  went  by  the  name  of  'Ajuq^idgecoQ  the  scene  was 
placed  at  Oropus,  near  the  Amphiaraeum,  and  that  they 
contained  ridicule  of  the  practices  of  that  famous  sanctuary. 
Similarly,  under  the  title  Tgofpcovtog  comedy-writers  may 
have  criticised  the  superstition  which  supported  the  oracle 
at  Lebadeia.  Hecate  was  the  patroness  of  sorcerers.  Pan 
overcame  men  with  "  panic  "  terror ;  Eileithyia  watched 
over  women's  confinements;  the  Muses  inspired  artists; 
the  fact  that  these  names  served  as  titles  does  not  supply 
exact  information  as  to  the  nature  of  the  subject  matter. 
Other  names,  we  may  assume,  had  a  sort  of  metaphorical 
value  :  a  clever  man  was  called  Palamedes ;  a  funny  rogue, 
Cercops;  Sisyphus  was  famous  for  his  rascality;  the 
Centaurs  for  their  wantonness;  Menander's  pseudo- 
Heracles  was  perhaps  not  a  person  who  tried  to  pass  him- 
self off  for  Heracles,  but  an  absurd  braggart.  In  a  word, 
several  titles  which  at  first  sight  appear  to  have  something 
to  do  with  mythology  are  susceptible  of  a  different  inter- 

^  If  the  king  of  the  gods,  aetherius  Juppiter,  aWpws  Zevs,  is  meant. 


WHAT    NEW    COMEDY    REJECTED        33 

pretation.  Who  was  the  hermaphrodite  who  lent  his 
name  to  a  play  by  Posidippus?  Was  he  the  legendary 
son  of  Aphrodite  and  Hermes,  or  rather  some  person  who 
was  reputed  to  have  the  attributes  of  both  sexes?  Who 
were  the  Lemnian  women  after  whom  one  of  Diphilus' 
comedies  was  named  ?  Were  they  the  renowned  followers 
of  Hypsipyle,  who  murdered  their  husbands  and  loved 
the  Argonauts,  or  were  they  women  of  Lemnos  without 
fame  or  history  ?  Who  was  the  Dardanus  of  Menander's 
play  ?  Was  he  Dardanus,  son  of  Zeus,  or  was  he  a 
barbarian  from  the  region  of  Illyria,  one  of  those  whom 
the  Greeks  generally  called  Aagdavelg  or  AaQddvioi,  the 
Romans  Dardani,  and  who  were  apparently  made  fun  of 
in  antiquity  ?  Or  was  he  a  slave  known  by  the  name  of 
his  race,  like  so  many  Daoses  and  Getas  and  Syruses  ? 
According  to  Meineke,  the  Aethrio  by  Caecilius  was  simply 
an  'AiaxQicov  whose  name  was  changed.  As  to  the  Myrmex 
by  Posidippus — if  the  word  does  not  mean  "an  ant" — 
there  is  nothing  to  show  he  was  not  a  mere  mortal. 

Thus,  more  than  one  of  the  comedies  I  have  just  enumer- 
ated ought  probably  to  be  left  out  of  consideration. 
Similarly,  other  plays,  which  do  not  bear  especially  sug- 
gestive titles,  have  sometimes  been  regarded  as  comedies 
dealing  with  a  legendary  subject.  But  no  convincing 
argument  has  been  forthcoming  for  any  of  them.  For 
example,  it  is  still  very  doubtful  whether  Philemon's 
comedy  called  Nv^  dealt  with  the  story  of  Amphitryon  ;  Nv^ 
is  not  Ni)^  fiaxgd.  In  connection  with  the  title  'Avdgoyvvog 
7]  Kg'^g,  the  name  of  a  comedy  by  Menander,  a  Cretan 
legend  told  by  Antoninus  Liberalis  has  been  cited. ^  I 
should  be  more  inclined  to  think  of  a  braggart,  as  several 
fragments  make  it  seem  probable  that  a  person  of  this 
kind  appeared  in  the  play,  and  the  appellation  drdgoyvvog, 
"  a  man  with  a  woman's  heart,"  which  was  commonly  used 
as  an  insult,  may  very  well  have  been  appropriate  to  him. 
Moreover,  it  would  not  be  at  all  surprising  if  the  poet 
represented  this  braggart  as  a  Cretan,  because  at  the  time 

1  Metam.,  17;   cf.  Ov.,  Metam.,  XII.  172  et  seq. 
D 


d4  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

of  the  New  Comedy  Crete  supplied  a  great  many  mercen- 
aries. As  regards  the  Aevy.adin,  I  have  stated  elsewhere 
why  I  do  not  believe  that  it  brought  the  famous  Phaon 
on  the  stage. ^  The  action  of  the  Aevxadia,  which  takes 
place  in  Leucadia,  could  only  have  presented  entirely 
fictitious  characters  supposed  to  be  contemporaries  of 
the  poet. 

Apart  from  plays  with  legendary  subjects,  the  fantastic 
and  the  supernatural  frequently  appeared  in  the  repertory 
of  the  old  comedy.  Here  the  actors  were  not  only  men ; 
they  were  also  gods,  symbolical  beings  or  personified  abstrac- 
tions— the  Just  and  the  Unjust,  Clouds,  Islands,  Cities, 
and  so  forth.  Or  they  were  animals  that  spoke  and  acted 
like  human  beings — birds,  frogs,  fish,  and  so  forth.  The 
scene  of  action  was  not  confined  to  terrestrial  surroundings. 
Trygaeus  ascended  to  Olympus,  Xanthias  and  Dionysus 
went  down  to  Hades,  Peisthetaerus  and  Euelpides  con- 
structed the  fanciful  Cloud-Cuckooville  'twixt  heaven  and 
earth.  How  much  of  this  compound  of  the  real  and  the 
unreal,  of  the  possible  and  the  impossible,  remained  in  the 
fieoT]  ?  It  is  not  easy  to  be  sure ;  but  we  may  assert  that 
the  vsa  retained  hardly  any  of  it.  y  In  Plautus  and  Terence, 
gods  and  supernatural  beings  appear  only  in  the  prologue ; 
after  explaining  the  plot  of  the  play  they  do  not  reappear ; 
and  this  was  probably  also  the  case  in  almost  all  the  plays 
of  the  new  period.  As  for  the  stage  setting,  it  never 
appears  to  have  been  placed  elsewhere  than  in  this  every- 
day world  of  ours.  In  a  general  way,  the  New  Comedy  must 
have  had  a  regard  for  physical  probability.  Here  we  meet 
with  no  miracles,  with  no  metamorphoses ;  the  miraculous 
return  to  youth  which  the  titles  'Avaveovjuevr]  and  'Avavsovoa 
would  seem  to  proclaim,  was  possibly  nothing  more  than 
a  decoy,  or  a  false  promise  of  a  sorceress,  or  else  it  took 
place  only  in  the  imagination  of  some  crazy  old  woman. 
The  Menaechmi  is  the  only  Latin  play  besides  the  Amphi- 
tryon in  which,  to  a  certain  extent,  we  are  called  upon  to 
admit   the    inadmissible.     For,  however   much    one   may 

1  Rev.  6t.  Or.,  XVII.  (1904),  pp.  310  et  seq. 


WHAT    NEW    COMEDY    REJECTED       35 

imagine  the  twins  as  resembling  one  another,  one  ean  hardly 
believe  that  both  of  them — the  one  a  bourgeois  living  in 
his  good  town,  the  other  just  back  from  a  long  voyage 
at  sea — should  wear  identical  clothes,  shoes  and  hats, 
have  their  hair  dressed  in  an  identical  manner,  and  be 
so  much  alike  that  the  people  among  whom  they  move 
most  intimately  insist  on  taking  one  for  the  otlier^  I 
repeat  that  this  ease  occurs  but  once  in  Plautus  and 
Terence;  all  the  other  material  that  remains  at  our 
disposal  for  the  reconstruction  of  the  vsa  does  not  admit 
of  our  citing  a  single  other  instance  of  this  sort. 


CHAPTER    II 

THE     SOURCES    OF     OUR    KNOWLEDGE 
OF    THE    SUBJECT    MATTER    OF    NEW    COMEDY- 
EXAMINATION    OF    THE    CHIEF    SOURCES 

I  BEGAN  my  definition  of  the  comedies  of  the  new 
period  by  pointing  out  what  they  did  not  contain. 
I  shall  now  take  up  the  most  important  part  of  my 
task  :  the  description  of  what  they  did  contain.  Like  all 
dramatic  works,  they  brought  upon  the  stage  persons 
who  are  involved  in  adventures.  Among  these  persons, 
it  is  natural  to  seek  a  priori  representatives  of  certain 
social  classes,  various  types  of  passion  and  more  or  less 
defined  characters.  The  chief  divisions  of  the  inquiry 
are  imposed  by  the  very  nature  of  the  subject. 

As  for  the  available  material,  the  fragments  of  the 
original  plays  supply  an  appreciable  amount  of  it.  But 
we  shall  derive  even  more  from  the  Latin  plays.  The 
time  has  therefore  now  come  to  explain  both  why  and 
to  what  extent  the  constituent  elements  of  Plautus'  and 
Terence's  comedies  can  be  traced  to  their  prototypes. 

These  comedies,  at  least  those  of  Plautus,  contain  a 
certain  number  of  details  which  have  a  clearly  Roman 
colouring.  Let  us  begin  by  examining  the  details  of  this 
character,  which  are  of  a  kind  to  arouse  our  distrust,  and 
let  us,  as  far  as  may  be,  determine  their  import. 

Many  of  them  concern  only  the  form  in  which  the 
adventures  are  presented,  and  have  nothing  to  do  with 
their  nature,  or  with  the  essential  characteristics  of  the 
actors.  For  instance,  expressions  borrowed  from  official 
language,  like  the  following,  among  many  others — 

Si  de  damnosis  aut  si  de  amatoribus 
dictator  fiat  nunc  Athenis  Attic  is. 

{Pseud.,  415-416.) 

Ibo  intro,  ubi  de  capita  meo  sunt  comitia. 

{Aul,  700.) 
36 


SOURCES    OF    OUR    KNOWLEDGE         37 

Si  ceniuriaii  bene  sunt  maniplares  mei. 

{Miles,  815.) 

Quin  ruri  es  in  praefeciura  tua  ? 

{Cos.,  99.) 

Ubi  tu  es,  qui  me  convadatu's  Veneris  vadimoniis? 
Sisto  ego  tibi  me  et  mihi  contra  itidem  <tu  te>-  ut 
sistas  suadeo. 

{Cure,  162-163.) 

Me  sibi  habeto,  ego  me  mancupio  dabo. 

{Miles,  23.) 

Omnes  ordine  sub  signis  ducam  legiones  meas 
avi  sinistra,  auspicio  liquido. 

{Pseud.,  761-762.) 

or  geographical  or  topographical  details  applying  specially 
to  Italy,  like  the  description  of  the  Forum,  like  the  men- 
tion of  the  Porta  Trigemina,  the  Capitol,  the  Velabrum, 
and  the  vicus  Tuscus,  or  that  of  the  slopes  of  Mount 
Massicus,  or  of  Campanian  carpets  and  Campanian  slaves. 
Further  instances  are  appeals  to  Latin  gods,  expressions 
borrowed  from  Latin  mythology  and  religious  rites,  allu- 
sions to  events  in  Roman  history  (wars  against  Carthage, 
victories  gained  over  enemies,  the  Lex  Praetoria  de  cir- 
cumscriptione  adulescentium,  etc.) ;  reference  to  certain 
Romans  (the  poet  Naevius,  the  comedian  Pellio,  the  ge7is 
Papiria,  etc.);  reference  to  foreign  contemporaries  of 
Plautus  with  whom  Rome  had  relations  (Attalus  I  of 
Pergamon,  Antioehus  the  Great,  etc.);  or  pleasantries 
like  the  following — • 

.  .  .  plusculum  annum 
fui  praeferratus  apud  molas  tribunus  vapularis. 

{Persa,  21-22.) 

Quid  si  aliquo  ad  ludos  me  pro  manduco  locem  ? 

{Rud.,  535.) 

Ex  unoquoque  eorum  exciam  crepitum  polentarium . 

{Cure,  295.) 


88  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

Quid,  Sarsinatis  ccqua  est,  si  Umbram  non  habes  ? 

{Most,  770.) 

...  At  nunc  Siculus  non  est ;  Boius  est,  Boiam  terit. 

{Capt.,  888.) 

The  addition  of  such  details  as  these  certainly  makes  it 
harder  to  appraise  the  Greek  originals  in  matters  of  form ; 
but  it  has  not  changed  their  substance. 

Other  details  are  more  important,  whether  regarded 
from  the  point  of  view  of  psychology  or  from  that  of  the 
plot.  When  the  advocati  of  the  Poenulus  rebel  against 
Agorastoeles'  too  sharp  admonitions,  they  declare  that 
they  do  not  mean  to  be  abused,  though  they  are  poor 
and  'plebeians.^  In  the  Menaechmi,  the  hero  is  kept  in 
the  forum  for  an  interminable  time  by  the  lawsuit  of  a 
worthless  client,^  who  is  brought  before  the  aediles.^  In 
the  opening  scene  of  the  Aiilularia,  Euclio  makes  up  his 
mind  to  go  out  of  his  house  in  order  to  receive  his  share 
of  a  distribution  of  money  which  the  magister  curiae  *  is 
about  to  make  to  the  curiales.  Later  on,  Pythodicus 
relates  that  the  old  miser  came  in  tears  to  the  praetor 
because  a  kite  had  stolen  a  piece  of  meat,  and  that  he 
wished  to  summon  the  bird  to  court  [vadarier  ^).  Still 
further  on,  Euclio  threatens  a  qgok  that  he  will  denounce 
him  to  the  triumvirs  because  he  has  a  knife  in  his  hand.^ 
In  the  Asinaria,  Diabolus  addresses  the  same  threat  to 
Cleareta  and  to  Philaenium  under  the  pretext  that  they 
are  corrupting  the  young  men.'  In  the  Truculentus, 
Diniarchus  rails  at  Phronesium,  whom  he  regards  as  a 
poisoner  {venefica),  and  plans  a  manus  injectio.^  Lycus, 
the  pander  in  the  Poenulus,  who  has  unwittingly  har- 
boured a  slave  of  Agorastoeles,  the  bearer  of  a  sum  of 
money,  but  has  denied  having  him  in  his  house,  fears 
that  he  may    be  brought  to  court  optorto   collo ;  ^   being 

1  Poen.,  515. 

2  Men.,  574,  576,  579,  588;   cf.  581,  585  (patronus). 

3  Ibid.,  587,  590.  *  AuL,  107,  179.  ^  76^cf.,  317-318. 
6  Ibid.,  416.                                       '  As.,  131. 

*  True.,  762.  »  Poen.,  727,  790. 


SOURCES    OF    OUR    KNOWLEDGE        39 

unable  to  repay  twice  the  amount  lie  has  unwittingly 
embezzled,^  he  sees  himself  handed  over  to  his  enemy 
{addictus).^  In  his  frif^ht  he  begs  the  young  man  to 
compromise  without  having  recourse  to  the  praetor  ^  and 
to  be  satisfied  with  the  simplum.^  Dordalus,  another 
pander  in  the  Persa,  is  in  a  most  distressing  situation 
because  he  had  bought  a  pretended  captive  girl  who  has 
not  been  mancupala ;  ^  when  her  father,  who  is  a  citizen, 
appears  and  claims  his  daughter  {adserit  manii),^  Dordalus 
has  no  one  to  fall  back  upon  and  is  obliged  to  take  the 
full  responsibility  for  having  kept  a  free  girl  in  confine- 
ment. The  same  legal  procedure  to  which  Saturio,  in 
the  Persa,  resorts — adserere  liberali  causa — is  proposed 
by  Agorastocles  in  the  Poenulus,  and  then  by  Hanno,' 
and  may  be  fraught  with  supplicia  multa  ^  for  Lycus. 
Dordalus,  in  the  Persa,  calls  upon  the  praetor  ^  to  free 
Lemniselenis.  In  the  Aulularia,  the  Curculio,  the 
Poenulus  and  the  Trinummus,  a  father  or  a  brother, 
when  giving  away  a  daughter  or  a  sister  in  marriage, 
exchanges  with  the  future  husband  the  certa  verba  of  a 
Roman  betrothal  :  Spondesne  ? — Spondeo.^^ 

The  plot  of  the  Aulularia  is  explained  by  the  Lai 
familiaris  of  the  house  of  Euclio;  it  is  owing  to  that 
god,  Roman  in  name  and  character,  that  Euclio  has 
found  the  treasure;  it  is  at  his  behest  that,  at  the  end 
of  the  play,  Megadorus  decides  to  ask  for  the  hand  of 
Phaedrium.  In  the  Mercator,  Charinus  is  preparing  to 
go  into  voluntary  exile,  and  bids  farewell  to  the  penates 
of  his  fathers,  to  the  Lar  pater  of  his  family,  and  com- 
mends his  parents  to  them.^^  Euclio  deposits  his  treasure 
in  the  sanctuary  of  Fides;  subsequently  he  takes  it  from 
there  to  a  grove  sacred  to  Silvanus.^^     A  boasting  soldier, 

1  Poen.,   183-184,  563-564,  1351.   *  Ibid.,   185-186,  564,  1341,  1361. 
»  Ibid.,   1361.  *  Ibid.,   1362. 

*  Persa,  525,  532,  589.       «  /^j^^.^  iq^,  716-717. 
'  Poe7i.,  905-906,  965,  1102,  1348,  1392. 

•  Ibid.,   1352.  »  Per.ta,  487. 

1"  AuL,  256;    Cure,  674;    Poen.,  1157;    Trin.,  502,  573,  1161-1163. 
"  Merc,  834-835.  "  AuL,  682  ot  soq.,  674  et  seq. 


40  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

on  arriving  at  the  house  of  his  mistress,  pretends  to  be 
the  god  Mars  visiting  Neriene.^     And  so  forth. 

It  would  be  easy  to  add  further  instances,  but  it  would 
be  a  mistake  on  that  account  to  credit  the  Latin  imitator 
with  too  great  a  degree  of  originality.  One  can  readily 
believe  that,  if  it  was  possible,  without  changing  the  main 
lines  of  the  original,  here  and  there  to  add  a  Roman 
detail  or  to  substitute  a  national  equivalent  for  a  foreign 
detail,  Plautus  took  pleasure  in  doing  so.  And  conversely, 
wherever  we  find  an  episode  or  a  characteristic  in  con- 
nection with  which,  after  eliminating  the  Roman  details, 
we  can  with  ease  mentally  supply  a  Greek  equivalent, 
there  is  nothing  to  prevent  our  attributing  the  episode  or 
characteristic  in  question  to  the  original  model. 

Let  us  return  to  some  of  the  examples  quoted  above. 
Upon  what  does  the  plot  of  the  Persa  depend  in  its  essen- 
tial features  ?  It  is  only  necessary  that  the  pander  should 
be  worried  on  account  of  the  purchase  he  has  made  in 
good  faith,  and  that  he  should  be  exposed  to  serious  disaster 
in  consequence.  Now,  the  former  condition  would  be 
realised,  in  the  light  of  Greek  law,  from  the  very  fact 
that  the  imaginary  Persian  had  sold  his  captive  dvev 
^e^aichoEcog ;  ^  the  latter  condition  would  be  realised  at 
the  same  time,  as  whoever  lost  a  yqacpr}  avbganodiofiov 
was  liable  to  the  death  penalty.^  Greek  law  can  also 
afford  sufficient  ground  for  Lycus'  plight.  As  he  has 
deprived  freeborn  girls  of  their  liberty  and  is  unable  to 
prove  that  he  has  purchased  them  in  good  faith,  he  may 
run  the  risk  of  having  them  taken  away  without  receiving 
any  compensation  by  an  acpatqeoK;  elg  iXevdegiav,  which 
anybody  can  institute  against  him.*  In  any  event  he 
runs  the  much  more  serious  risk  of  being  dealt  with  as 
an  dydQajiodioTT^g.     For  having  harboured  his  neighbour's 

1  True,  515. 

*  Cf.  Meier-Schomann,  Der  attische  Prozess  (revised  by  Lipsiiis,  1883- 
1887),  p.  719. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  458;   Beauchet,  Histoire  du  droit  prive  de  la  republique  atheni- 
enne,Yo\.  II.  pp.  412,  524-525. 

*  Der  att.  Prozess,  p.  663. 


SOURCES    OF    OUR    KNOWLEDGE        41 

slave,  the  bearer  of  a  sum  of  money,  and  for  having 
denied  that  he  had  taken  him  into  his  house,  he  is 
Hable  to  a  diKr)  xhnfjg.^  The  danger  of  being  fined  twice 
as  much,  which  seems  to  be  a  constant  source  of  worry 
to  experts  in  Roman  law,^  is  therefore  quite  natural.^  It 
is  of  Httle  consequence  that  in  a  Greek  country  he  does 
not  incur  any  annoyance  comparable  to  the  addictio;  if 
he  is  not  in  a  position  to  pay  the  fine  imposed,  he  must 
compromise  with  his  enemy  and  give  up  Adelphasium; 
nor,  doubtless,  would  Milphio  and  Agorastocles  like  any- 
thing better.  In  the  original  of  the  Aulularia,  the  miser 
may  have  conceived  the  idea  of  having  recourse  to  "  the 
Eleven"  to  arrest  his  thief;  this  would  have  been  a 
humorous  application  of  the  legal  procedure  known  as 
icpijyrjOLg.  The  offences  imputed  to  Congrio,  Cleareta  and 
Phronesium  were  liable  to  legal  prosecution  at  Athens  just 
as  they  were  at  Rome,  at  Athens  by  means  of  dtxrj  dixiag, 
yQacpi]  cpaQfidxvjv,  conducted  before  the  astynomoi,  whose 
business  it  was  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  courtesans.*  Of 
course,  grymblers  or  dismissed  lovers  could  also  indulge  in 
their  anger  without  having  recourse  to  the  courts.  The 
adventure  of  Menaechmus,  in  its  essential  features,  might 
have  taken  place  in  a  Greek  city — and  in  a  performance 
of  the  vea.  In  place  of  clients,  in  the  Roman  sense  of  the 
word,  well-to-do  citizens  in  Greece  had  dependents  and 
were  their  official  patrons.  I  believe  that  this  is  what 
Xenophon  alludes  to  in  the  Oeconomicus  (II,  6),  when  he 
mentions  nQoorarelai  as  among  the  duties  of  the  rich. 
One  of  Menaechmus'  dependents  has  committed  some 
crime  in  the  agora  and  is  obliged  to  appear  before  the 
agoranomoi.  Menaechmus,  in  self-defence,  acts  as  his 
ovvYjyoQOQ.  Distributions  of  money  such  as  that  in  which 
Euclio   indulges  were,   apparently,   unknown   in   Plautus' 

^  Cf.  Glotz,  Dictionnaire  des  AntiquiU's,  a.  v.  Klop6,  pp.  827-828. 

*  Cf.  Pornard,  Droit  romain  et  droit  grec  dans  le  theatre  de  Plaute,  pp.  177 
et  seq. 

»  Cf.  Der  att.  Prozess,  p.  453;   Glotz,  loc.  cit.,  p.  829,  col.  1. 

*  The   word.s  "  apud  magistratus  fazo  erit  nomen  tuom  "  {True,  761), 
remind  one  of  the  Athenian  procedure  ei'Seifij. 


42  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

time.  The  magistrate  who  has  to  preside  over  them 
bears  a  strange  name,  which  possibly  the  Romans  did  not 
know  and  by  which,  in  any  event,  they  only  designated 
some  obscure  subordinate  officials;  and  it  is  most  likely 
that  this  name — magister  curiae — originated  in  an  attempt 
to  translate  the  Greek  word  dtjjuaQXog,  curiales  being  the 
Latin  for  drjjuorai,  and  that  in  the  original  work  there  was 
a  distribution  of  "  spectacle  money "  {Oecoqixov).  The 
irascibility  of  the  advocati  in  the  Poenulus — their  Greek 
name  is  ovv^yogoi — can  be  accounted  for,  without  attri- 
buting it  to  a  social  distinction  between  them  and 
Agorastocles,  simply  on  the  ground  of  inequality  of  for- 
tune. The  repeated  references  in  Latin  comedy  to  the 
ordinary  methods  of  enfranchisement  are  of  no  importance 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  plot.  In  the  original  of 
the  Persa,  the  pander,  instead  of  taking  his  slave  to  the 
"  praetor,"  may  have  taken  her  to  court  in  order  to  pro- 
claim that  thenceforth  she  was  to  be  free.^  One  can 
imagine  the  formula  of  the  sponsalia  left  out  of  the 
scenes  where  it  occurs,  without  calling  for  any  change  in 
the  course  of  events.  Probably  it  often  took  the  place 
of  the  quasi-ritual  words  that  were  exchanged,  at  the  time 
of  the  iyyvrjoig,  between  the  future  husband  and  the 
xvQLog  of  the  bride.  In  the  original  plays  the  Oeol 
naxQwoL  or  ecpeoxtoL  may  have  been  mentioned  instead  of 
the  Lar  and  the  Penates.  The  part  allotted  to  the  Lar 
jamiliaris,  at  the  opening  of  the  Aulularia,  would  be  just 
as  suitable  for  a  god,  or  for  some  hero,  for  whom  the 
miser's  family  entertained  a  traditional  devotion;  it 
would  suit  Hermes,  the  god  of  lucky  finds,  if  a  statue  of 
Hermes  embellished  the  nqoQvqov  of  Euclio,  as  it  did  so 
many  ngoOvga  of  Athenian  houses.  Fides  was,  I  believe, 
substituted  for  Pistis;  Silvanus  for  Pan;  Neriene  may 
have  been  substituted  for  Aphrodite. 

In  very  many  passages  it  is  an  easy  matter  to  find 
equivalents  such  as  I  have  just  pointed  out,  and  where 
occasion  offers  I  shall  call  attention  to  them.     Upon  the 

^  Beauchet,  Droit  prive  de  la  rep.  ath.,  Vol.  II.  p.  473. 


SOURCES    OF    OUR    KNOWLEDGE        43 

whole,  I  do  not  believe  that  a  single  essential  element  of  a 
plot,  a  single  important  feature  of  a  charaeter  in  the  plays  of 
Plautus,  is  fundamentally,  necessarily,  undeniably  Roman. 

Without  wishing  to  dress  up  their  actors  and  plots  in 
the  fashion  of  their  own  country,  the  Latin  transcribers 
may  well  have  omitted  details  which  might  have  been 
without  interest  for  their  audience  or  might  even  have 
offended  them. 

Occasionally  we  can  place  our  finger  directly  on  such 
an  omission.  In  Menander's  'Eavxdv  rijucoQovfxevog  the 
passage  has  been  discovered  which  corresponds  to  the 
following  words  in  Terence — 

.  .  .  agrum  his  rcgionibus 

meliorem  neque  preti  maioris  nemo  habct. 

[HeauL,  63-64.) 
for — 

.  .  .  xal  rcov  'A}.fjaL  ^cdqiojv 

xsKtrj/nevos,  xdXXiorov  el,  vr)  rov  Ala, 

Ev  rolg  XQioi  <Cv^  ye  xai,  to  juaxaQKorarov, 

aOXLKXOV. 

How  colourless  the  Latin  translation  is  compared  with 
these  lines  !  It  suppresses  all  indication  of  locality, 
'AXfjoL;  it  makes  no  mention  of  the  "three  domains," 
which  were  probably  famous  in  that  region;  it  suppresses 
a  legal  custom,  dorixrov.  In  the  commentary  to  the 
first  scene  of  the  Phormio,  Donatus  declares  that  in 
Apollodorus  it  was  the  barber  himself  who  told  the  two 
cousins  about  the  despair  of  the  young  orphan  girl;  he 
had  witnessed  it  when  he  had  gone  to  cut  her  hair  as  a 
sign  of  mourning ;  and  Donatus  adds  this  remark  :  quod 
scilicet  mutasse  Terentium,  ne  externis  moribus  spectatorcm 
Romanum  ojfenderet.^  Likewise  in  the  opening  scene  of 
the  Phormio,  when  Davus  enumerates  all  the  family  events 
in  honour  of  which  slaves  give  presents  to  their  master, 
he  mentions  the  initiation  of  children. ^     This  is  conveyed 

^  Commentary  to  lino  91.  *  Phorm.,  49. 


44  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

by  one  word,  without  any  more  precise  statement — uhi 
initiabimt.  But  in  Apollodorus  the  initiation  into  the 
mysteries  of  Samothrace  is  expressly  mentioned.  Here 
again  Terence  has  eHminated  a  distinctly  Hellenic  detail. 
In  these  three  cases  the  omissions  are  of  little  consequence. 
There  are  instances  of  more  serious  ones.  At  the  end  of 
the  Epidicus,  it  becomes  clear  that  the  pretty  captive 
Telestis  is  the  step-sister  of  Stratippocles,  the  young  man 
who  loves  her.  Upset  by  this  discovery,  he  exclaims  : 
"  You  have  ruined  me  by  discovering  me,  my  sister  !  " 
And  his  slave  consoles  him  :  "  You  are  a  fool ;  keep  quiet. 
You  have  in  your  house  a  mistress  awaiting  you,  the 
lyre-player  whom  I  procured  for  you."  But  this  con- 
solation is  likely  to  be  unavailing.  In  the  first  place, 
because  Stratippocles  no  longer  loves  the  lyre-player,  and 
then,  because  the  father  of  the  family,  who  had  been 
induced  to  purchase  her  by  the  representation  that  she 
was  his  lost  child,  would  lose  no  time  in  re-selling  the 
maiden,  once  he  was  undeceived.  It  is  very  probable 
that  the  outcome  was  different  in  the  Greek  comedy  and 
that,  as  the  Athenian  law  permitted  marriages  between 
brothers  and  step-sisters,  Stratippocles  married  Telestis. 
Plautus  was  obliged  to  reject  a  solution  which  was 
inadmissible  in  the  eyes  of  Romans. 

I  believe  that  what  we  have  found  to  be  the  case  in 
a  few  instances  occurred  frequently. 

Still,  many  things  in  Plautus  and  in  Terence  have  re- 
tained a  decidedly  Greek  character.  The  scene  of  action 
is  always  in  some  Greek  country.  The  places  from  which 
the  actors  come  and  whither  they  go  are  towns  in  the 
Greek  or  Greco-oriental  world.  When  Charinus,  in  the 
Mercator,  seeks  for  a  spot  to  which  he  may  go  as  an  exile, 
on  his  imaginary  journey,  he  mentions  only  Hellenic  places. ^ 
Nearly  all  the  persons  who  move  in  these  Greek  surround- 
ings have  Greek  names ;  sometimes  these  names  are  muti- 
lated, but  they  are  always  meant  to  sound  Greek.     These 

1  Merc,  645  et  seq.,  932  et  seq. 


SOURCES    OF    OUR    KNOWLEDGE        45 

persons  live  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  or  during  the  tliird 
century — that  is  to  say,  at  the  time  of  Menander,  Apollo- 
dorus  and  Posidippus,  and  they  do  not  hesitate  to  allude 
to  men  and  to  occurrences  of  that  period  :  to  Demetrius 
and  Clinias,  or  unknown  persons,  or  the  dancers  Hegias 
and  Diodorus,  the  musician  Stratonicus,  the  painter 
Apelles,  and  even  the  comedy-writers  Philemon  and 
Diphilus,  King  Agathocles,  the  siege  of  Sicyon,  the  down- 
fall of  Cleomenes,  and  so  forth.  They  are  thoroughly 
conversant  with  Greek  mythology  and  with  the  great 
men  of  Greece,  and  talk  glibly  about  Phrixus  and 
Bellerophon,  Parthaon  and  Calchas,  Linus,  Phoenix, 
Geryon,  Autolycus,  Cycnus,  Tithonus,  Ganymede  (whom 
they  call  Catamitus),  Alcmaeon  (whom  they  call  Alcumcus), 
Nestor  and  Ajax,  Lycurgus  and  Orestes,  Solon  and 
Thales  of  Miletus.  They  know  the  story  of  Hecuba 
and  that  of  the  sons  of  Heracles.  They  are  familiar 
with  the  favourite  sports  of  Greece — boxing  and  the 
five  parts  of  the  pentathlon.  They  boast  of  possessing 
Attic  grace,  and  make  fun  of  Sicilian  wit.  The  fes- 
tivals they  celebrate  are  Greek  festivals  :  the  Aphrodisia, 
the  Dionysia,  the  Eleutheria;  they  have  attended  the 
Olympic  and  Nemean  Games  and  seen  the  Panathenaic 
procession,  which  conveys  the  beautiful  cloak  of  Athena 
to  the  Acropolis.  They  drink  Greek  wines,  and,  like  the 
Athenian  contemporaries  of  Hyperides  and  Lynceus  of 
Samos,  they  are  partial  to  fish.  They  take  part  in  ban- 
quets and  ovju^ohov.  They  reckon  in  drachmae  and  oboli. 
They  use  Spartan  keys  and  dwell  in  houses  that  are  orna- 
mented with  paintings  after  the  fashion  of  Hellenistic 
times.  At  their  doors  they  address  Apollo  Agyieus. 
They  are  ephebi,  quartered  at  the  Piraeus.  They  have 
on  the  tip  of  their  tongue  such  official  titles  as  agora- 
nomoi,  generals,  demarchs,  comarchs,  tyrants,  satraps. 
They  recognise  the  privilege  of  sanctuary  for  guilty  or 
ill-treated  slaves.  They  purify  their  children  five  days 
after  they  are  born.  Their  family  relations  vary  in 
many  particulars  from  those  which  obtained  among  the 


46  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

fellow-countrymen  of  Cato.  As  for  the  life  of  pleasure 
which  many  of  them  lead,  Plautus  was  the  very  first  to 
designate  it  by  the  words  congraecare,  pergraecari.  In- 
deed, the  scandals  and  the  gallant  exploits  which  are 
frequent  occurrences  in  that  life  of  pleasure,  the  cour- 
tesans, procurers,  parasites,  culinary  artists,  who  ordinarily 
play  a  part  in  it,  must  have  been  almost  unknown  at  Rome 
during  the  first  decades  of  the  second  century  before 
Christ.  The  same  applies  to  the  bragging  soldier  and  to 
the  flattering  slave  whom  some  ancient  Latin  commen-> 
tators  criticise  in  Terence  as  a  fantastic  creation.  Even 
a  most  cursory  reading  of  the  palliatae  makes  clear  the 
existence  of  manifestly  exotic  features  at  every  turn. 
This  is  so  often  the  case  that  the  poets  themselves  occa- 
sionally seek  to  explain  it  and  to  apologise  for  it.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  Phormio,  Terence  lets  Geta  explain  a 
point  of  Attic  law  :  "  There  exists  a  law  which  permits 
any  orphan  girl  to  marry  her  nearest  relative,  and  which 
also  insists  that  the  nearest  relative  should  marry  her."  ^ 
"  Do  not  be  surprised,"  says  Stichus  in  the  play  that 
bears  his  name,  "  if  poor  slaves  amuse  themselves  with 
drink,  make  love,  and  invite  one  another  to  supper;  at 
Athens  we  are  permitted  to  do  so  !  "  ^ 

Granted  the  facts  which  I  have  established  in  the  pre- 
ceding paragraphs — Plautus'  indifference  to  local  colour, 
Terence's  timidity  regarding  certain  details  that  are  too 
manifestly  foreign — there  can  hardly  be  any  doubt  as  to 
the  source  of  those  elements  which  bear  the  Hellenic  stamp. 
With  very  rare  exceptions  they  must  come  directly  from 
the  models  which  the  Latins  copied.  They  belong,  there- 
fore, to  our  inquiry  just  as  much  as  if  we  had  found  them 
in  the  original  works,  and  it  is  not  only,  as  one  might 
think  at  first  sight,  the  chapters  that  have  to  do  with 
habits  and  adventures  which  they  will  help  us  to  enrich. 
In  order,  however,  to  distinguish  in  the  works  of  the  comic 
writers  between  their  portrayal  of  society  and  that  which 
reflects  emotions  and   character,  some   effort  of   analysis 

1  Phorm.,  126-126.  »  Stick.,  446-448.     Cf.  Cas.,  prol.  67  et  seq. 


SOURCES    OF    OUR    KNOWLEDGE        47 

is  required.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  same  sentences, 
the  same  words  that  make  clear  a  given  stage  setting, 
that  refer  to  a  local  custom,  a  passing  fashion,  a  pecu- 
liarity of  the  social  or  political  organism,  frequently  also 
possess  an  interest  from  the  point  of  view  of  psychology. 
In  one  play  a  man  who  goes  to  the  Piraeus  to  learn  whether 
any  ship  has  arrived  from  Ephesus,  is  a  father  on  whom 
time  hangs  heavy  in  the  absence  of  his  child. ^  Another 
man  who  boasts  of  having  gone  to  Asia  in  his  youth  and 
of  having  made  his  fortune  as  a  mercenary,  refers  to  his 
exploits  in  order  to  humiliate  his  idle  son.^  A  slave, 
standing  before  the  facade  of  a  Greek  house,  invites  his  old 
master  to  admire  its  painted  decorations,  thereby  showing 
how  impertinent  he  is,  as  these  decorations  do  not  exist.' 
A  youth  goes  up  to  Athens  from  the  Piraeus,  where  he  is  in 
garrison  ;  we  see  him  rush  in,  furious,  because  a  friend  of 
his  family,  the  worthy  Archidemides,  has  detained  him  on 
the  way,  and  has  made  him  lose  sight  of  a  young  woman 
whom  he  had  been  following.  The  fact  is  that  our  hero 
is  of  a  particularly  inflammable  disposition  and  that  he 
has  been  "  struck  all  of  a  heap."  *  Another  person 
declares,  as  though  he  were  an  Athenian  familiar  with  the 
tragic  plays,  that  he  is  torn  asunder  like  Pentheus  rent  in 
twain  by  the  Bacchantes — he  is  a  lover  who  wishes  by  these 
words  to  convey  an  idea  of  the  pangs  of  his  love.^  There 
is  no  need  of  giving  further  examples.  At  every  turn  we 
find  Hellenic  features  combined,  as  we  have  seen,  with 
remarks  of  a  more  general  import.  They  guarantee  the 
origin  of  the  latter. 

But  this  is  not  all.  In  addition  to  the  fact  that  the 
abundance  of  exotic  detail  in  Plautus  and  in  Terence 
gives  promise  of  an  ample  collection  of  trustworthy 
material,  it  justifies  us  in  believing  that  these  authors  did 
not,  as  a  rule,  make  any  alterations  in  their  models.  If,  in 
portraying  their  characters,  they  respected  traits  that  might 
possibly  disconcert  their  audience,  there  was  even  more 

1  Bacch.,  285  et  seq.     *  Heaut.,   llOctseq.    *  Most.,  832  et  seq. 
*  Eun.,  289  et  seq.  »  Merc,  469. 


48  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

reason  why  they  should  allow  that  to  stand  which  partook 
of  the  nature  of  a  lasting  and  universal  truth  and  which 
had  an  interest  that  was  not  only  Greek,  but  also  human/" 

And  yet  we  must  here  differentiate  between  the  two 
poets.  It  would  seem  that  Plautus,  much  like  the  Roman 
public  of  his  day,  had  little  taste  for  psychological  refine- 
ments and  for  outbursts  of  sentiment.  He  himself 
informs  us  that  in  the  Casina  he  left  out  the  role  of  the 
youthful  lover ;  ^  while  in  the  Asinaria,  the  Aulularia  and 
possibly  other  plays  as  well,  he  must  have  cut  down  his 
part.  "  Contamination " — that  is  to  say,  the  combining 
in  one  and  the  same  work  passages  borrowed  from  several 
originals — was  practised  by  him  with  all  the  brutality  of 
an  author  whose  one  desire  was  to  lend  variety  and  life 
to  the  performance.  The  Stichus  is  an  example  of  this 
method.  The  opening  scenes  give  promise  of  a  charming 
character  comedy;  but  Plautus  soon  got  tired  of  a  subject 
that  was  no  doubt  too  calm  for  him.  He  neglects 
Pinacium  and  Panegyris,  who  have  both  wit  and  heart, 
and  introduces  Gelasimus,  who  is  merely  full  of  spirit. 
Then  he  neglects  Gelasimus  and  introduces  merry  slaves 
who  drink  and  bawl  and  cut  capers.  Elsewhere  also  his 
characters  play  the  buffoon  at  the  most  solemn  moments 
and  in  a  most  unnatural  way.  Or  else,  conflicts  of 
emotion  which  alone  can  account  for  the  behaviour  of  an 
actor  are  merely  hinted  at.  It  would  be  surprising  if  an 
author  who  so  often  scorned  to  portray  passion  and  charac- 
ter had,  at  other  times,  of  his  own  accord  taken  pains  to 
do  so.  If  Plautus  ever  did  anything  beyond  inventing 
the  language  of  his  plays,  it  would  be  to  conceive  some 
comical  or  fantastic  episode ;  his  inventions  were  certainly 
not  in  the  domain  of  psychology.  We  shall  not  go  far 
astray  if  we  trace  back  to  Greek  works  all  the  pathetic 
passages,  the  ingenious  observations  and  delicate  analyses 
that  occur  in  his  plays. 

As   for  Terence,   the   question   is   quite   different.     He 
likewise     practised    "  contamination,"     but     with     great 
1  Gas.,  prol.  64-68. 


SOURCES    OF    OUR    KNOWLEDGE        49 

skill,  and  apparently  without  omitting  anything  that  in 
his  model  was  devoted  either  to  psychological  description 
or  to  the  portrayal  of  sentiment.  Varro  praised  him 
for  this  :  in  ethesin  poscit  palmam.^  Moreover,  we  know 
from  the  commentary  of  Donatus  that  he  occasionally 
retouched  Menander's  or  Apollodorus'  characters  with  a 
view  to  making  them  more  perfect.  Tims,  it  appears  that 
in  the  Phormio  he  cut  out  a  wish  that  was  too  ingenuously 
selfish. 2  In  another  place  he  gave  more  space  to  the 
parasite's  profession  of  faith  than  Apollodorus  had  given 
it.'  When  Geta  interprets  Demipho's  thoughts  for  him, 
in  order  the  more  readily  to  allay  his  distrust,  the  poet 
attributes  a  remark  to  him  which,  in  the  original,  was 
made  by  Demipho  himself.^  In  the  Andria  he  transforms 
a  cold  and  didactic  speech  addressed  by  Davus  to  Mysis 
into  a  question  which  meant  the  same  thing,  but  con- 
veyed a  greater  sense  of  urgency.^  When  the  father 
of  the  family  thinks  that  he  is  being  deceived  by  his 
son,  Terence  represents  him  as  being  more  unhappy 
than  he  is  in  Menander's  play.*^  In  the  Adelphi  Demea 
does  not  even  answer  the  greeting  of  Micio  when  he 
comes  upon  the  stage.  Donatus  declares  that  this  is 
a  bit  of  rudeness  which  was  not  to  be  found  in  the 
original.'  Further  on,  it  is  said  that  if  Ctesipho  had 
not  been  allowed  to  have  his  music  girl,  he  would 
have  gone  into  exile;  in  the  'AdeXcpot  he  contemplated 
suicide.^  When,  towards  the  end  of  the  play,  an  attempt 
is  made  to  induce  Micio  to  marry  the  aged  Sostrata,  Micio 
rebels,  as  he  naturally  would ;  in  Menander's  play  he 
apparently  bore  his  fate  willingly,  or  at  least  did  not 
offer  so  much  resistance.^  Did  Terence,  then,  invent  so 
much,  add  or  suppress  so  much  in  the  process  of  drawing 

*  Noniua  Marcellus,  p.  374  M. ;    Menipp.,  399  Biich. 

*  Or  was  it  an  inconsiderate  wish  ?     Donatus'  note  to  line  482  can  be 
interpreted  either  way. 

»  Donat.,  note  to  line  339.  *  Ibid.,  note  to  line  647. 

*  Ibid.,  note  to  line  791.  •  Ibid.,  note  to  line  891. 
'  Ibid.,  note  to  line  81.  •  Ibid.,  note  to  line  276. 
»  Ibid.,  note  to  line  938. 

E 


50  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

his  characters  that  we  need  have  constant  scruples  when 
we  quote  him?  The  changes  indicated  by  Donatus  are 
not  of  great  consequence,  and  it  is  hard  to  understand 
why  they  should  have  been  thought  worthy  of  special 
mention  if  many  others  of  greater  importance  had  existed. 
Donatus — or  the  authors  upon  whom  he  relied — must 
have  pointed  out  only  such  of  them  as  constituted  some- 
thing exceptional  in  the  works  of  Terence.  As  for  Varro's 
remark,  it  does  not  necessarily  allude  to  a  gift  of  inde- 
pendent observation  and  creation.  What  it  meant  to 
convey  is,  no  doubt,  that  Terence,  when  compared  with 
Plautus,  Caecilius  and  the  other  writers  of  the  palliata, 
reproduced  the  subtlety  of  the  Hellenic  models  with 
greater  fidelity. 

i     In  a  word,  we  may  make  use  of  almost  all  the  Latin 
I  plays  in  studying  the  subject  matter  of  the  New  Comedy. 

The  same  remark  applies  to  the  Dialogues  of  the  Cour- 
tesans, if  we  can  trust  the  following  remark  of  a  scholiast : 
'loxeov  (hg  avxai  ndoai  at  exalQai  xeK(jofjLipdy]vxaL  xal  naoi 
jusv  xoig  xcojucpdionoioig,  judhoxa  ds  MsvdvdQOj,  d(p'  ov  xal 
ndoa  avxT)  rj  vXrj  Aovxiavco  xco  nqoxsifxevco  svTioQrjxai. 
Elsewhere  I  have  attempted  to  establish  by  analysis 
and  detailed  comparison  how  much  truth  there  is  in  what 
the  scholiast  says.^  It  will  suffice  here  to  state  the  con- 
clusion reached  in  that  preliminary  study.  Very  many 
elements  of  the  Dialogues — such  as  personal  character- 
istics of  the  persons  referred  to,  details  of  their  adventures 
— can  be  traced  with  more  or  less  certainty  to  extant 
comedies.  On  the  other  hand,  those  which,  for  some 
distinct  reason,  appear  to  run  counter  to  the  taste  of  the 
comic  writers  are  very  rare.  Thus  statistics  are  favour- 
able to  the  scholiast,  and  incline  us  to  the  belief  that  he 
was  not  guilty  of  much  exaggeration ;  and  when  we  come 
to  elements  of  which  the  source  is  uncertain  and  whose 
relations  to  comedy  are  in  no  wise  determinable,  and  yet 

^  ^  Les  Dialogues  des  Courtisanes  compares  avec  la  Comedie,  in  the  Rev. 
Et.  Or.,  XX.  (1907),  pp.  176-231;   XXI.  (1908),  pp.  39-79. 


SOURCES    OF    OUR    KNOWLEDGE        51 

cannot  be  positively  disproved,  these  statistics  lead  to 
the  belief  that  they  are  borrowed  from  the  via.  Although 
this  evidence,  considered  in  relation  to  each  specific  case, 
lacks  definiteness,  and  although  it  does  not  force  us  to 
any  logical  conclusion,  it  none  the  less  deserves  to  be 
collected. 

As  for  the  Epistles  of  Alciphron,  their  dependence  upon 
comedy  was  doubtless  neither  as  constant  nor  as  close 
as  was  that  of  the  Dialogues  of  the  Courtesans.  No  one 
claims  that  their  entire  contents  were  borrowed  from  the 
comic  stage.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  contain  only  a 
few  details  whose  equivalents  in  the  comic  poets  are  known 
to  us  on  good  authority,  and  several  of  these  may  have 
found  their  way  there  via  Lucian.^  An  examination  of 
the  whole  of  tliem  results  in  complete,  or  almost  com- 
plete, uncertainty  as  to  the  source  of  the  component  parts, 
and  it  is  necessary  to  conjecture  the  probabilities  for  each 
of  these  component  parts  separately. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  explain — and  I  hope  also  to 
justify — my  attitude  toward  our  chief  sources  of  informa- 
tion. My  reasons  for  occasionally  making  use  of  some 
documents  borrowed  from  other  writers  will  be  made  clear 
when  occasion  offers. 

1  Rev.  Et.  Or.,  XX.  (1907),  pp.  177-181. 


CHAPTER    III 

THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE 

THE  dramatis  personac  of  the  comic  stage  first  claim 
our  attention,  and  in  the  chapter  which  I  devote  to 
them  we  shall  pass  from  their  superficial  and  general 
features  to  their  most  intimate  and  special  ones. 

§  1. 
Foreigners — Rustics 

During  the  period  of  New  Comedy — as  in  the  preceding 
one — the  titles  of  many  plays  were  taken  from  a  race 
{'Avdgia,  BoLcorig,  etc.).  Furthermore,  in  the  works  of 
which  the  Latin  comedy  has  preserved  a  copy,  foreigners 
appear  quite  frequently  on  the  stage  :  a  pander  recently 
come  from  abroad,  a  merchant  summoned  by  his  affairs, 
a  soldier  on  leave,  a  bourgeois  on  a  business  trip,  a  person 
in  search  of  a  relative,  etc.  Or  else  the  scene  itself  is 
placed  in  a  foreign  country.  Thus  the  comic  writers  had 
ample  opportunity  to  introduce  national  characteristics. 
Let  us  examine  to  what  extent  they  did  so. 

This  examination  will  occasion  us  some  disappointment. 
In  the  first  place,  we  shall  discover  that  the  plots  whose 
scene  is  laid  in  foreign  parts  are  not  as  frequent  as  is  gener- 
ally supposed.  It  is  a  mistake  to  claim  for  Attica  alone 
all  the  notable  works  of  the  vea  or  even  all  the  works  of 
the  principal  comic  writers.  The  originals  of  the  Captivi 
and  the  Poenulus,  whose  plots  are  placed  in  Aetolia,  were 
perhaps  performed  at  Pleuron  or  at  Calydon ;  that  of  the 
Cistellaria,  in  which  Sicyon  is  the  place  of  action,  at  Sicyon 
itself ;  the  original  of  the  Curculio,  which  has  the  sanctuary 
of  Epidaurus  as  its  setting,  may  have  been  performed  in 
the  famous  theatre  of  Polycleitus;  and  so  on.  Conse- 
quently the  Aetolians,  Sicyonians,  or  Epidaurians  of  these 
various  plays  were  by  no  means  strangers  to  the  audience, 

52 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  53 

and  the  poet — if  he  was  not  himself  from  Aetolia,  Sicyon, 
or  Epidaurus — would  have  wasted  his  efforts  had  he  brought 
into  relief  their  national  peculiarities. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  comedies  the  plots  of  which 
really  were  laid  elsewhere  than  in  the  town  in  which  they 
were  performed.  As  far  as  we  know,  it  appears  that  the 
choice  of  a  foreign  setting  was  often  forced  upon  the  poets, 
or  at  least  that  it  often  appeared  advisable  to  them,  for 
reasons  that  had  nothing  to  do  with  a  desire  to  depict  an 
exotic  society.  This  is  clearly  the  case  in  the  plays  which 
dealt  with  a  legendary  subject,  where  the  place  of  action 
was  in  each  instance  fixed  by  tradition.  Furthermore, 
in  plays  of  pure  imagination  a  foreign  setting  appears  to 
be  the  necessary  corollary  of  certain  features  of  the  story. 
It  has  been  maintained  that  such  and  such  a  plot  is  placed 
outside  Athens  in  order  to  humour  Athenian  respecta- 
bility, because  among  the  characters  is  found  the  harbourer 
of  a  stolen  child,  and  that  the  Athenian  public  would  not 
permit  so  vile  a  person  to  remain  at  Athens.  This  hypo- 
thesis seems  somewhat  risky.  The  following  are  simpler 
and  safer  examples  of  dependence  on  the  nature  of  the 
story  which  I  desire  to  point  out.  In  the  Miles,  where 
a  lover  goes  in  pursuit  of  his  mistress  who  has  been  taken 
away  from  him,  the  scene  cannot  be  laid  at  Athens  because 
the  young  lover  is  an  Athenian.  Similarly,  when  the  play 
contains  a  person  who  has  been  stolen  in  his  infancy  and 
who  at  the  close  of  the  play  is  to  be  the  object  of  an  ana- 
gnorisis, it  is  quite  natural  that  the  action  should  take 
place  far  away  from  the  country  of  his  birth,  and  if  this 
person  is  represented  as  being  a  fellow-countryman  of  the 
audience,  the  scene  of  the  action  would  be  placed  in  what 
was  for  them  a  foreign  country,  as  is  the  case  in  the 
Rudens.  It  is  clear  that  under  such  circumstances,  though 
the  poets  chose  some  country  other  than  their  own  for 
the  scene  of  their  dramas,  they  had  no  intention  of  tying 
themselves  down  to  a  study  of  local  colour. 

It  may  be  that  one  or  the  other  of  the  plays  of  which 
the  title  was  the  name  of  a  race  in  the  plural,  carried  the 


54  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

audience  into  the  land  of  that  race,  on  the  track  of  some 
traveller,  and  that  it  entertained  them,  by  the  portrayal 
of  foreign  customs.  None  the  less,  the  fragments  which 
strictly  conform  to  such  an  hypothesis  are  very  few  in 
number,  and  they  are  fragments  of  Antiphanes,  Timocles, 
Clearchus  and  Xcnarchus — that  is  to  say,  poets  of  the 
fjieori.  It  is  also  in  the  works  of  the  representatives  of 
the  iiiori  that  we  occasionally  find  reminiscences  of  travel, 
chiefly  gastronomic  reminiscences,  and  it  is  possibly  from 
these  that  Alciphron  drew  his  inspiration  when  he  wrote 
Epistles  III,  15,  and  III,  24,  in  which  parasites,  back  from 
Corinth,  tell  of  their  misadventures.  Among  the  fragments 
that  certainly  belong  to  the  vsa  a  fragment  of  Diphilus — 
fragment  32  of  the  "Ejunogog — is  about  the  only  one  of  this 
kind  that  I  can  cite,  and  here,  too,  the  scene  is  at  Corinth. 
A  Corinthian  explains  to  a  stranger  who  is  passing  through 
the  town — in  all  probability  to  the  ejujiogog — how  in  his 
country  they  watch  the  epicures  who  spend  too  much 
money,  and  investigate  whence  they  get  their  income. 

In  a  word,  the  extant  plays  of  the  vea  contain  very  few 
descriptions  of  exotic  surroundings,  and  it  is  upon  indivi- 
dual types  of  foreigners  that  we  are  obliged  to  fall  back. 

Here,  again,  the  hopes  that  one  entertains  at  first  are 
not  fully  realised.  Terence's  Andria,  an  imitation  of 
Menander's  'Ardgia,  is  a  striking  example  of  the  fact  that 
race  titles  do  not  of  themselves  afford  any  sure  informa- 
tion; for  the  "  Andrian  woman  "  does  not  even  appear  in 
it.  In  the  Zafiia,  the  Samian  woman  Chrysis  does  appear 
and  she  plays  an  important  part ;  but  her  behaviour,  her 
attitude,  her  words,  are  exactly  the  same  as  though  she 
were  a  native  of  Attica.  Many  characters  of  the  repertory 
who  were  represented  as  foreigners  must  have  been  por- 
trayed as  such  simply  for  reasons  of  dramatic  fitness  or 
from  an  excess  of  national  pride.  To  the  former  category 
belong  the  parents  in  search  of  a  child  that  has  disappeared, 
like  Hanno  in  the  Poenulus,  and  the  young  girls  whom 
worthy  citizens  are  to  recognise  as  their  daughters  after 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  55 

long  years  of  separation — like  Phanium  in  the  Phormio, 
or  the  woman  who  is  supposed  to  have  come  from  Andros ; 
or  the  persons  who  appear  towards  the  end  of  a  play  in 
order  to  bring  about  a  recognition.  Had  Hanno  and  his 
daughters,  Phanium  and  her  father  Crito,  or  Glycerium 
and  Chremes  always  lived  in  the  same  town,  their  meeting 
and  anagnorisis  might  very  readily  have  taken  place 
sooner,  and  the  initial  situation  would  have  been  devoid 
of  probability.  Similarly,  if  the  donkey-seller  in  the 
Asinaria  had  been  an  Athenian,  there  would  be  less 
chance  of  his  not  knowing  Saurea;  so  he,  too,  comes 
from  foreign  parts,  from  the  land  of  the  horse-dealers, 
Thessaly.  Had  Dordalus  in  the  Persa,  or  Lycus  in  the 
Poenidus,  for  a  long  time  been  neighbours  of  Toxilus  and 
Agorastocles,  they  would  no  doubt  have  known  Sagaristio, 
the  intimate  of  Toxilus,  and  Collybius,  Agorastocles' 
bailiff.  So  Dordalus  is  supposed  to  have  come  recently 
from  Megara  to  Athens,  and  Lycus  from  Anactorium  to 
Calydon.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  disagreeable  for  an 
audience  composed  of  self-respecting  men  to  recognise 
pimps,  procuresses,  and  courtesans,  or  even  concubines 
and  blustering  soldiers,  as  their  fellow-countrymen.  That 
difficulty  is  easily  overcome  :  blustering  soldiers,  concu- 
bines, courtesans,  procuresses  and  pimps  are  labelled 
"  foiigigiiers." 

However,  there  can  have  been  nothing  foreign  about 
most  of  the  various  characters  I  have  just  enumer- 
ated, beyond  the  label.  Hanno  of  the  Poenulus,  and 
the  pretended  Persians  of  the  Persa,  are  the  only  ones 
among  the  dramatis  personae  of  Plautus  and  Terence 
upon  whose  nationality  the  poets  laid  stress.  And  even 
here  they  do  not  put  themselves  to  any  great  psycho- 
logical strain.  What  serves  to  make  Sagaristio  and  his 
companion  funny  is  merely  their  oriental  dress  and  the 
high-sounding  burlesque  names  with  which  Sagaristio 
beplumes  himself.  What  is  meant  to  characterise  Hanno 
is,  in  the  first  place,  his  general  appearance,  the  colour 
of  his  skin  and  his  costume,  and  then  the  jargon  which 


56  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

he  uses.  The  Greek  poets  appear  to  have  been  quite 
familiar  with  the  use  of  these  two  devices.  Some  of  the 
extant  fragments  mention  either  physical  defects  that 
were  said  to  be  common  among  certain  races/  or  articles 
of  raiment,  peculiarities  of  dress  that  were  characteristic 
of  one  country  or  another.^  It  is  probable  that  both  the 
former  and  the  latter  were  displayed  to  the  audience.  In 
two  lines  of  Menander's  Zixvcoviog  one  of  the  actors 
admits  that  the  oxfjjua  of  a  foreigner — by  this  I  think  he 
means  his  attire — exposes  a  man  to  unpleasant  remarks ;  ^ 
and  in  all  likelihood  something  of  the  sort  happened  to 
him  in  the  course  of  the  play.  Other  fragments — espe- 
cially those  of  the  middle  period — give  us  glimpses  of 
actors  who  speak  a  dialect.*  Or  else  some  one  uses 
words  or  idioms  that  are  not  Attic  and  the  persons  to 
whom  he  speaks  reprove  him  for  them ;  ^  thereupon  the 
foreigner  offers  an  explanation  or  sometimes  gets  angry. 
In  one  of  Posidippus'  plays  a  Thessalian  protests  against 
the  Athenians  for  claiming  that  they  alone  speak  true 
Greek. ^  In  the  "  Coislin  Treatise,"  in  which  a  few  bits 
of  Aristotle's  theories  appear  to  be  preserved,  we  read 
that  the  writer  of  comedies  ought  to  make  his  actors  speak 
his  own  language — del  rov  Hcojucodonoidv  rr)v  ndrgiov  avrov 
yXoiooav  xoIq  nqoooinoiz  TieQixiQevai',  and  then  come  the 
words  Ti]V  de  imxcoQiov  avrq>  ixeivo),  which  should  probably 
be  emended  to  avrcp  rcjj  ievco,  or  to  eyAoxov  rco  ^evcp. 
The  exception  thus  made  would  lead  us  to  believe  that 
in  Aristotle's  time  it  was  not  uncommon  for  actors 
to  use  a  dialect.  But  the  vea  did  not  attain  its  full 
development  in  Aristotle's  time. 

In  addition  to  their  dress  and  speech,  what  comedy 

1  ApoUod.  Car.;   fr.  12;   fr.  adesp.,  866. 

*  Antiph.,  fr.  91.  The  rplfiooves  of  the  Lacedaemonians  and  their 
huge  beards  appear  for  a  long  time  to  have  amused  the  audience ;  cf . 
Meineke,  Historia  critica,  p.  486. 

»  Men.,  fr.  439. 

*  Eubulus,  fr.  12;   Alexis,  fr.  142;   Euphron,  fr.  3;  fr.  adesp.,  283,  677. 

*  Alexis,  fr.  143;   Xenarchus,  fr.  11;   Diphilus,  fr.  47. 

*  Posid.,  fr.  28. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  57 

appears  most  frequently  to  have  noticed  in  foreigners 
was  their  ignorance  of  good  manners,  and  in  particular 
of  good  manners  at  table,  of  the  refinements  of  cooking 
and  of  the  usages  of  polite  society.  The  fragments  of 
the  middle  period  arc  full  of  allusions  to  the  gluttony 
and  dullness  of  the  Boeotians,  to  excesses  of  every  kind 
committed  by  Sicilians,  Thessalians  and  Corinthians,  and 
to  the  exaggerated  frugality  of  the  Spartans.  The  same 
themes  continued,  from  time  to  time,  to  inspire  the  authors 
of  the  subsequent  period.^  Menander  himself  was  not 
above  sneering  at  the  Boeotian  "  asses'  jaw-bones."  ^ 

According  to  one  of  Diphilus'  actors,  the  Rhodians 
prefer  wine  in  which  a  shad  has  been  cooked  to  perfumed 
wine;  the  inhabitants  of  Byzantium  insist  upon  having 
all  their  food  salted  and  seasoned  with  garlic  or  sprinkled 
with  wormwood.^  Elsewhere  some  one  or  other,  pos- 
sibly a  courtesan,  initiates  a  barbarian  in  the  art  of 
drinking.*  In  a  fragment  by  Lynceus,  a  native  of  Perin- 
thus,  who  has  been  invited  to  Athens  by  a  Rhodian,  for- 
bids the  cook,  in  his  own  name  and  in  that  of  his  host, 
to  serve  a  whole  lot  of  little  dishes,  after  the  Athenian 
fashion.  He  wishes  to  have  good  big  portions  of  food  to 
which  every  one  can  help  himself  after  his  own  fashion,^ 
In  Phoenicides,  a  Samian  sneers  at  Attic  dainties,  such  as 
myrtle  berries,  honey  and  figs,  and  declares  that  all  these 
things  are  not  worth  a  partridge  such  as  he  gets  at  home. 

We  might  glean  still  more  malicious  remarks  about  one 
race  or  another  from  the  comic  fragments,  but  all  of 
them,  as  is  the  case  in  the  Latin  comedy  writers,  were,  I 
believe,  merely  cursory  remarks ;  sometimes,  indeed,  they 
were  mere  figures  of  speech.  It  must  have  been  very 
rarely  that  an  actor  by  his  behaviour  on  the  stage  proved 
the  correctness  of  what  people  said  about  his  compatriots. 


* 
*       * 


Next  to  the  true  foreigners  we  must  place  those  other 
persons  who,  to  the  eyes  of  the  poets  and  to  those  of  a 

1  Philem.,  fr.  76;  Diph.,  fr.  22,  96,  119;  Men.,  fr.  462;  Eudoxus,  fr.  2. 
*  Men.,  fr.  911.        ="  Diph.,  fr.  17.        *  Ibid.,  fr.  20.        *  Lync,  fr.  1. 


58  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

good  part  of  their  audience,  must  have  appeared  as  semi- 
foreigners — the  rustics.  In  the  fourth  and  third  cen- 
turies, the  towns  of  Greece  had  not  yet  become  big  cities, 
but  several  of  them,  and  above  all  others,  Athens,  had 
developed  a  city  life  which  was  distinctly  different  from 
life  in  the  country.  Indeed,  many  of  the  middle-class 
folk  who  appeared  on  the  stage  were  landed  proprietors 
and  lived  alternately  in  the  country  and  in  the  city, 
so  that  there  w^as  no  reason  why  they  should  not  feel  at 
home  in  both  places.  But  others,  like  the  good  Cleaenetus 
of  the  Fecogyog,  or  like  Demea  of  the  Adelphi,  lived  in  the 
country  only.  The  same  applies  in  an  even  stricter 
sense  to  the  slaves  who  were  engaged  in  the  various 
branches  of  agriculture.  The  titles  of  several  lost  come- 
dies— most  of  them  of  the  middle  period — apparently 
foreshadow  a  portrayal  of  these  true  rustics;  especially 
the  title  "Aygoixog  (or  "Aygoixoi),  which  occurs  several 
times,  beginning  with  the  age  of  Antiphanes ;  then  other 
titles,  such  as  'AfineXovgyog,  KrinovQog,  AinoXoi,  IlQo^arevg, 
Fecogyog ;  or  titles  that  are  names  of  demes  :  Oooimoi, 
OqedoQioi,  'EntXQonevg,  'AXaielg.  I  shall  endeavour  to  trace 
the  characteristics  of  these  rustic  figures. 

Nearly  everything  that  is  to  be  known  about  the  rustics 
of  comedy  can  be  found  in  Ribbeck's  book  Agroikos,^ 
but  we  must  use  it  with  discrimination.  For  Ribbeck 
does  not  confine  his  researches  to  the  characters  in  comedy, 
much  less  to  those  of  the  via  only.  Moreover,  the  type 
which  he  studies  does  not  coincide  exactly  with  that  of 
the  peasant.  The  aygoixoi  of  former  times  did  not  all 
lead  a  rural  life  any  more  than  those  we  now  call  rustic 
or  boorish.  Accordingly,  by  no  means  all  the  evidence 
of  which  Ribbeck  made  use  is  within  the  scope  of  my 
investigations.  If  I  merely  retain  such  part  of  it  as  be- 
longs to  my  subject,  what  may  be  said  is  as  follows. 

The  comic  writers  primarily  noticed,  and  by  preference 
pointed   out,  the   quite   superficial   shortcomings  of   the 

^  Agroikoa,  eine  ethnologische  Stndie  in  the  Abhandlungen  der  k.  sachsischen 
Oeaellschaft  der  Wissenschaften,  Vol.  X.  (1885). 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  59 

peasant,  just  as  they  did  those  of  the  foreigner  :  slovenly 
dress,  vulgar  speeeh,  ignorance  of  polite  conventions  and 
of  the  sights  of  the  city,  lack  of  appreciation  of  the  elegan- 
cies of  life.  The  country  folk  came  upon  the  stage  dressed 
in  goatskins.^  Grumio,  in  the  Mostellaria,  and  the  young 
man  who  treats  Mousarion  with  scorn,  in  Lucian's  seventh 
dialogue,  smell  ill.^  Stratylax,  in  the  Truculentus,  turns 
up  his  nose  at  Astaphium's  neat  and  dainty  attire,  her 
rouge  and  her  perfumes,  and  declares  that  he  would  rather 
sleep  with  his  oxen  than  with  her ;  ^  his  speech  is  careless 
and  he  mangles  his  words;  *  he  is  a  noisy  and  abusive 
fellow;^  his  3^oung  master  Strabax,  the  youth  "with  the 
iron  teeth,"  ^  ill-kempt  and  dirty,'  himself  confesses  that 
he  is  a  stul^us.^  Tired  of  waiting  for  his  lady-love  in  a 
bed  in  which  he  grows  numb,  he  goes  to  fetch  her  without 
ceremony,  and,  indifferent  to  her  pretty  ways,  he  does  not 
even  try  to  hide  his  impatience  to  be  doing  something 
more  decisive.^  Several  of  Alciphron's  Rustic  Epistles 
are  written  by  men  who  have  never  seen  anything ;  i° 
and  possibly  the  author  derived  this  idea  from  comedy. 
But  one  thing  must  be  said :  among  the  extant  comic 
fragments,  those  which  it  is  most  worth  while  to  quote 
here  belong  to  the  middle  period.  In  the  "Aynoixoi  by, 
Anaxandrides,  one  of  the  dramatis  personae  admits  his 
astonishment  at  sight  of  a  well-set  table. '^^  Other  peasants 
in  Antiphanes,  clinging  to  their  own  ways,  refuse  to  eat 
of  a  big  fish  because  they  say  that  big  fish  are  all  man- 
eaters.i^  In  the  works  of  the  new  period  we  do  not  meet 
with  rustics  who  display  such  simplicity.  In  the  Casina, 
Olympio  is  competent  to  go  to  market,  to  hire  a  cook, 
to  buy  a  fish.  Syriscus,  in  the  "EniXQEnovxeq,  is  quite 
accustomed  to  go  to  town. 

1  Varro,  De  re  rust.,  II.  11,  11.     Cf.  'ETrirp.,  12-13;    Ale,  III.  34. 
=*  Most.,  39-41 ;   Luc,  Dial.  Mer.,  VII.  3. 
3  Triic.,  270  ot  seq.,  276-279,  289  et  seq.     Cf.  Ale,  II.  8. 
<  Ibid.,  683,  688;   cf.  262. 
6  Ibid.,  266  et  seq.,  268,  269,  286  et  seq.,  etc. 

«  Ibid.,  943.  »  Ibid.,  933.  »  Ibid.,  922.         »  Ibid.,  914  ot  seq. 

10  Ale,  II.  17,  28,  37.  "  Anax.,  fr.  2.  "  Antiph.,  fr.  68,  129. 


60  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

The  rustic,  as  he  appears  in  comedy,  is  not  only  rude, 
an  ill-mannered  table-companion  and  a  scorner  of  refine- 
ments. As  a  rule  his  sensibility  is  blunted,  he  is  dull- 
witted,  lazy  and  narrow-minded.  The  range  of  pleasures 
that  appeal  to  him  is  extremely  limited, ^  and  very  few 
things  affect  him.  Politics  do  not  interest  him.^  To 
his  mind  glory  is  a  mere  castle  in  the  air.^  As  for  intellect 
and  culture,  he  regards  them  as  frivolous  luxuries ;  philo- 
sophers appear  to  him  as  good-for-nothings,  engaged  in 
idle  discussions.*  Boutalio,  the  type  of  the  aygoixog  in  a 
play  by  Antiphanes,  was  at  the  same  time  a  model  of 
stupidity.^  In  the  Casina,  Olympio  has  difficulty  in 
replying  to  the  slave  Chalinus  during  their  dispute ;  he 
allows  himself  to  be  interrupted,  loses  his  head,  and  forth- 
with indulges  in  the  most  terrible  threats.^  His  dull 
imagination  laboriously  invents  complicated  torments 
which  he  takes  satisfaction  in  enumerating ;  '  he  has  no 
sense  of  the  ridiculous,  and  although  he  knows  the  special 
circumstances  under  which  his  marriage  is  to  take  place 
he  struts  about  boastfully,  dressed  in  white  and  with  a 
wreath  on  his  head.^  Ctesipho,  in  the  Adelphi,  lacks 
initiative,  courage  and  cleverness.  The  excellent  Cleae- 
netus,  of  the  Fecogyog,  who,  when  occasion  offers,  gives 
wise  counsels,  accompanies  them  with  this  touching 
admission :  ^  "  I  am  a  peasant,  I  cannot  deny  it,  and  I 
have  not  much  experience  in  city  affairs." 

A  characteristic  which  the  writers  of  comedy  appear 
to  have  taken  pleasure  in  pointing  out  is  the  difficulty 
the  rustics  had  in  expressing  their  thoughts,  and  their 
ignorance  of  the  refinements  of  speech.  "  I  am  a  peasant," 
says  one  of  the  actors,  "  and  I  call  things  by  their  name."  i° 
In  the  ' EnixQenovTEQ,  Daos  does  not  trust  his  ears  when  he 
discovers  that  the  charcoal-burner  Syriscus  is  a  good 
talker.     He  himself  can  place  but  a  very  meagre  eloquence 

1  Arist.,  Eth.  Eudem.,  p.  1230  B.     Cf.  Eth.  Nicom.,  p.  1104  A. 

2  Fr.  adesp.,  347.  a  Ale,  II.  13. 

*  Philem.,  fr.  71 ;  cf.  Ale,  II.  11,  38.       ^  Schol.,  Aristoph.,  Frogs,  990. 

*  Cas.,  389-391.  '  Ihid.,  120  et  seq.  «  Ibid.,  767-768. 
»  Men.   fr,  97.                  lo  Fr.  adesp.,  227. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  61 

at  the  service  of  his  rascality;  nervous  before  the  begin- 
ning of  the  discussion,  upset  after  its  conclusion,  he 
stupidly  repeats  over  and  over  again  the  same  useless 
complaints. 1  When  Alciphron  insinuates  that  a  rustic 
who  is  eloquent  and  can  understand  a  joke  is  a  very  rare 
curiosity,  he  shares  the  view  of  the  comic  writers.'^ 

Often  twitted  about  his  clumsiness  and  his  dullness 
of  wit,  the  man  from  the  country  occasionally  pretends 
to  disdain  the  skill  which  he  does  not  possess;  as  Grumio 
does,  when  he  reproaches  the  citizen  Tranio  for  his  clever- 
ness and  voluble  speech.  At  other  times  the  recognition 
of  his  own  inferiority  makes  liim  sensitive  and  irritable. 
"  Impudent  woman,"  Stratylax  cries  out  to  Astaphium, 
"  in  order  to  make  fun  of  a  man  from  the  country  you 
invite  him  to  a  debauch."  ^  Indeed,  distrust  in  all  its 
manifestations  and  the  fear  of  being  cheated  seem  to  be 
peculiar  to  the  rustic;  witness  Olympio's  attitude  in  the 
scene  of  the  drawing  of  lots,"*  or  that  of  Chremes  in  the 
Eunuchus,  towards  the  advances  of  Thais  and  the  civili- 
ties of  Pythias,^  or  that  of  Strabax  who  will  not  part  with 
his  bag.^ 

In  connection  with  this  distrust  I  may  mention  two 
other  characteristics  which  Ribbeck  points  out  in  his 
Agroikos  :  superstition — that  is  to  say,  fear  of  the 
supernatural — and  stinginess,  which  is  often  fear  with 
regard  to  the  future.  We  have  no  proof  that  the  comic 
writers  portrayed  the  peasant  as  being  especially  super- 
stitious. On  the  other  hand,  original  fragments  and 
imitations  repeatedly  denounce  the  excessive  stinginess 
of  the  rustic.  In  Antiphanes,  a  peasant,  when  asked  to 
choose  the  meat  of  which  he  is  to  partake,  at  once  ex- 
cludes that  of  animals  which  produce  something,  such  as 

1  'ETnTp.,  19;  5  and  20 ;   141,  144  and  155. 

«  Ale,  II.  26;  III.  34.  »  True,  263. 

*  Cos.,  384-385,  387,  395.  The  suspicion  expressed  in  lines  379-380, 
which  Leo's  edition  attributes  to  ChaHnus,  would,  it  seems  to  me,  bo  more 
naturally  expressed  by  Olympic,  for  it  is  Chalinus  who  had  gone  to  fetch 
the  sitella  and  everything  that  was  required  for  drawing  lota. 

*  Eun.,  507  et  seq. ;  532  et  seq.  «  True,  956,  960. 


62  NEWGREEKCOMEDY 

wool  or  cheese.^  Strabax's  father,  who  is  a  peasant,  has 
accumulated  his  wealth  through  saving  and  privations 
{farsimonia  duritiaque),^  Demea,  in  the  Adelphi,  lives 
in  the  country  parce  ac  duriter^  In  a  fragment  of  Titinius 
we  read  :   "  The  man  of  the  fields  is  exactly  like  an  ant."  * 

The  characteristics  which  we  have  thus  far  noted  do 
not  make  a  very  sympathetic  person  of  the  peasant  in 
comedy,  but  his  shortcomings  and  his  absurdities  are 
not  without  their  compensation.  Generally  speaking,  it 
seems  as  though  there  were  more  honesty  in  the  country 
than  elsewhere.  This  is  above  all  noticeable  among  the 
slaves,  and  especially  so  when  a  rustic  slave  is  compared 
with  a  city  slave.  The  crabbed  Stratylax  is  very  much 
attached  to  his  old  master,  and  is  very  careful  of  the 
household  property.  So  is  Grumio,  who  is  full  of  wrath 
at  the  scandalous  conduct  of  Tranio — a  wrath  which  even 
succeeds  in  loosening  his  tongue.  Even  the  absurd 
Olympio  has  a  real  sense  of  duty,^  and  he  speaks  of  a 
fugitivus,  of  a  Utteratus,  with  all  the  signs  of  a  virtuous 
indignation.^  This  same  Olympio,  in  line  418 — if  indeed 
he  is  serious  in  what  he  says — manifests  an  ingenuous 
confidence  in  the  justice  of  fate.' 

A  similar  sentiment  is  repeatedly  expressed  by  Grumio,^ 
and  it  contrasts  with  the  scepticism  of  the  person  with 
whom  he  is  talking.^  Syriscus,  in  the  ' EnixQenovxeQ — 
side  by  side  with  him,  however,  Daos  stands  for  rustic 
rascality — declares  that  it  is  every  one's  duty  to  secure, 
as  far  as  he  is  able,  the  triumph  of  justice ;  he  is  charitable 
and  unselfish.  From  the  slaves,  shall  w^e  pass  to  the 
free  men  ?  Like  Grumio,  Cleaenetus  relies  on  distributive 
justice,^"  and  personally  he  practises  it  under  the  guise 
of  gratitude.  He  is,  besides,  a  sensible  man  and  has  a 
gentle  heart.  This  character  alone  would  suffice  to 
prove  that  comedy  was  not  obstinately  unjust  to  the 

1  Antiph.,fr.  20.       ^  ymc,  310-311.       »  ^d.,  45;  cf.  866  ;  Men.,  fr.  10. 
«  Fullonia,  fr.  XIII.  *  Gas.,  104-105.  «  Ihid.,  397,  401. 

•'  Most.,  18-19,  55-57,  59,  70.  «  Ibid.,  18-19,  55-57,  59,  70. 

9  Ihid.,  58.  10  Men.,  fr.  94. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  63 

aygoixoi.  Without  indulging  in  the  ilhisions  of  the  idyll 
or  of  the  pastoral  romance,  it  recognised  their  good  quali- 
ties and  gave  them  praise  more  frequently  than  one  would 
think  at  first  sight.  It  is  undeniable  that  the  poets  did 
not  intend  to  condemn  everything  in  the  hard,  rough  life 
led  by  Demea  and  the  grandfather  of  Charinus  ^ — that 
life  for  which  the  country  affords,  so  to  speak,  the 
necessary  setting. 

Indeed,  comedy  did  not  fail  now  and  again  to  point 
out  some  eccentricity  or  vice  of  the  townspeople.  Straty- 
lax,  after  his  conversion  (which  I  believe  was  only  feigned), 
ironically  sums  up  under  two  heads  what  he  has  learned 
in  the  city  :  to  enjoy  himself  with  a  courtesan  ^  and  to 
humbug.^  Other  characters  besides  the  "  grumblers  " 
found  fault  with  the  lack  of  vigour,  the  TQvq^rj,  of  the 
city ;  and  among  them  were  some  who,  to  judge  by  their 
attitude,  seem  to  have  played  the  part  of  "  wise  men  "  : 
Parmeno,  of  the  IIXoxiov,'^  and  some  actor  in  the  'YdgiaJ' 
It  is  in  the  city  that  comedy  places  the  idlers,  the  in- 
defatigable talkers,  the  newsmongers,  who  are  sharply 
dealt  with  at  the  beginning  of  the  Trinummiis,  the  indis- 
creet fellows  who  interfere  with  other  people's  business.^ 
It  is  the  city  that  generally  supplies  the  pettifoggers  and 
intriguers,  the  men  who  will  do  anything  for  a  bit  of  money, 
the  flatterers  and  parasites.  When  Alciphron  contrasts 
the  people — evidently  city  people — who  earn  a  dishonest 
livelihood  in  the  agora  and  in  the  courts,'  with  the 
honest  peasant  {yecogydg  anqdy fxaiv  xal  ioydr}]g),  he  must 
be  following  the  example  of  comedy. 

§  2. 
Poor  and  Rich — Sycophants  and  Parasites 

Notwithstanding  the  reforms  which  Antipater  and 
Demetrius  had  introduced  in  the  constitution  of  Athens, 

1  Men.,  61  et  seq.  »  True,  678.  »  Ibid.,  683. 

«  Men.,  fr.  405.  *  Ibid.,  fr.  466. 

«  Trin.,  202.  '  Ale,  III.  34. 


64  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

the  society  in  which  the  majority  of  the  writers  of  the  via 
lived  was  a  democratic  society.  We  must,  therefore,  not 
expect  to  find  among  their  dramatis  personae  differences 
of  caste  for  which  the  actual  surroundings  did  not  afford 
a  pattern.  Nevertheless,  a  few  fragments  protest  against 
the  pride  of  birth. ^  Several  others,  especially  in  the 
middle  period,  allude  to  the  arrogance  of  certain  high 
officials,  particularly  the  generals,  and  to  the  deference 
the  common  people  showed  them.^  It  may  be  that  this 
arrogance  and  this  abject  deference  were  represented  on 
the  stage.  But  this  is  not  the  case  in  the  extant  parts 
of  the  plays.  The  only  social  difference  which  is  there 
expressed  and  references  to  which  are  worth  studying  is 
that  between  the  poor  and  the  rich. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  rich  people  who  appear  on  the 
stage  have,  as  a  rule,  no  especial  marks  to  distinguish 
them  as  such.  And  there  is  good  reason  for  this.  In 
the  first  place,  most  of  them  are  not  really  rich.  If  one 
pays  attention  to  the  sums  that  are  mentioned,  to  the  posi- 
tive statements,  one  will  find  that  many  a  good  bourgeois 
whose  wealth  is  supposed  to  be  inexhaustible — according 
to  the  statement  of  his  son  or  his  slave — has  barely  more 
than  is  required  for  a  comfortable  existence.  Chremes, 
in  the  Heauton  Timor oumenos,  calculates  that  he  ought 
to  have  two  talents  ^  as  dower ;  *  and  the  whole  estate 
of  his  godfather  does  not  amount  to  more  than  fifteen 
talents.^  Pataecus,  in  the  IlEQixeigojLievr],  gives  Glycera 
a  dower  of  three  talents.^  Demipho,  in  the  Phormio, 
regards  the  loss  of  a  talent  as  an  insupportable  disaster.' 
In  the  estate  of  his  brother,  the  best  part  of  the  fortune 
of  his  dowered  wife  Nausistrata  consists  apparently  of  her 
properties  in  Lemnos;  but  these  properties,  at  the  time 
when  they  were  best  administered,  yielded  two  talents 

1  Men.,  fr.  290,  533. 

«  Amphis,  fr.  30  ;  Alexis,  fr.  16,  25,  116,  303  ;  Oxyrh.  Pap.,  Vol.  I.  No.  11. 

»  An  Attic  talent  was  worth  about  $1000. — (Tr.). 

*  Heaut.,  940.  »  Ibid.,  145.  «  UeptK.,  354.  '  Phorm.,  644. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  65 

at  the  very  most ;  ^  and  even  this  statement  is  not  above 
suspicion,  for  it  is  Nausistrata  herself  wlio  makes  it.  The 
plutocrat,  the  jilovra^,  the  man  who  rolls  in  wealth,  is  a 
character  to  whom  occasional  reference  is  made  in  Latin 
plays  and  in  the  original  fragments  :  for  instance,  the 
Ionian  plutocrat  {' Icovikoq  nXovxa^)  whom  a  cook,  in 
Menander,  names  among  the  chief  types  of  banqueters ;  ^ 
Theotimus  of  Miletus,  and  the  Elian  Thensaurochrysoni- 
cochrysides — both  of  them  fictitious  persons — of  whom 
Chrysalus  (in  the  Bacchides)  and  Philocratcs  (in  the  Cap- 
tivi)  relate  marvellous  things.^  But  these  plutocrats 
remain  behind  the  scenes.  If  others  of  the  same  kind 
came  upon  the  stage  to  speak  and  act  before  the  audience, 
we  know  absolutely  nothing  about  the  part  they  played. 
Nor  are  we  much  better  informed  about  another  kind 
of  rich  man  who  is  one  of  the  most  entertaining  varieties 
— the  newly  rich.  That  he  did  not  escape  the  attention 
of  the  comic  writers  is  attested  clearly  enough  by  a  num- 
ber of  fragments.  One  of  Philippides'  characters  makes 
fun  of  the  rascals  {juaoxiyiai)  who,  after  making  a  fortune, 
have  the  coarse  food  for  which  they  retain  a  preference 
served  on  costly  platters.*  In  a  passage  of  the  Kola^, 
some  one  reminds  a  yaryenu  of  his  former — quite  recent — 
poverty:  "Man,  last  year  you  were  a  beggar,  a  corpse; 
to-day  you  are  rich."  ^  Elsewhere  a  certain  Stratophanes 
is  apostrophised,  who  formerly  possessed  naught  but  a 
wretched  cloak  and  a  single  slave. ^  The  remarks  con- 
tained in  fragments  252,  323,  587,  and  665  of  Menander, 
and  in  the  fragment  adespoton  487,  must  have  been 
about  vEonXovxoi.  Latin  comedy  does  not  supply  any 
detailed  descriptions  to  supplement  this  meagre  informa- 
tion. Several  characters  in  Plautus  and  in  Terence,  like 
Menedemus  in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos  and  Dcmipho 
in  the  Mercator,  have  made  their  own  fortunes,  but  long 

1  Phorm.,  789.  *  Men.,  fr.  462. 

»  Bacch.,  332;  Capt.,  277  et  seq.  *  Philippides,  fr.  9. 

*  Men.,  fr.  731  =  KoA.,  49-50.     Cf.  fr.  294  =  KoA.,  42-44. 

•  Ibid.,  fr.  442. 
F 


66  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

enough  ago  to  allow  of  their  having  become  accustomed 
to  their  estate ;   and  they  show  no  signs  of  being  parvenus. 

The  exclusion  of  the  7i?,ovTai  and  of  the  veojiXovrog 
deprives  us  of  those  varieties  of  rich  men  whose  portrayal 
would  have  been  most  interesting,  for  it  is  in  them  that 
vanity  and  the  love  of  display  are  most  apparent.  In 
their  absence,  representation  of  this  type  is  rare  in  the 
extant  remains  of  the  vea.  To  the  fragments  already 
quoted  from  Menander  and  Philippides  we  can  add  but 
a  very  few  other  passages,  in  which  the  rich  man  referred 
to  is  some  braggart  soldier.^ 

The  display  of  wealth  is  merely  ridiculous.  But  now 
and  again,  in  the  fragments  and  imitations,  more  serious 
shortcomings  are  laid  at  the  door  of  the  rich.  They  are 
said  to  be  haughty,  tyrannical,  hard  and  unjust  towards 
the  poor;  they  think  of  nothing  but  money,  and  money 
is  the  only  criterion  by  which  they  judge  men  and  things. 
Did  the  poets  themselves  share  this  view?  We  have  no 
means  of  knowing,  but  we  can  affirm  that  nothing  or 
nearly  nothing  in  the  words  and  behaviour  of  the  "  bour- 
geois "  who  appear  in  the  plays  warrants  so  severe  a 
judgment. 

Doubtless  Demipho,  in  the  Phormio,  and  Aeschinus,  in 
the  Adelphi,  believe  that  in  paying — ^the  former,  the  price 
of  the  woman  he  carries  off,  and  the  latter,  the  dower 
for  the  daughter-in-law  whom  he  intends  dismissing — 
they  are  doing  all  that  can  reasonably  be  expected  of 
them,  and  that  a  few  coins  handed  over  with  a  bad  grace 
ought  to  suffice  to  silence  their  opponents. ^  But  in 
justice  to  them  we  must  consider  who  their  opponents 
are.  Aeschinus  is  opposed  by  Sannio,  a  pander ;  Demipho 
by  Phormio,  the  sycophant,  and  the  old  man  thinks 
that  Phanium  is  the  latter's  intriguing  accomplice — a 
mistake  which  cleverer  people  than  he  might  have  made. 
"  Humble  "  folk  of  this  sort  surely  do  not  deserve  more 
gentle    treatment    and    consideration    than    the    fawning 

1  Miles,  1063-1064;  Eun.,  468,  471. 
*  Phorm.,  407  et  seq. ;  Ad.,  191  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  67 

sycophants  who,  in  comedy,  often  afford  diversion  to  the 
capricious  and  idle  rich ;  to  ill-treat  them  is  a  venial 
offence.  But  there  is  another  grievance.  Philto,  in  the 
Trinummus,  speaks  of  the  poor  with  a  hard-heartedness 
which  will,  no  doubt,  be  regarded  as  revolting  :  "  To 
give  drink  and  food  to  a  beggar  is  to  do  him  a  bad  service. 
What  one  gives  him  is  lost  and  one  merely  prolongs  his 
life  in  misery."  ^  But,  very  probably,  Philto  exaggerates 
in  order  to  warn  his  son  Lysiteles  against  an  excess  of 
sensibility;  and  in  practice  he  takes  care  not  to  push  this 
theory  to  extremes.  Indeed,  in  one  of  the  following 
scenes,  in  the  absence  of  Lysiteles,  he  speaks  about  the 
rich  and  the  poor  in  quite  a  different  manner  and  without 
a  trace  of  hard-heartedness.  So  we  ought  not  to  blame 
Philto  too  severely  for  a  few  unfortunate  words.  It 
would  also  be  unfair  to  blame  Agorastocles,  in  the  Poenulus, 
too  much  for  the  excesses  of  speech  in  which  he  indulges 
in  addressing  the  advocati.^  It  is  the  impatience  of  a  lover 
and  not  the  arrogance  of  a  rich  man  that  inspires  his  too 
sharp  reproaches.  In  a  fragment  of  Menander's  Kv^EQvfjjai 
a  poor  man  harshly  reproaches  a  youth  for  despising  the 
poor ;  ^  but  we  have  no  means  of  knowing  the  occasion 
for  this  reprimand.  The  lovers  in  the  FecogyoQ  and  in  the 
nXoxiov,  whatever  else  one  may  think  of  them,*  never 
thought  of  insulting  defenceless  poverty  as  exemplified 
in  their  mistresses. 

In  the  extant  remains  of  comedy  the  only  characters 
who  manifest  a  certain  insolence  toward  those  who  are 
not  favoured  by  fortune  are,  not  rich  men,  but  the  servants 
of  rich  men.  Traehalio,  in  the  Rudens,  addresses  the 
fishermen  who  are  going  to  work  in  rather  ungracious 
terms. ^  In  the  Poenulus,  Milphio  treats  the  witnesses 
who  are  hired  by  Agorastocles  with  great  haughtiness,*^ 
and  how  that  rascal  Geta,  in  the  new  fragments  of  the 
Fecogyog,  talks  to  poor  Myrrhina !  "^     We   must  not  hold 

»  Trin.,  339-340.  *  Poen.,  504  et  seq.,  529  et  seq. 

3  Men.,  fr.  301.  *  Ibid.,  fr.  94;  Caecilius,  Plocium,  fr.  XVIII. 

5  i?ud.,  310-334.     •  Poeu.,  583  et  seq.     '' rea;f)7.,  42etseq.,  59,  77  et  seq. 


G8  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

the  masters  responsible  for  the  impertinence  of  such 
knaves,  for  they  themselves  are  much  less  spoiled  by  their 
superior  advantages,  and  some  of  them  are  not  devoid  of 
kindness  of  heart.  Micio,  in  the  Adelphi,  gives  without 
much  urging.  A  young  man  in  the  AvoxoXog  declares 
to  his  father  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  rich  to  make  people 
happy.i  A  character  in  the  ''A?u£lg  affirms  that  the 
possession  of  wealth  may  make  one  kind  to  others. ^  It 
is  only  in  matrimonial  matters  that  the  rich  generally 
show  a  great  fondness  for  money.  Not  that  young  suitors 
hesitate,  whatever  their  fortunes  or  their  prospects  may 
be,  to  sue  for  the  hand  of  a  poor  girl.  But  a  father  who 
knows  that  his  own  purse  is  well  filled  does  not  give  a 
very  cordial  welcome  to  a  dowerless  daughter-in-law.  To 
resign  himself  to  such  a  contingency  he  would  have  to 
possess  the  easy  temper  of  a  Micio,  or  the  generosity  of 
Philto,  one  of  the  wise  old  men  of  the  Trinummus.  As  a 
rule,  fathers,  in  comedy,  regard  their  sons'  marrying  women 
without  dowers  as  one  of  the  greatest  calamities.  Davus, 
in  the  Andria,  knows  their  views  on  this  subject,  and  the 
assurance  he  gives  Pamphilus  regarding  the  plans  of  the 
aged  Simo  is  most  significant :  inveniet  inopem  potius  quam 
te  corrumpi  sinat.^ 

All  these  instances  show  the  effects  of  wealth  on  social 
relations.  Did  the  w^riters  of  comedy  pursue  the  study 
of  these  effects  still  further?  Did  they  portray  the  rich 
man  as  effeminate,  languishing,  knowing  nothing  of  the 
sad  realities  of  life,  and  incapable  of  facing  them,  exhausted 
by  his  very  good  fortune  ?  It  is  not  to  the  point  to  state 
that,  throughout  comedy,  the  bons  vivants,  young  and  old 
alike,  are  nearly  always  men  in  comfortable  circumstances ; 
it  goes  without  saying  that  poor  devils  have  other  things 
to  do  than  to  seek  pleasure,  and  that  other  more  sordid 
hardships  preserve  them  from  heartache.  One  must  live 
first  before  leading  an  evil  life. 

Occasionally  the  relation  of  wealth  to  loose  habits  is 
pointed    out    in    explicit    terms :    witness    lines    109    and 

1  Men.,  fr.  128.  "  Ibid.,  fr.  19.  ^  Andr.,  396. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  C9 

following  of  the  Ileauton  Timoroumenos  {Nulla  adeo  ex  re 
istuc  fit  nisi  ex  nimio  otio  .  .  .).  Similarly  Philolaches,  in 
the  Mostellaria,  when  examining  his  conscience  and  telling 
of  the  degeneration  of  his  morals,  begins  by  confessing 
his  indolence  :  venit  ignavia.^  As  for  more  telling  remarks, 
I  find  little  that  is  worth  gleaning.  Young  Pheidias,  who 
is  lectured  in  fragment  530  of  Menander,  is  a  sort  of 
hypochondriac  or  malade  imaginaire — we  should  call  him 
a  "  neurasthenic  " — whose  energy  has  been  dissipated  by 
an  uninterrupted  course  of  good  living. 

Comedy  shows  us  a  number  of  people  who  are  suddenly 
brought  face  to  face  with  poverty.  One  of  them,  Clitipho 
of  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos,  seems  greatly  disturbed 
thereat.  Others  take  it  good-naturedly.  Clinia  and 
Charinus,  whose  allowances  have  been  cut  off  by  their 
fathers,  courageously  take  up  the  trying  life  of  commerce 
or  of  husbandry.  The  spendthrift  Lesbonicus  calmly  faces 
the  fact  that  he  is  obliged  to  enlist  as  a  mercenary  and 
sacrifices  what  remains  of  his  fortune  in  order  to  give 
his  sister  as  large  a  dower  as  possible.  The  young  lover 
in  the  Vidularia  who  has  been  saved  from  a  shipwreck 
and  is  cast  penniless  on  the  shores  of  Attica,  declares  that 
he  is  ready  to  undertake  the  hardest  work,  and  says  that 
notwithstanding  his  delicate  appearance,  his  soft  hands 
and  white  skin,  he  will  cultivate  the  soil,  as  he  has  no 
choice. 2 

Such,  then,  are  the  rich  men  of  New  Comedy,  as  far  as 
we  have  any  information  about  them.  As  we  have  seen, 
they  are  portrayed  discreetly  and  without  much  malice. 
Despite  the  proverbs  which  proclaim  that  opulence  covers 
many  faults  and  much  disgrace,  that  the  lustre  of  wealth 
hides  faults  of  birth,  lowness  of  character  and  other  short- 
comings,^ the  wicked  rich  man  is  not  a  type  in  comedy. 

In  the  works  of  the  comic  writers  the  poor  have  more 
marked  features  tlian  the  rich  and  appear  under  more 

1  Most.,  137.  *   Vidul.,  31  et  seq. 

'  Men.,  fr.  90,  404,  485;  Caecilius,  Plocium,  fr.  VIII.;  Turpilius,  Demi- 
urgus,  fr.  II. 


70  NEW    GREEK    CO  MED  Y 

diverse  guises.  Some  of  them  arc  philosophers  and  are 
reeoncilcd  to  their  lot ;  ^  but  I  imagine  that  the  poor  of 
this  kind  were  few  in  number  in  comedy,  just  as  they 
are  in  real  life.  A  few  fragments  depreeiate  wealth  and 
praise  poverty — or  rather  a  gilded  competency,^  but 
probably  not  all  of  them  were  spoken  by  poor  men. 
Indeed,  one  of  them  appears  to  me  to  be  ironical.  For 
most  unfortunate  people,  poverty  was  "  an  untraetable 
wild  beast."  ^  The  obligation  tojvvork  which  it  imposes 
on  its  victims  is  cursed  in  more  than  one  passage.*  Wealth, 
on  the  contrary,  is  generally  regarded  as  the  supreme 
blessing.^  Full  of  illusions,  erroneously  regarding  wealth 
as  happiness,  the  poor  in  comedy  eagerly  hope  to  become 
rich.  Awake  or  asleep,^  they  delight  in  dreams  in  which 
their  faith  in  the  omnipotence  of  money  and  their  inex- 
perience in  handling  it  are  manifested  with  equal  ingenu- 
ousness. Merely  because  he  has  picked  up  a  travelling- 
bag  on  the  beach,  whose  contents  are  as  yet  unknown, 
Gripus,  in  the  Rudens,  already  sees  himself  in  imagination 
a  clever  merchant,  an  influential  person,  and  the  founder 
of  a  city.'^ 

It  is  in  their  relation  to  the  wealthy  that  the  poor  best 
reveal  the  feelings  peculiar  to  their  estate  and  that  they 
differ  most  from  one  another.  There  are  some  who,  like 
Hegio  in  the  Adelphi,  are  able  to  remain  dignified  and  just, 
and,  notwithstanding  the  inequality  of  fortune,  to  deal 
with  every  one  as  man  to  man,  on  an  equal  footing.^ 
There  are  even  some  who,  upon  unexpectedly  discovering 
the  hidden  sorrows  that  afflict  a  rich  neighbour,  find  words 
of  brotherly  compassion  for  him.^  But  it  must  be  admitted 
that  such  noble  sentiments  appear  only  exceptionally. 
Feeling  hurt  when  they  see  that  they  are  so  little  esteemed 

1  Cf.  Philem.,  fr.  92. 

2  Men.,  fr.  588,  612,  624,  666;   Diph.,  fr.  69,  104. 

3  Fr.  adesp.,  183;    Men.,  Tewpy.,  78. 

*  Men.,  fr.  597;    cf.   14,  404,  405-406,  633;    Diph.,  fr.   105;    fr.  adesp., 
115,  273. 

s  Cf.  Philem.,  fr.  96;  Men.,  fr.  281.  «  Cf.  Ale,  II.  2. 

'  Rud.,  930  et  seq.  »  Ad.,  462  et  seq. 

9  Men.,  fr.  281 ;  Philem.,  fr.  96. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  71 

and  that  people  do  not  trust  their  word,^  the  poor  are 
generally  suspicious  and  sensitive.  Hegio,  who  is  so  wise 
and  so  self-contained,  proves  this  when  he  speaks  of  his 
relatives,-  and  several  characters  in  comedy  confirm  the 
correctness  of  his  words  by  their  behaviour.  Euclio,  in 
the  Aulularia,  when  Mcgadorus  politely  addresses  him,  is 
sure  that  the  affability  of  his  rich  neighbour  is  a  cover 
for  some  evil  design.^  After  Megadorus  has  declared  his 
intention  to  marry  his  daughter,  Euclio  is  promptly 
offended  because  he  thinks  he  is  being  derided.*  The 
advocati  in  the  Poenulus,  although  they  are  a  pretty  sorry 
lot,  are  not  less  suspicious  :  "  However  destitute  and 
wretched  we  may  be,"  they  say  to  Agorastocles,  "  we 
have  enough  to  eat.  Do  not  crush  us  with  your  con- 
tempt. What  little  we  possess  belongs  to  us,  and  not 
to  you ;  we  ask  nothing  of  any  one,  and  nobody  asks 
anything  of  us.  Not  one  of  us  will  burst  his  spleen  to 
please  you."  ^  Phormio  himself  affects  the  pride  of  a 
"  poor  but  honest  "  citizen.  After  receiving  the  thirty 
minae  for  which  he  has  declared  himself  willing  to  marry 
Phanium,  he  goes  in  search  of  his  dupes,  Demipho  and 
Chremes,  and  meets  them  as  they  are  on  the  way  to  his 
house.  On  seeing  them  he  exclaims  :  "  Why  were  you 
coming  to  my  house?  Do  you  think  that  I  do  not  live 
up  to  my  promises,  once  I  have  made  them  ?  Go  to  ! 
Poor  as  I  am,  up  to  this  day  I  have  never  cared  for  anything 
but  to  be  worthy  of  confidence."  ^ 

The  charge  of  avarice  which  this  rascal  denies  with  so 
much  scorn  was  repeatedly  made  against  the  rich  by  the 
poor.  "  He  has  got  wind  of  my  gold,"  Euclio  thinks,  as 
soon  as  he  sees  Megadorus  coming  to  him,'  Phormio 
pretends  that  he  believes  that  the  reason  for  Demipho's 
disowning  his  young  cousin  is  that  the  relationship  is  not 
of  any  advantage  to  him."^     If  a  rich  man  is  a  day  behind - 

1  Men.,  fr.  93,  85G ;  Philem.,  fr.  102;  fr.  adesp.,  230. 
'  Ad.,  605etseq.       '  AuL,   184.  *  Ibid.,  221-222. 

*  Poen.,  536  ot  seq.     «  Phorm.,  902  et  soq.     '  AuL,   185,  210. 
«  Phorm.,  357-358,  393  et  seq. 


72  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

hand  in  payin<T  a  salary,  if  he  makes  any  remarks,  he  is 
suspected  of  stinginess  and  thcft.^  "  That's  just  Hke  our 
rich  people !  "  cries  one  of  the  advocati,  who  is  cross 
because  Agorastocles  did  not  invite  him  to  dinner.  "  If 
one  does  them  a  service  their  gratitude  does  not  weigh 
as  much  as  a  feather."  ^  In  a  fragment  of  Menander,  a 
more  serious-minded  person,  whose  name  is  not  known, 
complains  that  he  is  working  merely  so  that  some  one 
else — evidently  a  rich  man — shall  come  and  enjoy  the 
fruit  of  his  labour.^ 

Behind  all  these  complaints  there  lurks,  among  the 
poor,  an  undeniable  envy,  which  the  comic  writers  have 
remarked.*  Did  this  envy  go  so  far  as  to  make  those 
who  felt  it  hope  for  social  reform  and  a  fairer  distribution 
of  property?  I  can  discover  no  trustworthy  indication 
that  this  was  the  case.  But  this  envy,  at  any  rate,  led 
them  freely  to  accuse  the  rich  of  setting  the  laws  at  naught, 
of  laying  claim  to  special  privileges,  of  hating  democracy ; 
and,  when  they  acted  as  judges,  it  led  them  even  more  freely 
to  welcome  such  imputations  against  the  rich.  Phormio 
is  well  aware  of  this  when  frigidly  and  with  an  ironical 
threat  he  declares  to  the  aged  Demipho,  who  is  furious  at 
the  marriage  of  his  son  :  "  You  are  a  clever  man.  Go 
find  the  magistrates,  in  order  that  they  may  give  another 
verdict — in  your  favour — in  this  matter,  since  you  alone 
are  king,^  and  you  alone  can  secure  two  verdicts  in  the 
same  case  !  "  ^  The  rich  know  this  too,  and  that  is  why, 
with  far  more  reason  than  they  are  charged  with  arrogance 
or  accused  of  bribing  judges  and  witnesses,  they  dread 
calumny.  That  is  what  troubles  Demeas  in  the  midst  of 
his  anger,  and  the  fear  of  being  slandered  before  a  popular 
tribunal,  which  is  jealous  of  the  rich  and  tender  towards 
the  poor,  makes  him  disposed  to  compromise. 

Owing  to  this  class  hatred  there  flourishes  a  type  of 
rascal  who  has  apparently  been  more  than  once  intro- 

1  Men.,  fr.  303.  «  Poen.,  811-812.  *  Men.,  fr.  597. 

*  Cf.  Philem.,  fr.  92;   AuL,  481-482;   Capt.,  583. 
6  Cf.  Ad.,  176.  »  Phorm.,  403-406. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  73 

duced  in  New  Comedy.^  and  with  whom  one  of  the  extant 
plays  permits  us  to  become  acquainted — the  sycophant. 
Phormio,  in  his  cynical  confessions,  reveals  the  secret  of 
his  strength  :  "  A  man's  weak  spot  is  where  one  can  grab 
something  from  him.  As  for  myself,  people  know  that 
I  have  nothing."  ^  As  he  has  nothing,  he  risks  nothing, 
and  as  neither  care  for  his  honour  nor  scruples  of  conscience 
stand  in  his  way,  he  rushes  head  foremost  into  the  most 
questionable  intrigues.  As  a  professional  scandal-monger, 
he  has  in  course  of  time  acquired  a  mastery  of  that  art, 
of  which  he  is  proud  and  which  guarantees  him  impunity. 
The  whole  gamut  of  the  law,  the  tricks  of  sharp  practice, 
the  art  of  swaying  public  opinion,  all  these  have  no  mystery 
for  him.  Insults  do  not  affect  him — nay,  he  sometimes 
even  welcomes  them  with  the  idea  of  converting  them  into 
weapons.  In  the  midst  of  an  uproar  he  never  loses  his 
coolness,  and  in  the  anger  and  excitement  of  his  adver- 
saries he  recognises  the  symptoms  of  the  fear  he  inspires. 
Alternately  violent,  sly,  conciliatory  or  cordial,  he  gradually 
gets  people  at  his  mercy. 

The  sycophants  terrorise  the  rich.  Another  class  of  poor 
people — and  they  are  legion  in  comedy — choose  quite  a 
different  way  of  living  at  their  expense  :  they  fawn  and 
cringe.  They  are  the  parasites.^  The  aspect  under  which 
they  represent  poverty  is  anything  but  flattering.  Their 
ideals  are  very  low.  Their  dreams  are  not  even  of  all 
the  pleasures  of  a  comfortable  and  indolent  life — a  para- 
site in  love,  a  parasite  who  has  a  mistress,  is  almost 
unknown — but  almost  exclusively  of  the  grossest  pleasures 
of  all,  the  pleasures  of  the  stomach.  With  one  accord, 
Terence,  Horace  and  Apulcius  call  them  parasiti  edaces.'^ 
The  gluttony  of  this  sort  of  people  is  insatiable,  indomit- 
able;  everywhere  and   always,   at  the   most   trying   and 

1  Cf.  Alexis,  fr.  182;  Men.,  fr.  93,  223,  688;  Philippides,  fr.  29;  Alci- 
phron.  III.  34;    Heaiit.,  prol.  38,  etc.  *  Phorm.,  334-335. 

'  Ribbeck,  Kolax  (in  the  Abhandlungen  der  k.  sdchsischen  Ges.  der  Wisa., 
IX.  1884). 

«  Ter.,  HeauL,  prol.  38;   Hor.,  Ep.,  II.  i,  173;   Ap.,  Flor.,  XVI. 


74  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

pathetic  moments,  they  think  of  but  one  thing  :  eating, 
eating  well;  above  all,  eating  a  great  deal.  And,  doubt- 
less, this  constant  thought  of  food  is  not  exclusively  due 
to  a  long  experience  of  hunger,  because  we  find  among 
the  parasites  not  only  beggars  born,  but  also  people  who 
were  formerly  rich  and  have  dissipated  their  fortunes. ^ 
But  in  most  cases  we  may  regard  it  as  a  sign  of  destitution. 

The  parasites  of  comedy  have  various  ways  of  earning 
the  food  with  which  they  gorge  themselves.  Alciphron 
shows  us  poor  devils  who  are  veritable  scapegoats.  Their 
ears  are  boxed,  they  are  flogged,  cups  are  smashed  in  their 
faces,  gravy,  blood,  boiling  water  are  poured  over  them, 
they  are  tormented  and  humiliated  in  a  thousand  ways, 
they  are  treated  like  low  buffoons,  like  dogs.^  There  is 
no  doubt  that  Alciphron  got  the  idea  for  these  dreary 
pictures  from  the  comic  poets.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
fragments  which  prove  this  belong  to  the  middle  period — 
fragments  of  Antiphanes,  Aristophon  and  Axionicus.^ 
But  in  the  Eunuchus,  Gnatho — who  is  taken  from 
Menander's  Kola^  —  still  sees  the  custom  of  initiating 
neophytes  at  its  height ;  *  the  head  of  his  colleague  Erga- 
silus  only  too  often  makes  the  acquaintance  of  the  plates 
and  fists  of  the  other  guests.^  Curculio  loses  an  eye  at  a 
feast. ^  Long  after  the  period  of  the  [lEori  the  masks  of 
parasites  continued  to  have  crushed  ears,  a  permanent 
allusion  to  the  melancholy  advantages  of  the  profession.'^ 

One  can  understand  that,  in  order  to  escape  these 
calamities,  the  parasites  make  every  effort  to  be  useful 
or  agreeable.  They  are  not  dainty  in  their  choice  of 
means,  nor  always  very  happy.  In  Alciphron,  several 
of  them  think  it  right  to  open  the  eyes  of  a  too 
confiding  husband  and  inform  him  of  his  wife's  mis- 
conduct.®    Useless    display    of    zeal  !     With    the   help   of 

•     *  Eun.,  234  et  seq. ;  Ale,  III.  25. 

*  Ale,  III.  3,  4,  7,  9,  12,  13,  15,  25,  32,  34,  35. 

'  Antiph.,  fr.  155;  Axion.,  fr.  6;  Aristophon,  fr.  4.  Cf.  Persa,  60; 
also  Nicolao=!,  fr.  1,  29. 

*  Eun.,  244-245.     Cf.  Harpocration,  s.  v.  avToX7iKv6oi(=  Men.,  fr.  464). 
«  CapL,  88-89,  472.  «  Cure,  397-398. 

'  Pollux,  IV.  148.  8  Ale,  III.  26,  27,  33. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  75 

a  false  oath  the  accused  wife  gets  out  of  the  scrape,  and 
the  denouncer  is  confounded.  More  frequently  the  para- 
site helps  along  his  patron's  adventures,  and  particularly 
his  amorous  adventures.  For  him  he  comes  to  blows, 
breaks  down  doors,  intrudes  into  houses,  murders,  strangles, 
kidnaps,^  makes  purchases  in  the  market,  bargains  with 
panders. 2  He  goes  on  diplomatic  missions  to  a  cold  or 
irritated  lady,^  endures  her  rebuffs  ^  or  the  threats  of  a 
successful  rival,  ^  offers  her — with  a  word  about  their 
value — the  gifts  which  are  to  render  her  more  compliant ;  ^ 
he  gives  advice  to  a  clumsy  and  inexperienced  lover,'  and 
makes  more  or  less  honourable  ^  compromises  in  his  name ; 
for  jealous  patrons  he  prepares  the  text  of  a  contract 
which  is  to  enable  them  to  lock  up  their  mistress  and 
tyrannise  over  her.^  For  those  who  are  in  love  and  short 
of  money,  for  sons  who  are  afraid  of  their  fathers,  he 
rivals  a  rascally  slave  in  wickedness;  he  steals,  forges, 
adopts  false  names,  false  rank,  he  quotes  imaginary 
genealogies  and  invents  relationships  wholesale.^^  His 
compliance  may  go  even  further.  The  parasite  of  the 
Persa  involves  his  daughter,  against  her  will,  in  an 
impudent  hoax;  he  lends  her  to  the  man  who  feeds 
him — a  slave  ! — has  her  disguised  as  a  captive,  examined 
as  a  chattel  that  is  for  sale,  purchased  by  a  pander 
and  for  a  short  time  associated  with  courtesans.  Two 
fragments  of  Menander  (254  and  723)  suggest  similar 
adventures.  In  the  Zixvconog,  a  parasite  marries ;  ^^  was 
the  marriage  upon  which  he  enters  of  the  same  kind  as 
that  of  Olympio,  the  rustic  of  the  Casinat  The  idea  is, 
perhaps,  worth  a  moment's  consideration.  In  the  Phormio, 
at  any  rate,  when  Phormio  insists  on  marrying  Phanium, 
Demipho    immediately    suspects    the    existence    of    some 

1  Ale,  III.  5.     Cf.  Antiphanes,  fr.  195.  «  CapL,  474-475. 

'  Lucian,  Dial.  Mer.,  XIII.  *  Ale,  III.  2. 

^  Bacch.,  692  et  seq.         «  Eun.,  228  et  seq.  '  Ibid.,  435  et  seq. 

*  Ibid.,  1054  et  seq.  *  As.,  746  et  seq. 

1"  Curculio,  Phormio.     In  the  Parasitua  Medicua  a  parasite,  I  believe, 
disguises  himself  as  a  physician  for  the  better  success  of  some  intrigue. 
"  Men.,  fr.  444. 


76  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

disgraceful  intrigue,^  and  in  Alciphron  a  parasite  upon 
whom  a  fair  lady  heaps  her  favours,  calmly  watches  her 
giving  herself  to  rich  friends  as  well  as  to  himself.- 

The  spectacle  of  such  baseness  inclines  us  to  be  indulgent 
towards  the  wretched  people  who  merely  play  the  buffoon 
and  the  jester  in  order  to  gain  their  bread.  The  talent 
of  provoking  laughter  is  one  of  the  most  useful  assets  of 
the  parasite.  When  Gelasimus,  in  the  Stichus,  holds  the 
amusing  auction  sale  of  his  belongings,  he  makes  apt 
reference  to  logi  ridiculi  ^  and  cavillationes^  Like  Saturio, 
in  the  Persa,  he  has  a  collection  of  clever  sayings,  which 
he  repeats  to  himself  as  he  sits  down  to  table. ^  In  the 
Captivi,  Ergasilus  declares  that  in  luckier  days  some  of 
his  jokes  secured  him  free  meals  for  a  whole  month.  In 
several  of  Alciphron's  Epistles  parasites  boast  of  their 
cleverness  at  merry-making,  and  of  their  songs,  jokes,  and 
gift  of  conversation.®  But  the  best  way  to  please  is,  after 
all,  to  flatter,  and  so  the  poor  devil  who  lives  at  the  expense 
of  the  rich  man  is  often  a  shameless  flatterer.  There  is  a 
famous  passage  in  the  Euniichus,  copied  from  the  KoXa^, 
in  which  Gnatho  explains  his  methods — 

"  There  are  some  men  who  wish  to  be  first  in  everything, 
but  who  are  not.  To  these  men  I  attach  myself.  I  do  not 
come  to  them  in  order  to  make  them  laugh,  but  I  laugh 
with  them  of  my  own  accord,  and  at  the  same  time  I 
admire  their  cleverness.  Whatever  they  say,  I  praise  it; 
if  they  say  just  the  opposite,  I  also  praise  it;  if  they  say 
no,  I  say  no;  if  they  say  yes,  I  say  yes.  In  a  word,  I 
have  made  it  a  rule  to  praise  everything.  This  is  by  far 
the  most  profitable  business,  nowadays."  '  With  more  or 
less  spirit,  many  spungers  in  comedy  practised  this  system. 
Those  whom  we  know  best — Gnatho-Strouthias,  Artotrogus, 
and  Chenidas  in  Lucian — do  not  take  the  trouble  to  invent 
subtle  flattery,  as  they  have  to  do  with  fools.  They  lavish 
the  most  absurd  compliments  upon  their  patrons  and  give 

1  Phorm.,  932-934.  »  aIc,  III.  28.  »  Stick.,  221. 

*  Ibid.,  228.  s  Ibid.,  454.     Cf.  Persa,  392. 

«  Ale,  III.  7,  8,  13,  14.  '  Eun.,  248  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  77 

them  most  extravagant  assurances  of  their  admiration. 
To  judge  by  certain  fragments  we  may  suppose  that  some 
of  their  colleagues  even  outdid  them  in  vulgarity.^  More- 
over, as  we  see  in  the  FAinuchus,  they  indemnified  them- 
selves by  making  fun  of  their  silly  patrons,  not  only  when 
they  were  by  themselves  and  out  of  sight,  but  even  to 
their  very  faces,  in  terms  that  were  barely  disguised. 

There  are,  as  we  have  seen,  different  degrees  and  a  sort 
of  hierarchy  among  the  parasites.  But  in  all  the  degrees  of 
this  hierarchy  their  position  is  humiliating.  Gnatho  him- 
self, who  is  so  full  of  scorn  for  the  scapegoats  and  buffoons, 
has  to  suffer  the  indignity  of  having  a  slave,  the  servant 
of  his  master's  rival,  treat  him  with  insulting  familiarity, 
mock  him  and  insult  him.^  How  do  the  parasites  in  the 
works  of  the  comic  poets  put  up  with  such  ill-treatment  ? 
It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  they  should  openly  resent 
these  outrages,  for  by  doing  so  they  would  run  the  risk 
of  being  discharged.  An  irascible  parasite,  like  the  one 
Diphilus  portrays,  who  protested  against  a  too  outspoken 
insult,^  was,  no  doubt,  an  exception  and  a  rare  exception. 
It  is  in  the  absence  of  their  master  that  the  most  sensitive 
of  them  are  indignant  and  lament  their  lot.  Moreover, 
it  is  not  injury  to  their  self-respect  that  generally  forms 
the  subject  of  their  complaints,  but  the  meagreness  of 
the  food  supply,  or  extreme  ill-usage,  or  excessive  tedium.* 
There  is  but  one  parasite — in  Alciphron — whose  pride  is 
hurt ;  ^  sprung  from  a  rich  and  noble  family  he  must 
necessarily  be  doubly  sensitive  to  the  gross  insults  of  a 
parvenu.  Professional,  born  parasites  find  it  easier  to 
be  resigned.  Now  and  again  one  of  them  in  ambiguous 
words  makes  a  weak  apology  for  his  subserviency  or  for 
his  equivocal  conduct,  and  lays  the  blame  on  necessity.^ 
The  majority  of  them  are  completely  at  ease  in  tlieir 
humiliation.  As  long  as  they  have  something  to  eat,  it 
matters  little  to  them  that  they  are  always  relegated  to 

1  Cf.  Diodorus,  fr.  2,  35-40.  =  Eun.,  489-491. 

»  Diph.,  fr.  74-75.  '  Men.,  fr.  563;  Alexis,  fr.  195. 

*  Ale,  III.  25.  «  Alexia,  fr.  212;    Trin.,  847  et  seq. 


78  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

the  lowest  end  of  the  table,  and  are  given  no  more  room 
to  lie  down  than  a  dog.^  If  need  be,  they  are  content  to 
get  remnants  only  and  food  of  an  inferior  quality.^  As 
for  gibes,  insults,  and  injurious  nicknames,  they  care  little 
for  sucli  things.^  Nay,  they  even  eagerly  laud  the  advan- 
tages, the  excellence — even  the  glory  ! — of  the  profession 
of  the  parasite.* 

Finally,  the  parasites  never  have  any  real  affection  for 
their  patron,  or  any  real  gratitude.  Occasionally  they 
do  wish  him  a  long  life,  health  and  prosperity,^  but  in 
doing  so  they  think  only  of  themselves,  and  of  continuing 
a  relationship  that  is  to  their  advantage.^  When  occasion 
offers  they  do  not  hesitate  to  commit  theft  in  the  house 
in  which  they  live.'  If  the  man  who  supports  them  is  a 
vain  fool,  like  the  soldier  to  whom  Gnatho  has  attached 
himself,  they  eagerly  join  his  enemies  in  plucking  him. 
When  their  protector  has  aroused  their  spite  they  do 
not  hesitate  to  exploit  such  secrets  as  a  long  intimacy 
has  revealed  to  them  :  witness  Peniculus,  who  informs 
Menaechmus'  wife  of  the  escapades  of  her  husband. 


Types  of  Professional  People 

A  good  many  of  the  characters  whom  I  have  sketched 
had  a  profession  :  the  agriculturalists  had  an  honest  and 
respectable  one,  the  sycophants  and  parasites  a  disreput- 
able one.  But  it  was  not,  strictly  speaking,  their  customary 
occupations  that  gave  to  each  of  them  a  distinctive  char- 
acter; in  the  one  case  it  was  their  dwelling-place  and  in 

1  Stick.,  488-489,  493,  620;   Capt.,  471. 

»  Ale,  III.  37.     Cf.  Axionicus,  fr.  6,  14-15. 

3  Menaech.,  77  et  seq. ;  Capt.,  69  et  seq.  Cf.  Alexis,  fr.  178 ;  Antiphanes, 
fr.  195,  10  et  seq. ;   Nicolaus,  fr.  1,  31-32. 

*  Men.,  fr.  937;  Eun.,  232  et  seq.;  Diodorus,  fr.  2.  Cf.  Antiphanes, 
fr.  144 ;   Timocles,  fr.  8. 

5  Capt.,  139  et  seq.;    Alexis,  fr.  202;    Luc,  Dial.  Mer.,  XIII.  2. 

«  Ibid.,  139  et  seq. ;   Alexis,  fr.  202;    Luc.,  Dial.  Mer.,  XIII.  2. 

'  Ale,  III.  10,  11,  17.  The  KoKuKes  in  Eupolis  already  did  the  same 
(fr.  155,  168). 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSON  A  E  79 

the  other  their  destitution.  But  in  the  case  of  others, 
whom  I  am  about  to  describe  to  the  reader,  their  temper 
is  more  closely  connected  with  their  avocations. 

Among  the  second  group  there  are  many  who,  like  the 
parasite,  live  at  the  expense  of  the  rich.  I  shall  first 
consider  them,  and  first  and  foremost  among  them  the 
courtesans. 

By  a  curious  chance  these  persons,  to  whom  so  many 
fragments  of  the  middle  period  refer,  hardly  appear  in 
the  subsequent  period.  Still,  we  have  a  few  lines  giving 
a  characterisation  of  the  morals  of  Menander's  Oolq,  who 
was  regarded  as  an  embodiment  of  the  perfect  type  of 
courtesan.!  Possibly  I  ought  to  add  all  or  a  part  of  what 
Propertius  says  in  a  passage  in  which  that  illustrious  lady 
— Thais  pretiosa  Menandri — is  held  up  as  a  model  to  a 
young  debvitante.^  But  Latin  comedy,  Lueian's  Dialogues, 
and  Aleiphron's  Epistles,  are  safer  guides  to  the  lost 
originals;  and  as  the  master's  description  of  his  Thais 
has  not  come  down  to  us,  a  character  drawn  by  one  of 
his  imitators — Phronesium,  in  the  Truculentus — no  doubt 
deserves  to  be  regarded  as  a  good  example  of  the  genus. 

Absolute  heartlessness,  unscrupulousness  and  impudent 
greed  are  the  most  striking  characteristics  of  the  courtesans 
in  the  third,  as  well  as  in  the  fourth,  century.  Tliey 
value  a  man  merely  according  to  what  he  is  able  to 
give  them.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Truculentus,  Dini- 
archus,  more  than  two-thirds  ruined,  returns  from  a 
voyage,  and  knocks  at  the  door  of  his  former  mistress. 
He  is  received  by  the  servant  Astaphium,  and  she,  as  a 
worthy  mouthpiece  of  Phronesium,  tells  him  that,  in  her 
eyes  and  in  those  of  her  mistress  alike,  a  man  without 
money  no  longer  counts  for  anything.  It  is  only  after 
hearing  the  unhappy  Diniarchus  speak  of  a  house  and 
property  that  he  still  owns,  that  Astaphium  suddenly 
softens  and  declares  that,  after  all,  his  former  love  cannot 
regard  him  as  a  stranger  and  that  she   invites  him  to 

1  Men.,  fr.  217.  «  Prop.,  IV.  5,  43  et  seq. 


80  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

come  in.^  Cleareta  in  the  Asinaria,  Mousarion's  mother 
in  the  seventh  Dialogue  of  Liician,  Myrtale  in  the  fifteenth, 
Pctale  and  Philoumene  in  Alciphron  (IV,  9,  15)  counsel 
or  themselves  practise  the  same  shameless  greed. ^ 

Menander's  Thais  "  was  always  asking  for  something  "  ;  ^ 
Lysitcles,  in  the  Trinummus,  and  Diniarchus,  in  the 
Truculenius,  well  know  that  lovers  of  a  pretty  woman 
must  expect  constant  demands  to  be  made  upon  them. 
Moreover,  his  mistress  is  not  the  only  one  to  pluck  an 
incautious  lover;  she  has  at  her  heels  a  whole  band 
of  allies,  servants  and  maids.  In  his  effort  to  entertain 
all  these  people,  the  lover  ruins  himself.  As  for  pre- 
texts for  asking  for  something,  they  are  never  lacking. 
Diniarchus  lays  down  the  following  as  a  rule  among 
courtesans  :  "  If  you  have  not  yet  made  a  present,  a 
hundred  requests  are  already  prepared.  It  is  either  a 
lost  jewel,  a  torn  cloak,  a  slave  girl  that  has  just  been 
bought,  a  bronze  or  silver  vase  or  a  chased  one,  or  a  Greek 
clothes-press,  or  some  other  object  that  the  lover  is 
obliged  to  present  to  his  girl." 

Several  scenes  in  the  Truculenius  serve  as  illustrations 
of  these  general  observations.  In  them  we  see  Phronesium 
busily  engaged  in  "  plucking  "  her  lovers.  One  request 
follows  close  on  the  heels  of  another,  and  those  who  make 
the  presents  are  lucky  if  they  get  more  than  a  smile  and 
a  "  thank  you  "  in  return  for  them.  Diniarchus'  rival, 
the  soldier  Stratophanes,  presents  Phronesium  with  two 
Syrian  slaves  whom  he  has  brought  with  him  for  her  from 
his  conquests — two  deposed  princesses,  he  calls  them. 
The  gift  meets  with  a  very  bad  reception.^  A  mantilla 
does  not  please  her  any  better.  Incense  from  Arabia, 
perfumes  brought  from  Pontus,  she  does  not  even  deign 
worthy  of   a  look,  or   of   a  word  of  thanks.^     Later   on 

^  True,  164  et  seq. 

*  See  also  Naevius,  fr.  inc.  fab.  IX. ;  Trabea,  fr.  I. ;  Turpilius,  Lindia, 
fr.  VI. 

*  Men.,  fr.  217  :  aWovaav  irvKva.  *   True,  50  et  seq. 
6  Ibid.,  533-534,  537,  539-541. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  81 

Stratophanes  appears  again,  purse  in  hand.  He  gives 
and  gives  again,  and  eaeh  time  his  gift  elicits  the  same 
monotonous  refrain  from  the  lips  of  his  fair  one  :  parum 
est.^  Even  when  the  gifts  are  for  the  moment  well 
received,  the  lover  must  not  expect  gratitude  to  last  long. 
Diniarchus  has  sent  the  supplies  for  a  superb  supper  and 
five  minae  of  silver.  Presently  he  arrives  in  person  and 
wishes  to  enter  Phronesium's  house,  but  the  servant  stops 
him  and  explains  that  Phronesium  is  engaged  in  dismiss- 
ing another  admirer.^  As  soon  as  the  money  given  by 
Stratophanes  has  been  put  in  a  safe  place,  Phronesium 
turns  her  back  on  the  unfortunate  soldier  and  listens  to 
the  entreaties  of  the  young  rustic,  Strabax.  Stratophanes 
and  Strabax  engage  in  an  absurd  contest  of  extravagance, 
and  the  woman  for  whom  they  are  competing  ironically 
watches  them  vie  with  each  other  in  ruining  themselves.^ 

To  complete  the  picture,  I  must  add  that  Phronesium — 
like  the  Thais  of  whom  Propertius  tells  us — appears  to 
be  absolutely  indifferent  to  the  physical  advantages  or 
shortcomings  of  her  various  suitors.  She  just  as  readily 
permits  the  ill-favoured  and  dirty  Strabax  to  embrace 
her  as  Stratophanes  or  Diniarchus.'*  Similarly  Myrtale, 
in  Lucian,  gives  herself  to  her  frightful  Bithynian  with- 
out showing  any  sign  of  disgust.^  Only  beginners,  like 
Philinna  in  the  third  Dialogue,  and  Mousarion  in  the 
seventh,  feel  an  aversion  to  ugly  men.  An  experienced 
woman  well  knows  that,  in  order  to  offset  their  ugliness, 
they  pay  more  than  good-looking  young  fellows  do ;  °  and 
that  is  the  only  thing  that  interests  her. 

How  does  the  unfeeling,  cold  and  rapacious  courtesan 
secure  her  victims  ?  Chiefly  by  awakening  their  sensuous 
desire.  This  is  the  main  purpose  of  the  endless  care  she 
takes  of  her  person  and  of  the  artifices  of  her  toilet  which 
some  poets  of  the  f^eor}  have  maliciously  revealed,  of  the 
ointments  and  perfumes  which  she  uses  so  freely,  and  of 

1  True,  910.  ^  Ibid.,  739  et  seq. 

»  Ibid.,  949-950.  «  Ibid.,  934. 

»  Dial.  Mer.,  XIV.  4.  «  Ibid.,  VI.  4.     Cf.  Ovid,  Am.,  I.  8,  07. 
G 


82  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

the  elegance  of  her  appointments.*  This  is  the  purpose 
of  her  skilful  dancing  and  playing;  for  music,  says  Menan- 
der,  provokes  love,-  and  dancing  affords  a  chance  to  show 
a  pretty  leg  and  to  display  the  suppleness  of  a  fresh, 
young,  vigorous  body.  This  is  the  purpose  of  her  pro- 
vocative and  coquettish  ways.  Of  course,  a  well-behaved 
courtesan  does  not  throw  herself  into  men's  arms,  but 
she  does  not  hesitate  to  brush  up  against  them,  or  to 
let  them  do  as  much  to  her.  Under  pretext  of  showing 
her  ring  or  of  looking  at  some  one  else's,  she  places  her 
hand  ^  in  a  man's  hand,  or  else  she  does  so  when  stepping 
upon  the  banqueting  couch  or  getting  down  from  it.* 
With  her  foot  she  presses  the  foot  of  her  neighbours  at 
table,*  and  if  they  indiscreetly  slip  a  hand  under  her 
dress,  she  does  not  raise  the  slightest  objection.^  W^hen 
she  drinks  she  rather  likes  to  have  the  lips  of  her  male 
companions  placed  upon  the  traces  her  own  lips  have  left 
on  the  rim  of  the  cup.'  When  she  coughs  she  makes  a 
point  of  extending  her  rosy  tongue  a  little  more  than  she 
properly  should.^  Languorous  glances,  covert  promises, 
are  her  stock  in  trade.^  Menander's  Thais  is  skilled  in 
the  art  of  persuasion,  the  more  so  because  she  is  beautiful .1° 
Naevius'  Tarentilla,  a  copy  of  a  Greek  model,  understands 
how  to  attract  several  aspirants  at  a  time.^^  To  awaken 
the  desire  of  a  young  gallant,  and  then  to  hold  aloof  and 
put  him  off,  is  sometimes  a  good  way  to  make  his  passion 
more  ardent,  and  this  is  probably  what  the  woman  did 
after  whom  a  play  of  Menander's  is  named  :  'AvariOsjiievy]. 
In  addition  to  her  sensual  allurements  the  courtesan 
has  yet  other  baits.     She  flatters  men's  vanity  either  by 

1  Cf.  Poen.,   210  et  seq. ;  Most.,   157  et  seq.,  272  et  seq. ;  True,   322 
et  seq.,  etc. 

«  Men.,  fr.  237. 

«  As.,  778;    Naevius,  Tarentilla,  fr.  II.;    Tibullus,  I.  6,  25-26. 

*  Ibid.,  116-717. 

*  Ibid.,  775;    Naevius,  Tarent.,  fr.  II.;    Ovid,  Am.,  I.  4,  44. 
«  HeauL,  562-563;   Bacch.,  482.     Cf.  Miles,  652. 

'  Cf.  As.,  772.  »  As.,  794  et  seq. 

»  Ibid.,  784;   Naevius,  Tarent.,  fr.  II.;   Luc,  Dial.  Mer.,  I.  2;   VI.  3, 
"  Men.,  fr.  217.  "  Tarent.,  fr.  II. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  83 

feigning  a  love  for  them  which  she  does  not  fecl,^  or  by 
pretending  that  she  discovers  and  admires  the  highest 
manly  qualities  in  them — courage,  strength,  pride.  We 
may  recall  the  extravagant  praise,  the  comedy  of  amorous 
transports,  by  which  Acroteleutium  and  her  maid  Milphi- 
dippa,  in  the  Miles  Gloriosus,  awaken  the  desire  of 
Pyrgopolinices.  True,  it  is  no  special  credit  to  them,  as 
Pyrgopoliniees  is  a  fool,  suffering  from  excessive  lust. 

One  and  the  same  play  by  Plautus — a  copy  of  Men- 
ander — affords  us  two  seduction  scenes  of  a  livelier 
interest,  in  which  the  fine  Attic  spirit  of  the  original  may 
be  clearly  discerned.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Bacchides, 
Pistoclerus  is  a  very  well-behaved  young  man.  In  order 
to  do  an  absent  friend,  Mnesilochus,  a  service,  he  enters 
into  relations  with  two  courtesans,  the  sisters  Bacchis, 
one  of  whom,  the  Samian  Bacchis,  had  met  Mnesilochus 
at  Ephesus,  and  is  loved  by  him.  She  has  just  arrived 
at  the  house  of  her  sister,  Bacchis  the  Athenian,  arid 
there  awaits  her  lover.  But  before  giving  herself  to  him 
she  is  obliged  to  pay  a  forfeit  to  a  ferocious  soldier  to 
whom  she  had  plighted  herself  for  a  year.  The  soldier 
demands  immediate  payment,  on  pain  of  returning  and 
taking  back  his  mistress,  by  force  if  need  be.  Bacchis 
the  Athenian  very  cleverly  uses  this  situation  to  get 
Pistoclerus  into  her  toils — 

"  My  sister  begs  me  to  fmd  somebody  who  will  protect 
her  against  this  soldier.  ...  I  implore  you,  be  her  pro- 
tector." 2  Of  course,  Pistoclerus  does  not  dare  to  refuse ; 
he  would  look  like  a  coward.  But  he  seems  to  be  inclined 
to  waylay  the  soldier  as  he  goes  by,  without  compromising 
himself  in  the  society  of  the  two  women.  That  does  not 
suit  Bacchis — 

"  It  is  better  for  this  matter  to  be  settled  in  our  house. 
You  can  wait  here  without  any  risk  until  he  comes. 
At  the  same  time  you  can  have  something  to  drink, 
and  when  you  have  drunk  I  shall  give  you  a  kiss."  ^ 
Pistoclerus  objects  and  gives  vent  to  his  fears — 

^  Men.,  fr.  217.  ^  Bacch.,  42  et  seq.  '  Ihid.,  47  et  seq. 


84  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

"  Your  caresses  are  nothing  but  a  bait.  What  you 
suggest  to  mc,  woman,  is,  I  think,  not  good  for  mc.  I 
fear  your  enticements — you  are  a  cunning  creature."  ^ 
And  the  worthy  Bacchis  says  by  way  of  reassuring  him — 

"  If  you  suddenly  Avish  to  take  Hbertics  with  me,  I 
shall  stop  you  myself."  -  She  thereupon  promptly  resorts 
to  an  appeal  to  the  young  man's  courage,  to  the  devotion 
he  owes  to  his  friend.  Pistoclerus  begins  to  lose  control 
over  himself.  He  still  makes  some  virtuous  remarks,  and 
tries  to  call  himself  back  to  the  right  path  by  picturing 
to  himself  the  effeminate  life  one  leads  with  women  like 
Bacchis.  But  it  is  clear  that  the  picture  he  paints  in- 
spires him  with  more  desire  than  abhorrence.  Bacchis 
follows  up  her  advantage.  She  now  freely  enlarges  upon 
what  she  had  casually  said  :  "  The  soldier  will  believe  that 
I  am  your  mistress." 

B.  "  Pretend  that  you  love  me."  P.  "  Shall  I  pretend 
just  for  fun  or  in  good  earnest?"  B.  "Come,  come. 
Let  us  get  to  business,  that  is  better.  When  the  soldier 
comes  you  must  embrace  me."  P.  "  Why  must  I  do 
that  ?  "  P.  "  He  must  see  you  doing  so.  I  know  what  I 
am  about."  ^  The  poor  youth  promptly  loses  his  balance 
and  a  voluptuous  vision  dazzles  him. 

"  K,  by  chance,"  he  asks  Bacchis,  "  there  were  to  be 
a  lunch,  a  drinking  bout  or  a  dinner  such  as  you  are 
accustomed  to  have  at  your  social  gatherings,  where 
should  I  be  seated?  "^ 

Bacchis  thinks  the  time  has  come  to  show  all  her  cards — 

"  Next  to  me,  my  love,  so  that  a  handsome  boy  may 
be  seated  next  to  a  handsome  girl.  In  our  house  this 
seat  is  always  vacant  for  you,  even  if  you  come 
unexpectedly."  ^ 

Once  more  Pistoclerus  holds  back;  he  refuses  to  take 
the  fair  enchantress  by  the  hand  and  to  follow  her  into 
the  house.  But  this  is  the  last  effort  of  his  will,  and 
Bacchis  soon  overcomes  it.® 

1  Bacch.,  50  et  seq.  2  Ibid.,  57.  »  Ibid.,  75  et  seq. 

*  Ibid.,  79  et  seq.  s  /j,^^  gi  g^  ggq^  6  /^^-^^  gg  g^  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  85 

At  the  close  of  the  play  there  is  another  scene  of  seduc- 
tion.i  This  time  the  victims  are  two  old  men — Philo- 
xenus,  Pistoclcrus'  father,  and  Nicobulus,  father  of 
Mnesilochus.  They  come  in  great  anger  to  make  an 
uproar  at  the  door  of  the  courtesans,  in  order  to  get 
their  sons  out  of  the  house.  The  two  sisters  appear  on 
the  balcony.  At  first  they  make  fun  of  the  old  men  and 
treat  them  like  superannuated  bucks.  But  presently,  in 
the  midst  of  their  raillery,  a  few  remarks  make  plain  their 
project  and  prepare  the  way  for  the  success  of  their  plot. 
Thus,  one  of  them  with  subtle  flattery  says  to  the  other 
with  the  air  of  an  expert — "  These  bucks  were  good 
in  their  day;"  and  shortly  afterwards  she  insinuates 
that  they  are  now  old  and  good  for  nothing.  This 
retrospective  praise  awakens  tempting  memories  of  his 
former  pranks  in  one  of  these  worthies,  Philoxcnus. 
Their  scorn  annoys  him  and  provokes  him  to  prove 
that,  notwithstanding  his  white  hair,  he  is  still  good  for 
something.  When  the  two  Bacchides  talk  in  a  whisper 
and  look  towards  him  out  of  the  corner  of  their  eyes, 
he  is  quickly  stirred  and  inflamed.  His  companion 
Nicobulus  holds  out  longer,  but  the  bad  example  affects 
him.  Thereupon  the  Athenian  Bacchis  increases  her 
alluring  promises,  which  include  an  offer  to  return  to  the 
old  man  one-half  of  the  money  that  has  been  extracted 
from  him.  To  these  promises  she  adds  remonstrances 
and  philosophical  remarks  on  the  shortness  of  life.  When 
Nicobulus  weakens  and  expresses  his  fear  of  giving  his 
son  and  his  slave  too  great  an  advantage  over  him,  Bacchis, 
who  has  her  own  notions  about  family  hierarchy,  reassures 
him  by  means  of  this  fine  declaration — 

"  Tell  me,  honey  of  my  heart,  even  if  that  happens,  he 
is  your  son.  Where  do  you  suppose  that  he  could  get 
the  money,  if  you  do  not  give  it  to  him  ?  "  In  due  course 
Nicobulus  also  is  won  over. 

Once  they  have  captured  their  lovers,  they  must  keep 
them  and   divert  them.     Hence  the  occasional  coolness 

1  Bacch.,  1120etseq. 


86  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

with  which  an  experienced  woman  meets  hot  desire,  and 
the  niofrardliness — as  Turpilius  calls  it  ^ — with  which  she 
surrenders  herself.  A  true  courtesan  cannot  allow  her 
lover  to  regard  himself  as  her  lord  and  master,  or,  in  the 
belief  that  he  is  sure  to  find  her  docile,  to  grow  slack  in 
his  attentions.^  She  constantly  invents  some  new  trick 
to  keep  him  at  her  mercy  without  worrying  about  the 
annoyance  or  the  sorrow  she  occasions  him.  The  heroine 
of  the  Triiculentus  pretends  to  have  had  a  son  by  Strato- 
phanes  while  he  was  away  campaigning,  and  says  she  was 
in  danger  of  losing  her  life  when  she  gave  him  birth.  She 
counts  on  this  son  to  enable  her  to  pluck  the  officer,  and 
she — or  her  servant — calls  attention  to  his  resemblance 
to  his  pretended  father.  She  pleads  for  the  support  of 
the  child  by  recalling  the  suffering  it  has  caused  her,  and 
by  growing  tender  over  her  motherhood  and  her  fidelity.^ 
Later  on  she  indulges  in  other  tactics.  In  order  to  annoy 
and  worry  Stratophanes,  she  graciously  receives,  in  his 
presence,  gifts  sent  by  Diniarchus.*  When  he  sees  this, 
the  soldier  cries  out  :  "  What,  you  dared  to  say  that  you 
loved  another?  "  "  It  suited  me  to  do  so,"  Phronesium 
coolly  replies.  Indeed,  to  provoke  jealousy  appears  to 
have  been  a  common  trick  of  the  courtesans  in  comedy.^ 
Bacchis,  in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos,  hopes  to  increase 
the  passion  of  one  of  her  suitors,  a  soldier,  by  refusing  to 
listen  to  his  entreaties  and  by  going  to  Clitipho ;  ^  sub- 
sequently, when  the  money  promised  by  Clitipho  is  too 
slow  in  coming,  she  harps  upon  the  soldier.' 

These  tricks  are,  if  I  may  use  the  phrase,  tricks  of 
attack.  For  her  defence,  the  courtesan  employs  other 
tricks.  If  she  wishes  to  evade  the  entreaties  of  a  youth 
whom  she  does  not  care  for,  an  opportune  headache 
suffices,^   or   else    some    vow   which   demands    temporary 

^  Turpilius,  Demiurgus,  fr.  1. 

2  Luc,  Dial.  Mer.,  VIII.  2;  XII.  2.     Cf.   Ov.,  Atn.,  1.  8,  95-96;  Ars 
Am.,  III.  580  et  seq. 
»  True,  518  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  582  et  seq. 

*  Cf.  Dial.  Mer.,  VIII. ;  Ale,  III.  14.  «  HeauL,  366  et  seq. 

'  Tbid.,  730  et  seq.  «  True,  632. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSON AE  87 

chastity  offers  a  convenient  pretext. ^  If  there  is  need  of 
disarming  the  suspicions  of  a  jealous  lover  or  of  conceahng 
the  breaking  of  a  contract,  she  is  never  at  a  loss  for  lies 
or  clever  precautions.  For  example,  she  will  wipe  her 
hands  after  having  touched  money  so  that  the  metal 
may  not  leave  an  incriminating  odour  on  the  skin ;  or  a 
lover  who  has  been  surreptitiously  admitted  will,  if  need 
arises,  be  introduced  as  the  lover  of  a  friend.^  But  it 
is  chiefly  for  the  purpose  of  gaining  pardon  for  their 
infidelity  that  the  fair  ones  use  diplomacy.  When  Thais, 
in  the  Eunuchus,  wishes  to  induce  Phacdria  to  leave  the 
seat  next  to  her  vacant  for  the  soldier  Thraso,  she  counts 
on  the  young  man's  kind  heart,  makes  him  pity  the  fate 
of  Pamphila,  and  stirs  his  sympathy  for  her  own  loneliness 
as  a  stranger  in  Athens,  who  has  so  much  need  to  make 
friends  by  rendering  a  service.^ 

Phronesium,  in  the  Truculentus,  does  not  ask  Diniarchus 
for  permission  to  prefer  his  rival ;  indeed,  she  does  not 
seek  to  disguise  the  fact  that  the  soldier  Stratophanes  is, 
for  the  time  being,  her  acknowledged  lover.  Far  from 
doing  so,  by  making  a  confidant  of  him  and  by  pretending 
that  she  is  concealing  nothing  from  him,  she  endeavours 
to  keep  the  young  man  under  her  thrall — and  succeeds. 
She  frankly  tells  him  of  the  deceit  she  is  practising  upon/ 
Stratophanes,  as  though  he  were  too  clear-sighted  to 
allow  himself  to  be  duped,  and  too  delicate  to  betray  a 
secret.  She  gives  him  to  understand  what  she  thinks  of 
the  vulgar  veteran  and  how  superior  he,  Diniarchus,  is  to 
such  a  dullard.  In  a  word,  she  treats  him  as  a  dear  and 
absolutely  devoted  friend,  but  with  a  shade  of  pity,  as 
though  she  regretted  that  he  is  no  longer  rich  enough  to 
remain  her  chief  victim.^ 

Grasping,  coquettish,  mendacious  and  i)rofligate  in  her 
relations  with  men,  such  is  the  woman  who  has  made  love 
her  profession.  It  is  quite  likely  that  the  comic  writers 
portrayed  her  as  full  of  spite  against  respectable  women, 

1  .4s.,  806-807.  -  Most.,  207  et  seq. 

^  Eun.,  Hi  ot  soq.  *  True.,  387  et  seq. 


88  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

full  of  slander  and  jealousy  against  other  courtesans,  her 
competitors.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  both  original  frag- 
ments and  Latin  imitations  are  practically  silent  on  this 
topic.  But  in  Lucian  and  in  Aleiphron  the  courtesans 
are  much  less  reserved.  Myrtion  in  the  former,  Leaena 
in  the  latter,  roundly  abuse  the  young  women  who  are 
obliged  to  marry  their  lovers ;  ^  Tryphaena  eloquently 
curses  Philemation  "the  Sepulchre  ";2  the  Thais  of  the 
first  Dialogue  delights  in  enumerating  the  shortcomings  of 
Gorgona.  But  they  do  still  worse  :  Thais  and  Pyrallis  join 
Diphilus  and  Lysias  in  injuring  Philinna,  in  making  loessa  ' 
disconsolate ;  Glycera  has  taken  Habrotonon's  lover  away 
from  her,  and  Gorgona  subsequently  takes  him  away  from 
Glycera ;  ^  Thais'  relations  to  Megara  are  strained  on 
account  of  Strato,  and  Euxippe  tells  her  malicious  tales 
about  a  lover  who  has  deserted  her,  and  so  on.  I  believe 
that  these  spiteful  actions  and  these  quarrels  reflect,  on 
the  comic  stage,  the  rivalries  which  existed  among  the 
courtesans.  Two  comedies,  one  by  Antiphanes  and  the 
other  by  Nicostratus — perhaps  the  younger  Antiphanes 
and  the  second  Nicostratus — were  entitled  'AvreQoJoa, 
which  can  mean  The  Rival;  and  this  rival,  if  there  was 
a  rival,  doubtless  belonged  to  the  same  social  class  as 
Lucian's  heroines. 

The  writers  of  the  v^a  made,  then,  quite  a  detailed 
study  of  the  faults  of  the  courtesan.  To  one  point,  how- 
ever, it  appears  that  they  shut  their  eyes — or  rather  their 
ears.  If  we  are  to  judge  by  the  anecdotes  which  Athenaeus 
has  preserved  for  us,  such  women  in  Menander's  time  were 
occasionally  very  free  in  their  speech.  They  were  prone 
to  use  offensive  language,  and  such  jokes  as  they  made 
were  more  indecent  than  witty.  But  of  such  free  speech 
what  remains  to  us  of  comic  literature  affords  but  few 
examples.  Two  fragments  only  attribute  gross  or  vul- 
garly obscene  remarks  to  women.^     Habrotonon,  in  the 

1  Luc,  Dial.  Mer.,  II.  i;  Ale,  IV.  12.  »  Ibid.,  XI.  3. 

»  Ibid.,  III.  2;  XII.  1.  «  Ibid.,  I.  1. 

»  Diphilus,  fr.  50 ;  Philippides,  fr.  5. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  89 

'EniTQenovreg,  discloses  to  the  audience — and  possibly  to 
Onesimus — the  secrets  of  her  bedchamber,^  but  she  does 
so  without  any  evil  purpose  and  with  an  ingenuous 
simplicity  which  shows  close  observation  of  character  on 
the  part  of  the  poet.  It  is  by  no  means  certain  that 
Alciphron  found  the  models  for  his  sprightly  tales,  like 
those  in  Epistles,  IV,  13  and  14,  in  the  comic  writers.  In 
the  Latin  plays,  even  in  those  of  Plautus,  the  courtesans 
usually  observe  the  decencies  of  language. 

Moreover,  all  of  them  are  not  equally  wicked. 
Athenaeus  tells  us  that  Philemon,  in  one  of  his  comedies, 
applies  the  epithet  XOV^^^V  to  a  courtesan.-  He  adds  that 
Menander  strongly  protested,  a»g  ovdEjuidg  ovorjg  ;(;o?;ar^?. 
But  this  was  a  sally,  the  expression  of  a  passing  resent- 
ment on  the  part  of  the  poet  who  was  the  disgruntled 
lover  of  Glycera ;  and  subsequently  he  takes  a  less  severe 
view  of  the  matter.  The  comedies  of  Plautus  and  of 
Terence  prove  that  the  Greek  comic  writers  did  see  and 
did  portray  more  or  less  respectable  courtesans. 

We  may  leave  out  of  consideration  the  young  girls, 
daughters  of  good  families,  who  have  been  abandoned  or 
stolen  during  their  infancy  and  whom  chance  has  put 
into  the  hands  of  a  procuress  or  of  a  pander,  and  who 
are  against  their  will  brought  up  to  the  profession  of  a 
courtesan  but  have  not  as  yet  practised  it.  Such  girls 
are,  in  point  of  fact,  not  real  courtesans.  But  apart  from 
these,  we  occasionally  meet  with  a  few  more  or  less  sympa- 
thetic types  of  women.  Gymnasium,  in  the  Cisiellaria, 
who  has  no  pangs  whatsoever  about  the  baseness  of  her 
life,  nevertheless  has  a  kind  heart.  She  appears  to  be 
honestly  grieved  by  seeing  Selenium  overwhelmed  by 
sorrow.  When  she  discovers  that  this  sorrow  is  occa- 
sioned by  love,  she  makes  an  effort  to  cure  it,  though  her 
arguments  are  such  as  one  might  expect  from  a  prostitute. 
Unskilled  in  the  art  of  consoling,  she  at  least  commiserates 
with  Selenium  and  agrees  to  do  her  the  service  for  which 
she  asks.     Philotis,  too,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Hecyra, 

1  'Zirnp.,  221  et  seq.  «  Ath.,  p.  594  D  =  Philem.,  fr.  215. 


90  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

is  deeply  moved  by  the  "  persecution  "  of  which  Bacchis 
has  been  the  victim.  In  a  fragment  of  Phoenieides  an 
ill-starred  courtesan  confides  in  a  certain  Pythias  who,  I 
believe,  is  her  friend.^ 
/  The  kindness  which  these  women  display  is  towards 
'  their  comrades.  Others  give  evidence  of  it  towards 
persons  who  are  utter  strangers  to  their  guild  :  Bacchis, 
in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos,  towards  young  Antiphila, 
whose  scrupulous  fidelity  she  admires ;  Habrotonon,  in 
the  'ETtLTQenovTsg,  towards  a  poor  abandoned  baby,  whose 
attractiveness  has  moved  her;  Thais,  in  the  Eunuchus, 
towards  an  Athenian  family,  strangers  to  her,  who  had 
previously  lost  a  child;  Bacchis,  in  the  Hecyra,  towards 
the  parents  and  parents-in-law  of  her  former  lovers.  The 
behaviour  of  the  last  three  is  not  really  disinterested.  By 
making  an  effort  to  find  the  parents  of  the  abandoned 
child,  Habrotonon  hopes  to  secure  her  o^vn  enfranchise- 
ment.2  Thais  confesses  that  by  obliging  a  family  of 
good  position  she  hopes  to  find  protectors.^  The  worthy 
Laches  obliges  Bacchis  to  choose  between  war  and  peace.* 
But  in  each  of  these  three  cases  personal  profit  is  only  a 
secondary  motive.  Habrotonon  does  not  wait  until  she 
recognises  that  her  interest  and  that  of  the  infant  may  be 
identical  before  displaying  her  good  will.  Bacchis,  even 
before  Laches  has  named  his  terms,  appears  to  be  moved 
by  the  best  feeling — so  much  so,  indeed,  that  her  decent 
and  dignified  attitude  impresses  him,  and  when  her  visit 
to  Philumena  has  cleared  up  the  mystery  and  reconciled 
the  young  couple,  she  is  thoroughly  delighted.  One  may 
even  find  that,  carried  away  by  his  desire  for  novelty, 
Apollodorus  went  too  far,  for  the  Bacchis  who  (in  lines 
833  and  following)  indulges  in  such  noble  expressions  can 
hardly  be  the  same  woman  whose  wiles  and  coquettish- 
ness  Parmeno  had  described  shortly  before.^  The  author 
of  the  Eunuchus  did  not  go  to  such  extremes  nor  indulge 
in  such  contradictions.     His  Thais,  likewise,  is  anxious  to 

^  Phoenic,  fr.  1.  ^  'ETrirp.,  321  et  seq.  '  Eun.,  147  et  seq. 

*  Hec.,  764  et  seq.  ^  n^yji^^  158-159. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  91 

be  thought  better  than  her  kind ;  she  wishes  to  have 
the  regard  of  Phaedria,  for  whom  she  feels  affection,  if 
not  love.  It  pains  her  to  think  that  he  could  doubt  her 
word  and  suspect  her  of  imposture.  But  these  fine  senti- 
ments are  only  touched  upon  cursorily ;  ^  the  poet  does 
not  insist  upon  them. 

Moreover,  the  vea  recognised  that  a  true  passion  might  *i 
sometimes  exist  in  the  demi-monde.  Several  Latin  ' 
comedies — the  Mostellaria,  the  Asinaria,  the  Pseudolus — 
bring  upon  the  stage  courtesans  who  are  really  in  love. 
Of  course,  I  realise  that  not  all  of  these  enamoured  women 
are  worthy  of  a  like  confidence.  One  may  suspect  some 
degree  of  self-interest  in  Phoenicium,  in  the  Pseudolus, 
for  this  young  woman  is  the  slave  of  a  pander,  and  her 
love  is  closely  connected  with  her  enfranchisement.  But 
Philematium,  in  the  Mostellaria,  has  already  been  freed, 
and  Philaenium,  in  the  Asinaria,  has  always  been  free. 
In  the  case  of  both  of  these  women,  their  love,  very  far 
from  being  of  any  advantage  to  them,  can  only  be  a 
hindrance  and  an  obstacle  to  the  success  of  their  careers. 
Both  of  them  are  assailed  by  evil  thoughts  and  resist 
them.  They  must,  therefore,  be  regarded  as  honourable 
exceptions  among  a  class  of  women  who  are  generally 
heartless.  In  Lucian's  Dialogues  and  in  Alciphron's 
Epistles,  the  type  of  courtesans  who  are  in  love  is  quite 
freely  represented  :  Bacehis  in  the  latter,^  and  Myrtion, 
Mousarion  and  loessain  the  former,3are  touching  examples. 

Around  the  courtesan  there  assemble  various  other 
persons  on  whom  the  stamp — I  may  say  the  blight — of 
their  profession  is  deeply  impressed  :  '■  the  maid,  the 
procuress  and  the  pander. 

The  first  of  these,  as  we  see  her  in  the  Truculentus,  in 
the  Miles,  in  the  ninth  Dialogue  of  Lucian,  is,  as  it  were, 
a  reflection  of  her  mistress,  the  profligate  courtesan, 
whose  sayings  she  repeats,  whose  vices  she  shares  and 
whose  evil  designs  she  subserves. 

^  Eu7i.,\97etseq.     «  Ale,  IV.  11.     ^  Lucian,  Dio?,  Mer.,  II.,  VII.,  XII. 


92  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

The  procuress  has  a  more  distinctly  marked  personality. 
As  a  rule,  in  the  vea  she  is  not — as  in  the  first  mimiamb 
of  Hcrondas — an  agent  for  debauch,  who,  at  the  request 
of  a  gallant,  tries  to  suborn  such  and  such  a  woman.  At 
least,  all  that  tends  to  make  us  see  her  in  this  light  is 
summed  up  in  a  title  that  is  common  to  a  play  by  Apollo- 
do  rus  of  Carystus  and  to  one  by  Nicostratus — AidjioXog 
(which  may  mean  Temptress),  and  in  fragment  878  of 
Menander.  Most  frequently  she  is  represented  cither  as 
an  attendant  of  a  courtesan,  or  as  her  real  ^  or  supposed  ^ 
mother.  In  each  case  she  is  herself  a  superannuated 
courtesan,  a  courtesan  emerita.  We  also  hear  her  ex- 
pound the  theory  of  her  trade  with  the  greatest  force  and 
skill.  The  procuress  in  the  Cistellaria  says  that  one  must 
only  pretend  to  love,^  for  as  soon  as  one  really  loves  one 
puts  one's  lover  above  one's  own  interests.  If  a  woman 
wishes  to  retain  her  lovers  for  a  long  time,  adds  the  pro- 
curess in  the  Demiurgus,  she  must  always  be  niggardly 
of  her  favours.^  Above  all,  she  must  beware  of  remain- 
ing true  to  a  single  man.  Scapha,  in  the  Mostellaria, 
found  out  how  foolish  it  was  to  do  so.^  The  right  thing 
to  do  is  not  to  let  your  heart  speak,  not  to  hesitate  to 
swear  a  false  oath,  and  to  exploit  every  one  you  meet. 
This  is  the  advice  Syra  gives  Philotis  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Hecyra.^  In  the  Asinaria,  Cleareta  goes  still  further, 
and  declares  that  this  method  must  be  pursued  with 
vivacity.'  All  these  fine  precepts,  the  procuress,  when 
she  is  a  servant,  a  friend,  or  even  a  kindly  disposed 
mother,  is  content  to  preach.  When  she  is  a  high-handed 
mother  who  proposes  to  live  on  her  daughter's  earnings, 
she  may  try  to  insist  on  their  being  put  into  practice.  Of 
this  we  have  an  example  in  the  Asinaria. 

The  pander  appears  to  have  played  quite  a  considerable 
part  in  the  comedies  of  the  new  period.  Menander  him- 
self,  Philemon,  Diphilus,   Apollodorus  of  Carystus,   Posi- 

1  As.,  Cist. ;   Lucian,  Dial.  Mer.,  III.,  VI.,  VII.,  XII. 

*  Cist.  '  Ihid.,  95  et  seq.        *  Turpilius,  Demiurgua,  fr.  1. 

6  Cf.  Moat.,  200  et  seq.  «  Hec,  63  et  seq.  '  As.,  178  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSON  A  E  93 

dippus  and  several  of  the  writers  whom  Plautus  imitated 
have  in  turn  brought  him  upon  the  stage.  Like  the 
proeuress  he  is  an  enemy,  a  hindranee,  to  lovers ;  but  he 
does  not  waste  time  in  discussions.  There  is  no  instance 
where  the  women  under  his  charge  seek  to  soften  him  or 
thwart  him  with  their  preferences  or  antipathies.  For 
them,  as  for  all  of  his  slaves,  he  is  the  master,  a  relentless 
master  who  is  always  ready  with  a  threat,  if  he  does  not 
actually  hold  the  whip  in  his  hand.^  The  luxury  with 
which  he  surrounds  the  women  whom  he  exploits,  the 
careful  education  he  gives  some  of  them,  are  certainly  no 
proof  of  his  being  well  disposed  towards  them;  they  are 
the  devices  of  the  speculator,  and  represent  investments 
that  bring  a  heavy  return.  Towards  amorous  young  men 
he  behaves  like  a  merchant  who  wishes  to  sell  his  wares 
at  the  highest  price.  To  increase  the  price,  he  heightens 
the  passion  of  his  client,  either  by  letting  him  get  accus- 
tomed to  the  society  of  the  woman  he  loves,  or  by  keeping 
him  in  doubt,  or  by  making  him  compete  with  another 
would-be  purchaser.  If  the  young  man  is  short  of  money, 
the  pander  has  no  further  use  for  him.  He  meets  the 
most  pathetic  appeals  with  silence,  or  else  he  answers 
them  sarcastically ;  2  "no  money,  no  woman,"  such,  in  a 
word,  is  the  rule  he  follows.  This  is  natural  enough, 
because  he  is  in  business.  But  he  does  not  only  lack 
kindness  of  heart;  his  passion  for  money  is  so  great  that 
it  kills  even  his  honesty  as  a  business  man.  With  a  light 
heart  he  breaks  his  most  solemn  promises  if  he  sees  the 
slightest  advantage  in  doing  so.  To  promise  a  courtesan 
to  one  of  her  lovers  at  an  agreed  price  payable  on  a  certain 
day,  and  then  to  sell  her  to  another  who  appears  sooner 
and  with  a  fuller  purse — that  is  one  of  his  daily  perform- 
ances. In  the  Phormio,  Dorio  expresses  himself  very 
clearly  on  this  subject.^  Everybody  regards  the  pander 
as  an  object  of  hatred  and  contempt.  Something  excep- 
tional must  happen   before  a  respectable  man   who   has 

1  Cf.  Pseud.,  178,  199-201,  21t-224,  228-229. 

2  Pseud.,  308  et  seq. ;   Poen.,  751  et  seq. ;   Phorm.,  48G  et  seq. 
»  Phorm.,  525-526. 


01  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

passed  the  age  of  wild  pranks  receives  him  at  his  table, 
as  Diiomoncs  does  in  the  Rudcns.  And  no  doubt  few 
solid  married  citizens  and  fathers  of  a  family  would  agree 
to  associate  with  him,  as  Simo  does  in  the  Pseudolus, 
and  to  ask  a  service  or  to  render  him  one,  if  need  be. 
Respectable  people  turn  their  backs  upon  him  in  disgust. 
Fools  are  obliged  to  win  his  favour,  though  they  make  up 
for  that  constraint  as  soon  as  they  can,  by  heaping 
insults  upon  him,  or  even  by  thrashing  him.  But  he  re- 
mains indifferent  to  disgrace.  He  calmly  accepts  the  most 
offensive  epithets ;  ^  he  even  saves  his  enemies  the  trouble 
of  hurling  them  at  him,  and  calmly  apphes  them  to  him- 
self in  advance. 2  He  consoles  himself  for  all  insults  by 
fingering  his  money,  and  if  he  occasionally  threatens  to 
bring  a  suit  against  those  who  insult  him,^  it  is  not  with 
the  object  of  vindicating  his  honour,  but  with  a  view  to 
securing  satisfaction  in  money. 

Courtesan,  procuress  and  pander  constitute  a  group  of 
professional  types  in  whose  character  the  odious  side 
predominates.  In  the  soldier  we  reach  a  second  group 
of  persons  who  are  primarily  comic. 

In  his  Alazon,  Ribbeck  has  made  a  list  of  the  Greek 
and  Latin  plays  in  which  a  soldier  appears.*  It  is  a  long 
list,  and  in  it  the  works  belonging  to  the  new  period,  and 
especially  those  of  Menander,  abound. 
/  Life  in  camp  gave  the  soldier  whom  the  comic  writers 
portray  a  vulgarity  that  makes  him  very  disagreeable. 
"  There  can  be  no  such  thing  as  a  well-behaved  {xojUTpog) 
soldier,"  says  Menander,  "  even  if  a  god  were  to  mould 
him."  5  At  the  beginning  of  the  Hecyra,  Philotis  cannot 
get  over  her  joy  at  having  broken  off  relations  with  her 
soldier,  milite  inhumanissimo.^  The  soldier  in  the  Eunuchus 
is  distinguished  by  his  lack  of  tact.'     In  Lucian's  thirteenth 

1  Pseud.,  357  et  seq.  ^  j^^^l.,  188-189.  ^  ji,i(i_^  163  et  seq. 

*  Alazon,  ein  Beitrag  zur  Antiken  Ethologie  (Leipzig,  1882),  pp.  80-81. 
See  also  Plautus,  Cornicula  (fr.  II.). 

5  Men.,  fr.  732.  «  Hec,  85  et  seq.  '  Eun.,  456-457. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  95 

Dialogue,  Lcontichus  thinks  lie  can  overcome  Hymnis' 
repugnance  by  promising  lier  double  pay.  Besides  being 
clumsy  of  speech,  the  soldier  is  brutal  and  readily  grows 
aggressive.  In  the  neQixeiQOjuevr],  Polemo,  in  a  fit  of 
jealousy,  ill-treats  Glyeera  and  cuts  off  her  hair;  sub- 
sequently he  wishes  to  make  an  assault  upon  the  house 
in  which  she  has  taken  refuge.  Thraso,  in  the  Eunuchus, 
throws  Chremes  bodily  out  of  the  house ;  ^  in  a  scene  copied 
from  the  Kola^,  he  comes  at  the  head  of  a  mob  to  attack 
Thais'  house.-  In  the  Bacchides,  Cleomaehus  threatens  to 
carry  off  his  mistress,  if  she  refuses  to  accompany  him  or 
to  pay  him  a  forfeit. ^  Stratophanes,  in  the  Truculentus, 
draws  his  sword  against  Diniarchus'  emissary,  the  peaceable 
Cyamus.* 

A  further  striking  characteristic  of  the  stage  soldier  is 
his  stupidity,  his  lack  of  initiative.  The  writers  of  comedy 
had  well  observed  how  much  of  his  individuality  a  man 
loses  through  the  constraint  of  military  discipline  and  the 
habit  of  unreasoning  obedience.  One  of  Philemon's  char- 
acters says  that  the  soldier  does  not  deserve  the  name  of 
man,  and  calls  him  a  victim  fattened  for  slaughter  when 
the  proper  time  comes. ^  In  a  fragment  of  Apollodorus 
the  words  orQaricor7]g  and  elevQeqoq  arc  used  to  convey 
opposite  meanings.*^  More  skilled  in  fighting  than  in 
thinking,  the  soldier  allows  himself  to  be  led  like  a  child, 
often  into  a  trap,  by  any  of  his  companions.  Thraso  can- 
not undertake  anything  without  the  help  of  his  parasite. 
Pyrgopoliniees  eagerly  and  gratefully  accepts  the  perfidious 
advice  of  his  slave. 

But  above  all  else,  the  soldier  is  a  braggart.  Miles 
gloriosus — this  title  of  one  of  Plautus'  plays  conveys  the 
essence  of  the  type.  Moreover,  his  boasting  takes  very 
many  different  forms.  First  and  foremost  he  loves  to  tell 
extraordinary  tales  of  the  distant  lands  which  he  claims 

^  Eun.,  131. 

2  Ibid.,  771  et  seq.  In  the  KdAa|,  Bias  probably  assaulted  the  house  of 
his  rival  Pheidias. 

'  Bacch.,  42  et  seq.,  603,  842  et  seq.  *  True,  G13  ot  seq. 

*  Philem.,  fr.  155.  *  Apoll.,  fr.  10. 


96  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

to  liavc  traversed.  Antamoenides,  in  the  Pocnulus,  pre- 
tends tliat  he  has  seen  flying  men.^  Any  traveller  can 
indulge  in  such  lies,  but  the  soldier  is  not  satisfied  with 
them.  As  we  might  expect,  he  is,  above  all,  anxious  to 
have  people  admire  his  courage  and  his  strength,  and  so 
he  tells  endless  tales  of  pretended  prowess.  He  enumerates 
the  generals  under  whom  he  has  served, ^  displays  his 
wounds  and  recalls  where  he  got  them ;  ^  he  either  tells 
or  gets  one  of  his  comrades  to  tell  how  many  of  the  enemy 
he  has  massacred,  how  many  tribes  he  has  subjugated.* 
These  soldier  tales,  sometimes  embellished  with  most  pre- 
posterous conceits,  must  have  been  very  frequent,  at  a 
certain  period,^  in  the  works  of  the  via,  and  it  is  probable 
that  Plautus  follows  his  Greek  models  in  two  passages,^ 
in  which  he  points  out  and  condemns  their  too  frequent 
occurrence.  But  the  soldier  is  not  satisfied  with  strictly 
military  bluster.  A  doughty  warrior,  rival  of  the  gods 
in  battle,  he  also  claims  to  be  a  valiant  boon  companion. 
In  the  KoXa^,  Bias  boasts  that,  in  Cappadocia,  he  thrice 
emptied  a  vessel  containing  ten  measures  of  wine,  and  is 
delighted  when  his  parasite  declares  :  "  You  are  a  mightier 
toper  than  Alexander."  '  Next  to  bodily  prowess  comes 
wealth.  Rare  are  the  soldiers  who,  like  a  person  in 
Menander's  IlaQaKaradrjxrj,  admit  that  they  have  not 
made  a  fortune.^  The  majority,  if  we  may  trust  their 
words,  have  come  home  from  their  campaigns  and  their 
journeys  into  strange  lands,  laden  with  gold.  In  the 
ZiKvdiVLOQ,  a  soldier  who  shows  off  his  newly  gained 
wealth  gets  a  pretty  lively  rebuff.^  Polemo,  in  Lucian, 
like  Pyrgopolinices,^"  measures  his  gold  by  the  bushel,  he 
walks   about   in  purple  clothes,   and  his   slave   Parmeno 

1  Poen.,  470  et  seq.  *  Men.,  fr.  340;  fr.  adesp.  129. 

3  Ibid.,  fr.  562;  Phoenicides,  fr.  4. 

*  Poen.,  473;    Miles,  42  et  seq.;    Cure,  442  et  seq. 

6  Cf.  Men.,  fr.  76,  77,  78,  286,  563;   Phoenicides,  fr.  4. 

•  True,  482  et  seq. ;   Epid.,  431  et  seq. 

'  Men.,  fr.  293.     Cf.  Epinicus,  fr.  2;  Damoxenus,  fr.  2. 
»  Ibid.,  fr.  382.  »  Ibid.,  fr.  442. 

"  Miles,  1063  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  97 

wears  a  ring  glistening  with  precious  stones.^  In  Phile- 
mon's Ba^vlojvioq  another  of  these  heroes  promises  his 
girl  that  he  will  make  her  as  rich  as  Pythonicc,  the 
mistress  of  Harpalus.-  In  fact,  when  the  soldier  really 
has  money,  he  is  generous,  as  is  shown  by  the  attitude 
of  Pyrgopolinices  toward  Philocomasium  at  the  moment 
when  he  dismisses  her.^  But  very  often  the  soldier's 
wealth   is  as  unreal  as  his  exploits.* 

The  soldiers  appear  to  have  indulged  in  yet  another 
form  of  vainglory  :  they  bragged  of  their  social  standing. 
According  to  Thraso,  the  king  could  not  get  along  without 
his  society ;  ^  whilst  Pyrgopolinices  gives  us  to  understand 
that  he  is  one  of  Seleucus'  intimates.^  And  finally,  the 
soldier  wishes  to  be  successful  with  women,  or  at  least 
to  be  thought  so.  A  sure  way  to  please  Bias  is  to  name 
the  most  notorious  courtesans  of  the  day  as  among  his 
conquests.'  Stratophanes,  in  the  Truculentus,  is  indig- 
nant at  the  mere  thought  that  a  woman  might  prefer  "  a 
curly-headed  youngster  who  lives  in  safety  and  beats  the 
tambourine,"  ^  to  himself,  the  man  of  arms.  As  for 
Pyrgopolinices,  he  does  not  doubt  for  a  moment  that 
every  woman  dotes  on  him.^  This  fatuous  desire  to 
appear  a  Lothario  is  the  last  professional  characteristic 
feature  of  the  soldier  which  deserves  our  attention,  although 
Menander  has  endowed  his  Bias  (Thraso  in  the  Eunuchus) 
with  one  further  absurd  trait :  the  claim  to  being  a  wit.^" 
But  this  absurdity  is  only  casually  associated  with  the 
military  profession. 

After  the  soldier  come  several  characters  which,  though 
they  belong  to  quite  a  different  social  class,  have,  in 
common  with  him,  a  decided  tendency  to  be  boastful  : 
the  cook,  the  physician,  the  philosopher,  the  soothsayer 
or  sorcerer,  and  the  begging  priest. 

1  Dial.  Mer.,  IX.  1-2.        *  Philem.,  fr.  1(5.       »  Miles,  983,  1204-1205. 

*  Phoenic,  fr.  40;    cf.  Nicostratus,  fr.  7;    Hipparchus,  fr.  I. 

*  Eun.,  397  et  seq.  *  Allies,  75  et  seq.,  947  et  seq. 

7  Men.,  fr.  295.        »  True.,  609-610.       »  Miles,  58  et  seq.,  1040  et  seq. 
1"  Men.,  fr.  297  ;  Eun.,  414  et  seq.,  422  et  seq. 
U 


fiS  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

Tlic  cook  does  not  play  much  of  a  part  in  Latin  comedy. 
In  Terence  he  does  not  appear  at  all,  and  in  only  one 
play  by  Plautus,  the  Psendolus,  is  any  lengthy  development 
given  to  his  role.  Elsewhere,  in  the  Aulularia,  the  Casina, 
the  Curculio,  the  Menaechmi  and  the  Mercator,  he  comes 
on  the  stage  only  casually.  And  yet  it  would  seem  that 
in  the  vea,  taken  as  a  whole,  his  appearance  was  far  from 
rare,  and  the  greatest  of  the  comic  writers — excepting, 
perhaps,  Apollodorus  of  Carystus  —  took  a  delight  in 
introducing  him  into  their  plays.  A  rhetorician  mentions 
the  [idyeiQoi  among  the  customary  characters  of  Menander,^ 
and  we  know  that  cooks  do  appear  in  more  than  half-a- 
dozen  of  that  poet's  works.  Their  presence  in  Philemon, 
Diphilus,  Posidippus  is  proved  by  a  relatively  large  number 
of  fragments.  And  finally,  in  the  fragments  of  many  of 
the  minor  poets,  which  Kock  has  assembled  in  Volume  III 
of  the  Fragmenta,  passages  belonging  to  the  role  of  cooks 
are  quite  frequent. 

*Alal,ovLx6v  eon  ndv  xo  rcbv  ^ayeiQOiv  cpvXov,  says  Athe- 
naeus.2  The  vanity  of  the  culinary  artist  affords  the 
comic  writers  an  inexhaustible  theme.  Sometimes  it  is 
the  vanity  of  a  simple  cordon  bleu.^  Elsewhere  the  cook, 
who,  no  doubt,  in  the  long  run  feels  the  need  of  making 
a  greater  impression,  has  pretensions  of  a  loftier  kind. 
His  horizon  expands,  he  gets  away  from  his  oven,  and 
instead  of  singing  the  praises  of  his  dishes,  shows  an  ever 
growing  inclination  to  philosophise  about  cooking.  He 
gives  himself  the  airs  of  a  subtle  psychologist,  boasting  that 
he  knows  how  to  adapt  his  dishes  to  the  age,  to  the  nation- 
ality, to  the  social  standing  and  even  to  the  sentiments 
of  his  clients;*  or  else  he  claims  that  the  culinary  art  is 
a  compendium  of  all  human  knowledge.^     In  vain  do  those 

1  Hermog.,  p.  352,  17  Sp.  =  Men.,  fr.  942.  »  Ath.,  p.  290  B. 

'  Philem.,  fr.  60,  79;  Alexis,  fr.  110;  Dionysius,  fr.  1;  Nicostratus, 
fr.  8;    Hegesippus,  fr.  1;    Euphron,  fr.  11;    Archedicus,  fr.  2. 

*  Men.,  fr.  462;  Diph.,  fr.  17,  18;  Dionysius,  fr.  2;  Anaxippus,  fr.  1; 
Posid.,  fr.  26 ;  Naevius,  Ariolua,  fr.  II. 

^  Sosipatrus,  fr.  1;  Nicomachus,  fr.  1;  Posid.,  fr.  27;  Damoxenus, 
fr.  2;   Demetrius,  fr.  1;   Euphron,  fr.  11;   Athenion,  fr.  1. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  99 

whom  he  wearies  with  his  dissertations  seek  to  silence 
him;  onee  started,  he  talks  and  talks  and  talks,  and 
nothing  in  the  world  can  stop  him.  It  is  a  sight  to  see 
the  solemn  airs  with  which  he  comes  upon  the  scene  of 
his  activities  !  ^  It  is  amusing  to  hear  him  inquiring  in 
language  which  is  occasionally  interlarded  with  poetic 
terms,  about  the  number  of  guests,  the  plates  to  be  set, 
and  the  arrangement  of  the  places,^  and  complaining  that 
he  has  not  all  the  facilities  that  he  requires.^  Above  all, 
it  is  amusing  to  hear  him  give  his  instructions  :  the  brevity 
of  his  commands  to  his  scullions  is  that  of  a  true  chef;  * 
no  priest  could  be  more  solemn  than  he  when  offering  a 
sacrifice.^  Is  he  not  himself  somewhat  of  a  priest?  Our 
friend,  the  cook,  would  like  to  have  people  think  so,  and 
he  concludes  that  this  similarity  of  function  ought  to  make 
his  person  inviolable.^ 

Charlatanism  is  the  dominant  characteristic  of  the  cook 
on  the  stage.  But  we  have  still  to  complete  his  picture. 
Provider  of  fine  entertainments  which  are  frequently  given 
in  secret,  witness  of  forbidden  love-episodes,  the  cook 
generally  displays  an  insolent  familiarity  towards  the 
gallants  who  engage  him,  and  if  he  occasionally  sees  them 
caught  in  the  act,  he  is  greatly  amused  at  their  plight.' 
His  profession  opens  many  doors  to  him,  and  he  delights 
in  gossiping  with  the  servants,^  seeks  to  discover  family 
secrets,^  and,  when  occasion  offers,  lays  pilfering  hands  on 
everything  that  he  finds.  In  Plautus,  people  are  always 
on  their  guard  against  his  thieving  ways,  and  not  without 
good  cause.  In  a  fragment  of  Euphron  a  cook  boasts 
that,  following  the  example  of  the  seven  great  masters 
who  are,  as  it  were,  the  seven  wise  men  of  the  kitchen, 

1  Posid.,  fr.  26. 

*  Alexis,  fr.  173;   Men.,  Sa/^ia,  71  et  soq. ;   fr.  518;    Strato,  fr.  1, 
'  Alexis,  fr.  174. 

*  Men.,  fr.  292;    Damoxenns,  fr.  2;    Anaxippus,  fr.  6. 

6  Men.,  fr.  292.  »  Athenion,  fr.  1 ;  Men.,  fr.  130. 

'  Merc,  753  et  seq.  *  AuL,  294  et  seq. 

*  For  instance,  at  the  beginning  of  the  'Zirirpf-KovTfs.  Cf.  Theniistiue, 
Oral.,  XXI.  p.  262  C  (=  fr.  adcsp.,  112). 


100  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

he  too  has  invented  something — he  has  invented  the  art 
of  steaHng,^  In  another  fragment  of  the  same  poet's 
works  a  cook  teaches  his  pupil  the  principles  of  that  art; 
he  even  gives  evidence  of  a  comparative  delicacy  of  feel- 
ing— he  says  one  must  not  steal  from  those  who  pay  well, 
but  only  from  those  who  are  stingy.^ 

The  physician  is  dealt  with  in  a  few  fragments.^  The 
comic  writers  insinuate  that  the  credulity  of  his  patients 
constitutes  about  the  whole  of  his  science.  Do  they  not 
imagine  that  they  are  relieved  as  soon  as  they  see  him  ?  ^ 
Does  not  the  simplest  medicine,  if  given  under  a  high- 
sounding  or  especially  under  an  exotic  name,  appear  to 
them  to  be  something  wonderful  ?  ^  The  physician  profits 
by  this  state  of  mind.  In  order  to  increase  his  importance 
he  exaggerates  the  seriousness  of  every  evil  that  he  is 
called  upon  to  cure;  of  a  trivial  illness  he  says,  "  This  is 
serious  " ;  of  a  serious  sickness,  "  This  is  terrible."  ^ 
Following  the  example  of  several  poets  of  the  fieor],  Phile- 
mon wrote  a  play  called  'largog;  what  remains  of  it  is 
not  interesting.  This  is  also  true  of  the  ' Aox?.rjniox?.sidr]Q 
by  Alexis,  in  which  the  hero  must  have  been  a  physician, 
or  else  a  man  who  was  infatuated  with  medical  science; 
and  of  Plautus'  Parasitus  medicus,  in  which  a  parasite 
doubtless  played  the  part  of  an  Aesculapius  and  travestied 
his  prototypes.  Apart  from  the  Menaechmi  we  only  hear 
a  physician  speak  in  two  very  short  fragments,  one  by 
Alexis  and  the  other  by  Diphilus.  In  Diphilus  he  promises 
the  prompt  recovery — or  the  death  ! — of  his  patient. '^  In 
Alexis  he  boasts  of  the  difficulty  of  a  cure  that  he  has 
undertaken.^  These  fragments  give  us  glimpses  of  men 
of  the  same  type  as  their  colleagues  in  the  Menaechmi — 
that  is  to  say,  perfect  charlatans.^ 

Like  the  physicians,  the  philosophers  were  reproached 

1  Euphron,  fr.  1.  *  Ibid.,  fr.  10. 

'  Philem.,  fr.  75,  134;   Philem.  the  younger,  fr.  2-3;   fr.  adesp.  455. 

*  Philem.,  fr.  108.  *  Alexis,  fr.  142. 

•  Men.,  fr.  497.  '  Diph.,  fr.  98. 

*  Alexis,  fr.  112  (from  the  Kporem,  also  called  the  *apyuoKoirciA7js.) 

•  Menaech.,  882  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PSRS-QNAE  lOl 

by  the  New  Comedy  for  their  theatricaljnanners  and  their 
pompous  talk.  They  raise  their  eyebrows,^  and  wear  long 
beards ;  ^  they  do  not  dress  like  ordinary  mortals ;  ^  they 
discourse  endlessly  about  the  supreme  good ;  ^  they  affect 
austerity,  contempt  for  wealth  and  every  pleasure,  and 
pretend  that  they  devote  themselves  exclusively  to  search- 
ing for  wisdom ;  ^  all  of  which  does  not  keep  them  from 
drinking  hard  or  from  being  quick  to  recognise  the  best 
bits  at  dinner.*^  Their  wisdom  is  limited  to  their  talk.' 
In  a  fragment  of  Anaxippus  a  cook  denounces  their 
gluttony.^  One  of  Baton's  characters,  who  makes  a  very 
vigorous  attack  on  so-called  Platonic  love,^  may  possibly 
have  accused  them  of  yet  other  vices.  I  do  not  think 
it  improbable  that  in  certain  comedies — as  is  the  case  in 
the  tenth  Dialogue  of  Lucian  and  in  several  of  Alciphron's 
Epistles  1° — there  were  represented  philosophers  who  gave 
young  men  wrong  ideas  and  corrupted  their  morals.  One 
of  Alexis'  dramatis  personae  enthusiastically  praises  a 
famous  decree  of  Sophocles  which  expelled  philosophers 
from  Attica.  This  enemy  of  philosophy  is,  I  believe,  a 
father  of  a  family  who  has  had  some  sad  experience 
similar  to  that  of  Strepsiades.  At  all  events  there  is  no 
room  for  doubt  that  the  audience  occasionally  saw  philo- 
sophers upon  the  stage.  One  of  Philemon's  plays  bore 
the  title  0iX6oocpoi.  Fragment  1  of  Theognetus  is  aimed 
directly  at  a  disciple  of  the  Portico.  We  possess  a  frag- 
ment of  a  play  by  Posidippus,  entitled  MeracpsQo/uEvoi, 
which  reads  as  follows  :  "  So  much  so  that  in  ten  days 
time  he  will  wear  a  more  sober  air  than  Zeno."  ^^  Mera- 
(pEQOjuevoL  may  mean — Those  who  change  their  opinion  or 
their    manner    of    living.      I    can    readily    conceive    that 

^  Baton,  fr.  5.  *  Phoenicides,  fr.  4. 

3  Ibid.,  fr.  4 ;  Philemon,  fr.  146. 

*  Philemon,   fr.    71;     Theognetus,   fr.    1;     Damoxenus,   fr.    1;     Baton, 
fr.  I.  5,  6. 

*  Philemon,  fr.  85;    Baton,  fr.  2;  Phoenicides,  fr.  4;  Theognetus,  fr.  1; 
Turpilius,  Lindia,  fr.  IV. 

«  Baton,  fr.  5.  '  Anaxippus,  fr.  4.  *  Ibid.,  fr.  1,  38-40. 

»  Baton,  fr.  7.  i"  Ale,  II.  11,  38;  III.  28.  "  Posid.,  fr.  15. 


102  "NEW   GREEK    COMEDY 

Posidippus  introduced  a  Stoic  teacher  who  boasted,  Hke 
Aristaenetus  in  the  tenth  Dialogue,  that  he  was  bringing 
a  young  voluptuary  back  to  the  path  of  virtue. 

Of  the  soothsayers,  sorcerers,  and  mendicant  priests  of 
either  sex  we  know  next  to  nothing.  They  supplied 
several  comedies  with  titles  :^  the  'AyvQrrjg  by  Philemon, 
the  Mi]vayvQTriQ  and  the  ' legEia  by  Menander — and  to 
these  I  may  add  the  Osoq^ogovjuevr].  They  are  mentioned 
in  two  other  plays  by  Menander.  the  'Hvioxoq  and  the 
Ilaidiov.  They  were  seen  at  work  in  the  OerrdXr],  the 
comedy  by  Diphilus  to  which  fragment  126  belongs.  Some 
fragments  of  the  middle  period  represent  them  as  practis- 
ing medicine  ^  and,  above  all,  as  indulging  in  boasting.^ 
I  presume  that  they  remained  unchanged  in  the  vea. 

A  third  group  of  characters — and  a  far  more  homo- 
geneous one  in  point  of  their  professions — are  the  men  of 
affairs :  bankers,  usurers  and  merchants.  Possibly  these 
persons  occurred  quite  frequently  in  the  comedies  taken 
as  a  whole .^  To-day  a  few  scenes  in  Plautus  are  our  only 
means  of  becoming  acquainted  with  them,  and  they  do 
not  suggest  a  minute  study  of  character.  The  usurer  in 
the  Epidicus  hardly  opens  his  mouth.^  The  usurer  in  the 
Mostellaria  and  the  banker  Lyco,  in  the  Curculio,  both 
complain  about  hard  times,®  but  this  is  always  and  every- 
where a  pet  habit  of  business  men.  The  banker  is  careful 
and  formal  about  the  execution  of  a  contract,  and  the 
usurer  is  obstinate  in  his  claims.  These  two  figures  are 
only  sketched  very  summarily.  The  character  of  the 
donkey-seller  in  the  Asinaria  is,  to  my  mind,  more  care- 
fully drawn.'  He  too  is  obstinate  and  suspicious,  but  in 
addition  to  these  characteristics  he  possesses  a  third  which 

^  One  of  Alexis'  plays,  of  uncertain  date,  was  entitled  Max/reis,  another 

ldiO(p6pT}TOS. 

2  Antiphanes,  fr.  154.  3  Anaxandrides,  fr.  49. 

*  Philemon  and  Diphilus  each  wrote  an  "Eixizopos ;  Menander  and 
Eudoxus  each  wrote  a  NavK\r]pos ;   and  Alexis  a  Tokkttvs. 

*  Epid.,  631  et  seq.  «  Cure,  371  et  seq;  Most.,  532  et  seq. 
'  As.,  392  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  103 

is  no  less  proper  for  a  merchant  and  which  is  brought 
out  in  an  amusing  way — imperturbabihty.  Not  that  our 
donkey-seller  remains  indifferent  to  the  impertinence  of  the 
two  slaves  who  are  addressing  him — he  seems  to  be  more 
surprised  at  them  than  offended — but  the  verbose  argu- 
ments with  which  they  try  to  confound  him,  the  assur- 
ances of  good  faith,  the  appeals  to  his  sense  of  fairness, 
all  fail  to  move  him.  Without  saying  a  word  he  waits 
until  the  babblers  cease  talking,  or  else,  as  a  matter  of 
courtesy,  he  replies  in  a  few  words  that  do  not  commit 
him — a,  fortasse,  a  sceptical  and  indifferent  hand  negassim. 
He  shows  himself  a  man  who  is  accustomed  to  the  haggling 
of  trade  and  does  not  attach  any  importance  to  it. 

After  this   third    group    of   professional    persons    little  - 
remains  to  be  pointed  out.     Lydus,  in  the  Bacchides,  is  ' 
an   amusing   pedagogue.     The   ferule   is   his    passion ;    he 
regrets  the  good  old  times  when,  as  he  says,  men  remained  , 
subject  to  the  tyranny  of  an  usher  until  they  were  well 
advanced  in  years.     That  his  pupil  has  grown  up,  that 
he   is   becoming  emancipated,  that   he   simply  calls  him 
"  Lydus  "  and  no  longer  "  pedagogue,"  is  more  than  his 
small  routine  brain  can  understand  and  tolerate.     Accus- 
tomed to  lecture  boys,  he  cannot  make  up  his  mind  to 
drop  the   tone   of   reprimand,   even   when   he   speaks   to 
Philoxenus.     He   loves   to  be   emphatic   and,  like   many 
other  slaves  in  comedy  who  held  the  same  office,  he  em- 
bellishes his  dissertations  with  allusions  to  mythology. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Curculio  there  appears  a  duenna 
who  is  a  drunkard.  An  equally  bibulous  midwife  comes 
casually  upon  the  scene  in  the  Andria — where,  by  the 
way,  she  behaves  very  properly.  Her  counterpart  in  the 
IleQivdia  must  have  been  freer  in  her  conduct.^  Among 
the  characters  in  Menander's  WsvdrjQaxXfjg  there  was  a 
nurse  who  was  also  addicted  to  wine ;  "  among  those  of 
the  'AQQtjcpoQog  there  was  possibly  another  nurse  whose 
tongue  never  stopped  wagging ;  ^  a  retired  nurse  who  is 

1  Men.,  fr.  397.  *  Ibid.,  fr.  521.  a  /^jj^  fj.,  6,3 


104  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

garrulous  and  fond  of  drink  appears  in  the  la/uia}  In 
the  Rudcns  there  were  fishermen ;  and  fishermen  also 
played  a  part  in  the  'Ahelg,  the  Kaoxr]d6viog,  and  else- 
where in  Menander.2  They  do  not  appear  to  have  had 
any  special  characteristics. 

Finally,  a  certain  number  of  comedies,  besides  those 
with  which  I  have  already  dealt,  bore  as  their  title  the 
name  of  a  profession;  but  we  cannot  draw  any  more 
trustworthy  conclusions  from  titles  of  this  kind  than  we 
could  from  those  which  were  based  on  the  name  of  a  race. 
Both  these  kinds  of  titles  were,  by  the  way,  less  frequent 
in  the  age  of  New  Comedy  than  they  had  been  previously. 

§4 

Slaves 

The  comic  writers  of  the  new  period  brought  a  whole 
host  of  slaves  upon  the  stage.  First,  there  are  pe_da^ogues, 
active  or  retired,  trustworthy  men  to  whom  the  master 
confides  the  duty  of  looking  after  his  son,  of  helping  him 
in  his  travels  or  his  business,  and  of  keeping  him  on  the 
narrow  path  of  virtue  when  he  himself  is  away  from  home. 
Then  there  are  the  old  servants  acquainted  with  the  secrets 
and  the  worries  of  the  family,  old  serving-maids  who 
have  brought  up  their  mistress ;  and,  not  to  mention  the 
courtesans  who  are  slaves,  there  are  the  abigails  and 
the  duennas  and  the  major-domos  or  heads  of  the  house- 
hold. These  constitute  the  aristocracy  of  the  slaves,  as 
it  were.  By  their  side  we  find  lackeys  who  accompany 
the  young  men  on  their  amorous  exploits  and  wait  for 
them  as  they  come  from  their  festive  gatherings ;  military 
servants,  farmers  and  field  labourers,  servants  engaged  in 
various  kinds  of  household  work,  little  urchins  who  run 
on  errands,  or  guards  who  at  a  signal  from  their  master 
lay  hands  on  a  guilty  comrade,  bind  him  and  drag  him 
off  to  prison,  etc.     We   have  already  met  with   some  of 

1  2an.,  21  et  seq.,  87-88.  ^  Men.,  fr.  260,  717,  863. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  105 

these  persons  whose  occupation  stamps  them  with  the 
characteristic  mark  of  their  profession,  but  the  majority 
have  not  been  included  in  my  analyses  hitherto,  and  even 
those  who  were  included  have  merely  been  touched  upon 
casually.  We  must,  therefore,  examine  how  the  New 
Comedy  depicted  the  mentality  of  the  slave  as  a  whole. 
This  is  a  good  opportunity  to  do  so,  between  the  study 
of  the  characters  who  represent  various  social  classes  and 
that  of  the  family  types. 

One  of  the  most  common  characteristics  of  the  slaves 
in  comedy,  and  the  one  that  strikes  us  at  once,  is  their  \ 
cunning,  their  rascality.  In  this  respect  the  Gctas  and 
the  Davuses  enjoyed  a  well-established  reputation.^ 
Fathers  of  families,  their  usual  victims,  mistrust  them  at 
every  turn,  and  the  young  men  think  themselves  sure  of 
success  as  soon  as  they  appeal  to  the  slave's  slyness. 
Indeed,  Daos — or  by  whatever  other  name  he  is  known — 
is  never  at  a  loss  for  a  device.  A  few  minutes  for  reflec- 
tion, a  few  tosses  of  the  head,  a  few  frowns,  and  a  plan 
worked  out  in  all  its  details  springs  from  his  brain.  If 
need  be,  he  improvises.  He  takes  in  a  situation  at  a 
glance.  If  some  unforeseen  incident  arises  which  may 
increase  his  chances  of  success,  like  the  arrival  of  Harpa 
in  the  Pseudolus  or  that  of  the  donkey-seller  in  the  Asinaria, 
he  immediately  turns  it  to  account.  Occasionally  his 
quickness  and  presence  of  mind  enable  him  to  profit  by 
what  would  have  been  an  awkward  contretemps  for  a 
less  crafty  tactician — for  example,  the  sudden  appearance 
of  the  soldier  towards  the  middle  of  the  Bacchides,  or  that 
of  Chremes  at  the  conclusion  of  the  Andria.  A  single 
effort  does  not  exhaust  his  inventive  faculty  :  Stratippoclcs, 
in  the  Epidicus,  is  able  to  reiterate  his  demands ;  Demea, 
in  the  Adelphi,  knows  how  to  repeat  his  ill-timed  reappear- 
ances ;  Theopropides,  in  the  Mostellaria,  understands  how 
to  renew  his  attacks ;  a  slave  is  bound  to  show  a  bold 
front  to  the  end,  and  it  is  not  only  when  fortune  favours 

»  Cf.  Gal.,  De  nat.  facidt.,  I.  17  {=  Men.,  fr.  946);   Prop.,  IV.  5  (Roth- 
stein),  44;    Ovid,  Am.,  I.  15,  17;    Apul.,  Flor.,  XVI. 


106  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

him  that  he  is  fertile  and  daring,  but  even  failure  leaves 
him  in  possession  of  his  resources  and  full  of  self-confidenee. 
So  too,  when  one  of  his  projects  falls  through,  or  threatens 
to  do  so,  our  friend  the  slave  does  not  lose  courage,  but 
retreats  in  good  order  and  renews  the  attack  at  some  other 
point ;  witness  the  Andria  and  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos ; 
nay,  more  than  that,  out  of  a  failure  which  ought  to 
discredit  him  for  a  long  time,  he  manages  with  extra- 
ordinary audacity  to  extract  the  elements  of  an  immediate 
and  startling  revenge.  It  seems  that  the  comic  writers 
hardly  ever  made  fun  of  a  dull  slave.  Sceledrus,  in  the 
Miles,  is  the  only  specimen  of  the  kind  in  Plautus  and  in 
Terence,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  writers 
of  comedy  introduced  the  type  of  a  stupid  slave,  brutalised 
by  his  wretched  position.  On  the  other  hand,  we  find 
among  the  slaves  a  number  of  fine  talkers  whose  duty  it 
is  to  amuse  the  audience,  and  of  them  the  Romans  said : 
philosophantur,  delicias  faciunt.  Daos  is  not  only  crafty, 
he  is  also  witty. 

In  the  matter  of  morals  the  slaves  of  the  New  Comedy 
leave  much  to  be  desired,  and  the  list  of  shortcomings  with 
which  they  are  charged  is  a  long  one. 

The  slightest,  though  not  the  least  surprising,  of  these 
shortcomings  is  lack  of  reverence  for  everybody,  including 
their  masters.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  in  the  works  of 
Plautus  that  this  lack  of  reverence  is  shown  in  its  most 
brutal  aspect,  and  possibly  the  Roman  poet  is,  in  more 
than  one  case,  solely  responsible  for  the  excesses  of  language 
in  which  his  actors  indulge.  But  let  us  disregard  the  gross 
language.  Assuredly  Plautus,  who  is  so  anxious  to  excuse 
anything  foreign  in  the  behaviour  of  his  slave  characters — 
in  the  Stichus,  for  instance,  and  in  the  prologue  to  the 
Casina — ^would  not,  of  his  own  accord,  have  represented 
them  in  a  disrespectful  attitude  for  which  Roman  society 
in  the  second  century  could  not  afford  him  an  example. 
Besides,  this  attitude  is  also  found  in  Terence  and  in 
Menander  himself.  In  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos  Syrus 
compliments  Chremes  on  his  sharpness,  sings  the  praises 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  107 

of  the  pretty  Bacehis,  and  in  his  presence  finds  fault  with 
his  neighbour  Menedemus,  as  though  he  were  chatting 
with  one  of  his  own  class.^  The  Syrus  of  the  Adelphi 
parodies  Demea's  moral  teachings  to  his  face.^  Onesimus, 
in  the  ' EniXQinovxEQ,  greets  his  master's  father-in-law  with 
airy  persiflage,  makes  fun  of  his  calculating  nature,  gives 
him  a  lecture  on  philosophy  and  as  a  final  shot  pays  him 
such  compliments  as  the  following  :  "  See,  you  yourself 
were  nothing  but  a  dull  beast,  for  all  your  wise  airs."  ^  If 
the  slaves  show  so  little  respect  for  the  men  upon  whom 
they  depend  when  the  latter  remain  dignified  and  severe, 
it  is  even  more  natural  that  they  should  become  too 
familiar  when  the  master,  especially  a  young  master, 
confides  his  troubles  and  his  weaknesses  to  them  and  asks 
them  for  help.  Sceparnio's  remarks  about  young  Plcsi- 
dippus  in  the  Rudens,  or  those  of  the  two  rascals  in  the 
Asinaria  about  the  merchant,  serve  to  give  us  an  idea  of 
the  liberties  that  a  slave  in  the  vsa  allowed  himself  with 
free  men  who  were  neither  his  masters  nor  friends  of  his 
masters. 

But  I  repeat  that  this  lack  of  respect  is  only  a  slight 
fault  when  compared  with  a  great  many  others.  As  a  \ 
rule,  slaves  are  indiscreet,  inquisitive,  and  given  to  slander.  ! 
In  the  Hecyra,  Parmeno,  without  much  urging,  reveals  to 
Philotis  the  secrets  of  Pamphilus'  life.  In  the  ^EniXQenovreQ 
Onesimus  listens  at  the  keyhole,^  and  in  the  Phormio  Geta 
does  the  same.^  In  the  Aulularia  Pythodicus  tells  the 
cooks  about  the  stingy  disposition,  true  or  imagined,  of 
neighbour  Euclio.  In  the  Poenulus  Syncerastus  confides 
things  to  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry  which  might  ruin  his 
master. 

Gossip,  as  such,  has  a  great  charm  for  slaves,  for  they  * 
are  lazy  and  only  seek  ways  of  wasting  their  time.     In 
comedy  they  are  cursed  at  for  their  indolence,  their  slow- , 
ness,  their  lack  of  good-will  and  for  the  carelessness  with 
which    they    perform    their    duties.      Ballio's    diatribe    is 

1  Heaut.,  518  et  seq.     ^  Ad.,  422  ot  seq.      '  'Zirirp.,  480  et  seq. 
*  Ibid.,  404  et  seq.  *  Phorm.,  866  et  seq. 


108  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

well  known, ^  and  without  searching  elsewhere  than  in  the 
fragments  of  Philemon  and  of  Menandcr,  we  find  enough 
to  justify  it.  A  slave,  sent  to  market,  eomes  back  with 
something  quite  different  from  what  he  had  been  told  to 
fetch ;  another,^  who  has  been  told  to  carry  a  load,  sets 
it  down  before  the  door  and  gapes  in  the  air ;  ^  in  another 
passage  a  woman  employed  in  a  mill  chatters  more  than 
she  works.*  Everything  that  calls  for  increased  energy  or 
action  is  detested  by  the  slave.  Geta,  in  the  Mioov^evog, 
says  that  he  is  exhausted  by  his  master's  nocturnal 
excursions,  on  which  he  is  obliged  to  accompany  him ;  ^ 
Palinurus,  in  the  Curculio,  says  the  same  thing.^  The 
servant  Polemo,  in  the  IleQixeiQOjuevr],  and  Parmeno,  in 
the  Hecyra,  think  that  they  are  obliged  to  walk  a  great  deal 
too  much.'  Stasimus,  in  the  Trinummus,  thinks  with 
terror  of  the  hardships  of  military  life  which  he  is  afraid 
he  will  have  to  share  with  Lesbonicus.^  In  the  eyes  of 
city  servants,  being  sent  to  the  country,  where  one  must 
run  about  and  sweat  in  the  sun,  is  the  worst  of  all 
punishments.^ 

\  To  the  slave's  mind  a  good  part  of  happiness  consists 
in  lounging  about  or  dozing  in  a  corner.  Another  element 
of  enjoyment  is  the  gratification  of  sensual  appetites. 
Slaves  delight  in  being  i:akes,  and  truth  compels  the 
admission  that  herein  they  do  not  differ  from  free  men. 
But  above  all  they  are  drunkards  and  gluttons.  The 
"  Daos  in  a  lively  mood,"  whom  Dio  Chrysostomus  cites 
among  the  characters  in  comedy,^"  no  doubt  belongs  to 
the  vea,  and  fragment  229  of  Menander  must  belong  to  a 
scene  similar  to  one  of  the  closing  scenes  of  the  Pseudolus. 
In  the  "Hgajg,  Geta's  ideal  is  to  fill  his  belly  well ;  ^^  Daos, 
in  the  IleQiKELQOfxevr],  is  capable  of  forgetting  his  duty 
if  he  is  within  reach  of  a  good  meal.^^     j^  Latin  comedy 

1  Pseud.,  133etseq.  ^  Philem.,  fr.  145.  ^  Men.,  fr.  420. 

*  Ibid.,  fr.  943.  ^  Ibid.,  fr.  341.  «  Cure,  181  et  seq. 
'  nepiK.,  164etseq. ;  Hec,  814-815. 

•  Trin.,  596  et  seq.,  721  et  seq.  »  Cf.  As.,  342;  Most.,  19. 
10  Dio  Chrys.,  XXXII.  p.  699  R  =  fr.  adesp.  306. 

"  Men.,  fr.  345;  "Hp.,  16-17.  i''  nepi/c.,  281-283. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  109 

his  comrades  in  service,  even  the  most  distinj^uished  of 
them,  like  Syrus  of  the  Adelphi,  take  a  very  lively  interest 
in  free  dinners. ^ 

In  order  to  gratify  this  taste  for  good  food,  and  also 
to  increase  their  savings,  which  some  day  arc  to  enable 
them  to  purchase  their  liberty,  slaves  do  not  hesitate 
^  to  steal.  In  a  fragment  of  a  play  by  Posidippus  a  slave- 
cook  mentions  stealing  meat  as  a  peccadillo  of  daily  occur- 
rence.^ Strobilus,  in  the  Aulularia,  coolly  appropriates 
a  pot  full  of  gold  belonging  to  Euclio.  Stasimus,  in  the 
Triniimmiis,  who  looks  after  the  finances  of  a  young 
spendthrift,  abstracts  a  very  comfortable  sum  for  his 
own  use.^  Apparently  he  shares  the  opinion  of  one  of 
Menander's  characters  :  "  When  the  master  himself 
squanders  his  whole  fortune,  if  you  take  nothing  for 
yourself,  you  injure  yourself  without  helping  him."  ^ 

And  finally,  slaves  are  liars,  impudent  and  imperturb- ' 
able  liars ;  they  lie  in  order  to  deceive  their  foes,  they  lie 
in  order  to  gain  the  respect  of  their  masters,  they  lie  in 
order  to  hide  their  escapades,  they  lie  in  order  to  disguise 
the  fact  that  they  have  lied  !  In  their  eyes  perjury  is 
not  reprehensible;  nay,  it  is  even  one  of  the  things  in 
which  they  glory.  ^  Mysis,  in  the  Andria,  is  quite  surprised 
at  seeing  the  precautions — they  are  purely  formal  pre- 
cautions— that  Davus  takes  to  avoid  swearing  a  false 
oath.®  On  the  other  hand,  Davus  cannot  understand 
why  Pamphilus  hesitates  to  lie  in  order  to  get  out  of  a 
scrape,'  and  another  knave  of  the  same  species,  Syrus, 
in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos,  appears  to  think  the  scruples 
of  Chremes  rather  silly  when  the  latter  refuses  to  pretend 
that  he  is  giving  his  daughter  to  Clinia.^ 

Such  being  the  characteristics  of  the  majority  of  slaves, 
one  cannot  expect  them  to  be  restrained  by  conscientious 
scruples  or  by  a  sense  of  honour.  Dread  of  punishment 
is  the  beginning,  and  often  also  the  end,  of  their  good 

1  ^d.,  7G3-764.       »  Posid.,  fr.  2.       »  Tr/^.,  413.     Cf.  Philemon,  fr.  32. 
*  Men.,  fr.  580.        »  Aa.,  562.  «  Andr.,  726-730. 

'  Ibid.,  383  et  seq.  *  Heaut.,  780  et  seq. 


no  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

behaviour.  Of  this  we  can  form  an  idea  from  those 
remarks  of  Phaniscus  in  the  Mostellaria,  of  Strobilus  in 
the  Aulularia,  and  of  Mcsscnio  in  the  Menaechmi,  which, 
in  substance,  are  all  derived  from  Greek  originals. ^  In 
many  a  case,  however,  this  dread  is  no  longer  effective. 
Backs  become  callous  from  too  frequent  beating,  and 
the  skin  becomes  hardened  by  blows  and  tires  the  arms 
of  the  flogger.  The  slaves  in  Latin  comedy  scorn  flog- 
gings, chains  and  the  various  punishments  that  await 
them, 2  and  notwithstanding  the  silence  of  the  original 
fragments,  we  may  assume  that  this  indifference  was  also 
found  in  the  characters  of  the  new  period.  This  is  a 
further  illustration  of  their  degraded  state. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  slave  in  the  vea  is  often  a  despic- 
able creature,  but  take  it  all  in  all,  and  considering  the 
conditions  of  his  life,  he  might  have  been  represented 
in  a  much  more  repulsive  light.  We  must  not  forget 
that  we  are  dealing  with  a  period  in  which  theorists  define 
him  as  "  a  living  tool,"  ^  and  even  in  comedy,  in  the  midst 
of  buffoonery  and  laughter,  the  frightfulness  of  his  con- 
dition strikes  us  harshly.  Upon  what  do  the  tortures 
which  are  so  often  mentioned  and  which  may  make  his 
flesh  turn  pale,  his  blood  flow  and  his  bones  break — upon 
what  do  they  depend  ?  On  the  caprice  of  his  master. 
Defenceless  and  exposed  to  injustice,  to  the  moods  and 
the  brutality  of  others,  the  slave  in  real  life  must  have 
been  filled  with  hatred;  but  it  is  not  so  on  the  stage. 
Antiphanes,  in  a  passage  where  he  enumerates  the  dangers 
of  life,  speaks  of  slaves  who  kill  their  masters ;  ^  our 
Davuses  and  Getas  are  certainly  not  the  kind  of  men 
who  contemplate  such  a  crime.  As  a  rule,  their  worst 
crime  is  cheating.  In  all  comedy  there  is  but  a  single 
slave — Stalagmus  of  the  Captivi — who  is  a  real  criminal. 
Wlien  he  runs  away  he  kidnaps  his  master's  son,  but  this 

^  Most.,  857  et  seq. ;   Aul.,  587  et  seq. ;   Menaech.,  966  et  seq. 

*  Aa.,  318  et  seq.;  548  et  seq.,  574-576,  et  seq.;  Bacch.,  365;  Capt., 
650;  etc. 

»  Arist.,  Polit.,  I,  2,  4  (p.  1253  B,  31-32). 

*  Antiphanes,  fr.  204. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  111 

black  villain  does  not  appear  until  the  end  of  the  play — 
just  in  time  to  <rct  his  punishment. 

What  forces  drive  the  slave  to  do  wrong?  Frequently 
it  is  compulsion.  A  young  man  commands  his  servant 
to  procure  money  or  a  woman  for  him,  or  to  hide  an 
escapade,  or  to  thwart  a  disagreeable  plan ;  promptly, 
and  despite  himself,  the  slave  is  engaged  in  some  lying 
or  thieving  business.  Occasionally  he  protests,  tries  to 
talk  sense  to  his  master,  and  makes  clear  to  the  young 
fool  the  risks  that  he,  poor  devil,  runs  in  serving  him.^ 
But  the  youth  cares  not  for  advice  nor  for  complaints, 
and  if  he  is  not  obeyed,  he  threatens  with  the  lash  or 
the  treadmill.  And  what  is  the  slave  to  do,  standing  as 
he  does  between  two  dangers  ?  Pseudolus  makes  it  clear 
to  the  aged  Simo;  ^  by  obeying  he  averts  the  nearer 
danger,  and  trusts  to  luck  or  to  his  own  shrewdness  to 
avoid  the  more  distant  one  when  the  time  comes.  How- 
ever, we  must  not  exaggerate  the  part  played  by  com- 
pulsion. Sometimes  it  is  purely  and  simply  the  slave 
himself  who  takes  the  initiative  and  embarks  on  danger- 
ous ventures  for  his  master's  sake ;  witness  Syrus,  in  the 
Heauton  Timoroumenos.  Generally  the  slave  lies  and  steals 
without  any  special  repugnance.  Besides,  even  when  he 
lies  or  steals  for  some  one  else  he  may  profit  by  doing 
so,  because  he  is  generally  given  a  share  of  the  spoils. 
Chrysalus,  Pseudolus,  Libanus,  Leonides  and  Tranio  take 
part  in  their  master's  orgies — a  pleasant  prospect  which 
ought  to  suffice  to  fill  them  with  zeal  !  Another  advantage 
that  arises  from  this  association  is  that  the  slave  who  is 
the  organiser-in-chief  of  all  knavery,  acquires  the  right 
of  speaking  frankly  to  free  men,  of  ordering  them  about 
and  of  lecturing  them.^  Besides,  something  like  the  pride  , 
of  the  specialist  prompts  him  to  hatch  the  most  compli- 
cated plots,  and  he  delights  in  knowing  that  he  is  the 
author  and  the  centre  of  so  many  schemes.'*     The  thought 

1  Philem.,  fr.  18;  Epid.,  146-147;  Eun.,  381.  »  Pseud.,  502-503. 

»  Miles,  782  et  seq.,  902  et  seq.,  1176et  seq. ;  Andr.,  705  et  seq. ;  Paeud., 
235,  387  et  seq.,  720  et  seq. ;  etc. 

*  Men.,  fr.  946;  Miles,  813;  Pseud.,  574  et  seq. 


112  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

that  he  may  ecHpse  his  rivals  and  establish  a  record  for 
shrewdness  fills  him  with  joy  in  advance. ^  He  scornfully 
despises  victories  won  over  a  dull  rival, ^  but  as  soon  as 
he  finds  himself  face  to  face  with  crafty  adversaries  who 
are  on  the  defensive,  he  gets  excited  and  thinks  of  nothing 
but  the  end  that  is  to  be  gained.  When  he  does  succeed, 
he  sings  veritable  songs  of  triumph  and  self-glorification, 
with  which  certain  of  Plautus'  imitations — thoroughly 
Greek  in  spirit — acquaint  us,^  and  of  which  fragment  924 
of  Menander  appears  to  me  to  be  an  original  bit.  Such 
behaviour  reveals  more  vanity  than  real  malice.  When 
all  is  said  and  done,  the  desire  to  do  harm  is  rarely  the 
motive  that  actuates  slaves. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  not  unusual  in  comedy  to  find  a 
slave  who  is  capable  of  affection,  sympathy  and  devotion 
for  the  family  which  he  serves  or  for  one  of  its  members. 
The  most  mischievous  knaves  in  all  comedy  are  occasion- 
ally imbued  with  these  feelings.  In  the  Phormio  Geta 
declares  that  if  he  were  thinking  of  himself  only,  he  would 
run  away  as  soon  as  Demipho  returned ;  if  he  remains  and 
exposes  himself  to  the  wrath  of  the  father  of  the  family 
it  is  from  compassion  for  the  son — so  he  says  in  a  soliloquy.* 
In  the  Andria  Davus  finds  the  following  reason  for  dis- 
obeying Simo  and  helping  Pamphilus  :  "  If  I  were  to  for- 
sake Pamphilus  I  should  have  to  fear  for  his  life."  ^  Be- 
sides compulsion,  personal  interest  and  vainglory,  we  must 
frequently  include  among  the  motives  of  the  rascally 
slave  a  real  affection  for  his  young  master,  his  rQ6(pijuog. 
The  latter,  moreover,  is  well  aware  of  this,  and  when  he 
makes  peace  with  the  paternal  powers,  he  always  stipu- 
lates for  the  impunity  of  his  faithful  ally.^  We  may  even 
say  that  in  the  soul  of  certain  knaves  there  is  sometimes 
found  a  curious  loyalty  towards  the  very  man  whom  they 

1  Men.,  fr.  751;  Oxyrh.  Pap.,  Vol.  I,  No.  11;  Bacch.,  649  et  seq., 
Turpilius,  Thrasyleon,  fr.  VI. 

2  Men.,  fr.  393. 

^  For  example,  Chrysalus'  canticum  in  the  Bacchides,  925  et  seq. 

*  Phorm.,  188.  ^  Andr.,  210. 

•  Bacch.,  521  et  seq.,  689-691 ;  Moat.,  1168  et  seq. ;  Andr.,  955. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  113 

rob  and  abuse.  In  the  Trinummus,  Stasimus,  during  the 
absence  of  Charmides,  is  not  ashamed  to  profit  by  the 
thriftlessness  of  the  latter's  son,  but  when  Charmides 
returns  in  time  to  straighten  out  his  affairs,  Stasimus 
welcomes  him  with  a  joy  that  is  apparently  not  feigned. 

Elsewhere,  affection  for  the  master  is  still  more  un- 
qualified. It  is  so,  for  instance,  among  a  number  of  women 
servants,  old  nurses  and  others,  who  console,  help,  and,  if 
occasion  offers,  protect  some  unfortunate  woman  when 
she  is  in  a  scrape — witness  Philinna,  in  the  FECogyog; 
Canthara,  in  the  Adelphi;  Syra,  in  the  Mercator;  Doris, 
in  the  UeQixeigofievrj ;  Mysis,  in  the  Andria ;  Staphyla, 
in  the  Aulularia;  Sophrona,  in  the  "EnixQETiorxei;,  and 
Sophrona,  in  the  Phormio.  Irreproachable  loyalty  is  also 
found  among  the  male  slaves,  and  they  are  lauded  in 
fragment  644  of  Menander.  Such  a  one  is  Grumio  or 
Stratylax,  before  his  "  change  of  heart,"  or  Lampadio, 
or  Geta,  in  the  Adelphi,  or  Parmeno,  in  the  UXomov,  whom 
Aulus  Gellius^  calls  ''''  servus  bonae  frugi  " ;  and  such  were, 
in  all  probability,  the  characters  who  give  their  names 
as  titles  for  a  number  of  comedies  of  the  decadent  period 
called  OilodeonoTog.  Polemon's  servant,  in  the  nEQixsigojuevr], 
takes  an  interest  in  his  master's  love  affairs.^  In  the 
'EnLXQenovxeQ  Onesimus  has  watched  the  wife  of  Charisius 
during  the  latter's  absence  and  informed  him — with  more 
zeal  than  tact — of  the  unpleasant  things  that  he  has 
observed.  In  the  Miles  Palaestrio  on  his  own  initiative 
starts  in  pursuit  of  the  ravisher  who  had  carried  off  Pleu- 
sicles'  sweetheart.  Messenio  protects  Menaechmus'  purse 
against  Menaechmus  himself,  and  unhesitatingly  comes 
to  blows  for  him.  Now  and  again  we  hear  a  slave  say  that  I 
he  is  contented  and  protesting  that  he  is  loyal. ^  Daos, 
in  the  "Hgcog,  apparently  sings  the  praises  of  Laches ;  * 
with  a  trustfulness  that  does  honour  to  them  both,  he 
confides  to  him  his  fondness  for  Plangon  and  begs  him  to 

»  Aul.  Cell.,  II.  23,  15.  «  UeptK.,  68-70,  160  et  seq. 

'  Men.,  fr.  1093  =  Philem.,  fr.  227. 
*  "up.,  48  (Robert's  emendation). 
I 


114  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

intercede  for  him  with  Gorgias,  the  brother  and  kyrios 
of  the  young  woman.  Elsewhere,  master  and  slave  con- 
verse in  a  cordial  manner — the  former  counsels  and  the 
latter  consoles.^  And  it  is  not  only  in  the  houses  of  the 
poor,  who  are  hardly  less  wretched  than  their  slaves, 
that  such  sympathy  may  exist.  The  poor  man  in  Phile- 
mon,2  who  is  surprised  at  the  troubles  of  the  rich  and  has 
pity  for  them,  addresses  his  remarks  to  a  certain  Sosia. 
Now  that  is  the  name  of  a  slave,  and  the  Sosia  in  question 
was,  no  doubt,  the  slave  of  some  rich  man.  He  laments 
over  the  unhappiness  of  which  he  is  a  witness  and  by  means 
of  his  wailing  moves  the  poor  man  to  pity.  The  heroic 
example  of  Tyndarus  in  the  Captivi  shows  us  how  far  the 
affection  of  a  slave  for  his  master  can  go;  he  does  not 
hesitate  to  risk  his  life  in  order  to  free  Philocrates  from 
captivity. 

The  slaves  in  comedy  hardly  take  an  interest  in  anybody 
except  their  master.  Towards  their  comrades  in  service 
they  are,  as  a  rule,  indifferent  or  even  evilly  disposed ;  each 
of  them  laughs  at  the  misfortunes  of  his  neighbours,  spite- 
fully figures  out  the  punishments  that  await  them,  is 
jealous  of  them  and,  if  he  has  any  authority  over  them, 
lets  them  feel  it  to  their  sorrow.^  As  for  foreigners,  the 
slave,  for  the  most  part,  regards  them  as  nothing  more 
than  interlopers  or  dupes.  Still,  there  are  some  honourable 
exceptions  to  this  egotism.  Syriscus,  in  the  'EnixQenovreg, 
is  a  slave.  Doubtless  he  is  a  privileged  person,  a  xcoqIq 
oixcbv,  who  has  a  wife  and  household,  and  plies  his  trade 
at  home  in  return  for  paying  his  master  a  rental ;  still  he 
is  a  slave.  Now  Syriscus  has  a  compassionate  soul;  he 
wishes,  if  possible,  to  spare  his  temporary  ward  the  evil — 
slavery — from  which  he  suffers,  and  without  any  selfish 
interest  he  eagerly  and  passionately  demands  the  child's 

1  Philem.,  fr.  73,  90,  133;  Men.,  fr.  155,  407,  481,  649;  Philippides, 
fr.  adesp.,  115. 

2  Philem.,  fr.  96. 

'  [Men.],  fr.  698.  See  the  attitude  of  the  pseudo-Saurea  toward  Libanus, 
of  Thesprio  toward  Epidicus,  and  the  exchange  of  amenities  between 
Pinacium  and  Phaniscus  {Most.),  etc. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  115 

yvcoQia/iaza.  Another  person  in  the  same  play,  Habro- 
tonon,  also  a  slave  and  desirous  of  liberty,  is  disturbed 
at  the  thought  tliat  the  little  boy,  son  of  a  citizen,  runs 
the  risk  of  growing  up  in  bondage,  and  she  reproaches 
Onesimus  for  not  taking  active  steps  on  his  behalf.^ 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  fair  to  say  that  the  diligence 
with  which  some  slaves  fulfil  their  tasks  redounds  to  their 
credit.  We  have  already  found  this  virtue  in  several 
rustics,  Grumio,  Stratylax  and  Olympio.  Lydus,  in  the 
Bacchides,  is  the  type  of  a  zealous  pedagogue,  whose  zeal, 
by  the  way,  meets  with  a  poor  reward,  while  he  himself  is 
repudiated  by  his  master.  No  doubt  it  was  also  a  peda- 
gogue who  addressed  to  a  youth  some  moral  lecture  which 
is  preserved  in  the  fragments,-  and  who  indulged  in  com- 
mendable remarks  about  his  duties  which  are  interpolated 
in  lines  592  et  seq.  of  the  Aulularia.  Traces  of  this  pro- 
fessional pride  are  found  even  in  the  most  ticklish  situa- 
tions; witness  the  reasoning  with  which  Parmeno,  in  the 
Eunuchus,  consoles  himself  for  having  introduced  Chaerea, 
against  that  young  man's  wish,  to  Thais. ^ 

Finally,  we  meet  with  slaves  who  manage  to  retain  a 
certain  dignity  in  their  abasement.  I  do  not,  of  course, 
refer  to  the  absurd  pride  of  a  Geta  who  is  proud  of  his 
birth,*  nor  of  a  Thracian  who,  if  we  are  to  believe  his 
words,  was  a  prince  among  his  people ;  ^  but  to  true  moral 
dignity,  to  the  consciousness  of  being  a  human  being.  In 
a  fragment  of  Philemon  we  read  :  "  Even  if  a  man  be  a 
slave,  O  master,  he  is  none  the  less  a  man,  if  he  is  a  man ;  "  ^ 
and  in  another  fragment  of  the  same  author  a  slave  says 
that  every  man  in  this  world,  in  no  less  or  greater  degree 
than  himself,  is  the  slave  of  some  person  or  of  some  thing.' 
Though  he  does  not  indulge  in  such  fine  aphorisms,  Syriscus' 
attitude,  in  the  " Eniroenovxe:;,  gives  evidence  of  similar 
levelling  instincts.     When  he  begs  Smicrines  to  be  arbiter 

1  'ETTiTp.,  251-253.  *  Men.,  fr.  530,  531.  »  Eiin.,  930  et  seq. 

«  Men.,  fr.  547.  ">  Ibid.,  fr.  828. 

•  Philem.,  fr.  22  :  6.y6ponros  ovt6s  iariv,  hv  HvSpwiros  §. 

'>  Ibid.,  fr.  31. 


IIG  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

between  himself  and  Daos,  lie  addresses  him  politely,  but 
without  obsequiousness  and  more  freely  than  a  poor  man 
of  the  lower  classes  would  to-day  address  a  gentleman. 
The  latter  at  first  testily  gives  him  a  rebuff,  but  he  is  not 
disconcerted  and  insists  in  the  name  of  justice  and  the 
public  interest.  He  is  not  afraid  to  reprimand  a  man  who 
is  far  above  him  in  station,  and  finally  gains  his  point. ^ 

§  5 
The  Family 

We  are  now  ready  to  take  up  the  study  of  the  family. 
I  shall  begin  by  seeing  what  sort  of  a  picture  our  poets 
painted  of  marriage  and  of  married  life. 

New  Comedy  is  misogynous.  Diphilus  says  :  "  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  find  a  good  woman."  ^  When,  in  the  Aulularia, 
which  is  probably  an  imitation  of  Menander,  Megadorus 
addresses  his  sister  with  the  words  :  oytima  femina,  she, 
being  doubtless  used  to  other  appellations,  is  greatly 
surprised.  "  There  is  no  such  thing  as  an  excellent 
woman,"  she  declares  with  a  curious  humility ;  "  each  one 
is  worse  than  the  other."  To  which  Megadorus  condes- 
cendingly replies,  "  That  is  my  opinion  too."  ^  Stupidity, 
a  natural  propensity  to  take  the  wrong  side  and  to  cling 
to  it  obstinately,  an  irascible  and  untractable  temper,  a 
spirit  of  contradiction,  vanity,  garrulousness,  greediness, 
jealousy,  lack  of  modesty,  faithlessness,  heartlessness,  in- 
gratitude, hypocrisy,  lying — all  these  are  charged  against 
women  in  general.  Wherever  women  are,  there  all  evils 
are  found.  They  are  the  most  wicked  animals  in  the  world,* 
and  Prometheus,  who  created  them,  well  deserved  his 
punishment.^ 

As  the  vsa  professed  so  unfavourable  an  opinion  of  the 
fair  sex,  we  cannot  expect  it  to  extol  marriage.  In  two 
fragments — both  by  Menander — we  hear  a  defence  of  the 
institution  of  marriage,  or  rather  a  plea  of  extenuating 

1  'Eirirp.,  13etseq.  «  Diph.,  fr.  115.  ^  Aul,  135  et  seq. 

*  Men.,  fr.  488.  ^  ji^id,^  fr.  535. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  117 

circumstances  in  its  favour.^  Marriage  is  an  evil,  a  neces- 
sary evil,  if  you  will,  but  undeniably  an  evil  ^ — a  tiling 
that  one  wishes  one's  enemies.'  Even  the  fathers  of  mar- 
riageable daughters  say  so.^  Alexis  declares  that  it  is 
better  to  be  disfranchised  than  to  be  married.^  Another 
poet,  perhaps  Philemon,  says  that  it  is  better  to  bury  a 
wife  than  to  marry  her.''  In  a  fragment  of  Menander  we 
read  that  he  who  marries  ought  to  esteem  himself  happy 
if  he  is  not  thoroughly  unhappy,'  and  in  another  still  more 
pessimistic  fragment  marriage  is  compared  to  a  sea  of 
trouble,  not  to  a  Libyan  or  Aegean  Sea,  in  which  only  three 
out  of  every  thirty  ships  are  wrecked,  but  to  a  sea  on  which 
there  is  no  hope  of  safety.^  Eubulus,  a  poet  of  the  middle 
period,  wrote  :  "  May  the  second  man  who  took  a  wife 
die  a  terrible  death.  Of  the  first  one  who  did  so  I  shall 
not  speak  ill  because  he,  no  doubt,  had  no  experience  of 
this  plague ;  but  the  second  man  knew  how  great  a  calamity 
a  woman  is."  ^  Menander  goes  still  further  :  "  May  he  die 
a  wretched  death  who  was  the  first  to  get  married,  and 
then  the  second,  then  the  third,  then  the  fourth  and  so 
on."  ^°  One  must  be  young  and  inexperienced  to  have 
a  desire  to  marry.  A  man  who  has  been  a  bachelor  up 
to  a  mature  age  does  not  usually  dream  of  changing  his 
state;  he  congratulates  himself  upon  being  free  and  wife- 
less.^^  He  regards  proposals  of  marriage  as  he  would  a 
shower  of  stones,^^  and  if  he  succumbs,  it  is  under  pres- 
sure from  his  family,  like  Micio,  in  the  Adelphi,  or  like 
Megadorus,  through  the  influence  of  some  god. 

Such  scenes  of  married  life  as  New  Comedy  portrayed 
were  generally  sufficient  warrant  for  these  sarcastic  remarks 
and  for  such  apprehensions.  There  are  only  three  Latin 
plays — the  Amphitryon,  the  Stichus  and  the  Uccijra — in 

1  Men.,  fr.  325,  647. 

2  Philem.,  fr.  196,  198;  Men.,  fr.  651,  fr.  adesp.,  132. 

3  Fr.  adesp.  296-297.  «  Men.,  fr.  532.  »  Alexis,  fr.  262. 
«  [Philem.],  fr.  236.               '  Men.,  fr.  648,  of.  532.       »  Ibid.,  fr.  65. 

»  Eub.,  fr.  116.  1"  Men.,  fr.  154,  cf.  fr.  adesp.  110. 

"  Philem.,  fr.  239,  Men.,  fr.  1  (=  Ad.,  43-44);   Philippides,  fr.  6. 
12  Aul.,  151-152. 


118  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

which  wc  see  contented  homes ;  and  in  each  of  them  har- 
mony reigns  under  quite  special  conditions ;  for  Amphitryon, 
Pamphikis,  and  the  two  husbands  in  the  Stichus,  come  home 
after  a  long  absence.  As  regards  the  last  two,  I  must 
add  that  while  their  young  wives  awaited  them  with  an 
affectionate  loyalty,  they  themselves  appear  to  be  not  less 
impatient  or  less  delighted  to  see  them  once  more.  As 
for  Pamphilus,  he  is  on  his  honeymoon ;  legally  married 
for  less  than  a  year,  the  union  of  his  heart  is  still  more 
recent. 

Apart  from  the  Latin  comedies,  a  few  passages  admit 
of  the  supposition  that  an  edifying  married  life  was 
represented  in  the  vea.  Pamphilia  and  Charisius,  in  the 
' EniXQsnovxeq,  lived  in  tender  accord  before  the  birth  of 
the  supposed  bastard.  When  the  complication  which  had 
separated  them  for  a  time  is  straightened  out,  they  become 
reconciled  and  doubly  devoted  to  one  another.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  JJeQivQia  it  was,  as  we  know,  to  his  wife 
— and  not  to  his  enfranchised  slave,  as  in  the  Andria — 
that  the  father  confided  his  anxieties  and  his  plans.  In 
fragment  160  of  Menander,  a  person  whom  I  believe  to  be 
a  woman,  a  married  woman,  gives  a  man  good  advice.  In 
fragment  827  homage  is  paid  to  the  excellent  discretion 
of  a  wife.  In  fragment  848  some  one  exclaims  :  oi  Zsv 
nolvxifirid^  chg  xaXal  vcov  at  yvvai  {sic);  if  xaXai  here  refers 
to  moral  qualities,  it  is  possible  that  this  line  comes  from 
'AdeXcpol  a,  the  model  which  Plautus  followed  in  the  Stichus. 
Finally,  in  fragment  608,  some  unkno\vn  person  angrily 
defends  his  wife's  reputation.  That  is  all ;  and  it  is,  as 
we  see,  very  little. 

As  compared  wdth  these  rare  evidences  of  mutual  esteem 
and  of  satisfaction,  quarrels  and  recriminations  are  of  very 
frequent  occurrence,  and  comedies,  as  is  natural,  since  they 
were  written  by  men,  make  a  special  point  of  the  griev- 
ances of  husbands.  To  judge  by  the  way  in  which  a  friend 
tries  to  console  him,^  the  misogynist  in  Menander  blames 
his  wife  for  having  an  immoderate  love  of  luxury,   for 

1  Men.,  fr.  325,  7. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  119 

senseless  extravagance  in  dress,  in  furniture  and  perfumes.^ 
In  the  Hecyra  Laehcs  declares  that,  in  order  to  offset 
the  extravagances  of  Sostrata,  he  is  obhged  to  hve  in  the 
country.2  In  the  Miles  Periplecomenus  mentions  the 
dread  of  being  incessantly  bombarded  with  demands  for 
money  as  one  of  the  reasons  that  keeps  him  from  getting 
married.^  Megadorus,  in  the  Aulularia,  is  inexhaustible 
on  that  subject.^  Moreover,  it  is  not  only  on  account  of 
the  cost  that  the  luxury  of  their  wives  and  the  artifices  of 
their  toilets  annoy  the  husbands  so  much.  Sometimes  it 
is  also  because  they  think  such  things  improper.  "  Leave 
the  house,"  says  a  husband  in  Menander;  "a  respectable 
woman  ought  not  to  dye  her  hair  golden."  ^ 

Besides  these  sumptuary  expenses,  the  misogynist  must 
have  found  fault  with  the  expenses  due  to  an  exaggerated 
piety.  At  any  rate,  he  very  much  disliked  to  see  his  wife 
constantly  engaged  in  offering  sacrifices.^  "  It  is  us,  the 
married  men,"  says  one  of  his  companions  in  misery,  "  whom 
the  gods  ruin  by  preference ;  for  us  there  is  always  some 
festival  to  be  celebrated."  '  Superstition  is  a  feminine 
weakness  of  which  husbands  in  comedy  appear  to  have 
complained  more  than  once.  In  his  satire  on  married  life, 
Periplecomenus  speaks  of  matrons  who  are  anxious  to 
satisfy  a  whole  tribe  of  female  charlatans.^ 

Yet  another  grievance  :  women  talk  too  much,  and  have 
a  mania  for  being  effusive  to  excess.  Daemones,  in  the 
Rudens,  on  coming  home,  expects  his  wife  to  weary  his 
brain  with  her  chatter.^  Subsequently,  when  she  has 
found  her  daughter  again,  he  reproaches  her  because  she 
will  not  stop  embracing  her.^*^  Under  analogous  condi- 
tions Chremes,  in  the  Heauton  Timor oumenos,  overwhelms 
his  wife  with  sarcastic  remarks.^^  It  must  be  admitted 
that  Daemones  and  Chremes  are  unreasonably  grumpy; 
the  happy  event  at  which  their  wives  rejoice  may  well 
excuse  a  few  superfluous  words. 

1  Men.,  fr.  332,  333,  334  (?);  Philom.,  fr.  81.  «  Hcc,  224  et  seq. 

3  Mika,  690  et  seq.  *  AuL,  483  ot  seq.  '■  Men.,  fr.  610. 

«  Ibid.,  It.  326.  '  Ibid.,  It.  601.  «  ilfjVes,  693-694. 

»  Rud.,  905,  1"  Ibid.,  1203-1205.  "  Heaut.,  879  et  seq. 


120  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

But  now  we  come  to  something  more  serious  :  at  every 
opportunity  the  wives  pick  a  quarrel  with  their  husbands 
and  oppose  them.  Laches,  in  the  Hecyra,  and  a  character 
in  one  of  Naevius'  plays  are  melancholy  over  the  recogni- 
tion of  this  fact;i  Chremes,  in  the  Heauton  Timorou- 
menos,  groans  over  it.-  As  a  matter  of  fact,  neither  the 
Sostrata  in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos  nor  the  Sostrata 
in  the  Hecyra  gives  any  evidence  of  so  cantankerous  a 
disposition.  But  other  matrons  on  the  comic  stage  made 
themselves  liable  to  this  reproach.  In  the  Mercator, 
Dorippa,  the  wife  of  Lysimachus,  who  was  to  have  waited 
for  him  in  the  country,  goes  to  town  in  order  to  follow  him, 
and  she  boasts  of  this  escapade.^ 
1  Often  the  quarrelsome  disposition  of  a  woman  degener- 
'  ates  into  tyranny.  The  unfortunate  Menaechmus  has  to 
submit  to  a  close  cross-examination  every  time  he  goes  out 
or  comes  home  :  "  Where  are  you  going  ?  What  are  you 
doing?  What  are  you  after?  What  are  you  going  to 
fetch  ?  What  are  you  taking  away  with  you  ?  What  did 
you  do  out  of  doors  ?  "  so  that  Menaechmus  declares  : 
"  I  have  married  a  customs  officer  who  obliges  me  to  de- 
clare everything  that  I  have  done  and  everything  that  I 
am  doing."  *  In  one  of  Philemon's  comedies  a  tyrannical 
wife  is  brought  back  to  her  senses.^  In  Menander's 
'Yno^oXLjualog  the  extremes  to  which  another  "  masterful 
woman  "  goes  call  forth  similar  remarks  from  some  one.^ 
The  household  in  which  the  husband  trembles  in  the 
presence  of  his  imperious  better  half  is  a  commonplace 
of  the  comic  poets.  Hardly  has  such  a  husband,  whom 
the  world  deems  happy  and  who,  when  away  from  home, 
puts  on  airs — hardly  has  he  crossed  the  threshold  of  his 
house  than  he  falls  under  the  dominion  of  his  wife.^  And 
what  is  at  the  bottom  of  this  dominion  ?  Most  frequently, 
money.  Men  cringe  before  their  wives  because  their 
wives  are  richer  than  they.     The  New  Comedy  is  full  of 

1  Hec.,  202;  Naevius,  Agitatoria,  fr.  11.  *  HeauL,  1006-1007. 

»  Merc,  667-669.  ••  Menaech.,  lUetseq. ;   117-118. 

»  Philem.,  fr.  132.  «  Men.,  fr.  484.  '  Ibid.,  fr.  302. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  121 

curses  against  a  dowered  wife  and  of  lamentations  by- 
husbands,  who,  as  one  of  them  says,  have  sold  their  free- 
dom for  a  dower. 1  A  passage  of  the  TIloxiov,  preserved 
by  Aulus  GelHus,  especially  deserves  to  be  quoted  here. 
The  speaker  is  a  husband  whose  wife  Crobyle  has  just  forced 
him  to  sell  a  little  slave  girl,  a  good  and  clever  servant, 
at  whom  she  had  taken  umbrage  :  "  She  will  sleep  on 
both  ears  now,  the  pretty  heiress  !  She  has  just  performed 
a  great  and  glorious  feat  of  prowess.  .  .  .  Alas,  that  I 
should  have  taken  this  Crobyle  with  her  sixteen  talents  and 
her  cubit-long  nose.  And  what  conceit  !  Can  I  possibly 
stand  her?  No,  by  the  Olympian  Zeus  and  by  Athene, 
no  !  ...  I  have  married  a  Lamia  who  had  a  dower.  Didn't 
I  tell  you  so  ?  Yes,  didn't  I  tell  you  so  ?  She  is  mistress 
of  my  house,  of  my  estates,  of  absolutely  everything;  I 
have  a  mistress,  by  Apollo,  and  the  most  untractable  of 
the  untractable."  ^  More  than  one  husband,  in  Latin 
comedy,  is  of  the  same  opinion  as  the  husband  of  Crobyle. 
More  than  one  wife  proudly  boasts  of  the  number  of  talents 
she  brought  as  dower,  haughtily  finds  fault  with  the  busi- 
ness management  of  the  head  of  the  family,  or  even  takes 
the  administration  of  her  dower  out  of  his  hands,  and 
entrusts  it  to  one  of  her  slaves. 

The  wife's  sharp  temper  frequently  enough  takes  the 
most  unpleasant  form  of  all — that  of  jealousy.  It  must 
be  admitted  that  the  husbands,  in  comedy,  are  not  all  free 
from  reproach.  Hardly  any  one  of  them  prides  himself  on 
his  conjugal  affection.  There  are  some,  like  Simo  in  the 
MosteUaria,  who  are  satisfied  if  they  can  escape  a  tcte-d- 
tete  and  avoid  the  advances  that  are  made  to  them.' 
There  are  others  who  go  a  step  farther  and  who,  having 
grown  old  by  the  side  of  spouses  of  whom  they  are  tired, 
seek  amorous  adventures.  This  is  what  Demaenetus  in 
the  Asinaria  does,  and  Lysidamus  in  the  Casina,  and 
Menaechmus  in  the  play  of  the  same  name,  and  Chremcs 
in  the  Phormio.  All  these  worthies  appear  to  have  a  quiet 
conscience,  and  if  they  think  of  their  legitimate  spouses 

1  Alexis,  fr.  146.  *  Men.,  fr.  402-403.         »  Moat.,  692  et  seq. 


122  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

at  all,  it  is  merely  in  order  to  make  comparisons — not  very 
flattering  ones — between  them  and  their  rivals.  But  if 
they  happen  to  be  found  out,  their  infidehties,  whieh  the 
law  tolerates,  expose  them  to  redoubtable  outbursts  of 
passion  at  home.  Injured  in  her  feelings  and,  above  all, 
wounded  in  her  pride  and  her  interests,  the  wife  storms, 
scolds,  threatens,  sends  for  her  father  in  order  that  he  may 
secure  her  a  divorce,  or  else — and  this  is  the  supreme 
humiliation — makes  her  son  the  arbiter  between  herself 
and  her  husband.  And  the  husband,  abashed,  anxious, 
above  all  else,  to  disarm  such  wrath,  has  recourse  to  the 
poorest  excuses,  to  the  most  absurd  wheedling.  Thus  we 
see  that  wives  have  their  reasons  for  not  confiding  blindly 
in  their  husbands,  but  occasionally  they  go  to  the  opposite 
extreme  and  see  wrongs  which  do  not  exist — or,  let  us  say, 
which  do  not  as  yet  exist.  This  is  the  case  in  the  Mer- 
cator,  as  far  as  Lysimachus  is  concerned,  who,  it  is  true,  has 
all  the  appearances  of  wrongdoing  against  him ;  this  was 
the  case  in  the  Il^oxiov,^  and  is  the  case  in  the  Rudens,  in 
which  Daemones  abstains  from  harbouring  Palaestra  and 
Ampelisca,  because  his  wife  would  regard  them  as  his 
mistresses. 

Did  the  husbands  have  a  monopoly  of  adultery  in  the 
household  as  portrayed  in  comedy  ?  Both  the  fragments 
and  the  Latin  plays  make  several  allusions  to  the  infidelity 
of  married  women  as  a  matter  of  common  occurrence.^ 
But  it  is  one  thing  to  call  attention  to  the  corruption  of 
morals  and  another  thing  to  bring  it  upon  the  stage.  As 
far  as  their  morals  are  concerned,  the  matrons  in  Terence 
always  deserve  the  epithet  he  gives  them  —  matronae 
bonae.^  In  Plautus,  Pyrgopolinices  is  led  to  believe  that 
his  neighbour,  who  is  supposed  to  be  the  legitimate  wife 
of  a  man  who  lives  at  Ephesus,  is  smitten  with  him  and  is 
ready  to  be  his  mistress ;  *   the  aged  Nicobulus  is  told  that 

1  Aul.  GelL,  II.  23,  8  et  seq. 

*  Cf.  Men.,  fr.   261,   366,   535,   657;    Euphron,   fr.    12;    Baton,    fr.   3; 
fr.  adesp.,  225,  272;    Andr.,  316  et  seq. 

^  Eun.,  prol.  37.  *  Miles,  964  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  123 

his  son  has  the  wife  of  a  soldier  as  his  mistress ;  ^  but 
in  both  cases  these  statements  are  downright  Hes.  The 
mention  of  a  yqafpy]  jnoix^iciQ  in  Menander's  XaXxig,^  and 
that  of  the  degrading  punishment  which  was  at  that  time 
inflicted  on  adulterers  in  the  'A7ioxh]o/uevrj  by  Posidippus,^ 
are  evidently  very  weak  clues  that  do  not  permit  one  to 
make  any  conjecture  about  the  contents  of  the  two  plays. 
One  of  Philemon's  comedies  was  called  Moixog;  in  the 
'Ahelg  by  Menander,  reference  is  made  to  a  fioixog  who 
had  made  his  escape ;  *  in  the  A  idfiolog  by  Apollodorus, 
the  statement  is  made  that  no  door  is  closed  tightly  enough 
to  keep  out  the  j-ioixot  and  the  cats.^  At  first  sight  these 
details  appear  very  suggestive.  But  what  is  the  meaning 
of  the  word  fioixogt  Simply  a  seducer;  but  he  may  be 
the  seducer  of  a  concubine,  of  a  mistress,  or  of  a  wife. 
Nor  can  we  get  any  evidence  against  the  virtue  of  matrons 
out  of  the  title  ^ Anohinovoa,  for  this  word  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  desertion  of  bed  and  board,  but  refers  to  the 
legal  procedure  by  which  an  offended  wife  asks  the  arehon 
to  dissolve  her  marriage.  Nevertheless,  in  Apollodorus' 
'AnoXeinovoa  it  appears  that  a  woman  escaped  from  her 
house  by  means  of  a  rope-ladder ;  ^  probably  she  wished 
to  escape  from  her  husband's  ill  usage.  Finally,  there 
remain  some  passages  in  the  epistolographers,  and  in  them 
we  do  find  several  examples  of  unfaithful  married  women ; ' 
but  we  have  no  warrant  for  saying  that  they  are  taken 
from  comedy. 

In  what  survives  of  the  vea  opinions  are  much  more 
divided  about  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  paternity  than  they 
are  on  the  question  of  marriage.^  Paternity  is,  moreover, 
regarded  in  very  different  lights,  according  as  it  has  to 
deal  with  a  son  or  with  a  daughter.  A  son,  we  read  in 
Menander,    constitutes   the    happiness   of   his    parents,   if 

»  Bacch.,  851  et  seq.  *  Men.,  fr.  512.  '  Posid.,  fr.  4. 

♦  Men.,  fr.  16.  "  Apoll.  Car.,fr.  6.         •  Ibid.,  fr.  1. 

'  Ale,  III.  26,  33;  Arist.,  II.  22. 
»  Cf.  Men.,  fr.  166,  418,  649,  656;  603,  655. 


124  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

he  is  gifted ;  but  a  daughter  is  an  encumbrance.^  Posi- 
dippus  says  that  even  a  poor  man  brings  up  his  son ;  even 
a  rich  man  abandons  his  daughter.^  As  a  matter  of  fact 
we  know  how  frequent  the  exposing  of  daughters  is  in 
New  Comedy ;  we  hardly  know  of  an  instance  of  the  expos- 
ing of  a  son.  Daughters — I  speak  of  legitimate  daughters 
— were  generally  exposed  for  reasons  of  economy.  One 
father  wishes  to  avoid  the  cost  of  their  maintenance  and 
education,^  another  wishes  to  escape  the  necessity  of 
giving  them  a  dower.^  If  they  were  brought  up  it  was 
usual  to  regret  the  money  they  cost,  or  to  complain  of  the 
difficulty  of  getting  them  married.  "  A  daughter  is  a 
burden  and  hard  to  settle,"  says  a  character  in  the  'AXielg,^ 
and  another,  in  the  A  axrvXiog,  philosophises  as  follows  on 
the  experience  of  Danaus  in  antiquity  :  "  Who  was  ever 
so  forsaken  by  the  gods  as  not  to  be  willing  joyfully  to  give 
up  his  daughters,  especially  when  he  had  fifty  of  them  ?  "  ^ 

However  this  may  have  been,  parents  in  comedy  as  a 
general  rule  love  their  children.  The  most  unfair  attitude 
that  they  take  is  possibly  that  of  a  father  in  one  or 
two  of  Menander's  comedies — the  'Yno^oXifiaioQ  and  the 
NavxXrjQoq — in  which  he  treats  one  of  his  sons  with  every 
tenderness  and  the  other  with  indifference.  As  for  the 
recriminations  which  either  the  stupidity  or  the  bad 
behaviour  of  his  offspring  calls  forth  from  the  head  of  the 
family — recriminations  in  which  the  Latin  poets  abound 
and  which  are  also  found  in  a  few  original  fragments  ^ — 
they  do  not  preclude  affection. 

This  affection  especially  manifests  itself  when  a  father 
or  a  mother  is  in  danger  of  losing  a  child.  In  the  Heauton 
Timor oumenos  Menedemus  becomes  deeply  despondent 
after  Clinia  has  gone  to  serve  in  a  foreign  land,  and,  as 
the  account  which  he  gives  his  neighbour  Chremes  shows,^ 
there  is  a  large  share  of  remorse  in  his  unhappiness.     In 

1  Men.,  fr.  60.  »  Posid.,  fr.  11.  ^  Heaut.,  835  et  seq. 

*  Phorm.,  646-647,  with  Donatus'  note  (=  Apoll.  Car.,  fr.  22). 
6  Men.,  fr.  18.  «  Ibid.,  fr.  102. 

'  Alexis,  fr.  108;  Baton,  fr.  5.  *  Heaut.,  121  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  125 

the  Captivi  it  is  paternal  affection  alone  that  animates 
Hegio.  In  order  to  free  his  son,  who  is  a  captive  at  Elis, 
he  recklessly  spends  his  money  and  takes  up  a  far  from 
respectable  profession,  and  one  that  is  repugnant  to  his 
character — that  of  a  slave-dealer;  and  as  long  as  Philo- 
polemus  is  separated  from  him,  joy  finds  no  place  in  his 
soul.  Nicobulus,  in  the  Bacchides,  who  has  sent  Mnesi- 
lochus  to  Ephesus,  is  consumed  by  anxiety  because  he 
does  not  return.  In  the  Epidicus  the  unhappy  Philippa, 
whose  daughter  is  a  captive  of  the  Athenians,  follows  the 
army  that  bears  her  away,  searches  for  her,  alone  and 
unaided,  in  a  strange  town,  is  greatly  cheered  when  she 
thinks  her  daughter  has  been  found,  and  is  dissolved  in 
tears  when  her  hopes  are  deceived.  Time  docs  not 
always  cure  the  sorrow  caused  by  separation.  More  than 
ten  years  after  the  kidnapping  of  his  daughters,  Hanno, 
in  the  Poenulus,  seeks  for  them  throughout  the  world. 
Daemones,  in  the  Rudens,  cannot  look  at  Palaestra  with- 
out thinking  of  the  daughter  he  has  lost.^  Affection 
remains  alive  in  the  hearts  of  parents  even  for  a  child 
whom  they  have  barely  seen.  In  the  Epidicus  Peri- 
phanes  employs  a  trusty  slave  to  bring  presents  to 
Telestis,  whom  Philippa  had  borne  him  in  secret.  As 
soon  as  she  can  do  so  without  disgracing  herself,  Phano- 
strata,  in  the  Cistellaria,  goes  in  search  of  the  daughter 
whom  she  had  borne  before  her  first  marriage  and  whom 
she  had  exposed.  The  reappearance  of  a  child  that  had 
disappeared  is  generally  welcomed  by  its  parents  as  a 
blessing.  It  is  true  that  their  joy — at  any  rate  in  the 
Latin  copyists — is  often  rather  hinted  at  than  expressed, 
unless,  indeed,  its  further  expression,  which  would  be  a 
stale  theme  to  the  audience,  is  left  to  be  imagined  as 
occurring  behind  the  scenes.  But  that  does  not  prevent 
their  joy  from  being  sincere ;  without  lengthy  effusions, 
a  phrase,  a  word,  proves  it  to  be  so  and  shows  its 
intensity. 

The  test  of  absence  is  one  of  the  severest  and   most 

^  Rud.,  742  et  seq. 


12G  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

frequent  tests  to  which  the  affection  of  parents  is  sub- 
jected in  the  rea.  But  there  is  no  lack  of  other  oppor- 
tunities for  them  to  manifest  their  solicitude.  A  mother 
is  anxious  about  her  daughter's  confinement/  or  because 
she  has  been  deserted  by  a  faithless  suitor,^  or  threatened 
with  disgrace.^  Or  a  father,  even  though  he  be  brutal 
or  avaricious,  is  indignant  at  the  outrage  to  which  his 
child  has  been  subjected,*  or  deplores  her  unfortunate 
marriage,^  or  trembles  for  his  son,  whose  morals  are,  as 
he  thinks,  endangered.^  "  If  I  had  had  children,"  says 
Periplecomenus,  "  by  Pollux,  what  distress  they  would 
have  given  me  !  I  should  have  been  in  constant  anxiety. 
Had  one  of  them  had  a  fever,  I  should  have  thought  that 
I  was  dead.  Had  he  fallen  when  he  was  drunk,  or  been 
thrown  from  his  horse,  I  should  have  been  afraid  that  he 
had  broken  his  leg  or  his  neck  !  "  '  Even  when  there  is 
no  serious  reason  for  fear,  parents  create  bugbears  and 
grow  tender  over  the  most  worthless  scamp,  as  though  he 
were  a  defenceless  innocent.  Witness  the  worthy  Micio 
in  the  Adelphi.^ 

Notwithstanding  all  this  love,  the  majority  of  parents  in 
comedy  are  at  odds  with  their  children,  though  rarely 
with  their  daughters.  Moreover,  speaking  generally, 
daughters  who  are  under  the  tutelage  of  their  parents  do 
not  play  much  of  a  part  on  the  stage.  In  the  Asinaria 
we  meet  with  one — a  courtesan  who  contends  with  a 
mother  in  order  to  be  allowed  to  follow  her  own  bent 
and  to  love  the  man  of  her  choice.  In  the  Cistellaria 
Gymnasium  plies  without  repugnance  the  trade  her 
mother  has  forced  upon  her.  Selenium  owes  it  to  her 
mother's  kindness  that  she  is  able  to  belong  only  to 
Alcesimarchus.  It  will  be  recalled  after  how  many  remon- 
strances— they  are  always  respectful — and  with  how  much 
bitterness  Saturio's  daughter,  in  the  Persa,  obeys  her 
father,  who  lends  her  to  Toxilus  so  that  she  may  take  part 

^  Adelphi.  *  rewpySs,  Adelphi.  *  Hecyra. 

*  Aulularia.         *  'ETriTpeVoj'Tes.  *  Bacchides,  Eunuchus. 

'  Miles,  718  et  seq.  *  Ad.,  28  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  127 

in  a  degrading  comedy.  All  the  young  women  whom  we 
have  mentioned  belong  to  the  lower  soeial  classes,  a  sort 
of  contraband  world.  But  young  women  of  the  middle 
class  play  a  still  more  unimportant  part.  Nowhere, 
either  in  Plautus  or  in  Terence,  do  they  appear  upon  the 
scene,  and  there  is  hardly  a  Greek  or  a  Latin  fragment 
that  we  could  think  of  allotting  to  them.  At  any  rate 
there  is  no  proof  that  the  comic  writers  ever  represented 
respectable  young  girls  championing  their  love  against 
the  ill-will  or  the  adverse  plans  of  their  parents.  On 
several  occasions,  in  the  Latin  imitations,  we  hear  that 
the  marriage  of  a  daughter  of  good  family  is  decided 
upon,^  and  certainly  those  among  whom  she  lives  are  not 
indifferent  to  that  which  may  jeopardise  or  assure  her 
happiness;  but  they  make  no  effort  to  find  out  whether 
she  has  any  predilection  of  her  own.  The  only  extant 
plays  in  which  daughters  of  a  good  family  are  in  conflict 
with  paternal  authority  are  the  " EniTQenovxEQ  and  the 
Siichus.  In  both  of  these  plays  it  is  a  question  of  married 
daughters. 

Thus,  as  far  as  children  are  concerned,  interest  centres 
almost  entirely  in  the  sons.  As  regards  parents,  the 
mother  is  hardly  taken  into  consideration.  However,  an 
exception  must  be  made  in  the  case  of  the  mothers  of 
courtesans  of  whom  we  have  just  spoken.  Besides,  the 
courtesans,  as  a  general  rule,  never  have  a  father,  or  no 
longer  have  one.  In  regular  and  complete  families  the 
mother  is  relegated  to  the  background.  A  compassionate  I 
and  gentle  nature  is  generally  her  distinguishing  feature,  i 
"  Mater  indulgens"  says  Apuleius,  when  he  enumerates 
the  types  found  in  Philemon. ^  In  lines  991-993  of  the 
Hcauton  Timoroumenos  Terence  follows  Menander  in 
declaring  that  "  all  mothers  come  to  the  aid  of  their  sons' 
follies  and  usually  protect  them  against  their  fathers' 
injustice."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  Casina,  the  mother 
helps  along  her  son's  plans  regarding  the  young  slave  girl. 

^  In  tho  Trinummus,  tho  Andria  and  the  Aulularia. 
»  Ap.,  Flor.,  XVI. 


128  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

At  the  end  of  the  Phormio,  Phaedria's  mother,  Nausi- 
strata,  gets  Chremes  to  permit  the  young  man  to  keep  his 
mistress  and  to  let  him  have  the  thirty  minae  extorted  by 
Phormio,  so  that  he  may  acquire  an  undisputed  right  to 
Pamphila.  At  the  close  of  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos 
Clitipho's  mother  intercedes  for  him  when  his  father  is 
about  to  disinherit  him.  The  usual  indulgence  of  mothers 
in  comedy  docs  not,  however,  prevent  their  being  match- 
makers. "  You  are  all  like  that,"  says  Laches  to  his 
wife,  in  lines  240-241  of  the  Hecyra;  "you  want  your 
sons  to  get  married."  At  the  opening  of  the  Heauton 
Timoroumenos  Sostrata  offers  her  son  Clitipho  a  whole 
band  of  maidens  from  among  whom  to  choose  a  bride. 
In  Lucian's  second  Dialogue  it  is  Pamphilus'  mother  who, 
when  a  neighbour  gets  married,  reproaches  her  son  for 
remaining  a  bachelor  too  long.  In  the  seventh  Dialogue 
it  is  the  mother  of  Chaereas,  and  her  skill  at  discovering  a 
good  match,  that  worries  the  old  courtesan.  Indulgent 
even  towards  misconduct  and,  by  virtue  of  their  sex, 
more  susceptible  in  matters  of  a  sentimental  sort  than 
their  husbands,  the  mothers,  it  seems,  must  have  been 
the  allies  of  their  sons  when  the  latter  became  enamoured 
of  a  poor  girl  or  thought  of  marrying  below  their  station. 
In  two  instances,  however,  the  fragments  appear  to  attri- 
bute to  them  an  exactly  opposite  attitude.  "  Trust  your 
mother  Crobyle,  and  marry  your  cousin,"  we  read  in 
fragment  929  of  Menander.  It  is  likely  enough  that  the 
Crobyle  who  spoke  these  words  was  the  Crobyle  of  the 
nXoxiov,  the  detestable  dowered  wife  who  is  so  proud  of 
her  wealth.  It  may  be  that  after  her  husband  had,  in  an 
access  of  energy,  sanctioned  his  son's  marriage  with  a  poor 
neighbour,  she,  tyrannical  as  she  was,  and  full  of  con- 
tempt for  people  without  means,  objected  to  this  plan 
and  suggested  a  wealthy  heiress.  Elsewhere  it  is  again  a 
mother  who  wearies  her  son  by  constantly  insisting  on  the 
advantages  of  being  "  well  born  " ;  ^  we  can  assume  that 
she  did  this  in  the  course  of  a  discussion  on  the  subject 

1  Men.,  fr.  533. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  129 

of  matrimony.  Notwitlistanding  these  few  instances  of 
disagreement,  one  may  say  that,  in  comedy,  mothers 
and  sons  get  on  well  together.  Several  fragments  afford  , 
touching  and  decided  evidence  of  maternal  tenderness  or 
of  the  filial  affection  by  which  mothers  are  rewarded.^  In 
the  Ilecyra,  in  particular,  we  find  these  two  feelings 
carried  to  a  high  degree  of  nobility. 

I  have  still  to  deal  with  the  sons  and  fathers.  The 
point  on  which  they  generally  disagree  is  that  the  fathers 
try  to  force  them  to  break  off  some  attachment  or  clan- 
destine marriage  and  to  oblige  them  to  marry  a  wife  of 
their  choosing.  But  the  feelings  which  inspire  the  fathers 
vary  according  to  circumstances. 

Sometimes  it  is  egotism,  the  wish  to  arrange  their 
affairs  according  to  their  own  convenience  without  regard 
for  the  inclinations  of  the  young  men.  In  the  Feajgyog 
the  father,  for  reasons  unknown  to  us,  wished  his  son  to 
marry  his  half-sister.^  In  the  Phormio  Antipho  is  sacri- 
ficed by  his  tyrannical  father  in  order  to  pacify  an  uncle : 
Demipho  wishes  him  to  marry  Phanium,  a  daughter  of 
the  bigamist  Chremes,  so  that  strangers  may  not  make 
inquiries  into  the  origin  of  that  young  woman,  and  that 
Nausistrata,  Chremes'  wife,  may  remain  ignorant  of  that 
worthy's  infidelity.* 

More  frequently,  fathers  get  into  conflict  with  their 
sons  for  pecuniary  reasons.  Nearly  all  of  them  are  fond 
of  money  and  are  by  no  means  delighted  at  becoming  the 
fathers-in-law  of  poor  girls.  Above  all,  they  cannot  bear 
to  have  their  fortunes  jeopardised  by  foolish  adventures, 
and  used  to  pay  for  courtesans.  Theopropides,  in  the 
Mostellaria,  thinks  that  the  worst  misdeeds — if  not  all 
the  misdeeds — of  young  Philolaches  consist  in  his  extrava- 
gance. He  is  visibly  relieved  when  Callidamates,  Philo- 
laches' friend,  guarantees  that  he  will  not  have  to  pay 
for  his  son's  pranks.*     Luckily  for  the  honour  of  fathers, 

1  Men.,  fr.  763;   Philem.,  fr.  156;   Alexis,  fr.  267. 
«  Tiwpy.,  9-12.         »  Phorm.,  581  et  soq.  *  Most.,  1162  et  seq. 

K 


130  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

there  arc  but  few  in  comedy  who,  like  Theopropides,  at- 
tach importance  to  money  only.  Nevertheless,  pecuniary 
considerations  are  almost  always  mentioned  among  the 
reasons  for  their  severity.  Sometimes  they  fear  that  they 
are  going  to  be  ruined  themselves ;  ^  sometimes,  while 
resigned  as  far  as  they  themselves  are  concerned,  or  sure 
that  they  will  not  suffer  need  during  the  few  years  of 
life  that  remain  to  them,  they  become  indignant  at  the 
thought  that  after  their  death  their  fortunes  will  be 
squandered  and  their  children  will  be  beggars. ^ 

Sometimes  the  horror  of  extravagance  which  is  usual 
in  the  fathers  in  comedy  is  increased  when  they  compare 
the  happy  and  indolent  life  of  their  sons  with  their  own 
hardworking  and  penurious  youth.  Such  comparison 
engenders,  if  I  may  say  so,  a  certain  envy  of  the 
young  men  w^hom  their  labour  has  made  rich.  This 
feeling  is  very  evident  in  a  father  in  one  of  Philemon's 
comedies — Demipho  of  the  Mercator — and  in  Menedemus, 
in  Menander's  Heauton  Timor oumenos.  The  former,  so  his 
son  tells  us,  kept  on  repeating  "  how  he,  on  growing  to 
manhood,  had  not  given  himself  up,  as  I  had,  to  love, 
idleness  and  sloth,  and  that  he  would  not  have  been  in 
position  to  do  so,  as  his  father  kept  him  strictly,"  ^  and 
so  forth.  "  At  your  age,"  says  another  father,  "  I  did  not 
think  of  making  love.  I  was  poor,  and  I  left  this  country 
to  go  to  Asia,  where  I  found  glory  and  profit  in  the 
profession  of  a  soldier."  ^ 

The  motives  we  have  enumerated  are  not  of  a  very 
lofty  order.  Some  fathers  have  nobler  ones.  When  they 
insist  on  a  marriage,  it  is  sometimes  because  they  see — or 
because  they  sincerely  believe  that  they  see — a  promise 
of  happiness  for  the  young  man  concerned.  When  they 
attempt  to  break  off  a  youth's  illicit  attachment  or  to 
prevent  his  leading  a  dissipated  life,  it  is  often  from  a 
desire  to  guard  his  reputation  and  his  virtue.  In  the 
Trinummus    Philto    gives    his    son    Lysiteles    admirable 

1  Heaut.,  930-931.  ^  Ibid.,  969;  fr.  inc.  XXXVIII.  5. 

*  Merc,  61  et  seq.  *  Heaut.,  110  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  131 

advice — advice  which  is,  by  the  way,  superfluous,  as 
Lysiteles  is  an  exemplary  son.^  In  tlic  Ileauton  Timor- 
oumenos  Chremcs  gives  CHtipho  his  explanation  of  the 
source  of  the  apparent  severity  of  fathers  :  "  Their  objec- 
tions are  nearly  always  the  same.  They  do  not  wish 
to  have  their  sons  run  after  women  too  much,  nor  to 
be  constantly  merry-making.  They  give  only  as  much 
money  as  is  absolutely  necessary.  But  all  this  is  for  their 
sons'  good.  Once  the  heart  is  cauglit  in  the  meshes  of 
an  evil  passion,  it  is  inevitable,  Clitipho,  that  a  inan's 
behaviour  should  harmonise  with  it."  ^  Though  they  do 
not  speak  in  so  doctrinaire  a  way,  other  fathers  are  in- 
spired by  the  same  principles.  They  feel  that  they  are 
the  keepers  of  a  soul,  and  they  perform  the  duties  of 
teachers  and  educators  conscientiously,  if  not  skilfully. 
The  money  that  is  lost  through  their  sons'  fault  does  not 
disturb  them  so  much  as  the  prospect  of  an  entirely  spoiled 
life  and  of  a  good  name  jeopardised.  They  dread  scandal, 
and  upbraid  the  delinquent  for  his  weakness,  for  his 
neglect  of  the  proprieties  and  for  his  contempt  for  the 
law,  and  threaten  him  with  disgrace.  A  young  man  who 
misbehaves  is,  in  their  eyes,  a  subject  for  the  doctor,  an  un- 
fortunate creature  w^ho  is  ruining  himself,  and  he  appears 
to  them  as  having  plunged  into  an  abyss  of  misfortunes 
from  which  it  is  their  business  to  rescue  him. 

However  frequent  the  manifestations  of  paternal 
severity  may  be  in  the  writers  of  comedy,  they  did  not 
absolutely  assign  to  the  fathers  the  role  of  kill-joy.  A 
father  who,  like  Demea  in  the  Adelphi,  is  indignant  about 
all  of  his  son's  escapades,  appears  to  have  been  a  rare 
type,  and  with  severity  there  goes  in  most  cases — at  least 
in  Menander  and  his  imitators — a  certain  admixture  of 
indulgence. 

This  indulgence  is  generally  the  outcome  of  resignation. 
Many  a  father  shuts  his  eyes,  or  did  shut  his  eyes  for  a' 
time,  to  the  faults  of  his  offspring,  because  he  knows  in 
advance  that  any  attempt  to  correct  these  faults  would 

^  Trin.,  305  et  seq.  »  Ucaut.,  204  et  seq. 


132  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

be  vain  and  void.  His  motto  is  that  you  cannot  put  old 
heads  on  young  shoulders.  All  that  one  has  a  right  to 
expect  and  to  demand  of  young  men  during  certain  years 
is  that  they  do  not  go  to  the  extremes  of  scandalous  con- 
duct, that  they  keep  their  honour  unblemished,  and  that 
they  do  not  seriously  imperil  their  patrimony.  But  it 
would  be  vexatious  if,  in  later  years,  when  the  time  shall 
have  come  to  think  of  settling  down,  they  were  not  ready 
to  drop  their  former  habits.  But  time  and  satiety  can 
be  relied  upon  to  lead  them  to  do  so.  Thus  reasons 
Philoxenus,  in  the  Bacchides,  when  the  recollection  of  his 
last  year's  sins  no  longer  troubles  him.  Thus  reasons 
Simo  in  the  Andria,  and  Laches  and  Phidippus  in  the 
Hecyra}  It  even  happens  that  a  father  is  gratified  at 
discovering  proof  of  a  good  disposition  in  a  young 
man's  behaviour  towards  his  woman  friend  or  mistress. 
Simo,  in  the  Andria,  goes  to  the  funeral  of  Chrysis,  the 
pretty  courtesan  with  whom  his  son  had  had  relations, 
and  the  eagerness  with  which  Pamphilus  takes  charge  of 
the  funeral,  his  mournful  air  and  his  tears,  evoke  his 
friendly  sympathy. ^  Phidippus  is  ready  to  forgive  his 
son-in-law  for  having  occasionally  visited  his  former 
mistress.  He  says  :  "  Were  he  able  to  break  off  an 
attachment  that  had  lasted  so  many  years,  I  should 
believe  that  he  was  neither  a  man  nor  a  sufficiently 
faithful  husband  to  my  daughter."  ^ 
/  Occasionally  thoughts  of  their  own  past  lead  fathers  in 
comedy  to  be  indulgent.  Not  all  of  them  have  had  a 
toilsome  youth,  like  Demipho  and  Menedemus,  and  some 
of  them  were,  in  their  day,  sons  of  rich  families,  and  had 
profited  by  their  opportunities.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  do  not  always  remember  their  past  of  their  own 
accord.  Witness  the  worthy  Simo,  in  the  Pseudolus,  to 
whom  his   old  friend   Callipho   addresses   a  retrospective 

1  Andr.,  151  et  seq. ;  Hec,  118-119,  541  et  seq. ;  683  et  seq.  Similarly 
the  father  who  appears  in  a  BerUn  fragment  {Berliner  Klassikertextt, 
Vol.  II,  p.  118). 

*  Andr.,  109  et  seq.  *  Hec.,  554  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  133 

harangue,^  and  Chremcs,  in  the  Jlcauton  Timoroumenos, 
whose  admonitions  call  forth  ironical  remarks  from  his 
son. 2  Other  fathers,  however,  like  Pcriphanes  in  the 
Epidicus,  of  their  own  accord  recall  the  indulgences  they 
allowed  themselves  in  bygone  days,^  but  they  are  not  any 
the  more  easy  to  deal  with,  for  all  that.  And  finally, 
still  others  find  in  their  own  memories  a  justification  for 
the  behaviour  of  the  young  men  :  Philoxcnus,  for  example, 
in  the  Bacchides,  and  Moschio's  father,  in  a  Berlin  frag- 
ment.^ The  latter  comes  back  from  the  country,  quite 
surprised  at  being  summoned  by  his  son,  for,  up  to  that 
time,  the  young  man  had  made  it  a  rule  to  avoid  his 
father's  society,  from  fear  of  being  scolded.  However, 
that  worthy  scolds  without  anger.  "  For,"  says  he,  "  I 
myself  was  one  of  those  who  was  said  to  know  how  to 
squander  a  fortune.  This  time,  at  least,  my  wife  has  not 
deceived  me.  Moschio  is  certainly  my  son ;  he  is  good 
for  nothing."  ^  In  the  Bacchides  the  pedagogue  Lydus 
has  just  called  Philoxenus'  attention  to  the  behaviour  of 
his  son  Pistoclerus,  who  has  taken  one  of  the  Bacchis 
sisters  as  his  mistress.  Philoxenus  receives  the  news  in  a 
phlegmatic  manner  :  "  Well,  Lydus,  it  is  the  wisest  course 
to  be  moderate  in  one's  severity.  It  is  less  surprising  for 
my  son  to  commit  a  folly  at  his  age  than  for  him  not  to 
do  so.  I  did  just  the  same  in  my  youth."  ^  And,  rather 
than  interfere  himself,  he  empowers  a  young  man,  Mnesi- 
lochus,  Pistoclerus'  friend,  to  do  so  !  In  the  Adelphi 
Micio  shares  Philoxenus'  views;  in  his  younger  days  he 
had  behaved  himself  through  force  of  circumstances,  as  he 
had  no  money,'  but  he  is  very  sure  that,  had  he  possessed 
the  means,  he  would  have  led  a  jovial  life ;  and  this  con- 
viction suffices  to  absolve  Aeschinus.**  As  for  Demacnctus, 
in  the  Asinaria,  how  could  he  do  otherwise  than  regard 
Argyrippus'  love  affair  with  favour,  since  his  own  father 
had,  in  times  gone  by,  done  him  the  same  service  ? 

1  Pseud.,  436  et  seq.  "  HeauL,  213  et  seq.  '  Epid.,  382  et  seq. 

*  Berliner  Klassikertexte,  Vol.  II.  pp.  117-118.         *  Bacch.,  69-62. 
«  Ibid.,  408  et  seq.  '  Ad.,  104.  «  Ibid.,  103-107. 


134  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

But  this  sort  of  leniency  has  its  dangers.  As  far  as 
the  sons  are  concerned  this  is  clear;  but  it  also  has  its 
dangers  for  the  fathers.  By  dint  of  harking  back  to  the 
past  too  much,  one  easily  conceives  the  desire  of  prolong- 
ing it  and  of  living  it  over  once  more  in  the  present.  When 
Philoxenus  comes  to  the  Bacchis  sisters  to  draw  his  son 
out  of  their  clutches,  he  himself  yields  to  the  allurements 
of  these  pretty  women.  At  the  close  of  the  play  we  see 
him  in  turn  entering  the  halls  of  perdition  in  order  to  dine 
in  loose  company  with  Pistoelerus  and  to  share  in  his 
debauchery.  In  the  Asinaria  Demaenetus  abets  his  son 
and  proposes  to  have  a  share  in  his  fun.  He  gets  an 
invitation  to  a  good  dinner,  in  the  course  of  which  he  em- 
braces Philaenium,  and,  had  his  plan  not  been  thwarted, 
he  would  have  spent  the  night  with  the  fair  lady. 

Lastly,  a  father's  indulgence  may  have  reason  and 
method  in  it.  The  infamous  Demaenetus  prides  himself 
on  not  being  like  the  majority  of  fathers — "  All  fathers 
who  will  follow  my  advice  will  be  easy-going,  so  that 
their  sons  may  love  them  better  and  be  more  kindly 
disposed  towards  them.  That  is  what  I  try  to  do.  .  .  . 
My  son  Argyrippus  has  to-day  begged  me  to  get  him 
some  money  for  his  girl;  I  am  most  anxious  to  satisfy 
him.  .  .  .  My  son  has  thought  me  worthy  of  his  entire 
confidence;  it  is  right  that  I  should  appreciate  this  dis- 
position of  his."  ^  These  words  of  Demaenetus  are  like 
a  parody  of  the  views  of  certain  other  fathers  in  comic 
literature.  Chremes,  in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos, 
blames  Menedemus  for  his  excessive  severity,  which  was 
only  a  feigned  severity.  According  to  him,  fathers  and 
sons  should  show  themselves  to  one  another  as  they  are. 
The  son  ought  to  confide  in  his  father  as  he  would  in  a 
friend,  and  the  father  ought  to  receive  these  confidences 
without  pretending  to  be  more  displeased  at  them  than 
he  actually  is,  and  without  fear  of  showing  that  his  kind- 
ness   disposes    him    to    forgive.^     In    still    clearer    terms 

^  As.,  64  et  seq. 

^  Heaiit.,  155  et  seq. ;  cf.  925  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  135 

Micio  advocates  tolerance  and  reciprocal  trust,^  and  pre- 
tends that,  in  doing  so,  he  is  moved  by  lofty  educational 
considerations.^  As  a  matter  of  fact,  weakness,  and  the 
unavowed  desire  to  avoid  taking  active  measures,  have 
a  great  deal  to  do  with  his  fine  leniency.  Can  Micio 
seriously  believe  that  he  will  improve  Aeschinus'  morals 
by  always  forgiving,  by  paying  for  all  that  young  man's 
follies  without  a  word,  by  even  praising  his  pranks  and  by 
offering  him  the  premium  of  encouragement?  No  doubt 
he  has  a  right  to  expect  that  nothing  will  be  hidden  from 
him ;  but  even  this  hope  is  not  to  be  fulfilled,  for  Aeschinus 
keeps  him  in  the  dark  about  the  main  thing — his  intimacy 
with  the  girl  who  lives  next  door.  Yet  at  least  he  can 
hope  that  Aeschinus  will  never  lie  in  order  to  get  out  of 
a  scrape.  But  is  mendacity  the  only  vice  against  which 
Micio  desires  to  guard  his  son  ?  He  will  gain  his  affection, 
it  is  true,  by  more  respectable  means  than  Demaenetus 
employs;  but  does  he,  in  all  conscience,  believe  that  to 
gain  a  son's  affection  constitutes  the  whole  task  of  a  good 
educator  ? 

With  such  diversity  existing  among  fathers,  it  goes 
without  saying  that  the  attitude  of  sons  is  not  uniform, 
either.  It  does  not,  however,  vary  in  different  cases  as 
much  as  one  might  suppose,  and,  as  a  rule,  it  is  more  or 
less  correct.  Argyrippus,  who  beholds  his  father  Demae- 
netus in  a  state  of  the  lowest  degradation,  remains 
deferential  towards  him.  Did  other  sons  who  joined  in 
their  fathers'  debauches  indulge  in  greater  freedom,  and 
take  advantage  of  a  scandalous  good  fellowship  to  treat 
the  authors  of  their  being  cavalierly?  We  have  no  proof 
whatsoever  that  this  was  the  case.  Though  fathers  and 
sons  were  almost  always  at  loggerheads,  it  appears  that 
the  conflict  was  never  a  brutal  one.  In  the  majority  of 
Latin  comedies  there  is  not  a  single  scene,  at  least  not 
before  the  close,  in  which  they  are  found  face  to  face ;  and 

*■  ^d.,  49  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  55-5G;  76  et  seq. 


136  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

when  they  do  meet,  it  is  without  violent  words  and  with- 
out any  shocking  violation  of  filial  respect.  A  few  Greek 
fragments  apparently  depict  family  differences.^  In 
these  fragments,  as  in  the  Latin  plays,  the  young  man's 
language  remains  proper  and  courteous.  Generally 
speaking,  sons,  in  comedy,  appear  to  be  thoroughly 
imbued  with  the  maxim  that  has  been  attributed  to 
Menander :  to  insult  one's  father  is  to  blaspheme  the 
gods.2 

Nay,  we  may  even  say  that  sons  hardly  ever  cross  their 
fathers  openly  or  light-heartedly.  In  one  of  Menander's 
plays  a  man  brings  a  suit  against  his  parents.  He  is 
reprimanded  vigorously,  and  his  conduct  is  regarded  as 
evidence  of  insanity.^  When  Pamphilus,  in  the  Andria, 
is  forced  by  Simo  to  marry  the  very  same  day,  and  finds 
no  w^ay  of  refusing,  he  finally  declares  that  he  is  ready 
to  obey.  At  their  fathers'  command,  Charinus,  in  the 
Mercator,  Clinia,  in  the  Heauton  Timor oumenos,  and  Pam- 
philus, in  the  Hecyra,  break  off,  or  at  least  interrupt, 
their  illicit  relations.  Clitipho,  Clinia's  friend,  does  as 
much.  Of  the  young  men  who  deceive  their  fathers  or 
make  a  levy  on  their  purses,  few  act  for  themselves,  as 
Strabax  does  in  the  Truculentus ;  most  of  them  let  their 
slaves  act  and,  at  best,  give  them  meagre  support. 
Charinus  deems  it  criminal  to  lie  to  the  aged  Demipho ;  ^ 
Calidorus,  in  the  Pseudolus,  declares  that  filial  piety  pre- 
vents him  stealing  from  Simo.^  If  a  son  has  secretly  got 
into  a  position  to  displease  his  father,  he  is  always  greatly 
disturbed  on  being  found  out.  Antipho  hides  when 
Demipho  comes  back;  Clinia,  after  his  return  to  his 
beloved  Antiphila,  does  not  dare  to  appear  before  Mene- 
demus ;  Aesehinus,  in  the  Adelphi,  and  the  young  lover  in 
the  recogyog,  only  confess  the  engagements  they  have 
contracted  when  driven  to  the  last  extremity. 

If  we  inquire  to  what  feelings  this  docility  and  anxiety 

1  Men.,  fr.  128,  247-248,  283,  554,  629;   Apoll.,  fr.  16;   fr.  adesp.  281. 

*  [Men.],  fr.  715.  3  Men.,  fr.  806. 

*  Merc,  209.  s  Pseud.,  291. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSON  A  E  137 

are  due,  we  find  that  in  many  cases  fear  undeniably  plays 
a  large  part  in  them.  Sharp  reprimands  and  humiliating 
admonitions  were,  in  themselves,  very  real  punishments 
for  proud  and  sensitive  young  men.  And  then  the  head 
of  the  family  might  assign  a  too  flighty  son  some  task 
well  fitted  to  mortify  him — set  him  to  work  in  the  fields,  or 
send  him  abroad  to  trade  or  settle  some  business  trans- 
action. But,  above  all,  he  might  cut  off  his  allowance  and 
drive  him  from  home  without  a  penny.  In  the  Phormio 
and  in  the  Andria,  the  threat  of  some  such  retaliation 
evidently  haunts  Antipho  and  Pamphilus;  in  a  more 
imminent  form  this  threat  has  much  to  do  with  sobering 
Clitipho,  in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos.  Nevertheless,  fear 
does  not  account  for  everything.  Side  by  side  with  it 
in  the  souls  of  the  young  men  we  discover  a  true  respect 
for  their  father,  the  conviction  that  he  is  acting  for  their 
best  interests,  trust  in  his  greater  good  sense,  and  appre- 
ciation of  his  care  and  kindness.  Before  leaving  Attica, 
Clinia  probably  indulged  in  the  reflections  which  Mene- 
demus  attributes  to  him  :  he  said  to  himself  that  age  and 
affection  made  Mcnedemus  more  competent  than  he  was 
to  judge  of  what  he  ought  to  do,i  and  when  he  thinks  that 
he  has  been  betrayed  by  Antiphila,  his  father's  admoni- 
tions, which  taught  him  to  mistrust  women,  come  back 
to  his  mind. 2  Antipho  recognises  that  his  father  only 
desires  what  is  best  for  him,  and  suffers  at  the  thought 
that  he  fears  the  latter's  return.^  Charinus  cannot  bear 
to  lose  the  respect  of  Demipho,  "  whom  it  is  his  duty  to 
please."  ^  Aeschinus  is  in  despair  at  having  pained  Micio, 
and,  when  he  meets  him,  is  ashamed  of  his  behaviour.^ 

Nowhere  do  we  hear  a  son  say  anything  seriously  dis- ; 
agreeable  about  his  father.  Hardly  ever  does  he  wish' 
him  ill.^     As  a  rule,  it  is  the  courtesans  who  speculate  on 

1  Heaut.,  115-116.  «  jn^.,  260  et  seq.         '  Phorm.,  153  et  seq. 

*  Merc,  79-82.  ^  Ad.,  681  et  seq. ;  cf.  Men.,  fr.  586. 

•  I  do  not  think  that  Philolaches'  exclamation  in  lines  233-234  of  the 
Mostellaria  should  be  taken  seriously,  any  more  than  that  of  an  actor  in 
Naevius'  Tribacelus,  or  Strabax's  brutal  expression  in  lines  660-661  of  the 
Truculentus. 


138  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

the  death  of  the  head  of  the  family,  and  the  cynical  slaves 
and  facetious  friends  who  hope  for  it,  or  pretend  to  hope 
for  it.^  The  sons  do  not  willingly  contemplate  that 
eventuality;  witness  the  pious  reticence  of  Chaereas,  of 
which  the  old  courtesan  makes  fun,  in  the  seventh 
Dialogue  of  Lucian  :  iav  6  naxi]Q,  .  .  .  y.ai  yvgiog  yevcojuai 
rcbv  naxQiooiv,  xal  ndvra  od.  The  kind  of  misfortunes  the 
sons  in  comedy,  or  at  least  the  sons  in  Menander's  comedies, 
invoke  from  the  bottom  of  their  hearts  upon  a  father  who 
interferes  with  their  fun  is  doubtless  shown  in  lines  519-520 
of  the  Adelphi,  spoken  by  young  Ctesipho  :  "  Would  to 
heaven  that,  without  doing  himself  very  great  harm  {qitod 
cum  salute  eius  fiat),  my  father  might  so  fatigue  himself 
that  for  three  days  he  could  not  stir  from  his  bed."  In 
a  word.  New  Comedy  does  not  appear  to  have  brought  a 
bad  son  upon  the  stage. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  must  not  expect  to  find  great 
demonstrations  of  filial  affection  in  the  comic  writers.  As 
the  majority  of  their  plots  represent  conflicts  between 
fathers  and  sons,  they  do  not  afford  occasion  for  it.  The 
title  0do7tdrcoQ,  borne  by  several  comedies,  proves 
nothing.  In  a  fragment  of  Menander's  Eevoloyoq  refer- 
ence is  made  to  a  son  who,  after  having  been  carefully 
brought  up  by  an  impecunious  father,  deeply  appreciates 
the  sacrifices  made  for  his  education,  and  relieves  his 
father's  poverty.^  These  few  lines  must  belong  to  a 
prologue,  and  we  have  no  means  of  knowing  whether  the 
"  good  son  "  had  an  active  part  in  the  play  itself. 

In  real  life,  husband  and  wife,  parents  and  children,  are 
the  chief  persons  in  the  life  of  the  family,  and  they  are 
nearly  the  only  ones  whom  New  Comedy  attempted  to 
portray. 

Mothers-in-law — especially  the  mothers-in-law  of  young 
women — ^certainly  had  a  very  bad  reputation  in  the  days 

^  Ad.,  521,  and  Donatus'  note;   Turpilius,  Philopator,  fr.  XI.;  Bacch., 
732;    cf.  As.,  528-529. 
2  Men.,  fr.  354. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONA E  139 

of  Apollodorus,  as  various  passages  of  the  Hecyra  bear 
witness.^  But  this  reputation  is  not  confirmed  anywhere 
in  the  writers  of  comedy.  The  only  mothers-in-law  that 
we  know  in  all  comic  literature — Sostrata  and  Myrrh ina, 
in  the  Hecyra — are  free  from  reproach.  Indeed,  the  former 
is  full  of  affection  and  devotion  for  her  daughter-in-law. 
As  for  the  father-in-law — the  father-in-law  of  the  husband 
— his  habitual  role  consists  in  interfering  in  the  young 
household  when  his  daughter  thinks  she  has  cause  for 
complaint. 2  He  does  so,  however,  with  a  bad  grace,  and 
fellow  feeling  for  the  male  sex  counts  for  more  with  him 
than  family  sentiment.  He  is  quick  to  find  his  daughter 
in  the  wrong,  accuses  her  of  an  inclination  to  tyrannise, 
and  preaches  submission.  The  only  things — or  nearly  the 
only  things — that  the  father-in-law  in  comedy  resents  arc 
extravagance  on  the  part  of  the  young  husband,  bad 
management  of  his  affairs,  and  the  attempt  to  get  control 
of  his  wife's  property.  The  father-in-law  of  Menaechmus, 
who  is  so  ready  to  forgive  his  infidelity,  does  not  forgive 
him  for  stealing  a  mantle.  Antipho,  in  the  Stichus,  has 
a  disagreement  with  his  two  sons-in-law  about  money. 
What  most  worries  Smicrines,  in  the  'ETzirQSJtovreg,  is  the 
extravagance  of  Charisius.^ 

The  stepmother,  who  appears  in  so  disagreeable  a  light 
in  tragedy,  is  hardly  found  in  the  fraginents  of  the  via. 
A  comic  writer  praises  the  law  of  Charondas  which  cen- 
sured fathers  of  a  family  who,  having  become  widowers, 
marry  a  second  time ;  *  but,  apparently,  he  did  so  more 
from  horror  of  marriage  than  from  solicitude  for  the 
children  of  the  first  marriage.  In  the  Za/iua,  Chrysis, 
Demeas'  concubine,  is  full  of  kindness  towards  his  son, 
whose  love  affair  she  encourages.  A  nallaxy)  in  the 
W  EvdrjQaxh'jg  brought  up  the  two  daughters  of  her 
deceased  mistress,   whose  place  she  has  taken  with  the 

1  Hec,  240  et  seq. ;   276  et  seq. ;   532  et  seq. 

*  Menaechmi.     Mercator. 

'  'EniTp.,  467  et  seq.,  484;  Men.,  fr.  177;  fr.  adcsp.  105  (attributed 
by  Capps  to  the  'KiriTptnovTes,  Berliner  philol.   Woch.,  1908,  p.   1198). 

*  Fr.  adesp.  110. 


140  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

widower,^  and  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  she  did  so 
without  affection. 

Among  the  characters  in  Philemon's  plays  Apuleius 
mentions  the  "  scolding  uncle  "  {patruus  objurgaior),^  but 
neither  in  the  Latin  plays  for  which  Philemon  furnished 
the  model  nor  in  what  remains  of  the  vea  does  the  "  scold- 
ing uncle  "  appear.  In  this  passage  of  Apuleius  there  is 
evidently  an  attempt  at  symmetry.  The  characters 
mentioned  are  grouped  three  by  three,  and  the  epithets 
given  to  each  group  all  have  a  similar  ending.  Perhaps 
the  patrims  objurgator  was  mentioned  alongside  of  miles 
proeliator  and  the  sodalis  opitulator  chiefly  with  a  view  to 
completing  a  trio,  and  did  not  owe  this  distinction  to  his 
real  importance. 

Brothers  and  sisters  appear  in  a  few  Latin  plays. ^  In 
the  Eunuchus  Phaedria  and  Chaerea  hardly  meet,  and 
they  take  little  interest  in  one  another.  Pamphilippus  and 
Epignomus,  in  the  Stichus,  take  still  less.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  the  Adelphi,  Aeschinus  does  not  hesitate  to  com- 
promise himself  in  order  to  help  Ctesipho,  and  when  his 
good  nature  has  placed  him  in  a  most  cruel  predicament, 
he  refuses  to  get  out  of  it  by  betraying  his  brother ;  * 
Ctesipho  in  return  displays  very  great  gratitude  ^  towards 
Aeschinus.  In  the  Phormio  Demipho  is  devoted  to 
Chremes'  interests,  and  strives  to  spare  him  painful 
domestic  scenes.  In  Menander's  'Adelcpoi  the  character 
who  corresponds  to  Hegio,  the  brother  of  Sostrata,^ 
eagerly  undertakes  the  defence  of  his  sister  and  of  his 
niece.  In  the  Aulularia  Eunomia  is  full  of  solicitude  for 
Megadorus,  to  whom  she  recommends  marriage.  The 
friendly  disposition  displayed  by  Aeschinus,  Demipho, 
Hegio  and  Eunomia  was  probably  very  common  among 
the  brothers  and  sisters  in  comedy.  Several  lost  plays 
were   called   0iXa.dsX(poi ;  perhaps  one   of  them  portrayed 

1  Men.,  fr.  520.  *  Ap.,  Flor.,  XVI. 

*  In  addition  to  two  of  Menander's  plays,  comedies  by  Alexis,  Euphron, 
Philemon,  Diphilus  and  Apollodorus  bore  the  title  'A5e\(pol. 

*  Ad.,  623  et  seq.  »  75 j^.^  256  et  seq. 

*  Donatus,  Commentary  to  line  351. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  141 

fraternal  affection.  At  the  same  time,  I  must  remark 
that  very  often  a  brother  is  of  less  consequence  than  a 
friend,  especially  a  friend  of  the  same  age,  a  synephcbos. 
"  Sodalis  o'pitulator,''^  says  Apuleius.^  In  fully  half  a 
dozen  Latin  comedies  we  meet  with  two  young  men,  for 
the  most  part  of  the  same  age  {aequalcs),  who,  without 
being  brothers  or  relatives,  mutually  help  one  another  with 
money  and  good  offices. ^  This  was  probably  also  the  case 
in  the  plays  by  Philemon,  Menander,  Apollodorus  and 
Euphron,  called  Zvve(prj^og  or  ZvvEq)r}^oi. 

If,  now,  we  examine  the  relations  between  the  elders, 
the  majority  of  the  old  men  who,  here  and  there,  espouse 
the  cause  of  the  father  of  a  family  with  the  greatest  zeal 
are  in  no  way  related  to  him.  In  a  word,  New  Comedy  did 
not  give  good  brothers  much  prominence.  We  may  add 
that  hostile  brothers  were  perhaps  not  unknown.  One 
of  Menander's  plays,  the  Navxlr]Qoq,  appears  to  have 
brought  them  upon  the  stage,^  and  fragment  809,  which 
sings  the  praises  of  cordial  relations  between  brothers, 
may  just  as  well  be  an  exhortation  as  a  mere  statement. 

At  this  point  I  shall  end  my  study  of  the  characters 
drawn  from  the  family  circle.  In  addition,  no  doubt,  to 
the  characters  of  whom  we  have  spoken  above,  there  are 
still  many  others  who  are  related  to  one  another  by  ties  of 
blood  or  marriage.  Their  number  is,  however,  too  small, 
and  the  degree  of  their  consanguinity  too  distant,  to 
warrant  a  special   study. 

As  for  maxims  relating  to  the  family  in  general,  they 
have  but  a  secondary  interest.*  The  following  picture  of 
a  family  dinner,  found  in  a  fragment  of  Menander,  is  more 
entertaining — 

"  What  an  experience,  to  drop  into  a  family  dining- 
room  !  The  father,  cup  in  hand,  is  the  first  to  speak, 
gives   advice   and   drinks   a   draught.     Then   the   mother 

1  Ap.,  Flor.,  XVI. 

*  Bacchides,  Epidicus,  M creator,  Moetellaria,  Paeudolus,  Heauton  Timor- 
oumenos. 

»  Men.,  fr.  350. 

*  e.g..  Men.,  fr.  4;    Diph.,  fr.  102. 


142  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

follows.  Then  an  aunt  chatters ;  after  her  an  old  gentle- 
man with  a  deep  voice,  the  aunt's  papa;  after  him  an 
old  lady  who  calls  you  '  dear  child,'  The  '  dear  child  ' 
says  '  yes  '  to  every  one."  ^ 

We  can  guess  what  provokes  all  this  wearisome  moral 
discourse  addressed  to  the  patient  listener,  and  we  shall 
not  be  much  mistaken  in  supposing  that  it  is  some  amorous 
escapade. 

§6 

Lovers 

]\Iany  characters  in  the  via  are  represented  as  being  in  love, 
and  among  them  men  are  in  the  majority.  Naturally  the 
young  men  predominate,  and,  among  these,  the  unmarried 
ones.  Except  for  Amphitryon,^  the  list  of  husbands  who 
dote  on  their  wives  includes,  as  far  as  we  know,  only 
Charisius  in  the  ' EniTQenovxeQ,  and  Pamphilus  in  the 
Hecyra.  The  list  of  faithless  young  husbands  is  limited  to 
Menaeehmus,  for,  in  Charisius'  case,  it  was  much  against 
his  will  and  under  quite  special  conditions  that  he  deserted 
Pamphila.  On  the  other  hand,  almost  all  the  amorous 
greybeards  are  fathers  of  a  family,  who  are  tired  of  their 
old  and  ugly  spouses  and  seek  amusement  outside  their 
homes.  As  far  as  the  women  are  concerned,  we  know 
that  those  who  seek  amorous  adventures  are  not  usually 
found  among  the  young  girls  of  good  family.  The  wife 
who  deceives  her  husband  does  not  occur — or  hardly 
occurs — in  comedy.  The  wife  who  is  in  love  either 
remains  behind  the  scenes,  or  else,  if  she  appears  on  the 
stage,  does  not  give  free  rein  to  her  feelings.  Alcmena  is 
a  single  exception,  and  Alcmena  belongs  to  the  region  of 
fable.  As  for  jealous  matrons,  their  jealousy  is  not  due 
to  love  but  to  pride,  or  to  a  horror  of  vice,  or  else,  purely 

1  Men.,  fr.  923. 

*  In  Plautus,  Amphitryon  is  called  senex  (1072;  cf.  1032).  But  there 
is  nothing  in  his  part  that  fits  in  with  this  attribute.  Alcmena's  husband, 
the  Theban  general,  can,  at  most,  be  a  middle-aged  man.  I  may  incident- 
ally remark  that  "  middle  age  "  is  not  represented  among  the  characters 
of  New  Comedy,  or  at  least  not  among  the  prominent  characters. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  143 

and  simply,  to  a  spirit  of  contradiction.  The  vea  recruits 
its  amorous  women  elsewhere  than  in  polite  society.  Some 
of  them  are  courtesans,  others  are  the  slaves  of  their 
lovers.  The  majority  of  them  belong  by  birth  to  respect- 
able families,  but  have  left  the  paternal  roof  very  early 
and  have  grown  up  in  the  homes  of  poor  and  more  or 
less  respectable  people  who  pass  them  off  as  their  daughters, 
or  in  the  house  of  a  pander  who  waits  for  an  opportunity 
to  sell  them  to  good  advantage. 

As  a  rule,  it  is  the  men  who  take  the  first  step  in  an 
amorous  adventure.  The  courtesans  who  tempt,  like 
Bacchis  the  Athenian,  act  from  design,  not  from  passion. 
Acroteleutium,  in  the  Miles,  wishes  to  make  fun  of  Pyrgo- 
polinices  when  she  pretends  to  offer  herself  to  him  unasked. 
In  the  ' A7ioxXr]o/Li£v?-j  by  Posidippus,  it  appears  that  a 
woman  made  tender  advances  and  was  rebuffed,  but  there 
is  nothing  to  show  that  this  woman  was  still  in  the  pre- 
liminary stages  of  a  liaison.  In  a  word,  I  do  not  believe 
that  the  woman  who  offers  her  love,  like  Simaetha  in 
Theocritus,  was  portrayed  in  comedy. 

Why  does  one  fall  in  love?  One  of  Menander's  char- 
acters asks  himself  this  question  and  finds  great  difficulty 
in  answering  it.^  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  often  nothing 
else  than  the  woman's  beauty  that  stirs  the  lovers  in 
comedy,  and  what  they  desire  is  nothing  but  sensuous 
pleasure.  Especially  when  old  men  meddle  with  love, 
they  seek  merely  to  tickle  their  senses ;  the  only  thing 
that  moves  them  is  the  spirit  of  lechery.  Like  Trygaeus 
and  Philocleon,  they  are  merely  hot  with  desire.  Senile 
love,  it  is  true,  is  intentionally  painted  in  repulsive  and 
ridiculous  colours  by  the  writers  of  comedy,  but  young 
people  also,  young  lovers,  with  whom  the  poet  sympatiiises, 
are  more  than  once  influenced  merely  by  fleshly  desire. 
The  mere  charm  of  a  beautiful  face  or  of  a  fine  figure 
sufficed  to  determine  the  conduct  of  Lyconides,  in  the 
Aulularia,  of   Aeschinus  in  the   Adelphi,  and    of   ever  so 

1  Men.,  fr.  541. 


144  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

many  otlicr  youths  wliose  relations  with  their  mistresses 
began  by  their  ravishing  them.  Similarly,  mere  beauty 
can  occasion  the  "  thunder-strokes  "  (love  at  first  sight) 
which  are  so  frequent  in  comedy.  How  should  Chaerea 
and  Moschio  have  noticed  anything  but  the  agreeable 
appearance  of  Pamphila  as  she  crossed  the  street,  or  of 
Glycera  as  she  stood  at  her  threshold  ?  When  Calidorus, 
in  the  Pseudolus,  is  bereft  of  his  mistress,  he  apparently 
mourns  only  the  loss  of  purely  sensual  pleasures.^  The 
intoxication  of  the  senses  is  described  at  length  by  an 
enthusiastic  lover,  in  fragment  536  of  Menander.  A  detail 
which  serves  to  disclose  what  the  love  of  certain  persons 
in  comedy  is  worth,  is  the  way  they  behave  in  the  presence 
of  rivals,  avowed  or  merely  imagined.  In  several  Latin 
plays  we  meet  with  lovers  who  agree  to  strange  bargains 
and  bear  a  separation  without  much  grief.  I  shall  not 
dwell  upon  the  adventure  of  Argyrippus,  in  the  Asinaria, 
for  it  is  W'ith  distinct  chagrin  and  dislike  that  he  tem- 
porarily gives  up  his  mistress  Philaenium  to  his  father. 
But  at  the  close  of  the  Eunuchus — and  I  believe  the  scene 
is  an  imitation  of  what  occurred  in  Menander's  Kola^  ^ — 
Phaedria  resigns  himself  to  sharing  Thais'  favours  wdth 
Thraso,  and,  in  the  Truculentus,  Diniarchus  does  not 
even  dream  of  demanding  sole  possession  of  Phronesium. 
Love  that  comes  from  the  heart  does  not  admit  of  such 
j  compromises,  nor  of  such  leniency,  for  which  there  is  but 
one  explanation — that  those  who  indulge  in  them  are  above 
all  else  seeking  for  sensuous  pleasures. 

Thus  the  lovers  in  the  via  are  much  inclined  to  physical 
passion ;  and  yet  it  would  be  a  slander  to  think  that  they 
are  always  ruled  by  their  senses.  In  the  "Hqcdq,  Daos,  a 
slave,  loves  Plangon,  who,  he  thinks,  is  a  simple  servant 
and  the  daughter  of  a  freedman.  Of  course,  he  has  no  lack 
of  opportunity  for  paying  the  young  woman  most  urgent 

^  Pseud.,  63  et  seq. 

*  It  is  proper  to  add  that  Pheidias'  love  in  the  K(^/\a|  was  not  concerned 
with  a  woman  Uke  Thais  and  was  not  of  the  same  kind  as  that  of  Phaedria 
in  Terence's  Eunuchus. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  145 

court,  but  he  has  no  designs  against  Plangon's  virtue 
and  asks  her  most  properly  to  marry  him.^  Among  the 
young  lovers  there  are  some  who,  like  the  misoumenos 
Thrasonides,  are  smitten  with  a  woman  whom  they  have 
in  their  power,  and  yet  respect  her,  because  they  desire 
that  she  should  give  herself  to  them  willingly. ^  There 
are  some  who,  like  Clinia  in  the  Heauton  Timor oumenos, 
cannot  bear  the  thought  that  any  one  else  has  a  share 
in  the  favours  of  their  well-beloved,  and  repeatedly  we  can 
discover  in  the  soul  of  this  or  that  character  a  more  lofty 
motive  for  love  than  mere  admiration  for  a  good  figure. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  the  pleasure  which  a  polite  and 
distinguished  bearing  affords  them.  To  behave  properly 
in  society,  and  especially  at  table,  is  one  of  the  duties ' 
which  people  versed  in  the  art  of  love — or  rather  of  making 
one's  self  beloved — point  out  to  their  pupils,  the  young 
courtesans.  In  the  sixth  Dialogue  of  Lueian  the  aged 
Crobyle  calls  the  attention  of  her  daughter  Corinna  to  it. 
In  the  Eunuchus  Parmeno,  who  is  likewise  an  experienced 
person,  hopes  that  the  sight  of  courtesans  en  neglige  in 
their  homes  will  cure  Chaerea  of  his  liking  for  them  : 
"  To  see  the  untidiness,  the  filth,  the  poverty  of  these 
creatures,  to  see  how  badly  they  behave  and  how  greedy 
they  are  as  soon  as  they  are  at  home  alone,  how  they 
devour  black  bread  dipped  in  yesterday's  soup — to  know 
all  this  is  the  salvation  of  a  young  man."  ^ 

It  is  qualities  of  mind  and  heart  that  lovers,  or  at  least 
some  of  them,  value  in  their  mistresses,  even  more  than 
good  manners.  Toxilus,  in  the  Persa,  is  sure  that  the 
supposed  captive  girl,  a  fine  talker  and  clever  at  repartee, 
will  have  a  brilliant  career  as  a  courtesan  owing  to  these 
accomplishments.'*  In  the  Poenulus,  Agorastoeles  almost 
dies  with  laughter  when  he  hears  the  sanctimonious  moral- 
isings  of  Adelphasium.^      In  the  Mostellaria  Pliilolaches 

1  'Hp.,  41  et  seq. 

*  Men.,  fr.  336.     Cf.  Diog.  Laert.,  VII.  130. 

*  Eun.,  934  et  seq.  *  Persa,  563  et  seq. 

*  Poen.,  289  et  seq.,  308  et  seq. 


146  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

feels  his  love  growing  when,  hidden  from  Philematium's 
view,  he  hears  her  express  her  gratitude,  lier  affection  and 
her  fidelity.^  Plangon,  in  the  "Hgcog,  enehants  Daos  by 
her  good  behaviour  and  correct  bearing.^  Above  all,  in 
Terence  we  repeatedly  see  mention  made  of  motives  that 
are  anything  but  sensuous  mentioned  as  accounting  for 
a  love  affair.  In  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos  it  is  the 
respectability  of  Antiphila  to  which  Clitipho  and  Bacchis 
render  homage ;  ^  it  is  the  great  tenderness  with  which 
she  requites  Clinia — that  tenderness  which  causes  her  to 
faint  when  she  hears  of  his  return  *  and  when  she  finds 
herself  face  to  face  with  him;  ^  it  is  the  mutual  regard 
existing  between  the  two  lovers ;  ^  in  a  word,  to  go  to  the 
root  of  the  matter,  it  is  the  similarity  of  their  inclinations.' 
Motives  of  the  same  kind  are  more  or  less  explicitly  alleged 
in  the  Phormio  and  in  the  Andria.  Phanium,  in  the 
Phormio,  is,  according  to  the  testimony  of  disinterested 
persons,  an  entirely  proper  young  woman;  ingenuaf 
liberalis,  says  Antipho's  young  cousin ;  ^  perliberalis,  insists 
Nausistrata,  a  matron,  from  whom  one  might  have 
expected  a  preconceived  severity.^  Glycerium,  in  the 
Andria,  has  been  brought  up  on  principles  of  honour  and 
virtue,^"  she  has  given  Pamphilus  her  heart  and  her  life,^^ 
and  her  character  harmonises  with  that  of  her  lover. ^^ 

I  must  add  that  in  the  last  two  plays  the  young  men's 
love  is  strengthened  by  a  sense  of  duty.  The  mistress  of 
the  one  and  the  clandestine  wife  of  the  other  have  trusted 
themselves  to  their  honour,  and  they  feel  their  responsi- 
bility towards  them.  This  feeling,  which  we  may  call 
chivalrous,  is  strongly  marked  in  the  role  of  Pamphilus. 
One  need  only  recall  the  splendid  tirade  in  lines  277-299. 
The  same  note  is  sounded  in  the  Phormio,  lines  468-470. 
In  this  instance  profound  pity  is  added  to  the  feeling  of 
responsibility  in  a  more  marked  way  than  in  the  Andria. 

^  Moat.,  205  et  seq.,  222  et  seq.  *  "Hp.,  40. 

»  HeauL,  226,  381  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  304  et  seq. 

s  Ibid.,  403  et  seq.         «  Ibid.,  394.        '  Ibid.,  393.        «  Phorm.,  168. 

'  Ibid.,  815.  10  Andr.,  274.  "  Ibid.,  272.        i*  Ibid.,  696. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  147 

It  is  under  the  influence  of  pity  that  love  entered  the 
heart  of  Antipho  when  he  saw  Phanium,  poor  and  deserted, 
weeping  over  her  mother's  body.  lie  has  dcHvered  her 
from  the  poverty  into  which  she  would  have  relapsed 
without  his  aid,  and  he  loves  her  the  more  for  this — with 
the  complacent  love  that  every  man  feels  for  his  good 
deeds. 

Just  the  opposite  is  the  case  with  Pamphilus,  in  the 
Ilecyra.  He  loves  Philumena  in  order  to  make  reparation 
for  his  behaviour  towards  her.  He  had  married  her  with- 
out feeling  affection  for  her.  At  first  he  treated  her  with 
contempt  and  continued  to  prefer  his  former  mistress, 
the  courtesan  Baechis.  Then  little  by  little,  as  Parmeno 
explains  :  "  He  got  to  know  himself  and  to  know  Baechis 
and  the  young  wife  he  had  at  home.  .  .  .  His  heart,  both 
moved  by  pity  for  his  wife  and  repelled  by  the  exactions 
of  Baechis,  freed  itself  from  its  trammels.  He  transferred 
his  love  to  his  home,  where  he  had  discovered  a  disposition 
that  harmonised  with  his  own."  ^  Thus,  for  the  third 
time,  we  find  that  love  is  accounted  for  by  a  similarity 
of  taste  and  character,  and  there  is  no  trace  of  the  brutal 
desire  which  is  sometimes  indiscriminately  attributed  to 
all  lovers  in  the  vea.  Many  of  them  are  quite  as  sensitive 
and  have  quite  as  fine  characters  as  the  majority  of  modern 
lovers. 

One  thing  that  should,  I  believe,  be  noted,  is  the  com- 
posure with  which  they  see  their  liaisons  or  their  amorous 
adventures  end  in  marriage.  Nothing  would  be  more 
natural  if  the  woman  they  courted  had  from  the  outset 
been  known  to  them  as  a  woman  whom  one  could  marry, 
and  if  they  had  been  duly  informed  of  her  social  position 
and  her  morals  at  the  time  when  they  entered  into  clandes- 
tine relations  with  her.  Apart  from  all  other  feelings,  a 
sense  of  honour  must  have  prescribed  their  course  under 
such  conditions.  But  there  are  cases  where  the  woman 
was  at  first  regarded  as  a  foreigner,  as  a  slave,  as  a  cour- 
tesan, and  where  the  young  man  was  not  called  upon  to 
^  Hec,  IGl  ot  seq. 


148  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

make  any  reparation  as  far  as  she  was  concerned,  and 
yet,  notwithstanding  all  this,  eagerly  marries  her  when 
her  real  character  is  revealed.^  It  even  happens  that  he 
passes  her  off  for  what  she  is  not,  in  order  to  be  able  to 
marry  her.^  Of  course,  this  attitude  may  show  that 
marriage  is  often  not  taken  seriously  in  comedy,  but  it 
would  appear  that,  here  and  there,  we  may  be  justified 
in  reaching  a  contrary  conclusion — namely,  that  the  young 
man's  passion  was  not  a  mere  passing  fancy,  and  that 
he  had  been  drawn  to  his  mistress  by  something  more 
than  a  mere  amorous  caprice — by  a  well-founded  regard. 

At  all  events,  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  the  disin- 
terestedness of  young  lovers.  The  writers  of  comedy,  who 
so  often  portrayed  a  household  in  which  a  dowered  wife 
is  rampant,  apparently  did  not  introduce  the  fortune- 
hunter.  If,  now  and  again,  a  young  man  is  charged  with 
money-seeking — as  in  the  Cistellaria,^  or  in  the  second 
Dialogue  of  Lucian — it  is  owing  to  some  mistake  that  is 
quickly  discovered.  Rarely  do  pecuniary  considerations 
keep  a  lover  from  following  his  inclination.  This  may 
have  been  the  case  in  the  original  version  of  the  Poenulus. 
In  the  Aulularia  a  few  lines  of  the  prologue  might  give 
rise  to  doubts  regarding  Lyconides'  generosity,*  and  it 
seems  that  at  the  close  of  the  play,  in  a  scene  that  is  lost, 
he  fought  with  his  father-in-law  about  the  ownership  of 
the  precious  pot.  But  the  exceptional  circumstances  of 
the  case  must  be  taken  into  account.  Lyconides  has  to 
deal  with  an  old  miser  in  whose  hands  money  is  useless. 
He  is  in  possession  of  the  treasure  which  his  slave  Strobilus 
has  stolen,  and  his  behaviour  when  he  asks  for  the  dowry 
is  therefore  not  that  of  a  skinflint.  If  he  waited  so  long 
before  declaring  his  love,  it  was  from  fear  of  enduring 
reproaches,  rather  than  from  a  disinclination  to  marry 
a  poor  girl.  As  a  rule,  far  from  looking  for  a  dowry,  the 
young  men  treat  it  with  indifference  when  people  offer  it 

'  "H^cos,  VleptKeipoiJ.fVT],  Casina,  Curculio,  Cistellaria,  Epidicus,  Poenulus, 
Rudens,  Eunuchus,  Heauton  Timoroumenos. 

*  Phormio.  *  Cist.,  492  et  seq.  *  AuL,  25  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  149 

of  their  own  accord.  We  even  meet  with  a  young  bride- 
groom— in  the  Trinummus — who  obstinately  refuses  to 
accept  the  dowry  that  his  wife  is  to  receive. 

Hitherto  I  have  spoken  only  of  young  men  who  are  in 
love.  Girls  who  are  honestly  in  love,  if  they  appear  at 
all,  often  do  nothing  beyond  appearing.  We  find — or  we 
suspect — that  they  have  the  same  reasons  for  loving  which 
move  the  young  men,  ranging  from  sensuality — ingenu- 
ously admitted  by  one  of  Lucian's  courtesans,^  and  less 
ingenuously  by  Phoenicium,  in  the  Pseudolus  ^ — to  real 
sympathy.  There  is,  however,  a  kind  of  love  which,  in 
comedy,  is  peculiar  to  women  and  which  must  be  classed 
by  itself — the  love  that  comes  from  gratitude.  In  the 
Mostellaria  Philematium  declares  that  she  is  for  all  time 
devoted  to  Philolaches  because  he  freed  her  from  slavery. 
Philaenium,  in  the  Asinaria,  and  Selenium,  in  the  Cistel- 
laria,  are  grateful  to  Argyrippus  and  Alcesimarchus  for 
the  respect  with  which  they  have  treated  them  and  for 
their  affectionate  courtesy,  notwithstanding  they  were 
courtesans  or  daughters  of  courtesans.^  It  may  be  that 
Philematium  is  mistaken  about  the  nature  of  her  feelings ; 
the  other  two  girls  are,  without  a  doubt,  truly  in  love. 

We  now  know  whence  love  comes  into  the  hearts  of 
people  on  the  comic  stage.  How  it  comes  is  a  problem 
that  comedy  does  not  attempt  to  solve.  As  far  as  we 
know,  Chaerea  is  the  only  one  who  falls  in  love  in  the 
course  of  a  play,  and  it  w'ill  be  recalled  how  suddenly  he 
is  smitten.  As  a  rule,  the  lovers  are  all  afire  and  aflame 
at  the  very  outset  of  the  play,  and  the  portrayal  of  the 
perturbation  caused  by  their  passion  begins  forthwith. 

This  perturbation  is  violent,  for  Eros  is  a  very  powerful 
god.  It  is  a  commonplace  of  comic  writers  to  declare  that 
love  leads  men  to  rave  and  makes  them  blind  and  m^d. 
A  lover  no  longer  calls  his  soul  his  own,  he  is  entirely 
possessed    by  his  fancy,   which    makes    him  forget    food 

i  Luc,  Dial.  Mer.,  VII.  3.  »  Pseud.,  66-68. 

3  Most.,  204-205,  214,  220-221;    Aa.,  525;    Cist.,  92-93. 


150  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

and  drink.  The  presence  of  the  person  he  loves  suffices 
to  upset  liim;  on  seeing  Thais,  Phaedria  is  all  of  a 
shiver.^  On  seeing  Clinia  after  a  long  absence,  Anti- 
phila  almost  faints  away.^  Pleusicles  and  Philocomasium 
swoon  in  one  another's  arms  in  the  presence  of  the 
man  whom  they  are  deceiving.^  The  happiness  of  love  is 
proclaimed  to  be  the  greatest  happiness  in  the  world, 
greater  than  that  of  riches  or  of  kings. ^  Lovers  compare 
themselves  to  the  very  gods.^  When  Clinia,  in  the  Heaidon 
Timor oumenos,  knows  that  he  can  marry  Antiphila,  he 
declares  that  henceforward  nothing  can  trouble  him — 
he  is  so  happy.  ^  In  the  Eunuchus,  Chaerea,  after  having 
possessed  Pamphila,  would  gladly  consent  to  die  lest  by 
continuing  to  live  he  might  see  his  bliss  poisoned  by 
some  sorrow.'  The  lover  who  reaches  the  goal  of  his 
desires  and  whose  passion  is  requited  and  meets  with  no 
hindrance  is,  as  it  were,  drunk  with  joy.  He  thinks  of 
nothing  but  his  happiness,  speaks  of  nothing  else,  and  does 
not  wish  others  to  speak  of  anything  else.  \Vhen  he  hears 
a  bit  of  news  that  delights  him,  he  never  tires  of  hearing 
it  repeated.  He  is  anxious  to  make  known  the  happy 
outcome  of  his  love,  and  makes  a  confidant  of  Tom,  Dick 
and  Harry.  Overflowing  with  contentment  himself,  he 
would  like  to  have  universal  contentment  prevail  about 
him.  He  feels  a  wholly  groundless  gratitude  towards 
everybody  and  everything.  When  Polemo  begins  to  hope 
that  Glycera  will  come  back  to  him,  he  promises  Doris 
that  she  shall  be  freed  and  calls  her  his  very  dear  one.^ 
Chaerea,  who  has  been  given  permission  to  marry  Pam- 
phila, is  full  of  affection  for  Parmeno,  for  Thais,  for  his 
brother  and  for  the  whole  world. ^ 

Happy  he  who  can  experience  so  delightful  an  ecstasy  ! 
But,  alas,  all  is  not  joy  in  love ;  the  bitter  is  mixed  with 
the  sweet,  and  often  predominates.    Love,  says  Gymnasium, 

^  Eun.,  83-84.  ^  Heaut.,  403  et  seq. 

»  Miles,  1334  et  seq.  *  Cure,  178  et  seq. 

«  Andr.,  959  et  seq.;  Heaut.,  693;  Cure,   167-168. 

«  Heaut.,  679-680.  '  Eun.,  561-552. 

*  UepiK.,  332-333,  339.  •  Eun.,  1034  et  seq.,  1051  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  151 

doubtless  lets  us  taste  much  sweetness,  but  it  also  abounds 
in  bitterness,  it  overflows  with  it.^  Those  who  submit  to 
its  laws  have  to  endure  a  harder  lot  than  that  of  a  poor 
labourer. 2  Love  is  the  prince  of  tormentors.^  For  every 
scene  in  which  we  sec  a  lover  exult inf^,  there  are  ten  in 
which  other  lovers  lament  and  complain  that  they  are 
being  put  upon  the  rack.  It  is  chiefly  the  pangs  of  love 
that  comedy  portrays  for  us. 

Manifold  are  their  causes.  Now,  it  is  a  third  person 
who  is  evilly  disposed,  a  severe  father,  a  rival,  a  pander 
or  a  procuress  that  thwarts  the  two  lovers;  or  again,  the 
loved  one  remains  indifferent,  is  unfaithful  or  pretends  to 
be;  or  feelings  hostile  to  his  love  struggle  for  the  upper 
hand  in  the  lover's  heart.  From  these  varied  causes  spring 
various  pangs. 

The  simplest  of  them,  and  the  most  common,  is  the 
pang  of  privation  :  the  lover  suffers  because  he  cannot 
possess  the  object  of  his  desire,  or  because  he  has  lost  her. 
His  suffering  is  all  the  greater  because  he  is  generally 
impatient — fervidus  amator,  says  Apuleius  ^ — and  incapable 
of  listening  to  reason.  To  live  apart  from  Thais  for  two 
days  appears  to  Phaedria,  in  the  Eunuchus,  to  be  almost 
unbearable.  In  order  to  endure  it,  he  plans  to  go  to  the 
country,  and  to  kill  himself  with  work  in  order  to  forget 
his  annoyance  and  to  cure  his  sleeplessness.  But  this  fine 
plan  is  not  carried  out;  he  only  makes  the  two  journeys 
— there  and  back;  if  he  cannot  possess  his  mistress  he 
at  least  means  to  see  her.^  When  Mnesilochus  is  away 
from  Bacchis  the  Samian,  he  is  like  a  body  without  a 
soul.^  In  the  Mioovjuevog  the  jilted  lover  is  driven  out 
of  doors  at  night  by  his  sad  thoughts  and  awakens  his 
slave  Getas,  who  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  matter,  to 
tell  him  of  his  mortification.'  In  the  comic  writers,  as 
well  as  in  the  Alexandrian  elegiac  poets,  sleeplessness 
appears  to  have  been  a  regular  consequence,  as  it  were, 

1  Cist.,  67-70.  *  Merc,  356.  ^  Cint.,  203  ot  seq. 

*  Ap.,  Flor.,  XVI.  »  Eun.,  629  et  soq.  »  Bacch.,  193. 

">  Arr.,  Diss.  Epict.,  IV.  1,  9  Schw. ;   Men.,  fr.  341. 


152  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

of  the  worries  of  love.  To  it  must  be  added  the  pallor 
which  overcomes  Toxilus,  in  the  Persa}  and  his  indifference 
to  the  niceties  of  his  toilet,  and  finally  a  sickly  languor.^ 

Occasionally  a  thwarted  lover  grows  whimsical,  irritable, 
and  unjust.  When  Adelphasium,  in  the  Poenulus,  looks 
crossly  at  Agorastocles,  he  vents  his  bad  humour  on  the 
back  of  the  innocent  Milphio.^  In  the  Mercator  Charinus 
finds  that  the  faithful  Eutychus,  who  is  so  devoted  to 
him,  is  too  slow  and  clumsy  in  serving  him.*  More 
frequently  still,  the  pangs  of  love  make  men  sentimental. 
Anticipating  Acontius,  the  young  lovers  in  comedy  seem 
to  think  that  one  can  assuage  one's  sorrows  by  speaking 
of  them.  They  beset  their  friends  and  their  trusted  slaves 
with  their  lamentations,  or  else  they  apostrophise  heaven 
and  earth,  and  claim  that  the  whole  world  should  be  con- 
cerned exclusively  with  themselves.  Cicero  has  preserved 
for  us  the  most  interesting  passages  of  one  of  these  ex- 
travagant tirades  ^  in  a  few  lines  of  Turpilius'  Leucadia, 
an  imitation  of  one  of  Menander's  plays.  A  lover  pro- 
claims his  agony  from  the  top  of  the  Leucadian  rock;  he 
calls  the  gods  to  witness,  "  if  indeed,"  he  adds  with  bitter- 
ness, "  there  be  a  god  who  cares  for  me."  He  invokes 
the  help  of  Apollo,  of  Neptune  and  the  Winds,  but  is 
severe  on  Venus,  who  has  not  listened  to  his  prayers. 
WTien  carried  to  such  a  paroxysm,  the  lover's  despair 
borders  upon  insanity.  Some  distressed  lovers  exceed  all 
bounds  and  lose  their  heads  entirely.  Charinus,  in  the 
Mercator,  and  Alcesimarchus,  in  the  Cistellaria,  suffer 
from  veritable  attacks  of  insanity  on  the  stage,  and  vie 
with  each  other  in  their  outpourings. 

What  can  be  done  to  escape  this  grievous  obsession? 
Charisius,  in  the  ' ETiixQEnovxeQ,  and  Polemo,  in  the 
UeQixEiQO/Lihr],  stifle  or  try  to  stifle  their  troubles  by 
feasting  with  their  friends.  Elsewhere,  the  young  men 
leave  the  place  where  they  had  to  suffer,  in  order  to  cheat 

1  Persa,  24.  2  Cf.  Cist.,  113-115. 

*  Poen.,  135  et  seq.,  378-379.         *  Merc,  595  et  seq.,  629  et  seq. 

»  Cic,  Tusc,  IV.  34,  72  (Turpilius,  Leucadia,  fr.  XII.). 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  153 

their  grief.  They  go  into  exile  or  travel,  as  Charinus,  in 
the  Mercator,  did,  and  still  wishes  to  do.  They  enlist  in 
an  army,  like  Clinia  of  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos.  For 
those  whom  this  treatment  does  not  cure  or  who  are  not 
willing  to  resort  to  it,  there  remains  a  last  and  radical 
resource — suicide.  It  is  mentioned,  more  or  less  seriously, 
in  the  JleQiHEigojuivrj,  the  Mercator,  the  Pseudolus,  the 
Miles,  the  Epidicus  and  the  Asinaria,  in  which  Argy- 
rippus  and  Philaenium,  filled  with  a  like  despair,  dream 
of  dying  together  and  of  being  together  carried  to  the 
grave.i  It  is  also  spoken  of  in  Menandcr's  'AdeX(poi.^  In 
the  MioovfjLEvoQ  it  seems  that  the  hero  asks  for  his  sword 
that  he  may  kill  himself  with  it.^  In  the  Cistellaria 
Alcesimarchus  holds  his  sword  in  his  hand  when  Selenium 
interferes  with  his  purpose.^  Possibly  the  title  of  one  of 
Crobylus'  comedies — 'ATtayxojuevog — and  that  of  a  play 
by  Diphilus — ZwojioOvy^oxovteq — allude  to  suicide  or  to 
plans  for  suicide  on  account  of  love. 

Occasionally  yet  other  anxieties  are  added  to  the  grief 
occasioned  by  an  enforced  separation,  such  I  have  just 
described.  According  to  Parmeno,  of  the  Eunuchus, 
"  insults,  suspicions,  quarrels,  reconciliations,  war  and  a 
renewal  of  peace  "  follow  in  the  train  of  love.^  In  the 
enumeration  of  the  themes  of  comedy  which  is  contained 
in  one  of  Terence's  prologues,  hating  and  suspecting  come 
immediately  after  loving.^  Let  us  now  examine  what  are 
the  feelings  of  the  jilted  or  betrayed  lover  and  what 
attitude  he  takes  towards  the  obdurate  one  or  the  betrayer. 

Generally  speaking,  a  rebuff,  far  from  discouraging 
passion,  results  in  exciting  it  to  a  still  higher  degree. 
Rivalry  inflames  the  rivals.  Every  lover's  quarrel  is 
followed  by  a  reawakening  of  love.  Experienced  cour- 
tesans are  well  aware  of  this,  and  we  have  already  seen 
how   skilfully  they   exploit   these    inconsistencies    of   the 

1  nepiK.,  242,  325;  As.,  607,  613-615;  Ep.,  148;  Pseud.,  89  et  seq. ; 
Merc,  471-473;    Miles,  1240-1241. 

*  Donatus,  commentary  to  line  275  of  the  Adelphi. 

»  Arr.,  Diss  Epict.,  IV.  1,  19  Schw. ;    cf.  Men.,  fr.  346. 

«  Ciat.,  641.  6  Eun.,  59-61.  •  Ibid.,  pro].  40. 


154  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

human  heart.  As  a  rule,  aspirants  for  the  favour  of  one 
of  these  enticers  entertain  no  illusions  concerning  her,  and 
rightly  despise  her.  But  not  infrequently  they  show  no 
sign  of  their  contempt,  and  never  cease  addressing  her 
with  tender  words  or  even  supplications.  This  is  what 
Diniarchus,  in  the  Truculentus,  does,  excepting  in  one 
scene  where  his  wrath  breaks  forth;  and  doubtless  more 
than  one  lover  in  comic  literature,  provided  he  was  able 
to  satisfy  his  passion,  resigned  himself  to  the  knowledge 
that  it  was  not  requited. 

Behaviour  such  as  this  merely  required  a  certain  amount 
of  cowardice  and  callousness.  But  another  class  of  lovers 
is  more  interesting — those  who,  after  having  been  deserted 
by  the  object  of  their  affection,  still  remain  sufficiently  in 
love  to  forgive  everything,  even  desertion,  or  who  even 
seek  to  find  an  excuse  for  the  delinquent.  To  this  class 
belong  Selenium  of  the  Cistellaria,  and  one  of  Philaenium's 
suitors  in  the  Asinaria.  Before  he  is  quite  sure  whether 
Philaenium  shares  her  mother's  intention  of  ousting  him, 
he  reserves  his  curses  for  Cleaereta;  at  the  most,  in  his 
first  access  of  anger  he  makes  a  threat  which  includes  the 
two  women;  but  he  quickly  corrects  himself:  "  You  will 
see  !  As  for  her,  how  could  I  be  angry  at  her  ?  There  is 
no  reason  for  it,  she  in  no  way  deserves  it;  it  is  you  who 
made  her  act  as  she  did,  she  obeys  your  orders.  You  are 
her  mother,  you  are  mistress  here."  ^  As  for  Selenium, 
she  thinks  she  has  positive  knowledge  of  Alcesimarchus' 
infidelity;  notwithstanding  this,  she  makes  the  following 
touching  recommendation  to  Gymnasium  who  is  to  look 
after  her  house  :  "  If  he  comes  while  I  am  away,  do 
not,  I  beseech  you,  receive  him  with  severe  reproaches. 
Notwithstanding  all  he  has  done  to  me,  he  is  dear  to  me. 
Say  nothing  that  might  hurt  him."  ^ 

It  is  rather  curious  that,  in  Plautus  and  Terence,  there  is 
an  almost  complete  lack  of  scenes  of  reconciliation  between 
lovers.  When  the  behaviour  of  a  faithless  one  is  censured, 
it  is  generally  by  a  third  person,  and  most  frequently  not 

1  Aain.,  145-147,  *  Cist.,  108-110. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  155 

in  the  presence  of  the  culprit.  If  we  except  the  Trucu- 
lentus,  in  which  Stratophanes'  anger  is  due  to  his  absurd 
vanity  rather  than  to  his  injured  love,  there  is  only  one 
instance — in  the  Eunuchus — where  a  lover  reproaches  his 
mistress  for  the  favour  she  shows  another  man ;  and  he 
does  not  persist  in  his  recriminations.  I  can  hardly 
believe  that  what  is  true  of  the  few  extant  plays  applied 
as  well  to  all  comedies.  Without  a  doubt  bitter  reproaches, 
offensive  insinuations,  floods  of  cruel  words  were  not 
unknown  in  the  vea.  In  the  fourth  Dialogue  of  Lucian 
Melitta  tells  a  friend  how  Charinus  had  harshly  upbraided 
her  for  her  supposed  infidelity.  In  the  twelfth  Dialogue 
Lysias,  in  injurious  terms,  charges  loessa  with  infidelity. 
Fragment  569  of  Menandcr  and  a  few  verses  of  the  Lcucadia 
by  Turpilius  apparently  belong  to  analogous  scenes  and  to 
scenes  of  reconciliation. 

The  lovers'  spite  which  embitters  quarrels  plays  a  con- 
siderable part  in  Lucian.  Before  giving  loessa  a  chance 
to  explain,  Lysias  humiliates  her  by  publicly  and  in  her 
presence  paying  court  to  one  of  her  enemies,  and  by 
singing  the  praises  of  a  worthless  woman.  Philinna  and 
Diphilus,  in  the  third  Dialogue,  make  it  their  business 
to  drive  one  another  to  distraction.  Apparently  Lysias, 
Philinna  and  Diphilus  believe  in  the  excellence  of  the 
method  which  Gnatho,  in  a  scene  of  the  Eunuchus,  recom- 
mends to  the  soldier  Thraso :  "  I  tell  you  what.  If 
Thais  happens  to  speak  of  Phaedria,  to  sing  his  praises^ 
in  order  to  be  disagreeable  to  you  .  .  .  there  is  but  one 
way  in  which  you  can  silence  her.  As  soon  as  she  says 
'  Phaedria,'  you  must  answer  '  Pamphila.'  If  she  says 
'  Let  us  send  for  Phaedria  for  supper,' — '  Let  us  have 
Pamphila  come  to  sing.'  If  she  praises  the  good  looks  of 
the  one,  you  must,  in  return,  praise  the  pretty  face  of 
the  other.  In  a  word,  give  her  tit  for  tat,  so  as  to  annoy 
her  also."  ^  Thraso,  as  we  know,  in  the  course  of  the  play 
puts  this  method  into  practice — with  his  characteristic 
awkwardness — and  other  heroes  of  comedy  must  have  done 

^  Eun.,  437  et  seq. 


156  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

as  much.  For  instance,  the  girl  from  Leucas  thinks  that 
she  has  been  offended  by  her  lover  and  pretends  to  listen 
to  the  advances  of  an  old  aspirant  who  rolls  in  wealth.^ 
Several  of  Lucian's  characters  go  still  further  in  the  way 
of  retaliation.  When  Charmides,  in  the  eleventh  Dialogue, 
is  rebuffed  by  Philemation,  he  has  Tryphaena  to  his 
house — but  gives  her  holiday  all  night.  In  the  fourth 
Dialogue,  Charinus,  who  thinks  he  has  cause  to  complain 
of  Melitta,  ostentatiously  shows  himself  in  Simmiche's 
company.  Herein  he  behaves  like  certain  lovers  in 
Menander — Charisius  of  the  'EnirQ^novreg,  and  Polemo 
of  the  IIsQixeiQojuEvi].  Partly  to  amuse  themselves  and 
partly  to  take  revenge,  the  one  on  his  wife,  the  other  on 
his  mistress,  these  two  hire  courtesans.  They  are,  by  the 
way,  no  more  polite  to  these  unfortunate  "  substitutes  " 
than  Charmides  is  to  Tryphaena. 

Occasionally  a  lover's  spite  takes  brutal  forms.  It  will 
be  recalled  how  insultingly  Polemo,  in  the  IleQixeiQo/iievrj, 
treats  his  mistress.  In  the  Eunuchus  Thais  takes  great 
precautions  when  she  sees  that  Thraso  is  angry  :  she  en- 
trusts her  jewels  to  Dorias,  who  takes  them  home  with  her, 
and  she  herself  chooses  the  right  moment  to  slip  away.^ 
In  the  eighth  Dialogue  Chrysis  and  Ampelis  have  had 
their  clothes  torn  and  their  ears  boxed  by  their  jealous 
lovers.  The  heroine  of  one  of  Menander's  plays,  the 
' PajtiCofj,evrj,  must  have  been  the  victim  of  some  similar 
calamity.  Here  and  there,  unrequited  lovers  go  so  far 
as  to  threaten  death.  In  the  Truculentus  Stratophanes 
wishes  to  cleave  Phronesium  and  Strabax  in  two.^  In  the 
Bacchides  Cleomachus  declares  that  if  he  finds  the  faith- 
less Bacchis  and  Mnesilochus  together,  he  will  kill  them 
and  have  no  mercy.*  These  are  coarse  soldiers;  but  in 
the  Cistellaria  a  young  gentleman  also  speaks  of  murder- 
ing a  woman  who  rejects  him,  as  well  as  her  mother.^ 
W^e  may,  however,  doubt  the  seriousness  of  his  words. 

1  Cf.  Rev.  Et.  Gr.,  XVII.  (1904),  p.  318. 

*  Eun.,  616,  627-628,  734.  ^  True.,  927. 

*  Bacch.,  859-860,  869.  "  Cist.,  534. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  157 

In  Lucian  the  woman  resorts  to  the  sorcerers  wlicn  the 
man  threatens  and  beats  her.^  Very  probably  this  was 
also  the  case  in  comedy. ^  A  fragment  of  Turpilius,  a 
remark  of  Menander's,^  a  word  in  the  Tniculentus,'^  a  line 
in  the  Cisicllaria,^  the  titles  of  a  play  by  Philemon  and 
of  one  by  Philippides,^  all  seem  to  me  to  show  this.  Above 
all,  we  know  that  in  one  of  Menander's  comedies,  called 
J.  the  GerzaXr],  magic  played  an  important  part.'  Now, 
there  was  no  comedy  of  Menander's  that  did  not  contain 
a  love  adventure,  and  therefore  I  do  not  think  it  rash  to 
surmise  that  the  magicians  in  the  OeTxah]  made  their 
skill  serve  the  same  purpose  as  did  the  Syrian  sorceress  in 
the  fourth  Dialogue. 

We  have  seen  that  the  love  of  certain  of  the  dramatis 
personae  could,  as  Terence  insinuates,  change  into  hatred, 
or  rather  that  the  two  emotions  could  exist  at  one  and 
the  same  time,  and  rend  the  hearts  of  lovers.  As  for  the 
torments  of  jealousy,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  the 
comic  poets  devoted  much  time  to  portraying  them.  In 
what  remains  to  us  of  the  via,  the  lovers  who  have  been 
supplanted  by  a  rival  suffer  because  they  have  been  super- 
seded, but  not  especially  because  they  see  another  person 
preferred  to  themselves.  They  are  never  haunted  by  the 
odious  vision  of  caresses  in  which  they  have  no  share. 
Hardly  ever  do  they  make  invidious  comparisons,  that 
might  hurt  their  pride,  between  themselves  and  those  who 
are  preferred  to  them.  Above  all,  I  know  of  no  character 
in  comedy  who  worries  without  a  cause  and  puts  an  evil 
construction  on  harmless  occurrences — that  characteristic 
habit  of  jealous  people.  All  those  who  say  they  have  been 
deceived,  really  are  deceived,  or  else  have  some  plausible 
[reason  for  imagining  that  they  are.  Witness  Polemo,  in 
the  IleQixeiQOjiievr].  No  doubt  he  is  irritated  too  quickly 
and  carries  the  expression  of  his  wrath  too  far,  but  it 
must  be  admitted  that  his  mistake  was  a  most  natural 

1  Luc,  Dial.  Mer.,  I.,  IV.,  VIII.  *  Turpilius,  Boethuntes,  fr.  VI. 

8  Men.,  fr.  646.  «  True,  762.        »  cist.,  290. 

•  'AvavcovjMfi'ri,  'Acai/coCcro.  '  Pliny,  XXX.  6,  7. 


158  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

one.  He  saw — saw  with  his  own  eyes — Moschio  kissing 
Glyccra,  and  Glycera  allowing  herself  to  be  kissed.  How 
could  he  guess  what  Moschio  himself  did  not  know — 
that  he  saw  before  him  a  brother  and  sister  exchanging 
innocent  caresses  ?  Polemo  is  jealous  just  as  every  lover  is 
who  sees  his  place  in  his  mistress'  affections  taken  by  another 
— that  is  to  say,  just  as  every  man  is  liable  to  be  jealous, 

I  have  still  to  speak  of  the  struggles  lovers  had  with 
themselves. 

In  the  Trinummus,  an  imitation  of  one  of  Philemon's 
plays,  a  young  man,  Lysiteles,  makes  an  arraignment  of 
love,  and  finds  fault  with  it  in  the  name  of  social  pro- 
priety.^  It  must  be  remarked  that  when  Lysiteles  makes 
this  wise  sppeeh  he  is  not  in  love  with  any  one.  Another 
one  of  Philemon's  characters,  who  is  deeply  in  love,  Philo- 
laches,  mournfully  declares,  in  one  of  the  first  scenes  of 
the  Mostellaria,  how  far  passion  has  degraded  him.^  But 
this  scene  does  not  present  the  picture  of  a  conflict,  properly 
speaking,  for  though  Philolaches  blushes  for  his  fall,  he 
does  nothing  whatever  to  redeem  himself  and  yields  to 
his  fate.  One  of  Menander's  characters,  Chairestratus  in 
the  Evvovxog,  must  have  been  more  dramatic.  He  does 
not,  like  the  former  two,  waste  his  time  in  speculation 
that  has  no  special  point.  It  is  vexation  that  makes  him 
speak,  vexation  at  finding  his  mistress'  door  locked.  The 
beginning  of  Terence's  play  and  a  passage  in  one  of  Persius' 
Satires  have  preserved  for  us  a  picture  of  his  irresolution.^ 
He  reproaches  himself  in  a  manner  worthy  of  the  most 
austere  mentor,  but  his  access  of  pride  is  brief.  The 
prospect  of  making  his  fair  one  shed  a  tear,  were  it  only 
a  feigned  tear,  suffices  to  upset  him — 

"  Monstrous  !  Monstrous  !  Now  I  understand  that 
she  is  false  and  that  I  am  unhajopy.  I  am  disgusted  with 
her,  yet  I  am  on  fire  with  love.  Knowing  and  realising  it, 
with  eyes  open  and  life  in  me,  I  go  to  destruction  and 
know  not  what  to  do."  * 

1  Trin.,  267  et  seq.         *  Most.,   142  et  seq. 
'  Ter.,  Eun.,  46  et  seq. ;  Persius,  Sat.,  V.  161  et  seq. 
*  Eun.,  70  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  159 

Diniarchus,  in  the  Trucidentus,  displays  the  same  clear- 
sightedness and  the  same  resignation.  He  well  knows 
that  when  a  man  is  in  love  he  runs  the  risk  of  being  a 
dupe,  and  that  he  is  inelined  to  be  excessively  credulous ;  ^ 
he  takes  Phronesium's  protestations  for  what  they  are 
worth.  For  all  that,  he  acts  as  though  he  believed 
they  were  sincere,  and  is  quite  clear  that  his  desire  for  a 
rupture  and  for  revenge  will  not  hold  out  against  a  fond 
word  from  her.^  There  must  have  been  very  few  persons 
in  comedy  who  ceased  to  be  in  love  because  they  were  no 
longer  able  to  respect  the  object  of  their  affections.  Pam- 
philus,  in  the  Ilecyra,  to  whom  this  happened  with  Bacchis, 
was,  owing  to  his  marriage,  in  an  exceptional  position,  which 
enabled  him  to  make  instructive  comparisons.  Clinia, 
in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos,  has  a  fine  access  of  disgust 
and  indignation  when  he  imagines  that,  after  an  absence 
of  a  few  months,  his  gentle  Antiphila  has  been  transformed 
into  a  luxurious  courtesan.^  But  who  can  tell  how  long 
his  anger  would  have  lasted,  and  how  he  would  have 
behaved,  if  what  he  dreads  for  a  moment  had  been  true  ? 

In  the  Ilecyra  the  struggle  which  the  young  lover 
undergoes  in  the  course  of  the  play  is  especially  pathetic. 
Pamphilus  used  to  love  his  wife.  He  discovers  that  she 
had  been  ravished  before  he  married  her.  He  thinks  it 
impossible  to  retain  her,  but  continues  to  love  her.  From 
the  outset  he  is  thoroughly  convinced,  as  is  Myrrhina, 
Philumena's  mother  (whose  entreaties  he  eagerly  recalls), 
that  the  unlucky  woman  had  not  really  sinned  and  that 
she  still  deserves  his  respect.  He  is  about  to  sacrifice  his 
happiness  to  worldly  consideration,  and  the  sacrifice  is 
all  the  harder  because,  in  his  desire  to  save  Philumena's 
reputation,  he  is  unwilling  to  declare  its  true  motive. 
To  those  who  urge  him  to  renew  his  conjugal  relations 
he  is  obliged  to  offer  objections  which  he  does  not  take 
seriously  himself,  and  his  love  is  displayed  even  in  the 
midst    of   his    refusal.^      For   a    moment    he    appears   to 

1  True,   lOOetseq.  '  Ibid.,  766  ot  seq. 

3  Heaut.,  256  et  seq.         *  Hec,  486  et  seq. 


160  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

wavcr.i  The  thought  that  if  he  takes  back  Philumena 
he  will  be  obliged  to  bring  up  the  child  of  an  unknown 
father  as  his  own  son  is  the  only  thing  that  helps  him 
to  persist  in  his  first  resolve. 

A  similar  struggle  must  have  been  described  in  the 
' EnLXQEnovxeq  by  Menander.  Charisius  has  made  the 
same  discovery  as  Pamphilus  and  he  too  continues  to  love 
his  wife.  But  pride  and  a  certain  severity  that  reminds 
one  of  the  Stoics  lead  him  at  first  to  consider  the  unhappy 
woman  as  a  real  culprit,  unworthy  of  the  affection  of  an 
honest  man.^  Though  he  does  not  send  her  away,  nor 
proclaim  her  disgrace,  he  humiliates  her  and  tries  to  forget 
her.  In  vain.  From  the  beginning  of  the  play  onwards 
Charisius  bitterly  regrets  that  he  has  learned  of  her  sad 
mishap;  in  other  words,  he  is  on  the  point  of  forgiving 
her.  The  poignant  memory  of  a  misdemeanour  of  his 
own  which  the  circumstances  call  up,  the  generosity  of 
Pamphila,  who  remains  devoted  to  him  notwithstanding 
everything,  hasten  and  complete  his  change  of  heart. 
Even  before  he  learns  that  his  wife  had  never  belonged  to 
any  one  else,  Charisius  is  ready  to  keep  her.  In  his  case, 
therefore,  love  gains  a  more  complete  victory  over  pre- 
judice than  in  the  case  of  Pamphilus.  But  it  is  helped 
along  by  remorse,  and  as  the  inconvenient  child  has,  so 
to  speak,  disappeared,  the  victory  is  less  difficult. 

Many  of  the  inward  struggles  which  young  lovers 
undergo  are  due  to  the  interference  of  a  father.  Of  course, 
all  of  them  are  not  equally  interesting  from  a  moral  point 
of  view.  Sometimes  the  feelings  that  conflict  with  love 
which  are  called  forth  by  a  father's  interference  are  any- 
thing but  heroic.  When  Clitipho,  in  the  Heauton  Timor- 
oumenos,  is  on  the  point  of  being  disinherited,  he  thinks 
first  and  foremost  of  the  poverty  that  awaits  him ;  ^  if  he 
gives  up  Bacchis,  it  is  not  so  much  owing  to  sincere  repent- 
ance as  to  care  for  his  own  well-being.  In  the  Phormio, 
Antipho,  who  has  made  a  better  choice  in  his  love,  does 
not  even  contemplate  the  possibility  of  championing  it 
»  Hec.,  613,  616.  ^  'E^rirp.,  433  et  seq.  '  Heaut.,  880. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  IGl 

against  his  father's   will.     Let  Dcmipho   command,   and 
Antipho  will  break  off  his  relations  with  Phanium.     Mean- 
while, he  is  not  ashamed  to  groan  over  his  lost  peace  of 
mind,   and  regrets  that  there  had  been  a  possibility  of 
his  marrying  the  girl  whom  he  had  so  greatly  desired.^ 
In  a  word,  fear  drives  affection  out  of  his  heart  and  so 
far  masters  him  as  to  make  him  disavow  himself.     Else- 
where love  is  really  in  conflict  with  obedience  and  filial 
respect.     In  the  Andria  the  two  feelings   that   fight   for 
the  upper  hand  in  the  heart  of  the  young  lover  are  clearly 
indicated    in    lines    261-262  :      amor  .  .  .  patris    pudor. 
Finally,  the  young  man  is  beaten  and  offers  to  withdraw, 
but  it  cannot  be  said  that  his  love  is   overcome  by  his 
respect   for   his    father.     I    am   inclined    to   believe   that 
Pamphilus  would,  as  he  seems  to  imply  in  line  695,  have 
been  willing  to  lose  Simo's  love,  together  with  his  patri- 
mony.    But  he  cannot  make  up  his  mind  to  be  taken  for 
a  rascal;    his  resolve  is  forced  upon  him  by  his  feeling  of 
honour. 2     A    rupture   which   occurs   under   such   circum- 
stances does  not  imply  a  disavowal  on  the  part  of  the  lover, 
and  is  in  no  way  humiliating  for  him,  nor  does  it  involve 
offence  to  the  person  with  whom  he  breaks  off  relations. 
It  is  the  act  of  a  sensitive  person  who  values  his  love  and 
cannot  consent  to  give  it  the  appearance  of  an  equivocal 
adventure. 

Are  considerations  of  honour,  rightly  or  wrongly  under- 
stood, and  respect  or  dread  of  paternal  authority  the 
only  feelings  New  Comedy  portrayed  in  conflict  with 
passion  ? 

Moschio,  the  young  lover  in  the  Zafiia,  is  annoyed  at 
his  father  and  thinks  of  punishing  him  by  leaving  the 
country  and  enlisting  in  a  foreign  army  in  a  distant 
country.  But  his  affection  for  Plangon  keeps  him  from 
doing  so  :  "  For  your  sake,  dear  Plangon,  I  shall  do  none 
of  the  things  which  would  be  worthy  of  a  man ;  it  is 
impossible  for  me;  Love,  henceforward  the  master  of  my 
reason,  does  not  allow  me  to."  ^     This  passage  contains 

»  Phorm.,  157-160.  ^  Andr.,  897  et  seq.  »  2a^.,  285-287. 

M 


162  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

an  indication  of  a  conflict  :  liere  love  is  sliown  at  odds 
>vith  the  sulky  irritability  of  a  spoiled  child.  But  Moschio 
promptly  makes  up  his  mind.  He  merely  pretends  to 
go  away  in  order  to  frighten  Demeas — a  puerile  decision 
which  promptly  satisfies  both  opposing  feelings  ! 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  thirteenth  Dialogue  of  the 
Courtesans  we  see  love]  and  vanity  at  odds.  The  swag- 
gering soldier  Leontichus  has  just  held  forth,  to  young 
Hymnis'  wonderment,  about  the  terrific  courage  to  which 
he  lays  claim.  The  fair  one,  frightened  or  feigning  fright, 
has  fled,  declaring  that  she  could  not  live  with  a  murderer, 
a  man  dripping  with  blood,  a  hangman.  Leontichus  is 
startled  by  this  unforeseen  outcome;  he  takes  counsel 
with  his  parasite  Chenidas  and  finafly  says  :  "Go  and  tell 
Hymnis  that  I  lied,  but  not  in  everything  that  I  said." 
I  do  not  believe  that  the  thirteenth  Dialogue  is  an  accurate 
paraphrase  of  a  scene  from  comedy,  but  it  is  very  possible 
that  some  braggart  in  comedy  found  himself  in  the  same 
dilemma  as  Lucian's  Leontichus. 

Possibly  other  actors  vacillated  between  greed  and  love. 
The  inconsistencies  that  could  not  fail  to  develop  in  the 
conduct  of  an  avaricious  lover  seem  to  have  attracted  the 
attention  of  malicious  comedy- writers ;  witness  fragment 
235  of  Menander  :  "  There  is  no  man  so  stingy  or  so  close- 
fisted  that  he  would  not  sacrifice  some  part  of  his  w^ealth 
to  the  god  Eros."  In  the  Poenulus  Agorastocles  does  not 
seem  to  be  indifferent  to  money.  Just  as  Euclio  enjoyed 
listening  to  Megadorus,  so,  too,  Agorastocles  takes  the 
keenest  delight  in  hearing  his  well-beloved  Adelphasium 
inveigh  against  the  excesses  of  luxury .^  But  it  is  hard  to 
understand  why,  as  he  is  rich  and  free  to  do  as  he  chooses, 
he  has  not  long  ago  purchased  from  the  pander  Lycus 
the  young  woman  of  whom  he  is  enamoured.  I  suspect 
that  in  the  original  version  a  conflict  of  emotions  was 
portrayed,  nearly  all  traces  of  which  the  Latin  writer, 
from  lack  of  psychological  insight,  has  effaced. 

1  Poen.,  289  et  seq.,  308  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  163 


§  7 
Characters  and  Individual  Figures 

In  one  of  Alciphron's  Epistles,  supposed  to  be  addressed 
by  Glycera  to  Menander,  we  read  the  following  :  "  Egypt, 
the  Nile,  the  promontory  of  Proteus,  the  tower  of  Pharus, 
all  are  now  waiting,  longing  to  sec  Menander  and  to 
hear  his  misers  {cpilaQyvQCDv),  his  lovers,  his  superstitious 
people  [deioLdaifiovojv),  his  suspicious  people  {ajiiarojv),  and 
everything  that  he  brings  upon  the  stage."  ^  Further- 
more, the  titles  of  several  of  his  plays  are  derived  from 
a  moral  attribute,  and  this  would  lead  us  to  believe 
that  New  Comedy  had  made  a  special  study  of  certain 
vices,  shortcomings  or  absurdities ;  in  other  words,  that  it 
had  sometimes  risen  to  the  dignity  of  character  comedy. 
Unfortunately,  little  is  left  of  what  it  produced  of  this  kind. 

In  our  study  of  professional  types  we  have  already  met 
with  a  bad  habit  that,  as  it  were,  clings  to  some  of 
them — boastfulness.  The  boaster  (dXaCcov) — in  Aristotle's 
opinion  one  of  the  types  that  is  most  capable  of  provoking 
laughter  ^ — is  defined  in  the  Ethica  Magna  as  follows  : 
d  .  .  .  d^aCajv  iariv  6  nleico  rcov  vnaqxovxojv  avrcp  tiqoojiol- 
cujuevog  elvat  ij  eldevai  a.  jut)  oldev.^  Many  d^a^oveg  in 
comedy — soldiers,  cooks,  physicians,  etc. — frankly  carry 
out  this  programme,  exalting  their  own  virtues,  and  in 
explicit  terms  exaggerating  the  merits  they  possess  or 
pretend  to  possess.  Some  of  them,  especially  in  Menander 
and  his  imitators,  have  a  flatterer  at  hand  who  gives 
them  the  cue,  enlarges  upon  their  boasts,  and,  in  case 
of  need,  comes  to  the  aid  of  their  exhausted  imagina- 
tion.    In    Lucian's    thirteenth    Dialogue,    which    is    very 

1  Ale,  IV.  19,  6. 

»  Coialin  Treatise,  §  7  (Kaibol,  p.  52).     Cf.  Bornays,  lili.  Mus.,  VIII. 
(1853),  p.  577  etseq. 

»  Eth.  Magn.,  I.  p.  1193  A. 


164  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

probably  made  up  of  reminiscences  of  the  stage,  the  atti- 
tude of  the  braggart  Leontichus  towards  his  parasite 
Chenidas  is  very  amusing.  He  begins  by  dictating  the 
story  lie  expects  him  to  tell  in  such  detail  that  there  is 
nothing  left  for  Chenidas  to  add  to  it.  Then  our  hero 
unflinchingly  develops  a  new  theme,  suggested  by  his 
acolyte.  In  the  long  run,  however,  he  appears  to  feel 
the  impropriety  of  singing  his  own  praises — or  is  it  that 
he  fails  to  find  praise  that  satisfies  him?  So  he  takes 
Chenidas  to  witness  :  "  Tell  me  now,  to  whom  does  every- 
body compare  me  at  this  moment  ?  "  And  Chenidas 
answers,  "  To  whom  else,  by  Zeus !  than  to  Achilles,  the 
son  of  Thetis  and  Peleus?"  Subsequently,  when  the 
descriptions  of  terrible  slaughter  have  put  Hymnis  to 
flight,  Leontichus,  confounded,  is  ready  to  blame  the  too 
clever  Chenidas  for  his  failure,  and  grudgingly  admits 
that  he  has  gone  too  far.  This  dialogue,  here  and  there, 
contains  yet  other  cleverly  observed  features,  which  are 
possibly  derived  from  a  comic  prototype.  In  the  account 
Leontichus  gives  of  his  fight  against  the  Galatians,  he 
begins  by  declaring  that  the  mere  sight  of  him  put  the 
enemy  to  flight.  Hence  he  is  deprived  of  the  opportunity 
to  tell  of  his  fine  swordsmanship.  To  this  he  cannot  make 
up  his  mind,  and,  without  fear  of  the  contradiction  implied, 
he  draws  up  a  proper  number  of  the  fugitives  in  battle 
array  so  that  he  may  slay  them.  We  must  also  note  the 
disparaging  reference  he  makes  to  his  comrades  in  arms  : 
"  And  you,  Chenidas,  you  came  along  shortly  afterwards 
when  the  enemy  had  already  fled,"  and  the  false  retro- 
spective modesty  of  the  parenthesis  :  "I  was  only  a 
chiliarchus  at  that  time."  The  reader  will  recall  the 
ingenuous  words  with  which  the  conversation  ends. 
Wavering  between  his  love  and  his  vanity,  Leontichus 
does  not  care  completely  to  sacrifice  the  latter  to  the 
former,  and  he  instructs  Chenidas  to  attempt  a  recon- 
ciliation by  telling  Hymnis  that  he  had  lied ;  "  but  not 
about  everything.'' 

W^hen  the  qualities  to  which  they  lay  claim  are  put  to 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  165 

the  test  and  are  proved  to  be  contrary  to  the  facts,  the 
braggarts  are  in  especial  need  of  resourcefulness  in  order 
to  maintain  their  dignity.  When  Thraso  attacks  Thais' 
lodgings,  he  prudently  stays  behind  his  men,  out  of  the 
reach  of  blows.  But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  this 
keeps  him  from  representing  himself  as  a  very  thunderbolt 
of  war.  Pyrrhus,  he  declares,  always  used  these  tactics.^ 
One  of  the  most  amusing  varieties  of  braggarts  that  diverted 
the  ancients  is  that  of  the  TtroJxa^ctCdveg,  the  beggars  who 
wish  to  be  thought  rich.  The  Rhctorica  ad  Herennium 
tells  us  of  one  who  has  to  struggle  against  a  thousand 
obstacles. 2  The  tribulations  of  the  poor  man  are  described 
with  much  spirit,  but  it  is  impossible  to  determine  whether 
the  author  borrowed  from  the  comic  poets  or  not,  although 
a  fragment  of  Alexis  ^  shows  that  the  nrcoxa^a^cov  was  not 
unknown  in  comedy. 

Side  by  side  with  the  braggart,  Aristotle  recommends 
the  ELQcov  as  a  type  equally  suitable  for  comedy.  This 
type  is  defined  several  times  in  Aristotelian  treatises, 
and  has  been  made  the  subject  of  a  monograph  by  Rib- 
beck.^  In  contrast  with  the  dXaCcov,  who  exaggerates  his 
station,  his  merits,  and  his  possessions,  the  eiQcov  is  always 
ready  to  depreciate  all  these  things.  He  pretends  to 
recognise  all  sorts  of  superiority  in  others,  so  much  so 
indeed  that,  viewed  superficially,  his  behaviour  some- 
times appears  to  be  that  of  a  vulgar  flatterer.  But  his 
purpose  and  the  aim  that  he  pursues  distinguish  him  from 
the  KoXa^.  What  he  does  is  not  done  out  of  selfishness, 
nor  even  from  a  desire  to  please.  When  he  exalts  others, 
when  he  declares  that  he  is  their  inferior,  it  is  almost  always 
to  sneer  at  them.  At  bottom,  he  has  quite  a  good  opinion 
of  himself,  but  his  indolence  or  his  cowardice,  an  inborn 
tendency  to  mystify  his  fellows,  or  his  irony,  in  the  French 

^  Eun.,  783.     Idem  hoc  iam  Pyrrhus  jactitavit. 
2  Rhet.  Her.,  IV.  50  et  seq.  '  Alexis,  fr.  2. 

*  Ribbeck,  Ueher  den  Begriff  dea  (ipwv,  in  the  Rh.  Mua.,  XXXI.  (1876), 
pp.  381  et  seq. 


166  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

sense  of  the  word,  generally  leads  him  to  assume  an  atti- 
tude of  exaggerated  modesty.  The  eIqcov  is  rarely  met  with 
in  the  extant  portion  of  New  Comedy.  This  may  in  part 
be  due  to  the  fact  that  in  their  adaptations  the  Romans 
could  not  appreciate  a  peculiarly  Attic  trait.  It  must  also 
be  due  to  the  very  nature  of  elgajveia,  which  is  not  one 
of  those  loud  characteristics  that  attract  attention  and 
readily  adapt  themselves  to  the  laws  of  stage  illusion.  It 
is  hard  to  conceive  of  a  play  in  which  an  eiQcov  is  the 
chief  person,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  such  a  play  does  not 
appear  to  have  existed. 

Among  the  characters  that  appeared  on  the  comic  stage, 
the  grumblers,  churls  and  misanthropists  must  have 
constituted  an  imposing  group. ^ 

One  of  Menander's  comedies  was  called  the  A'6oxolog. 
A  fragment  of  the  prologue  informs  us  that  the  scene  was 
placed  at  Phyle,  near  the  sanctuary  of  the  Nymphs — that 
is  to  say,  in  a  ravine  of  Mount  Parnes,  whither,  no  doubt, 
the  hero  went  in  search  of  solitude.^  This  hero,  as  we 
learn  from  an  expression  of  the  rhetor  Choricius,  was 
called  Cnemon,^  and  it  is  very  tempting  to  suppose  that 
several  of  Aelian's  epistles  regarding  a  brutal  fellow 
named  Cnemon,  who  likewise  lives  at  Phyle,  contain 
reminders  of  his  prowess.^  One  of  Cnemon's  neighbours, 
Callipides,  writes  to  him  complaining  of  his  uncouth 
manners.  Cnemon  replies  that  he  hates  and  abhors  the 
entire  human  race  and  that  he  even  detests  himself.  Calli- 
pides tries  to  calm  his  rage ;  he  invites  Cnemon  to  celebrate 
the  festival  of  Pan  with  him  and  a  few  friends,  in  the  hope 
that  wine  and  the  society  of  amiable  women  may  cure 
him  of  his  black  thoughts.  To  this  Cnemon  replies  more 
angrily  than  ever  that  he  would  like  to  have  his  neigh- 
bour before  him  so  that  he  might  kill  him  with  his  own 
hands,  that  he  abhors  all  social  gatherings,  that  he  dis- 
trusts wine  as  much  as  an  ambuscade,  and  that  when  he 

1  See  the  Agroikos,  by  Ribbeck.  ^  Men.,  fr.  127. 

»  Revue  de  philologie,  1877,  p.  228.  *  El.,  Ep.  Rust.,  13-16. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  107 

honours  the  gods  he  offers  them  no  sacrifices,  in  order 
to  avoid  making  himself  importunate  to  them. 

Compared  with  sucli  a  misanthropist,  the  brutal  charac- 
ters who  appear  in  extant  comedy  must,  perforce,  appear 
gentle.  The  most  typical  are  Smicrincs  in  the  'EmrQeTtovreg, 
Stratylax  in  the  Truculcnius,  Demea  in  the  Adelphi,  and 
Euclio  in  the  Aulularia.  When  Smicrincs  is  politely  ad- 
dressed by  Syriscus,  who  tells  him  that  he  has  had  a 
difference  with  his  journeyman,  he  begins  to  snarl  at  the 
poor  devil,  and  makes  fun  of  the  two  strange  litigants.^ 
When  Syriscus  ventures  to  speak  out  of  turn  he  threatens 
him  with  his  stick. ^  After  the  verdict  is  given,  he  goes 
away,  still  sullen,  without  replying  to  the  thanks  Syriscus 
gives  him.^  In  the  last  scene  he  tortures  the  unhappy 
Sophrona  with  insults  and  threats,  and  blames  her  for 
begging  him  not  to  take  back  her  daughter  by  force.* 
Besides  living  in  the  country,  Stratylax  and  Demea  have 
this  peculiarity  in  common  that  they  place  their  brutality 
at  the  service  of  virtue.  Their  intentions  are  excellent, 
but  they  have  very  bad  manners.  As  soon  as  Stratylax 
sees  a  woman  loitering  about  his  house  he  "  shouts  and 
drives  her  off  as  he  would  a  goose  stealing  a  bit  of  wheat."  ^ 
He  repels  the  graceful  advances  of  the  waiting-maid 
Astaphium,  lavishes  ill-sounding  reproaches  upon  her  and 
makes  her  fear  his  violence.  As  for  Demea,  we  know  from 
a  note  by  Donatus  that  he  was  less  discourteous  in  the 
original  version  than  in  the  Latin  transcription.  In  the 
former  he  acknowledged  his  brother's  greeting,  whereas, 
in  the  Adelphi,  he  ignores  this  demand  of  courtesy.^  Other 
characteristics  are  probably  copied  from  the  Greek  proto- 
type :  for  instance,  the  triumphant  eagerness  with  which 
Demea  tells  Micio  of  his  adopted  son's  pranks  and  of  the 
scandal  they  have  created  in  the  town,  or  his  scornful 
laments  over  his  brother's  folly,  and  his  threat  against 
Syrus,  whom  he  wishes  to  thrash.''     As  for  Euclio,  I  do 

1  "ETTiTp.,  11-13.  2  jhid.,  31-32.  »  Ibid..  153. 

«  Ibid.,  464  etseq.  *  True,  251-252. 

•  Ad.,  81  and  Donatus'  note.  ''  Ibid.,  782. 


168  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

not  think  that  the  position  in  which  lie  happens  to  find 
himself  sufliciently  explains  the  rage  he  displays  when  he 
beats  Staphyla  and  threatens  her  with  the  most  terrible 
punishment,  and  covers  Congrio  with  blows,  and  lavishes 
insults  upon  Strobilus.  If  his  strong-box  did  not  afford 
him  so  much  occasion  to  get  angry,  he  would  doubtless 
find  it  elsewhere.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  title 
of  the  play  that  Plautus  imitated,  Euclio  is  certainly  a 
dvoy.o?.og. 

Next  to  the  misanthropes  and  the  dvoxoXoi  we  may 
place  the  misers,  since  their  characteristics  are  sometimes 
found  combined  in  certain  people.  At  least  two  comic 
writers  of  the  new  period — Philippides  and  Theognetus — 
wrote  plays  called  0ddQyvQog,  in  which,  in  all  probability, 
men  who  are  too  fond  of  money  played  the  leading  part. 
Other  misers — in  the  broad  sense  of  the  word — appear,  as 
we  know,  in  four  or  five  of  Menander's  plays  :  the  AvoxoX-og, 
the  'Ydgia,  the  'EmzQeTTOvreg,  the  Orjoavgog,  and  probably 
in  the  Aanrvhog.  It  is  possible  that  the  Aulularia  is  an 
imitation  of  the  'Ydgia. 

Euclio,  the  hero  of  the  Aulularia,  certainly  has  very 
little  resemblance  to  Harpagon,  to  whom  he  has  often 
been  compared.  At  first  sight  he  reminds  one  rather  of 
La  Fontaine's  cobbler  who  has  unexpectedly  grown  rich 
and  is  much  embarrassed  by  his  wealth.  His  avarice,  if 
it  be  avarice,  is  excusable  on  account  of  his  poverty.^ 
Before  discovering  the  pot,  he  had  lived  for  a  long  time, 
for  better  for  worse,  on  the  produce  of  a  little  field  situated 
near  the  city;  his  poor  house  is  void  of  everything  but 
spiders'  webs.^  In  his  case  the  fear  of  privation  is  therefore 
explicable  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  pardonable;  but  he 
carries  it  too  far.  Of  course,  one  must  not  take  what 
Pythodicus  ^  relates  of  him  too  literally ;'  it  is  the  slander 
of  an  impertinent  servant,  who  is  used  to  live  in  the  houses 
of  the  rich,  and  yet  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  general 
behaviour  of  our  hero  afforded  some  ground  for  such 
inventions.     Moreover,    the    prologue    seems    to    blame 

>■  Aul,  206.  2  Ibid.,  13-14,  84.  »  Ibid.,  298  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  169 

Phacdriuni's  father  for  having  an  excessively  parsimonious 
nature.  Eucho  himself  shows  that,  to  a  certain  extent, 
both  the  prologue  and  Pythodicus  arc  right,  when  he 
justifies  himself  and  praises  himself,  as  he  does,  for  coming 
back  from  market  without  provisions,^  and  delights  in 
listening  to  Megadorus'  tirades  against  the  extravagance 
of  women,2  and  expresses  his  fear  that  the  flute-playing 
girl  who  has  been  hired  by  his  future  son-in-law  may  drink 
too  much  winc,^  and  complains  that  the  lamb  he  has  just 
received — and  received  gratis — cannot  bring  him  more 
profit.*  In  a  word,  if  the  hero  of  the  Aulularia  is  not 
the  typical  miser,  even  if  he  is  not  a  miser  at  all  in  the 
proper  sense  of  the  word,  we  may  at  any  rate  without 
unfairness  say  that  he  is  remarkably  close-fisted. 

Generally  speaking,  the  cpdaQyvQoi  of  New  Comedy — 
always,  or  nearly  always  men  of  advanced  years — were, 
as  it  seems,  less  anxious  to  make  money  than  not  to  spend 
it.  Like  Euclio,  the  miser  in  the  AvoxoIoq  and  the  miser 
in  the  'Ydqia  buried  their  money.  Fragment  129  of  the 
AvoxoloQ  criticises  the  custom  of  making  sumptuous  sacri- 
fices in  a  rather  amusing  way,  but  evidently  with  a  pur- 
pose. It  declares  that  the  brigands  {toixcoqvxol)  who 
offer  them  think  less  about  the  gods  than  about  them- 
selves; to  the  gods  they  offer  the  tail  of  the  victim,  the 
bile  or  uneatable  bones,  and  with  the  rest  they  gorge 
themselves.  Detestable  custom !  Incense,  a  cake  that 
can  be  burnt  on  the  altar  and  all  of  which  goes  up  to  the 
gods,  that  is  what  a  pious  man  should  offer.  Fragment 
175  of  the  " EmxQETiovxeQ  contains  the  following  maxim 
that  is  worthy  of  Harpagon  :  "  A  healthy,  lazy  man  is 
worse  than  a  fever-patient,  for  he  eats  double  and  with 
no  results."  And  finally,  we  know  from  an  expression 
of  Chorieius  that  Smicrincs,  an  important  character  in  one 
of  the  comedies  cited  above,  feared — like  Euclio — that  the 
smoke  might  occasion  him  some  loss  by  escaping  from 
his  house. ^ 

1  AuL,  371  et  seq.  ^  /jj,/^  496-497.  ^  j^^^  ^  557  ^^  ggq 

*  Ibid.,  661  etseq.  *  Revue  de  philologie,  1877,  p.  228. 


170  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

In  Euclio's  case,  the  dread  of  being  robbed  is  intensified 
by  the  fact  that  he  has  but  recently  come  into  possession 
of  a  treasure-trove.  He  loses  his  peace  of  mind  and  his 
good  sense  through  watching  his  precious  pot.  He  suspects 
everything,  everything  awakens  his  distrust,  and  he  lives 
under  the  obsession  of  a  fixed  idea.  And  yet  Euclio  must 
not  be  regarded  as  a  man  in  whom  the  love  of  money  has 
crowded  out  all  generous  feelings.  When  allowance  is 
made  for  the  customs  of  the  ancients,  it  cannot  be  said 
that  he  sacrifices  Phaedrium  by  marrying  her  to  an  old 
husband  without  having  consulted  her.  His  ignorance 
of  his  daughter's  misfortunes  is  shared  by  many  fathers 
in  comedy.  When  he  hears  of  them  he  forgets  his  lost 
pot.  At  the  end  of  the  play  he  resigns  himself  to  the  loss 
of  his  treasure,  and  since  he  is,  as  I  believe,  secured  against 
want,  he  even  congratulates  himself  at  being  rid  of  a  source 
of  worry.  In  the  'EniTQenovreg  excessive  fondness  for 
money  has  left  a  deeper  mark  on  Smierines.  A  scholiast 
of  Homer  says  of  him  that  he  cared  more  for  his  fortune 
than  for  his  dearest  affections,^  and  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
various  passages  in  extant  fragments  show  that  he  is  more 
anxious  to  save  Pamphila's  dowry  than  to  ensure  her  hap- 
piness. The  true  motive  for  his  animosity  toward  Chari- 
sius  is  ingenuously  displayed  in  his  invectives  against 
Sophrona  :  "  Must  I  expect  my  daughter's  fine  husband 
to  squander  the  dowry  which  belongs  to  me  ?  And  must 
I  have  discussions  about  what  is  my  own  ?  That  is  what 
your  advice  amounts  to  !  "  ^  Onesimus  knows  quite  well 
what  is  worrying  the  old  man,  and  when  Smierines  knocks 
at  the  door  he  greets  him  with  these  words  :  "  Ah,  old 
Close-fist,  coming  to  fetch  his  dowry  and  his  daughter  (the 
dowry  is  mentioned  first).  .  .  .  Very  prudent :  that's  what 
I  call  the  eagerness  of  a  man  who  knows  how  to  calculate 
{loyioxiKov  di'(5^og)."  ^  And  Smierines  quite  agrees  with 
him  :  it  is  against  the  brigandage  of  Charisius  [aQnaojua) 
that  he  inveighs — that  is  to  say,  against  his  extravagance. 

1  Sch.  Ambros.,  Od.,  VII.  225.  ^  'Ewnp.,  480  et  seq. 

'  Ibid.,  467  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  171 

It  is  not  impossible  that  the  judgment  of  the  scholiast  of 
Homer  would  have  been  applieable  to  other  characters 
in  comedy  besides  the  miser  of  the  " EnirqenovxeQ  :  a 
fragment  of  the  AaxTvXioq  is  apparently  spoken  by  a  father 
of  a  family  who  is  delighted  to  give  his  daughter  in 
marriage  without  providing  her  with  a  dowry ;  ^  though 
in  all  probability  a  dowcrlcss  marriage  was  an  unworthy 
marriage. 

Together  with  the  (pdagyvQci  Alciphron  mentions  the 
cbiioroi.  Suspicion  was  a  secondary  feature  of  the  char- 
acter of  certain  misers,  or  of  certain  dygoixoi.  In  one 
instance,  at  least,  in  Menander's  writings — in  the  play 
called  "AnioTog — suspicion  must  have  been  the  predomi- 
nant characteristic  of  the  chief  actor.  It  has  been 
assumed,  though  there  are  no  convincing  reasons  for  this 
assumption,  that  the  Ghoran  fragments,  discovered  by 
Jouguet,  belong  to  this  comedy.  They  are  too  incom- 
plete to  allow  our  forming  a  precise  idea  of  the  plot.  All 
we  know  is  that  a  young  man,  a  lover,  probably  on 
his  return  from  a  journey,  thinks  that  he  has  been  betrayed 
by  all  about  him,  and,  among  others,  by  a  friend  in  whom 
he  had  confided.  His  mistake  and  his  utterances  remind 
one  somewhat  of  Mnesilochus  in  the  Bacchides.  It  may 
be  that  his  mistake,  like  that  of  Mnesilochus,  was  due  more 
to  deceptive  appearances  than  to  an  especially  suspicious 
temperament. 

The  third  type  cited  by  Alciphron  is  that  of  the  super- 
stitious jnan  {deioidaijucov).  One  of  Menander's  comedies 
was  called  Aeioidaijucov.  Superstitious  men,  and  particu- 
larly superstitious  women,  probably  appeared  in  several 
other  plays  whose  titles  are  sometimes  significant  :  the 
MrjvayvQxrjg,  the  ' leqeia,  the  OsoqpoQOVfiEtn'i,  the  Toocpojviog, 
and  the  Miooyvvrjg.  And  finally,  a  few  interesting  frag- 
ments have  survived  that  bear  no  indication  of  their 
origin.     Tlic    most    curious    passage    is    fragment    109    of 

1  Men.,  fr.  103. 


172  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

the  Aeioidaificov,  in  which  the  liero  tells  a  friend  of  a 
terrible  accident  he  has  had  :  "  May  it  turn  out  well  for 
me,  revered  gods  !  In  putting  on  my  shoes  I  broke  the 
strap  of  my  right  shoe."  A  few  sentences  of  fragment 
534  and  fragment  adespoton  341  may  be  compared  with  this 
passage.  Fragments  530  and  544  of  Menander  ridicule 
certain  expiatory  ceremonies.  In  fragment  601,  from 
the  Miooyvv7-jg,  we  hear  of  a  woman  who  offers  sacrifice  in 
her  own  house  five  times  a  day,  while  seven  servants, 
standing  in  a  circle,  beat  cymbals  and  others  utter  piercing 
shrieks.  Fragment  245,  from  the  'legeia,  concerns  another 
equally  foolish  devotee. 

Such  are  the  characters  whose  portrayal  in  comedy  can 
still  be  traced.  As  for  others,  like  the  insatiable  man 
{cmI.rjorog),  possibly  a  variety  of  the  miser  ^ — ^the  ambitious 
man  {(pilaQxoQ),  the  discontented  or  melancholy  man  {avTov 
nevdojv),^  the  intriguing  or  indiscreet  man,  or  the  busy- 
body {(pdoTiQayjucov,  nolvnQayfxcov),  the  poltroon  {ipocpoderjo), 
the  inconstant  man  {evQinog),  of  all  these  we  know  but  one 
thing — that  New  Comedy  concerned  itself  with  them.^ 

* 
*      * 

Although  they  do  not,  to  any  marked  degree,  give 
evidence  of  a  particular  vice  or  shortcoming,  a  great  many 
characters  in  comedy  have  a  psychological  individuality. 
There  are  some,  no  doubt,  whose  nature  is  but  imper- 
fectly indicated  by  their  age,  their  social  station,  their 
family  or  by  their  position  as  lovers.  But  in  the  case  of 
others,  the  very  nature  of  their  love,  their  conception  of 
filial  duty,  the  manner  in  which  they  exercise  paternal 
authority,  or  live  with  their  wives,  depict  characteristics 
peculiar  to  them.  In  the  foregoing  chapters  I  have  dis- 
tinguished only  the  large  categories — the  dramatic  role 
characters.     But  such  a  classification   must  not  mislead 

^  Unless,  indeed,  we  have  simply  to  deal  with  a  parasite  whom  nothing 
satisfies. 

*  Unless  we  ought  to  translate  Avrhv  ireydwi/  by  "  the  man  who  grieves 
about  himself"  and  find  in  this  title  a  reminiscence  of  some  mystification. 

'  These  adjectives  have  all  served  as  titles. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  173 

us ;  it  applies  rather  more  to  the  costumes  and  the 
masks  that  the  actors  wore  than  to  tlicir  real  qualities. 
If  we  examine  the  most  complete  fragments  of  the  Greek 
originals  and  the  most  careful  Latin  imitations,  particu- 
larly those  by  Terence,  we  shall  discover  in  them  many  a 
feature  of  which  this  classification  took  no  account.  The 
skill  of  the  best  poets  of  the  via  succeeded  in  creating 
the  most  diverse  characters  within  the  limits  of  each 
category.  The  essential  elements  remain  the  same  in 
each  case,  but  they  appear  in  different  combinations, 
according  as  one  or  the  other  of  them  predominates ; 
and  minor  details  of  an  infinite  diversity  combine  with 
them  to  complete  a  distinct  character  in  each  instance. 

Let  me  quote  some  examples — 

It  is  an  inadequate  description  of  Simo,  in  the  Mostel- 
laria,  to  class  him  among  the  yegovreg,  or  among  the  dis- 
contented husbands,  or  among  the  eiQOJveg.  His  physiog- 
nomy is  more  complex.  His  cynical  joy  at  having  thwarted 
his  wife's  designs  and  at  having  thereby  secured  a  good 
meal,  the  anxiety  with  which  he  observes  the  extrava- 
gance of  his  young  neighbour,  his  indifference  to  his  own 
home  and  to  the  decorum  of  his  family,  the  irony  of  his 
replies  to  Theopropides  when  he  comes  home  from  the 
market-place — all  these  things  fit  together  and  combine,  it 
is  true,  to  make  Simo  a  rather  unsympathetic  person; 
but  he  is  lifelike,  and  his  personality  stands,  as  it  were, 
in  relief. 

Demeas,  in  the  Zajuia,  is  likewise  a  person  whom  one 
cannot,  in  fairness,  place  under  a  general  heading.  He 
has  a  character  of  his  own,  not  very  rare  in  quality,  but 
nevertheless  above  the  commonplace.  Many  another 
person  would  have  cast  aside  all  doubts  after  listening  to 
the  servants'  gossip  which  he  has  overheard  by  chance : 
the  child  which  he  had  regarded  as  his  own  must  have 
sprung  from  the  illicit  relations  of  his  son  with  his  mis- 
tress. But  Demeas  does  not,  at  first,  admit  this  conclu- 
sion, because  it  disturbs  him  in  his  love  of  tranquillity, 
and  because  it  would  oblige  him  to  proceed  with  vigour. 


174  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

whereas  lie  is  a  peace-loving  person.  He  even  shrinks 
from  formulating  it,  and,  in  order  to  counteract  the  sus- 
picion which  he  feels,  he  affectionately  recalls  the  fact 
that  Mosehio  was  always  the  model  of  a  respectful  son. 
Notwithstanding  all  the  evidence,  the  matter  does  not 
seem  clear  to  him.  He  questions  Parmeno,  the  factotum 
of  the  house,  who,  next  to  himself,  ought  to  know  how 
matters  stand.  Parmeno  protests  that  he  knows  nothing. 
And  yet,  now  that  he  has  given  voice  to  his  fears,  Demeas 
is  sure  that  they  are  not  imaginary.  Without  receiving 
any  new  proof,  he  is  suddenly  convinced  of  what  but 
a  moment  ago  appeared  doubtful  to  him.  Shall  he 
take  vigorous  measures  against  Mosehio  ?  No  indeed  ! 
Mosehio  is  too  dear  to  him,  and  he  himself  is  too  good- 
natured.  Chrysis,  w^hom  he  loves  less,  suddenly  appears 
to  him  as  the  only  culprit.  That  rogue  of  a  Samian 
woman  must  have  inveigled  the  virtuous  young  man, 
must  have  lain  in  wait  for  him,  in  order  to  make  him  forget 
his  duty  at  a  time  when  he  was  drunk.  She  must  be 
punished,  sent  off;  and  in  order  to  humiliate  Mosehio, 
her  innocent  accomplice,  she  is  to  be  sent  off  without 
being  told  for  what  she  is  blamed.  With  the  courage  of 
an  excited  coward,  Demeas  rushes  into  his  house  and 
reappears  almost  immediately,  followed  by  Chrysis,  w^hom 
he  turns  out  of  doors.  The  Samian  woman,  who  has,  no 
doubt,  ere  this,  witnessed  similar  explosions,  does  not 
appear  to  be  particularly  disturbed.  With  more  malice 
than  fitness  she  calls  her  friend's  attention  to  the  fact 
that  he  is  no  longer  sure  of  himself,  and  that  one  can 
discern  signs  of  relenting  in  his  outbursts  of  anger.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  Demeas  is  doing  violence  to  his  own  feel- 
ings, and  he  is  doubtless  aware  that  his  resolve  would 
weaken  were  he  to  listen  to  Chrysis;  and  so  he  keeps  on 
interrupting  her.  To  force  himself  to  feel  disgusted  with 
her,  he  recalls  the  wretched  state  in  which  she  was  when 
he  took  her  in — barely  clothed  in  a  chemise;  he  pictures 
to  himself  what  will  become  of  her — a  haunter  of  feasts,  a 
drunkard,  a  woman  who  will  sell  herself  for  ten  drachmae. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  175 

With  tlie  liclp  of  sucli  precautions,  lie  succeeds  in  return- 
ing home  alone  and  leaving  Chrysis  in  the  street.  But 
it  is  easy  to  divine  that  the  rupture  is  not  final.  Even 
if  events  did  not  vindicate  the  Samian  woman,  Demeas 
would,  wc  may  be  sure,  find  an  excuse  for  calling  her 
back.  In  the  course  of  a  few  scenes  our  friend  Demeas 
has  shown  of  what  stuff  he  is  made.  Henceforward  he  is 
more  than  a  name,  more  than  a  character  of  the  play, 
more  than  a  type ;  he  is  an  individual. 

Let  us  take  another  example.  Laches  and  Phidippus, 
in  the  Hecyra,  are,  as  far  as  their  social  standing  goes, 
two  persons  of  the  same  class  :  two  respectable  citizens, 
two  old  husbands,  two  fathers  of  a  family.  Neither  of 
tliem  has  a  well-defined  character.  At  first  sight  it  would 
appear  as  though  they  shared  the  same  colourless  respect- 
ability that  characterises  all  the  other  actors  in  the  Hecyra. 
And  yet,  when  we  examine  them  more  closely,  how  much 
one  differs  from  the  other  !  From  the  very  first  scenes  in 
which  they  appear,  Phidippus,  in  contrast  to  Laches, 
shows  himself  to  be  a  good,  though  a  rather  weak  man, 
who  avoids  occasioning  his  family  sorrow,  and  is  not  in 
the  habit  of  making  his  wishes  prevail.  Later  on,  the 
different  manner  in  which  each  of  them  greets  Pamphilus 
— Laches'  greeting  consists  of  only  a  few  words,  that  of 
Phidippus  takes  the  form  of  a  compliment — allows  us  to 
surmise  that  the  one  has  more  authority  and  the  other 
more  good  nature.  Everything  else  is  in  keeping.  In 
his  quarrels  with  Sostrata,  Laches,  without  taking  things 
in  a  tragic  way,  speaks  firmly,  like  a  man  who  has 
decided  on  a  line  of  conduct  from  which  he  will  not 
swerve,  and  who  knows  how  to  command.  His  wife's 
humility  does  not  disarm  him.  When  she  declares  that 
she  wants  to  go  off  to  the  country,  he  tells  her  to  go 
and  pack  her  trunks.  When  Phidippus,  on  the  other 
hand,  learns  of  Philumena's  clandestine  confinement,  he 
has  a  much  greater  cause  for  anger,  and,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  he  does  get  angry ;  but  his  wrath  is  not  by  any  means 
terrible,  and  it  is  not  directed  against  his  daughter,  for 


176  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

whom  lie  is  eager  to  find  excuse.  In  his  conversation  with 
his  wife  he  soon  gives  up  reproaching  her,  and  undertakes 
the  defence  of  Pamphilus,  a  task  that  is  more  to  his 
taste.  As  soon  as  he  finds  an  opportunity  he  will  be  most 
happy  again  to  assure  Myrrh ina  of  his  esteem.  Like  all 
weak  characters,  he  indulges  in  quite  ill-timed  outbursts 
against  Pamphilus  and  Baechis — outbursts  which,  by  the 
way,  are  not  of  long  duration.  Without  good  reason  he 
accuses  the  former  of  losing  his  head  about  an  inheritance, 
and  of  scorning  an  alliance  with  his  family,  and  then 
becomes  unduly  conciliatory,  and  allows  him  and  his 
father  freely  to  follow  their  own  inclinations,  and  almost 
apologises  because  he  cannot  answer  for  his  wife's  moods. 
He  starts  by  declaring  to  Baechis,  in  insulting  terms, 
that  such  a  person  as  she  is  not  deserving  of  belief,  but 
this  does  not  prevent  him  from  believing,  the  very  next 
moment,  everything  she  says.  Laches  is  much  more 
sober-minded  and  consistent.  If  he  indulges  in  hard 
words  about  Pamphilus,  it  is  because  appearances  are  all 
against  the  youth  and  expose  him  to  the  suspicion  of 
hypocrisy.  To  Baechis,  quietly  and  without  ill-timed 
threats,  he  gives  the  choice  between  peace  and  war,  and 
he  does  not,  from  prejudice,  fail  to  recognise  the  sincerity 
in  her  answers.  Such  being  the  dispositions  of  the  two 
fathers,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  the  initiative  is 
generally  taken  by  Laches.  It  is  he  who,  before  Pamphilus 
comes  back,  insists  upon  Philumena  consenting  to  live 
with  him  again.  Phidippus,  caught  between  this  impor- 
tunity and  his  daughter's  obstinacy,  has  no  other  idea, 
poor  man,  than  to  get  out  of  the  way.  After  Pamphilus' 
return,  it  is  again  Laches  who  urges  on  his  fellow-gossip, 
and  whispers  in  his  ear  what  he  is  to  do.  It  is  Laches 
who,  at  the  height  of  the  confusion,  plainly  tells  the 
young  man  what  Phidippus  thinks,  but  has  carefully  kept 
hidden.  It  is  Laches  who  comes  to  an  understanding 
with  Baechis;  Phidippus,  who  has  thought  of  this  under- 
standing— and  this  behaviour  on  his  part  is  surprising — 
does  not  take  the  trouble  to  be  present;  to  go  and  fetch 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  177 

a  nurse  on  whom  he  lavishes  pleasant  words  is  certainly 
more  in  keeping  with  his  methods. 

But  let  us  cut  short  the  discussion  with  the  consider- 
ation of  the  cases  of  two  or  three  "severe  fathers"  who 
are  the  victims  of  troubles  of  the  same  kind  :  Sinio  in  the 
Andria,  Demipho  in  the  Phormio,  and  Chremes  in  the 
Heaiiton  Timoroumenos.  All  three  have  just  discovered 
that  their  sons  had  disobeyed  them  and  give  vent  to 
their  displeasure,  but  each  of  them  does  so  after  his  own 
fashion. 

"  There  you  have  the  respect  of  a  son  !  Aren't  you 
sorry  for  me  ?  "  says  Simo  to  an  old  friend.  "  To  think 
that  one  takes  so  much  trouble  for  such  a  son  !  "  ^ 

"  You  arc  quite  right  to  make  fun  of  me,"  says  Chremes. 
"It  is  with  myself  that  I  am  angry  now.  How  many 
things  would  have  made  me  guess  it,  had  I  not  been  so 
stupid  !  Why  did  I  not  have  my  eyes  open,  unhappy 
man  that  I  am  !  "  ^ 

"  And  so,"  complains  Demipho,  "  Antipho  has  married 
without  my  permission  !  Neither  my  authority — but  let 
us  say  nothing  of  my  authority — nor  even  the  fear  of 
my  displeasure  could  keep  him  from  doing  so.  Not  the 
slightest  scruple  !     What  effrontery  !  "  ^ 

In  Simo's  case  it  is  his  feelings  that  are  hurt;  with 
Chremes  it  is  a  case  of  wounded  vanity,  and  with  Demipho 
a  blow  at  his  tyrannical  disposition.  Their  exclamations 
in  the  distress  of  the  first  moment  show  the  great  differ- 
ence in  their  characters.  An  analysis  of  their  several 
roles  would  confirm  this  evidence. 

Even  more  readily  than  among  the  old  men  we  can 
point  to  distinct  individualities  among  the  young  men, 
the  lovers  in  comedy. 

Compare  Antipho  of   the  Phormio  with   Paniphilus    of 

the  Andria.     Each  of  them  has  affectionate  relations  with 

an  excellent  girl,  and  each  of  them  is  at  loggerheads  with 

his  father.     Throughout  the  play,  Paniphilus  hardly  for  a 

1  Andr.,  869-870.  *  Heaut.,  915-917.  »  Phorm.,  231-233. 

N 


178  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

moment  appears  to  be  in  doubt  as  to  his  proper  course. 
While  he  hopes  that  his  interests  can  be  safeguarded 
without  his  being  obliged  to  push  himself  forward,  he  is 
frankly  resolved  to  resist,  if  necessary;  and,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  at  the  most  critical  moment  he  confesses  his  love 
to  his  vexed  father  :  "  Yes,  I  love  Glycerium ;  I  confess 
it,  and  if  it  is  a  fault,  I  admit  my  fault."  ^  Antipho  is 
not  of  the  same  calibre;  he  is  timid  and  irresolute,  and 
begins  by  losing  his  head.  In  place  of  the  energetic 
declarations  made  by  the  lover  in  the  Andria,  he  only 
makes  lamentations  and  constantly  renews  the  avowal  of 
his  insurmountable  terror.  Pamphilus  reproaches  him- 
self for  having  relied  too  much  on  others.^  Antipho  sees 
that  it  is  best  for  him  to  let  his  slave,  his  parasite  or  his 
cousin,  act;  and  he  passively  awaits  the  outcome  of  their 
machinations,  though  he  blushes  at  his  own  inactivity. 
He  does  not  even  possess  the  necessary  energy  to  control 
and  to  criticise  the  actions  of  his  allies.  Pamphilus,  when 
Davus  has  got  him  into  a  tight  corner,  overwhelms  him 
with  reproaches  and  threats ;  ^  under  similar  conditions 
Antipho  does  nothing  but  moan.* 

Another  lover  of  the  most  interesting  sort,  whose 
acquaintance  we  owe  to  recent  discoveries,  is  the  soldier 
Polemo,  of  the  IleQiKeiQojuevr].  As  I  have  already  pointed 
out,  Polemo  is  not  the  typical  jealous  man.  WTiat  places 
him  above  the  commonplace  is  his  impetuous  nature,  his 
spirit,  which  is  at  once  impetuous  and  irresolute.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  play  he  sulks,  and  tries  to  drown  his 
sorrow  by  feasting  with  his  comrades.  He  only  succeeds 
in  taking  half-measures  against  Glycera;  under  a  futile 
pretext  he  sends  his  servant  to  her  to  find  out  what  she 
is  doing.  He  would,  no  doubt,  like  to  return  himself,  but 
cannot  make  up  his  mind  to  do  so.  Later  on,  when  he 
plans  to  attack  Myrrhina's  house,  we  recognise  the  in- 
furiated man  who  made  havoc  of  his  mistress'  hair,  and 
this  fresh  outburst  of  wrath,  like  the  one  that  had  pre- 

1  A7idr.,  896.     Cf.  Men.,  fr.  859.  *  Andr.,  607-609. 

»  Ibid.,  610  et  seq.  *  Phorm.,  685  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  179 

ceded,  is  promptly  followed  by  profound  depression. 
Confronted  with  the  short  and  frigid  remonstrances  of 
the  prudent  Pataecus,  the  soldier's  anger  is  appeased  in 
the  twinkling  of  an  eye.  The  man  who  wanted  to  slaughter 
everybody  admits  that  he  has  no  claim  whatsoever  on 
Glycera,  that  she  is  free  to  bestow  herself  on  whomsoever 
she  chooses,  and  that  he  can  only  regain  her  favour  by 
persuasion.  Discouraged  before  he  has  made  an  effort, 
he  decides  that  there  is  nothing  left  for  him  to  do  but  to 
hang  himself.  Then,  all  of  a  sudden,  he  remembers  that 
Pataecus  could  easily,  if  he  would,  be  of  use  to  him,  and 
he  refuses  to  let  him  go  until  he  agrees  to  help  him. 
Thereupon  he  insists  on  displaying  the  fine  gowns  he  had 
once  bought  for  Glycera  as  proofs  of  his  love,  and  Pataecus 
has  perforce  to  admire  the  fine  gowns  without  delay.  The 
same  impatience,  the  same  irresoluteness,  the  same  ten- 
dency to  exaggerate  are  displayed  in  one  of  the  final 
scenes.  There  Polemo  learns  from  Doris,  Glycera's 
attendant,  that  the  young  woman  has  found  her  father; 
he  thereupon  imagines  that  she  is  lost  to  him,  declares 
that  he  cannot  live  without  her  and  threatens  to  kill 
himself.  Doris  reassures  him  and  sets  out  to  return  to 
Glycera.  As  long  as  she  remains  in  sight  he  overwhelms 
her  with  advice,  with  protestations  and  with  promises. 
Left  alone  for  a  moment,  he  reproaches  himself  most 
bitterly.  When  Doris  returns,  bringing  good  news  and 
words  of  forgiveness,  he  exults  and  is  beside  himself  with 
joy.  From  beginning  to  end  the  character  is  consistent. 
Chaerea,  in  the  Eunuchus,  is  neither  an  ordinary  veaviag 
nor  a  commonplace  lover.  Whatever  the  situation,  he  is 
ardent  and  resolute.  As  soon  as  he  falls  in  love  with 
Pamphila  he  makes  up  his  mind  that  she  shall  be  his,  and 
the  orders  he  gives  his  slave  do  not  admit  of  a  rcply.^ 
The  plan  that  is  jokingly  suggested  to  him — to  enter 
Thais'  house  disguised  as  a  eunuch — pleases  him  at  first 
sight.  He  takes  it  up  enthusiastically,  and  when  Parmeno 
is  dumbfounded  by  so  much  audacity,  and  attempts  to 
1  Eun.,  319-320. 


180  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

withdraw,  lie  imperiously  silences  him.  He  shows  the 
same  resoluteness  in  carrying  out  his  gallant  exploit,  and 
the  same  exuberance  when  he  has  succeeded  and  tells  the 
audience  of  it.  It  turns  out  that  Pamphila  is  a  citizen. 
That  does  not  disturb  Chaerea.  He  means  to  marry  her, 
and  has  no  doubt  that  he  will  marry  her,  and  that  every- 
body will  approve  of  the  marriage.  With  fine  confidence 
he  asks  Thais,  whom  he  had  not  even  known  a  few 
moments  before,  to  champion  his  cause.  He  liberally 
discounts  his  father's  good  will,  and  seems  to  think  that 
his  resoluteness  would  even  force  the  hands  of  the  gods. 

Similarly,  among  the  slaves,  whether  they  be  honest 
or  knavish,  we  meet  with  some  who  are  not  merely 
representatives  of  a  particular  class.  Onesimus,  in 
the  'EnixQEnovxEQ,  talks  too  much ;  Messenio,  in  the 
Menaechmi,  is  suspicious;  Parmeno,  in  the  Hecyra,  is 
indiscreet  and  inquisitive;  his  namesake  in  the  Eunuchus 
is  a  coward.  Even  in  the  exercise  of  the  function  that  is 
common  to  a  good  many  of  them — the  art  of  deception — 
some  of  them  display  an  individual  temperament.  For 
instance,  Tranio,  in  the  Mostellaria,  is  not  content  to 
make  the  aged  Theopropides  believe  whatever  is  necessary 
in  order  to  hide  the  sins  of  Philolaches,  but  derides  him 
to  boot.  When  he  accompanies  him  on  a  visit  to  a 
neighbour,  he  makes  a  point  of  showing  him,  as  though 
it  were  in  the  vestibule,  a  painting  that  does  not  exist — 
two  buzzards  of  whom  a  crow  is  making  fun,  an  image  of 
himself  and  the  two  old  men  whom  he  is  taking  for  a 
walk.  Naturally  enough,  Theopropides  sees  nothing  of 
all  this,  and  Tranio  says  :  "  Come,  let's  say  no  more  about 
it.  I  am  not  angry  with  you.  Your  age  prevents  your 
seeing  things  clearly."  ^  Here  we  find  the  same  dare- 
devil impudence  that  Tranio  displayed  in  his  first  con- 
versation with  Grumio,  or  when  he  invented  the  story  of 
the  purchased  house,  and  which  he  again  displays  towards 
the  close  of  the  play,  when,  as  the  saying  is,  he  is  about 

1  Most.,  840. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONAE  181 

to  rush  into  the  hon's  jaws.  The  ways  of  a  slave  Hke 
Chrysalus,  or  Hke  Davus  in  the  Andria,  arc  quite  different. 
Even  purely  episodic  characters  were  sometimes — at 
least  in  Menander's  comedies — carefully  portrayed.  For 
instance,  the  shepherd  Daos,  one  of  the  litigants  in  the 
"EniXQETiovxeq,  appears  in  only  one  scene — that  of  the 
contest — and  yet  this  suffices  to  give  us  the  impression  of 
a  distinct  personality.  He  is  selfish,  distrustful  and  dull, 
and  at  the  same  time  sly.  He  is  apparently  as  much 
astonished  as  he  is  annoyed  at  Syriscus'  demands.  What 
do  people  expect  of  him  ?  He  has  generously  surrendered 
one-half  of  what  he  has  found — found  unaided ;  has  he  not 
a  right  to  keep  the  other  half?  He  claims  that  he  has, 
and  I  believe  that  he  is  sincere;  and  that  explains  why 
he  is  ready  to  abide  by  the  decision  of  the  first-comer. 
But  as  he  listens  to  Syriscus,  who  has  a  glib  tongue,  he 
becomes  anxious,  and  has  recourse  to  all  the  cunning  of  a 
rustic.  The  account  of  the  discovery  and  of  the  subse- 
quent events  which  he  gives  in  his  speech  is  a  master- 
piece of  assumed  artlessness.  Maliciously  he  relates  how 
Syriscus  insisted  on  getting  the  child ;  in  a  scornful  way 
he  incidentally  underrates  the  value  of  the  few  things 
which  he  is  asked  to  give  up,  the  very  things  with  which 
he  is  absolutely  unwilling  to  part ;  and  a  few  moments 
after  having  claimed  that  the  child  was  a  burden  to  him, 
he  insinuates  that  in  handing  it  over  to  some  one  else 
he  has  proved  his  generosity.  His  malice,  by  the  way, 
is  short  lived.  Once  his  suit  has  been  dismissed  he  is 
nothing  but  a  dullard,  a  numskull  who  whines  pitifully 
and  keeps  repeating  his  absurd  grievances  with  mechanical 
ojjstinacy. 

/  Thus,  as  we  have  seen,  there  are  a  great  many  characters 
in  extant  comic  literature  that  can  supply  material  for  a 
portrait,  and  their  lively  and  characteristic  outlines  often 
appear  all  the  more  alive  and  characteristic  because  they 
are  brought  into  relief  through  contrast.  Such  contrasts 
as  I  have  pointed  out  between  Pamphilus  in  the  Andria 
and  Antipho  in  the  Phormio,  between  Simo,  Chrcmes  and 


182  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

Dcmipho,  are  frequently  found  between  the  actors  in  a 
single  play.  Antipho  has,  as  his  counterpart,  his  cousin, 
who  is  audacious  and  so  completely  master  of  himself 
that  he  wins  Geta's  admiration ;  Chaerea  has  his  brother, 
a  timid  man  who  is  readily  embarrassed  by  exaggerated 
scruples.  Polemo,  the  brutal  but  sincere  lover,  easily 
discouraged,  has  as  his  rival  a  man-about-town,  a  young 
fop  who  thinks  himself  irresistible.  In  the  Phormio  we 
have  the  gentle  and  timid  Chremes  as  a  contrast  to  the 
domineering  and  harsh  Demipho;  in  the  Heauton  Timor- 
oumenos  Menedemus,  his  own  enemy,  who  sees  the  dark 
side  of  everything,  as  a  contrast  to  Chremes,  the  optimist ; 
in  the  Andria  a  third  Chremes,  who  cannot  refuse  a 
request,  as  a  contrast  to  Simo,  who  is  so  harsh  in  exacting 
w^hat  he  wishes  from  his  friends.  Furthermore,  we  find 
Aeschinus  side  by  side  with  Ctesipho  in  the  Adelphi, 
Lysiteles  side  by  side  with  Lesbonicus  in  the  Trinummus 
— the  one  judicious  beyond  his  years,  the  other  a  sympa- 
thetic "  bad  lot."  In  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos  we 
have  Clinia  and  Clitipho,  in  whom  the  difference  which 
marks  their  father's  natures  is  reflected;  in  the  Feajgyog 
the  violent  Gorgias  and  the  timid  young  lover;  in  the 
Asinaria  the  two  aspirants  whose  parts  Monsieur  Havet 
has  very  aptly  characterised  :  ^  Diabolus,  determined  and 
quick  to  resort  to  threats,  Argyrippus,  sentimental  and 
humble.  Among  the  old  men  we  have,  besides  Laches 
and  Phidippus,  Micio  and  Demea  in  the  Adelphi,  Simo 
and  Callipho  in  the  Pseudolus,  Philoxenus  and  Nicobulus 
in  the  Bacchides,  each  more  uncompromising  than  the 
other.  In  the  Casina  we  have  Lysidamus  and  Alce- 
simus;  in  the  Mercator  Demipho  and  Lysimachus,  more 
or  less  conscious  of  their  years  and  of  their  duties.  Among 
the  female  characters  we  have  the  two  sisters  in  the 
Stichus,  one  of  whom  is  obliged  to  encourage  the  fidelity 
of  the  other;  the  sisters  in  the  Poenulus — Adelphasium, 
prouder  and  more  sedate,  and  Anterastilis,  the  younger 
of  the  two,  who  is  inclined  to  make  fun  of  everything. 

^  Revue  de  philologie,  XXIX.  (1905),  pp.  92  et  seq. 


THE    DRAMATIS    PERSONS  183 

Several  lost  comedies,  one  of  which  belonged  to  the  new 
period,  had  the  titles  "Ofioioi,  "0/Lcoiai ;  and  it  may  be  that 
they  were  plays  in  which  the  contrast  between  characters 
was  all  the  more  noticeable  because  the  heroes  were  of 
the  same  age  and  of  the  same  social  standing,  or  because 
a  very  strong  physical  resemblance  led  them  to  be  taken 
one  for  the  other.  Something  of  this  kind  occurs  in  the 
Menaechmi :  Menaechmus  Sosiclcs  is  much  bolder,  much 
more  direct,  if  I  may  say  so,  than  the  kidnapped 
Menaechmus. 


CHAPTER  IV 

ADVENTURES 

SOME  of  the  adventures  in  which  the  dramatis  personae  of 
New  Comedy  take  part  have  already  been  mentioned, 
because  it  was  impossible  to  avoid  all  reference  to  them 
in  my  review  of  the  characters  themselves.  But  in  order 
to  give  a  fairly  complete  idea  of  the  via  I  must  call  atten- 
tion to  still  others,  and  also  co-ordinate  what  has  been 
said  of  some  of  them  by  anticipation  and  incidentally. 
In  this  chapter  I  propose  to  fulfill  this  twofold  task,  and 
there  will  be  found  in  it  a  review  of  the  various  incidents 
which  the  comic  poets  have,  as  far  as  we  know,  introduced 
into  the  composition  of  their  plots. 

Very  few  of  these  incidents  can  have  been  of  a  political 
nature.  War,  which  is  spoken  of  frequently  enough, 
generally  only  supplies  a  subject  of  conversation — a  pre- 
text for  bragging.  Sometimes  it  explains  the  absence  of 
a  gallant  soldier,  who,  after  its  close,  reappears  more  or 
less  unexpectedly,  or  else  it  is  the  cause  of  a  family  being 
dispersed.  Rarely  does  a  war  have  an  immediate  influ- 
ence on  the  plot,  and  yet  in  the  Captivi  and  the  Epidicus 
its  vicissitudes  separate  father  and  son,  mother  and 
daughter,  and  subsequently,  contrary  to  all  expectation, 
bring  Hegio  two  children  in  place  of  the  one  of  which  they 
had  deprived  him,  and  supply  Philippa  with  a  second 
husband  in  addition  to  Telestis.  As  for  military  life,  it 
may  be  that  it  was  depicted  in  one  of  Diphilus'  comedies, 
which  is  supposed  to  have  been  called  the  ^EXaicav 
i]  Oqovqovvxsq,  in  the  Ovlaxri  by  Philemon,  and  in  the 
Wo(poderiQ;  but  at  best  this  is  extremely  doubtful. 

From  civic  life  and  its  duties  the  comic  writers  do  not 
appear  to  have  borrowed  more  than  an  occasional  detail 
to  adorn  their  plots.  In  the  Miles  and  in  the  Truculentus 
the  absence  of  the  young  lover  is  accounted  for  by  a  public 
service — an  embassy  to  Naupactus,  the  duties  of  a  magis- 

184 


ADVENTURES  185 

tracy  at  Lcmnos;  ^  whilst  in  the  Aulularia,  Eiiclio  leaves 
his  house  to  get  his  share  of  a  distribution  made  to  the 
people. 2  But  we  meet  with  nothing  else  of  this  kind  in 
Latin  comedy,  and  nothing  is  to  be  found  in  the  Greek 
fragments.  Several  comedies  bore  as  their  title  either 
the  name  of  a  public  office — 'AqeoTiayivriQ,  "Ag^oiv,  Aixaaxai, 
NojLiodhrjg,  0v?.aQxog — or  that  of  a  class  of  the  population 
— Arjjuorai,  "E(pr]^og  {"Ecprj^oi,  Zvvecpri^oi),  Mhoixog.  But  a 
title  of  this  sort,  standing  by  itself,  teaches  us  nothing 
about  the  plot  of  the  play. 

Business  life  is  represented  in  quite  a  number  of 
episodes  in  comedy. 

Most  of  the  journeys  mentioned  in  Plautus  and  in 
Terence  are  undertaken  for  the  sake  of  profit.  One 
person  goes  on  a  long  journey  in  order  to  rehabilitate  his 
fortune ;  another,  in  order  to  increase  it  or  that  of  his 
parents.  In  the  Bacchides,  Mnesiloehus  has  gone  to 
Ephesus  to  collect  a  debt;  in  the  Hecyra,  Pamphilus  has 
been  obliged  to  go  to  Imbros  to  take  over  an  inheritance ; 
and  in  the  Andria,  Crito  lands  at  Athens  for  the  same 
purpose.  Business  trips  are  mentioned  in  fragments  of 
Menander's  "Hgcog,  Fecogyog,  Kola^  and  NavxXrjQog,  and 
of  the  Lindia,  by  Turpilius,  as  well  as  in  the  anonymous 
Strassburg  prologue  and  elsewhere.  Few  incidents  can 
have  been  more  commonly  introduced  by  the  writers  of 
New  Comedy.  Moreover,  as  a  rule,  these  journeys  end 
in  the  course  of  the  play,  which  amounts  to  saying  that 
the  home-coming — either  wished-for  or  feared — was  a 
favourite  theme. 

Though  lawsuits,  contracts,  and  the  bargains  and  diffi- 
culties which  may  arise  from  them  do  not  play  so  much  of  a 
part  as  business  journeys,  they  nevertheless  occur  quite  fre- 
quently in  comic  plots.  Several  titles,  such  as  AiadixaC6fj,e- 
voi,  "EyxaXovvzeg,  'Ejiidixa^ojuevoi,  "EjiixlriQog,  "EjiirQeTiovxeg, 
'Enirgonog,  'Enayyekkovzeg,  UaQexdidofievr],  Ugoeyxcdcbv, 
Aiadfjxai,  IlaQaxaxaBrixri,  in  themselves  make  more  or  less 
1  Miles,  102-103;  True.,  91-92.  *  AuL,  107-108. 


186  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

certain  allusion  to  them.  Latin  imitations  and  other 
documents,  here  and  there,  give  us  further  information. 
Quintilian  praises  the  judicia  contained  in  several  of 
Mcnander's  plays,^  but  the  pleadings  that  took  place 
before  an  audience  were  never,  I  imagine,  attended  by 
greater  pomp  and  a  more  official  character  than  was  the 
debate  in  the  'EnizQiTiovreg;  and  probably  these  scenes 
represented  arbitration.  On  the  other  hand,  regular  law- 
suits sometimes  took  place  behind  the  scenes.  The  Phormio, 
a  translation  of  Apollodorus'  'ETZidtxaCo/uevog,  is  an 
example,  and  shows  the  kind  of  litigation  that  a  comedy 
with  the  title  'EnixXrjQog  or  AiadixaCojuevoi  may  have 
contained.  In  the  Miooyvvrjg,  a  ygacpr]  xaxcboscog  appears 
to  have  been  instituted, ^  and  in  the  Xalxiq  there  may 
have  been  a  ygacprj  juoLxstag.^  Twice  in  Plautus,  in  the 
Casina  and  in  the  Menaechmi,  an  actor  comes  back  upon 
the  stage  and  explains  that  his  long  absence  was  due  to 
the  importunity  of  some  litigant,  a  relative  or  client,  who 
had  most  inconveniently  claimed  his  assistance  in  court.* 
Elsewhere  actors  account  for  their  exits  by  saying  that 
they  are  going  to  market  or  to  a  banker.  In  the  Mostel- 
laria  we  witness  a  discussion  between  a  usurer  and  an 
insolvent  debtor;  subsequently  we  see  a  gentleman  in- 
specting the  house  he  thinks  he  has  bought,  and  hear 
him  criticising  it  and  planning  improvements.  In  the 
Asinaria  landed  proprietors  either  sell  or  give  orders  to 
buy  cattle.  In  the  Mercator  and  in  the  Adelphi  the 
purchase  of  a  slave  girl  takes  place  on  the  stage;  in  the 
Curculio  and  in  the  Pseudolus  the  sale  has  been  agreed 
upon  before  the  play  begins,  but  the  delivery  is  still  to 
be  made,  and  the  entire  interest  centres  upon  it.  In  the 
Vidularia,  as  in  the  FernqyoQ,  an  impecunious  young  man 
hires  himself  out  to  a  private  gentleman.^  In  the 
Bacchides,  one  of  the  sisters  is  bound  to  the  soldier 
Cleomachus  by  a  contract  of  hire  similar  in  its  essentials 
to  the  contract  prepared  by  the  parasite  in  the  Asinaria, 

^  Quint.,  X.  1,  70.  ^  Men.,  fr.  327,  328.  ^  j^d.^  fr.  512. 

*  Caa.,  566  etseq. ;  Menaech.,  588etseq.     "  Vid.,  20etseq. ;  reop-y.,  46-47. 


ADVENTURES  187 

and  is  anxious  to  cancel  it.  In  the  'EnitQenovreg,  a  %co^£? 
oixwv,  the  charcoal-burner  Syriscus,  comes  to  pay  his 
master  the  anocpoqa.'^  In  the  "Hqcoq,  Gorgias  and  Plangon 
pay  off  by  their  labour  the  debt  contracted  by  their 
putative  father,  the  freedman  Tibcius.^ 

The  life  of  pleasure  appears  to  have  supplied  comedy 
with  favourite  themes  during  the  whole  middle  period, 
and  one  phase  of  that  life,  above  all  others,  seems  to  have 
claimed  the  attention  of  the  poets  —  the  banquet.  At 
least  that  is  what  we  gather  from  the  words  spoken  by 
Antiphanes  one  day  when  King  Alexander  showed  little 
pleasure  in  listening  to  his  works  :  "  O  king,  in  order  to 
enjoy  these  things  one  must  have  frequently  taken  part 
in  banquets  where  every  one  pays  his  share,  and  one  must 
have  fought  more  than  once  about  a  courtesan."  ^  Traces 
of  this  preference  are  also  found  during  the  period  that 
followed.  There  is  not  a  single  play  by  Plautus  or  by 
Terence  in  which  a  banquet  is  not  mentioned,  if,  indeed, 
it  is  not  spoken  of  at  length  or  represented  upon  the  stage. 
The  fragments  of  original  works,  Lueian's  Dialogues  and 
the  Letters  of  Alciphron,  prove  that  this  was  generally  the 
case  in  the  whole  of  comic  literature.  The  players  in 
the  vea  have  banquets  on  the  slightest  provocation.  At 
the  dinner-table  they  celebrate  public  festivals  or  happy 
family  events;  at  the  dinner-table  they  seek  solace  for 
their  grief;  a  banquet  is  the  means  of  purchasing  or  recom- 
pensing the  services  of  a  parasite,  a  go-between,  or  a 
duenna.  As  a  rule,  they  hold  banquets  for  no  particular 
reason,  their  only  purpose  being  to  pass  the  time  in  an 
agreeable  manner  and  in  gay  company,  and  about  the 
banquet  are  grouped  various  episodes.  The  host  goes  to 
market  or  sends  his  servants  there;  the  cook  arrives  with 
the  provisions;  he  is  introduced  and  given  advice,  or 
quarrelled  with ;  he,  being  indiscreet  and  a  thief,  occasions 
brawls  and  hubbubs,  or,  being  puffed  up  with  his  own 
importance,  offers  sacrifice  to  the  gods,  and  superintends 

1  'Eirirp.,  161-163.         *  "Hp.,  36;  c£.  hypoth.,  5.         »  Ath.,  p.  555  A. 


188  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

upon  the  stage  the  processes  of  his  art.  When  they  finish 
drinking,  the  guests  are  entertained  by  dances.  Certainly 
it  is  about  the  festive  board  that  the  parasites  exhibit 
most  of  their  accompHshments,  and  there,  too,  does  many  a 
quarrel  arise.  When  the  feast  is  over,  the  servants  come  to 
fetch  their  masters  as  they  go  out  of  the  banqueting  hall ; 
the  guests  scatter  in  a  noisy  komos,  or  else  they  stagger 
about  and  betake  themselves  to  renewed  orgies. 

However  great  the  importance  of  the  banquet,  it  is  not 
the  only  phase  of  the  life  of  pleasure  that  is  portrayed  in 
the  vea.  We  hear  of  hunters — hunters  who  have  come 
from  town — in  a  fragment  of  the  "Hqwq,^  The  title  of 
one  of  Philemon's  comedies — 'E(pedQiordi  or  'EtpedQi^ovzeg — 
and  a  fragment  of  Diphilus^  suggest  scenes  representing 
games.  The  Mosiellaria  contains  a  scene  in  the  boudoir. 
In  the  Poenulus,  two  young  women,  in  their  finest  array, 
start  out  for  the  Aphrodisia,  and  a  young  man  declares 
his  intention  of  doing  so  likewise.  Menander  wrote  an 
'A(pQodioia,  a  Kavrjq^ogog,  and  an  ' AQQ'y]q)6Qog ;  Philippides 
WTote  an  'AdcovidCovom;  Philemon  wrote  a  Jlav^jyvgig; 
Baton  wrote  a  UavrjyvQiorai;  Alexis  Hipparchus  and 
Kallipos  each  wrote  a  IJavvvxtg  ;  Alexis  a  XoQtiyiq ; 
Paramonus  a  XoQrjycov;  Posidippus  a  Xogevovoai.  It 
may  be  that  in  one  or  the  other  of  these  plays  one 
saw  or  heard  accounts  of  some  part  of  a  festival.  On 
the  other  hand,  some  titles,  like  ' Ano^dtriq,  Gumniasticus, 
IIayxQarLaoT7]g,  'Hrioxog,  and  possibly  Navjua^ia,  transfer 
us  to  the  world  of  sport. 

But  it  is  to  love  adventures  that  the  poets  of  the  vea 
chiefly  devoted  themselves.  If  we  can  trust  Ovid,  there 
was  not  a  play  of  Menander's  that  did  not  contain  one.^ 
Plautus,  probably  following  the  Greek  original,  points  out 
the  absence  of  all  love  intrigues  in  the  Captivi  as  a  peculi- 
arity.^ Therefore  this  class  of  adventure  above  all  others 
deserves  to  be  studied  in  detail. 

^  Cf.  Kretschniar,  De  Menandri  reliquiis  nuper  repertis,  p.  59. 

*  Diph.,  fr.  73.  ^  Ov.,  Trist.,  11.  369.  «  Capt.,  1030,  1032, 


ADVENTURES  189 

How  does  a  love  affair  start  ?  In  very  many  cases  the 
comic  poets  do  not  explain  this,  and  when  the  woman  in 
question  is  a  courtesan  who  offers  herself  or  is  offered  to 
the  desire  of  every  comer,  we  can  do  without  an  explana- 
tion. In  other  cases  the  origin  of  a  love  affair  is  told  in 
various  ways.  The  prologue  of  the  Mercator  informs  us 
that  Pasicompsa  was  lent  for  one  night  and  then  sold  to 
Charinus  by  a  host  who  treated  his  guests  generously.  In 
the  Andria  Pamphilus  is  dragged  to  Chrysis'  house  by 
his  comrades,  and  though  he  resists  the  charms  of  the 
mistress  of  the  house,  he  falls  in  love  with  a  young  girl 
whom  she  is  bringing  up.  In  the  Bacchides  Pistoclerus 
has  established  relations  with  the  sisters  Bacchis  in  order 
to  oblige  a  friend.  In  the  Rudens  and  in  the  Phormio  a 
girl  who  is  being  brought  up  to  be  a  courtesan  meets 
and  wins  her  lover  on  her  way  to  her  cithara  teacher.^ 
In  the  Eimuchus  it  is  mere  chance  that  brings  Pamphila 
and  Chaerea  together.  In  the  case  of  young  girls  who 
live  with  their  parents — whether  real  or  putative — and 
who  seldom  appear  in  public,  it  is  often  at  a  festival 
that  the  first  meeting  takes  place.  Selenium,  in  the 
Cistellaria,  and  Menander's  heroine  who  speaks  the  words 
contained  in  fragment  558  (she  must  be  the  prototype  of 
Selenium)  have  been  noticed  by  their  lovers  at  the  Diony- 
siac  procession.^  The  daughter  of  Phanias,  in  a  Berlin 
fragment,  was  noticed  by  Moschio  as  she  was  taking  part 
in  a  deipnophoria — that  is  to  say,  in  a  procession  in  honour 
of  Artemis  at  Ephesus.^  Periphanes  and  Philippa,  in  the 
Epidicus,  met  and  became  attached  to  one  another  at 
Epidaurus,  a  place  to  which  pilgrims  resorted.^  If  it  is 
not  in  the  course  of  a  festival,  it  is,  at  any  rate,  in  a  temple 
that  a  young  lover  in  a  play  by  Turpilius  saw  his  mistress 
for  the  first  time,  and  was  smitten  by  the  bolt  of 
love.^  I  think  the  Phormio  affords  the  only  example  of  a 
less  commonplace  meeting.     Antipho  hears  people  in  the 

1  Rud.,  -42-44;  Pkorm.,  80  ct  seq.  -  Cist.,  89  et  seq. 

^  Berliner  Klassikertexte,  V.  2,  p.  119  (94  et  seq.). 

*  Epid.,  540-541,  554.  *  Turpilius,  Hclaeru,  fr.  I. -II. 


190  NjEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

barber's  shop  talking  of  the  misfortune  of  a  young  foreign 
girl  who  Hves  in  the  neighbourhood,  the  death  of  whose 
mother  has  left  her  quite  alone  in  the  world.  Curiosity 
and  pity  lead  him  to  go  to  see  the  unhappy  girl,  and  he 
falls  in  love  with  her  as  soon  as  he  sets  eyes  on  her.^ 

The  first  steps  described  above  are  honourable;  but  in 
other  instances  the  adventure  starts  in  a  more  regrettable 
way — by  rape.  The  Eunuchus  and  a  Latin  fragment  of 
uncertain  origin  ^  afford  instances  of  a  premeditated  rape, 
but,  as  a  rule,  the  crime  is  committed  under  the  influence 
of  intoxication,  generally  at  night,  and  often  in  the  con- 
fusion of  a  nocturnal  religious  festival,  while  there  are 
instances  where  the  culprit  does  not  even  know  whom  he 
has  violated.  When  they  return  to  their  senses,  the  brutal 
lovers  of  the  vea  pursue  various  courses.  Aeschinus, 
in  the  Adelphi,  promptly  goes  in  search  of  Pamphila's 
mother,  confesses  to  her,  implores  her  forgiveness,  promises 
marriage,  and  meanwhile  continues  the  relations  he  has 
so  cavalierly  begun  with  the  young  woman.  Such  perfect 
correctness  is  rare.  Lyconides,  in  the  Aulidaria,  has  the 
best  intentions,  but  waits  until  circumstances  shall  force 
him  to  carry  them  out.  Diniarchus,  in  the  Truculentus, 
appears  no  longer  to  think  of  Callicles'  daughter,  though 
she  had  been  betrothed  to  him.  In  the  Cistellaria, 
Demipho,  after  violating  Phanostrata  at  Sicyon,  hurriedly 
returns  home  without  worrying  about  what  is  to  become 
of  his  victim.  It  is  only  after  a  long  while  that  he  offers 
her  reparation,  and  then  it  is  merely  owing  to  chance  that 
he  does  so.  Pamphilus  in  the  Hecyra,  Laches  in  the 
"Hgcog,  and  Charisius  in  the  'EniTQETcovreg,  have  an  equally 
accommodating  conscience. 

In  whatever  manner  they  have  started,  love-affairs  in 
comedy  are  always  on  the  eve  of  a  crisis,  and  in  order 
to  pass  in  review  the  manifold  incidents  involved,  I  shall 
classify  them  according  to  the  nature  of  the  obstacles 
that  stand  in  the  way  of  the  lover's  happiness. 

The  heartless  women  who  keep  their  doors  locked,   or 

1  Phorm.,  91  et  seq.  «  Frag.  inc.  II.  (p.  132).     Ribbeck.^ 


ADVENTURES  191 

those  whom  a  merciless  master,  a  pander,  a  procuress  or  a 
jealous  lover  keeps  under  lock  and  key,  are  the  recipients 
of  nocturnal  serenades,  of  clandestine  visits,  of  the  naqa- 
xlavo[dvQa  of  which  the  opening  of  the  Curculio  has  pre- 
served an  instance.  In  the  Curculio  Phaedromus  secures 
an  interview  with  Planesium  at  small  expense  :  all  he 
needs  to  do  is  to  give  her  duenna  a  jug  of  wine.  In  the 
Eunuclius  Chaerea  comes  to  Pamphila  in  the  disguise  to 
which  I  have  already  referred.  In  other  cases  the  under- 
taking presents  more  difficulties.  In  the  Miles  Gloriosus 
the  lovers  only  manage  to  come  together  by  breaking 
through  a  party  wall,  and  when  one  of  the  soldier's  servants 
sees  Philocomasium  in  Periplecomenes'  courtyard,  it  is 
necessary  to  invent  a  long  story  in  order  to  allay  his 
suspicions  and  to  pretend  that  a  twin  sister  of  the  young 
woman's,  who  has  come  to  find  her,  lives  in  the  adjoining 
house,  and  then  to  arrange  that  Philocomasium  should 
appear,  turn  and  turn  about,  first  in  the  house  of  her 
lover  and  then  in  that  of  her  master,  in  the  former  case 
under  her  own  name,  in  the  latter  under  that  of  her  pre- 
tended sister — a  complicated  piece  of  comedy  that  calls 
for  the  skill  of  a  clever  inventor  of  tricks.  The  Miles  is 
the  only  Latin  play  which  deals  with  the  theme  of  a  useless 
surveillance,  but  I  suspect  that  this  theme  was  more  than 
once  exploited  in  Greek  comedy.  We  know  Apollodorus' 
saying  that  no  door  is  so  well  closed  that  a  weasel  and 
an  adulterer  cannot  find  a  way  to  open  it.^  Xenarchus,  a 
poet  of  the  middle  period,  enumerates  the  feats  to  which 
every  man  who  courts  another  man's  wife  must  get  accus- 
tomed :  secretly  to  climb  a  ladder,  to  enter  a  house  through 
a  hole  in  the  roof,  to  be  carried  into  a  house  in  a  bundle 
of  straw.2  Possibly  certain  gallants  on  the  comic  stage 
performed  some  such  feat  in  the  course  of  a  play,  and 
perhaps  I  ought  here  to  mention  the  title  of  one  of 
Anaxippus'  comedies,  "  The  Man  who  Envelops  Himself  " 
— 'EyxaXvnro/Ltevog.  However,  to  judge  from  the  texts 
which  we  possess,  lovers'  struggles  with  jailers,  spies  and 

1  Apollod.,  fr.  6.  8  Xenarchus,  fr.  4,  10-12. 


192  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

duennas  cannot  have  played  a  very  important  part  in 
the  rea. 

The  same  remark  applies  to  the  abductions  effected 
without  the  woman's  connivance,  and  to  all  the  acts  of 
violence  to  which  an  aspirant,  tired  of  futile  appeals,  may 
have  an  idea  of  resorting.  Again  it  is  only  in  the  Miles 
that  such  an  episode  is  mentioned  :  Pyrgopolinices  has 
carried  off  Philocomasium,  and  has  taken  her  against  her 
will  from  Athens  to  Ephesus. 

A  third  category  of  episodes,  which  is  likewise  meagrely 
represented  in  the  vea,  is  based  upon  the  competition 
between  male  or  female  rivals.  To  judge  from  a  statement 
by  Antiphanes,  it  appears  that  in  his  comedies  and  in  the 
writings  of  his  contemporaries,  these  competitions  often 
took  the  form  of  a  fight.  In  the  period  that  followed,  the 
rivals  only  resort  to  blows  if  one  of  them  is  a  soldier.  As 
a  rule,  the  two  aspirants  compete  in  money  and  gifts,  and 
no  longer  with  fisticuffs.  Moreover,  it  often  happens  that 
the  play  ends  without  their  meeting,  or  that  one  of  them 
does  not  appear  at  all,  and  in  the  majority  of  cases  the 
subject  of  their  rivalry  is  not  enlarged  upon;  it  is  simply 
touched  upon  sufficiently  to  explain  the  anxiety  of  the 
lover  or  to  make  it  appear  more  distressing.  Only  in  a 
single  instance — in  the  Casina — an  amusing  episode  grows 
out  of  it :  the  two  rivals — and,  by  the  way,  they  are 
merely  acting  as  proxies — draw  lots  to  see  who  is  to  win 
the  fair  one. 

In  my  study  of  the  passion  of  love  I  have  pointed  out 
various  incidents  in  which  the  jealousy  and  the  spite  of 
injured  lovers  are  displayed — quarrels,  ill-usage  and  re- 
course to  a  sorceress.  I  have  still  to  explain  how  the 
disagreements  arise.  In  Lucian,  Charinus  quarrels  with 
Melitta  because  he  has  read  the  following  two  mendacious 
graffiti,  written  in  charcoal  in  the  KsQajuetxog  :  MeXixxa 
(pdel  'Egjuorijuov,  '0  vavxlr^qog  'Eg/Liorijuog  cpdel  MeUxTav.^ 
Myrtio  is  cross  with  Pamphilus  because  she  thinks  that 
he  is  about  to  leave  her  in  order  to  get  married. ^     In 

1  Luc,  Dial.  Mer.,  IV.  3.  »  Ibid.,  II.  3. 


ADVENTURES  1^3 

the  twelfth  Dialogue,  Lysias  enters  his  mistress'  house 
at  night;  he  gropes  his  way  to  her  bed  and  there,  in  the 
darkness,  hears  two  people  breathing  in  their  sleep.  By 
loessa's  side  he  touches  a  soft  and  beardless  chin,  a  closely 
shaven  head  that  smells  of  perfume,  and  quite  naturally 
he  concludes  that  his  mistress  has  deceived  him.  But  he 
is  mistaken,  for  the  person  who  shares  loessa's  couch,  and 
whom  he  took  to  be  a  handsome  lad,  is  none  other  than  a 
girl  friend  Pythias,  who  owing  to  a  sickness  had  been 
obliged  to  shave  off  her  hair  and  to  wear  a  wig.^  These 
three  stories  of  Lucian's  are  very  largely  made  up  of 
details  borrowed  from  comedy,^  and  yet  I  would  not 
venture  to  say  that  they  had  their  prototypes  in  works  of 
the  via.  In  fact,  only  a  single  comedy,  the  negixEigojuevr], 
contains  something  of  the  kind  :  Polcmo  finds  Glycera 
and  Moschio  conversing  in  a  suspicious  manner,  and 
without  any  further  information  he  thinks  that  he  is 
being  deceived  by  Glycera. 

Apparently  the  writers  of  comedy  had  a  preference  for 
portraying  the  critical  position  of  a  lover  who  is  the 
victim  of  a  pander,  a  procuress  or  a  courtesan,  and  is 
at  the  same  time  hampered  by  lack  of  money;  they  de- 
lighted in  inventing  countless  expedients  by  which,  with 
the  help  of  some  expert  rascal,  he  gets  over  these  diffi- 
culties. Some  of  these  expedients  consist  in  a  simple 
abuse  of  confidence.  In  the  Truculentus  Strabax  makes 
unauthorised  use  of  his  father's  name  to  secure  the  price 
of  a  flock  of  sheep,  and  hastens  to  bring  the  money  to 
Phronesium.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Bacchides  Chrysalus 
displays  greater  shrewdness  :  he  tells  the  aged  Nicobulus 
that  he  and  his  young  master  Mnesilochus,  who  had  been 
sent  to  Ephesus  to  collect  a  sum  of  money,  had  not  been 
able  to  bring  back  more  than  a  small  part  of  the  sum 
collected ;  the  remainder,  which  he  hides,  is  to  be  used 
to  ransom  Bacchis.  In  other  cases  it  is  not  a  question 
of  withholding  money  that  is  forthcoming;  the  difficulty 
is  to  lay  hands  on  any.     When  efforts  to  borrow  money 

^  Ibid.,  XII.  3-4.  *  Cf.  Rev.  Et.  Or.,  XI.  (1908),  pp.  48-52. 

O 


194  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

fail,  it  is,  in  most  cases,  obtained  from  the  cashbox  of  the 
father,  to  which  end  the  latter's  affection  and  sohcitude 
are  frequently  exploited  in  the  most  shameless  fashion. 
In  the  second  part  of  the  Bacchidcs  Chrysalus  frightens 
Nieobulus  by  making  him  think  that  his  son  has  been 
found  guilty  of  adultery,  and  he  extorts  a  whole  fortune 
from  the  old  man  in  order,  as  he  says,  to  buy  off  the 
people  who  would  otherwise  molest  Mnesilochus.  In 
the  Epidicus  it  is  likewise  under  the  pretext  of  freeing 
the  daughter  of  Periphanes,  who  had  become  a  slave,  that 
Epidicus  makes  him  give  him  the  money  needed  to  pur- 
chase the  courtesan  Acropolistis.  Subsequently,  when  he 
is  obliged  by  his  young  master,  the  fickle  Stratippocles, 
once  more  to  secure  forty  minae  in  order  to  pay  for  a  new 
folly,  he  pretends  to  share  the  anxiety  of  the  young  man's 
father,  who  has  had  some  vague  intimation  of  his  son's 
behaviour.  He  urges  Periphanes  to  be  severe  and  induces 
him  forthwith  to  purchase  Stratippocles'  mistress,  who  is 
to  disappear.  Again  Epidicus  is  instructed  to  close  the 
bargain,  and  again  he  profits  by  the  situation.  In  the 
Phormio  the  money  that  is  extorted  from  Chremes,  and 
which  is  to  help  along  his  son's  love  affair,  is  nominally 
destined  to  break  off  the  marriage  of  his  nephew  Antipho. 
In  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos  there  is  another  cock-and- 
bull  story.  Syrus  cleverly  takes  advantage  of  the  fact 
that  Chremes  has  just  found  his  daughter  Antiphila,  and 
assures  him  that  the  young  woman  had  been  turned  over 
to  Bacchis  in  settlement  of  a  debt ;  if  Chremes  is  honest  he 
must  redeem  her;  Chremes  agrees,  and  artlessly  pays  the 
ten  minae.  In  other  cases  the  swindlers  who  manage  the 
affair  do  not  only  count  upon  the  credulity  of  an  old  man ; 
they  steal  and  commit  forgeries.  In  the  Asinaria  Leonidas 
impersonates  the  steward  Saurea,  and  in  this  capacity 
collects  twenty  minae  from  the  donkey-seller.  In  the 
Curcidio  Curculio  steals  a  ring  and  uses  it  to  impersonate 
Platagidorus,  the  servant  of  Therapontigonus,  and  with- 
draws the  money  which  the  soldier  had  deposited  with  the 
banker  Lyco. 


ADVENTURES  195 

All  these  intrigues  have  one  point  in  common  :  their 
object  is  to  satisfy  with  good  hard  cash  the  exactions  of 
a  woman,  or  of  those  who  exploit  her.  In  other  cases, 
especially  when  lovers  have  to  deal  with  a  pander,  the 
problem  is  solved  in  a  different  way  by  dispensing  with 
payment  altogether.  In  a  scene  of  the  Adelphi  borrowed 
from  Diphilus,  Aeschinus  shows  us  the  simplest  way 
of  doing  this — it  is  to  carry  off  by  main  force  that  one 
of  the  pander's  boarders  whom  one  desires,  thus  placing 
oneself  in  a  position  to  negotiate  with  him  at  a  future 
time,  to  promise  to  pay  later  on,  or  to  settle  for  half  the 
price.  In  the  Pseudolus  the  young  lover's  clever  helpmate 
impersonates  his  rival's  messenger  and  carries  off  the 
woman  for  whom  the  latter  has  already  paid.  In  the 
Poenulus  the  pander  is  trapped  by  his  own  cupidity. 
Matters  are  so  arranged  that,  against  his  wish  and  without 
his  knowledge,  he  becomes  the  harbourer  of  a  slave  and 
of  a  sum  of  money  belonging  to  the  lover.  In  order 
to  avoid  still  greater  disaster  he  is  obliged  to  give  up 
possession  of  a  courtesan  without  compensation. 

Several  of  the  adventures  just  mentioned  call  for  a 
disguise,  and  I  may  say,  by  the  way,  that  writers  of  comedy 
seem  frequently  to  have  resorted  to  this  device.  In  the 
Trinummus  we  meet  with  a  counterfeit  traveller,  in  the 
Miles  with  a  counterfeit  sailor.  In  the  Casina  the  slave 
Chalinus  disguises  himself  as  a  young  married  woman  in 
order  to  befool  Lysidamus. 

In  addition  to  financial  difficulties,  and  in  many  cases 
concurrently  with  them,  a  father's  opposition  produces  a 
great  variety  of  incidents  in  the  course  of  a  love  affair. 
Quite  frequently  this  opposition  is  not  yet  overt  and 
actual,  but  is  merely  in  prospect.  The  father  knows 
nothing,  and  means  must  be  devised  to  keep  him  from 
discovering  how  matters  stand.  In  the  Mostcllaria  and 
in  the  Adelphi  the  danger  is  imminent  :  Demea  and 
Theopropides  unexpectedly  arrive  just  as  their  sons  are 
making  merry  in  company  about  whose  character  there 
can  be  no  question.     They  must  be  got  rid  of  at  any  cost, 


196  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

and  Syriis  succeeds  in  doing  so  by  sending  Demea  off  to 
the  country  or  to  the  four  corners  of  the  town,  and  Tranio 
by  telHng  Theopropides  that  his  house  is  haunted.  In  the 
Hcauton  Timoroumenos,  the  Mercator  and  the  Phormio,  the 
woman  who  causes  the  trouble  is  not  hidden  away,  but 
is  introduced  to  the  father  of  the  family  as  being  some  one 
else  than  she  really  is;  for  instance,  the  mistress  of  a 
friend  of  his  son's,  a  servant,  or  a  poor  relation.  In  the 
Epidicus  impudence  is  carried  to  the  length  of  making 
old  Periphanes  think  that  Acropolistis,  the  mistress  of 
Stratippocles,  is  his  own  daughter  who  has  been  brought 
up  far  away  from  her  father. 

The  father's  attitude,  however,  is  not  always  so  passive. 
When  he  knows  what  is  going  on  he,  in  his  turn,  acts 
with  more  or  less  energy  and  more  or  less  openly.  In  the 
Epidicus  we  have  seen  him  endeavouring  to  remove  the 
woman  who  is  debauching  his  son.  If  the  woman  is  a 
free  woman  and  mistress  of  her  acts,  he  sometimes,  as  in 
the  Hecyra,  tries,  by  means  of  persuasion  or  intimidation, 
to  induce  her  to  break  off  relations.  Or  else — as,  for 
example,  in  the  Andria — he  turns  to  the  lover  and  his 
adviser,  threatens  them  and  lectures  them.  But  whether 
the  father  knows  what  is  going  on  or  not,  it  is  his  deter- 
mination to  get  his  son  married,  and  married  according 
to  his  (the  father's)  wishes,  that  most  frequently  interferes 
with  the  smooth  course  of  love ;  and,  as  a  rule,  he  shows 
this  determination  without  giving  any  previous  notice. 
Some  fine  morning  the  young  man  hears  that  he  is  to  be 
married,  and  is  invited  to  sign  his  death  warrant  the  very 
same  day.  Then  his  confusion  is  terrible,  and,  in  order 
to  parry  this  unexpected  blow,  new  devices  are  indis- 
pensable; above  all,  he  must  gain  time.  In  the  Andria 
Pamphilus  by  chance  discovers  that  the  marriage  with 
which  he  is  threatened  is  not  proposed  seriously.  Strength- 
ened by  this  knowledge,  he  disarms  Simo  by  behaving  in 
a  most  docile  manner.  Subsequently,  when  the  threat 
grows  serious,  Davus  betakes  himself  to  the  future  father- 
in-law   and,    by   showing   him   how   deeply   Pamphilus   is 


ADVENTURES  197 

committed  elsewhere,  persuades  him  not  to  take  Glycerium's 
lover  as  his  son-in-law.  In  the  Phormio  Antipho  has 
anticipated  matters  without  knowing  anything  about  his 
father's  matrimonial  intentions.  He  takes  advantage  of 
the  fact  that  he  is  left  alone  at  Athens  to  marry  an  inter- 
esting orphan  girl  with  the  sanction  of  the  court.  Owing 
to  this  bold  move  he  is  in  a  much  better  position  than 
the  majority  of  sons.  Phormio,  his  spokesman,  is  able 
to  confront  Demipho  with  the  decision  of  the  court  and 
to  exert  a  sort  of  legal  pressure  upon  him. 

Such,  then,  are  the  amorous  adventures  of  young  lovers 
in  the  extant  remains  of  comic  literature.  When  married 
men  engage  in  illicit  love  affairs,  their  chief  care  is  to 
keep  their  adventures  from  becoming  known.  The  grey- 
beard Demaenetus,  in  the  Asinaria,  succeeds  in  doing  so 
for  a  short  while  only.  He  does  manage  to  slip  over  to 
Philaenium's  house  unobserved,  but  his  virago  of  a  wife^ 
who  is  informed  of  his  escapade  by  a  parasite,  catches  him 
in  -flagrante  delicto  and  leads  him  home  in  a  doleful  mood. 
Demipho,  in  the  Mercator,  and  Lysidamus,  in  the  Casina, 
borrow  the  house  of  an  obliging  neighbour,  in  order  to 
enjoy  their  freedom  there.  Lysidamus  is  in  love  with 
one  of  the  maids  and  contrives  to  give  her  in  marriage 
to  his  bailiff  Olympio,  who  is  not  likely  to  make  a  jealous 
husband.  Unfortunately  for  him  his  plan  is  discovered 
and  the  sly  old  fellow  is  baffled. 

Along  with  love  adventures,  some  of  the  above  episodes 
touch  upon  family  life,  whilst  others  are  more  definitely 
taken  from  it.  Quite  frequently  a  young  woman  who  has 
been  seduced  is  confined  on  the  very  day  that  is  pictured 
in  the  play.  Those  about  her  are  worried  and  send  for 
the  midwife.  Sometimes  the  confinement  is  to  be  kept 
secret,  or  at  least  withheld  from  the  knowledge  of  certain 
people;  and  this  gives  rise  to  great  confusion.  In  the 
FecoQ-yoQ  Cleaenetus  appeared  unexpectedly,  I  believe,  at 
Myrrhina's  house,  accompanied  by  the  young  girl's  brother, 
and  found  her  whom  he  had  come  to  marry  on  the  point 


198  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

of  l)cinfj  confined.  In  the  Ilecyra  the  heroine  is  married, 
and  married  long  enough  to  make  her  pregnancy  appear 
perfectly  legitimate  in  the  eyes  of  the  public.  But  the 
husband  has  some  reason  to  think  otherwise,  and  so 
Philumena  is  obliged  to  hide  from  him  in  order  to  prevent 
him  from  being  enlightened  by  others,  and  from  everybody 
else  excepting  her  own  mother,  with  whom,  under  some 
specious  pretext,  she  takes  refuge.  As  a  rule,  the  mother 
of  a  child  born  out  of  wedlock,  and  those  about  her,  let 
the  child  disappear  as  soon  as  it  is  born.  In  the  Za/uia 
Plangon  has  the  good  fortune  to  keep  her  child  quite  close 
to  her,  in  the  very  house  of  her  lover  Moschio,  w^here  it  is 
looked  upon  as  the  son  of  the  Samian  woman,  Chrysis, 
the  concubine  of  Moschio's  father.  In  the  "Hqojq  Myrrhina 
has  entrusted  her  twins  to  a  freedman  of  the  family,  who 
brings  them  up  as  though  they  were  his  own,  and  the 
time  comes  when,  owing  to  curious  circumstances,  the 
young  men  live  in  their  mother's  house,  along  with  the 
other  servants,  while  circumstances  keep  her  from  declar- 
ing that  she  is  their  mother.  In  another  comedy  by 
Menander,  of  which  we  possess  a  partial  synopsis,^  we 
meet  with  a  woman  who,  after  an  interval  of  many  years, 
has  to  suffer  from  the  consequences  of  a  youthful  mishap. 
She  had  given  birth  to  a  daughter  before  her  marriage. 
After  her  marriage  she  had  this  daughter  brought  up 
secretly  in  the  house  adjoining  the  one  in  which  she  herself 
dwelt,  and  was  in  the  habit  of  receiving  her  visits  through 
an  opening  made  in  the  wall  which  was  decorated  like  a 
sort  of  oratory.  One  fine  day  her  husband's  son  comes 
in  unexpectedly  and  sees  the  young  woman.  At  first  he 
takes  her  for  a  goddess,  and  then,  when  he  sees  that  she 
is  merely  a  human  being,  falls  in  love  with  her.  The  two 
women's  secret  is,  all  at  once,  in  danger,  and  the  mother 
runs  the  risk  of  her  past  being  exposed  to  her  dishonour. 

In  the  course  of  my  study  of  the  family,  I  said  that 
more  than  one  household  among  those  brought  upon  the 
stage  by  the  comic  poets  appeared  to  be  on  the  point  of 

^  The  (paafxa,  cf.  Donatus'  note  to  Eunuchus,  prol.  9. 


ADVENTURES  199 

breaking  up,  either  because  the  husband  sought  a  divorce 
or  because  the  father  of  a  married  daughter  wished  to 
take  back  his  daughter,  or  because  the  wife  thought  of 
going  back  to  her  parents.  In  no  case  does  the  rupture 
take  place.  In  all  probability  it  did  take  place  in  the 
plays  called  ^ AnoAelnovoa  or  ' Ajiohnovoa,  and  possibly 
in  others;  but  even  there,  I  imagine,  it  did  not  last  any 
longer  than  the  estrangement  between  Demeas  and  his 
concubine,  in  the  Zajiua. 

Exposure,  substitution  and  kidnapping  of  children  were 
frequent  occurrences  in  New  Comedy.  Either  the  offspring 
of  illicit  relations  or  the  youngest  child  of  a  modest 
household  was  exposed  from  dread  of  having  the  family 
grow  too  large.  As  a  rule,  the  child  that  had  been  exposed 
was  taken  in  by  poor  people  and  was  regarded  as  their 
offspring.  By  way  of  exception,  the  slave  who  had  found 
Casina  gave  her  as  a  present  to  his  mistress,  and  she 
brought  up  the  little  girl  almost  with  a  mother's  care. 
Occasionally  the  unfortunate  child  was  not  exposed,  but 
given,  either  to  a  woman  who  wished  to  convey  the  im- 
pression that  she  had  just  been  confined,  or  to  people  in 
poor  circumstances  who  hoped  sooner  or  later  to  get  some 
profit  out  of  it.  Substitution,  the  popularity  of  which  on 
the  stage  is  vouched  for  by  a  remark  of  Terence  ^  and 
by  the  titles  'YTio^ohjualog,  WevdvTzo^ohjLialog,  which  recur 
several  times,  was  practised  not  only  by  faithless  courte- 
sans, but  also  by  women  of  good  family,  like  Myrrhina 
in  the  IJegixeigofiht],^  who  desired  to  have  a  child. 

Children  were  kidnapped  in  various  ways ;  sometimes 
pirates  carried  them  off,  sometimes  an  untrustworthy 
pedagogue  ran  off  with  his  pupil,  and  sometimes  "  stealers 
of  men,"  who  carried  on  their  operations  in  the  midst  of  a 
crowd  and  at  festivals,  did  the  kidnapping.  After  having 
been  carried  off  for  the  sake  of  gain  or  from  a  desire  for 
revenge,  the  child  most  frequently  grew  up  in  slavery, 
and  girls  are  generally  discovered  in  the  hands  of  a  pander. 
But  it  also  happens  that  the  victim  of  the  kidnappers  falls 
1  Eun.,  prol.,  39.  *  UeptK.,  1-3. 


200  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

into  good  hands;  witness  Agorastocles  in  the  Poemdus, 
who  becomes  the  adopted  son  of  the  old  man  who  had 
bought  him.  In  the  Menaechmi  one  of  the  twins  was 
rescued,  rather  than  kidnapped,  and  the  man  who  found 
him  in  the  street  in  Tarentum  brought  him  up  as  his  own 
child,  and  made  him  his  heir. 

Exposure,  substitution,  and  kidnapping  have  generally 
taken  place  before  the  play  begins.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  is  towards  the  end  of  the  play  that  we  meet  with  other 
episodes  which  also  occur  very  commonly,  and  which,  in 
the  majority  of  cases,  are  correlated  to  the  foregoing — 
namely,  the  "  recognitions  "  [avaynoQioEii;,  or  dvayvcogio^uoi). 
There  are  many  kinds  of  recognition,  and,  of  these, 
chance  recognitions  constitute  the  greater  part.  Some 
are  the  crown  and  reward  of  years  of  travel  and  of 
patient  search.  A  child  may  be  recognised  owing  to  its 
own  recollection  of  the  earliest  days  of  its  life ;  sometimes 
the  testimony  of  those  who  have  brought  it  up,  exposed 
or  rescued  it,  or  who  accompanied  it  into  exile  is  given. 
More  frequently  the  proof  of  a  child's  identity  is  furnished 
by  a  birthmark,  or  by  some  small  trinket  that  it  has 
always  kept  {yvcoQiojua),  a  ring,  a  necklace,  a  bit  of 
cloth,  toys  or  amulets.  Generally  the  avayvcboioiQ  results 
in  the  person  concerned  rising  from  a  wretched  or  modest 
state  to  a  better  one;  but  there  are  exceptions  to  this 
rule.  In  Menander's  'Yno^ohfjLaloQ  the  supposed  child  of 
rich  people,  who  had  been  brought  up  in  their  house, 
was  apparently  recognised  as  the  son  of  a  poor  man 
who  claimed  him,  and  to  whom  he  was  himself  pre- 
paring to  return ;  but  it  goes  without  saying  that  in  the 
end  matters  had  to  be  so  arranged  as  to  spare  him  from 
making  too  painful  a  sacrifice. 

In  addition  to  children  who  have  disappeared,  other 
characters  in  comedy  give  rise  to  searches  and  recognitions. 
In  the  Ilecyra  a  woman  recognises  her  husband  as  her 
former  seducer.  The  same  episode  occurs  in  the  'EniXQS- 
novxEQ,  in  the  "Hqojq,  and  probably  also  in  the  0dojiia; 
and    a    similar    occurrence    has    taken    place    before    the 


ADVENTURES  201 

opening  of  the  Cistellaria.^  In  the  Epidicus,  Periphanes 
plans  to  go  in  search  of  his  former  mistress,  with  a  view 
to  marrying  her  and  assuring  the  future  of  his  children. 

This  brings  me  to  the  discussion  of  a  more  normal  act 
of  family  life — marriage.  A  late  act  of  reparation,  such  as 
Periphanes  contemplates,  is  not  the  only  instance  in  which 
a  marriage  is  connected  with  a  recognition.  For  instance, 
there  is  the  marriage  project  that  drives  a  young  lover  to 
despair,  and  which  grows  out  of  a  father's  solicitude  for 
an  illegitimate  daughter  whom  he  wishes  to  see  discreetly 
settled.'^  But,  above  all,  there  is  the  dvayvojQiaig,  which 
removes  the  obstacles  that  stand  in  the  way  of  the  regular 
and  definitive  union  of  two  lovers,  by  showing  that  a 
passionately  beloved  mistress  is  a  citizen,  a  girl  of  good 
family — nay,  even  a  rich  heiress.  Marriage  of  one  kind  or 
another — Avhether  a  love  match  or  a  manage  de  raison, 
acquiesced  in  as  a  penance — is  one  of  the  most  frequent 
occurrences  in  the  vea.  It  is  the  common  denouement  and 
the  comic  one  yar  excellence. 

Hitherto  I  have  been  able  to  make  a  more  or  less 
satisfactory  classification  of  the  episodes  that  called  for 
our  attention.  Another  set  of  comic  episodes  drawn  from 
daily  life  or  having  a  more  or  less  romantic  character,  do 
not  admit  of  such  grouping.   I  shall  simply  enumerate  them. 

Among  the  most  commonplace  of  these  incidents  I 
must  mention  the  comings  and  goings  of  certain  characters 
— troublesome  fathers,  jealous  matrons — their  journeys 
from  town  to  country  and  vice  versa,  visits  to  the  market 
and  walks  to  the  harbour.  The  titles  of  certain  come- 
dies (Alexis'  'EiooixiCo/iiEvog,  Philemon's  'E^oiy.i^6[.iEvoQ, 
Diophantus'  MeroixiCojuevog)  apparently  alluded  to  moving 
or  change  of  domicile,  and  fragments  830  and  853  of 
Menander  to  quarrels  between  neighbours. 

A  few  lines  have  survived  belonging  to  a  scene  in  which 

1  Cist.,  179. 

^   See   the  reconstruction  of  the   Greek  prototype  of   the   Epidicus  by 
Dziatzko,  Rh.  Mus.,  IV.  (1900),  pp.  108  et  seq. 


202  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

sleeplessness  plays  a  part.^  In  the  Curculio  and  in  the 
Fecogyog  one  of  the  characters  is  ill,  or  has  been  ill ; 
this  must  also  have  been  the  case  in  Menander's  'A(pQo- 
dioia,^  in  the  play  to  which  fragment  890  belongs,  and 
in  the  comedies  in  which  a  physician  appears  on  the  stage. 
A  man  who  is  afflicted  with  blindness,  or  pretends  to  be 
blind,  no  doubt  played  a  part  in  the  ' ATieyXavPico/iievog 
by  Alexis,  a  man  who  has  recovered  his  eyesight  in  the 
' Avaf^liiKDv  by  Posidippus,  insane  people,  or  people  who 
feigned  insanity,  in  the  works  called  Maivofievog,  Dementes, 
'EUe^oQL^ofievoi,  and  in  a  play  imitated  by  Luscius.' 
The  Casina,  the  Captivi,  the  Mercator  and  the  Menaechmi 
also  contain  an  account  or  a  dramatic  portrayal  of 
attacks  of  frenzy.  Dreams  are  related  in  the  Curculio — a 
dream  which  one  of  Aesculapius'  patients  has  sought 
for  and  secured — in  the  Mercator,  and  in  the  Rudens. 
Fragment  126  of  Diphilus  apparently  belongs  to  a  scene  of 
incantation.  I  need  only  mention  the  suggestive  titles  of  a 
play  by  Philemon  and  of  one  by  Philippides — 'Avaveov/nevr], 
'AvavEovoa;  that  of  a  play  by  Alexis — MavdQayoQiCo^ievr], 
and  Pliny's  remark  about  Menander's  Qexxalrj :  complexa 
ambages  feminarum  detrahentium  lunam.  The  belief  in 
divine  apparitions  gives  rise  to  an  interesting  sudden 
change  of  fortune  in  Menander's  Odojj.a.  Plautus'  Mostel- 
laria  is  an  imitation  of  Philemon's  Odofxa,  and  contains 
a  ghost  story.  Another  play  with  the  title  0a.ojua,  a  work 
by  Theognetus,  probably  contained  a  similar  incident. 

In  the  Andria  and  in  the  Phormio  one  of  the  characters 
gives  an  account  of  a  funeral,  and  there  are  various  indica- 
tions that  the  ceremonies  connected  with  the  cult  of  the 
dead  found  a  place  in  comic  plots.  Such  indications  are 
found  in  the  titles  of  two  plays  by  Diphilus — Mv7]/udnov, 
'Evayiojuara  or  'EvayiCovreg — and  in  that  of  a  play  by 
Menander,  Kaqivr] ;  and  also  in  a  fragment  of  the  poet 
Anaxippus,'*  and  in  the  partial  synopsis  of  the  Orjoavgog, 
preserved  by  Donatus.     Elsewhere,  we  meet  with  episodes 

^  Men.,  fr.  164;    Turpilius,  Epiclerus,  fr.  1;    Apollodorus,  fr.  3. 
2  Men.,  fr.  86.  3  Phorm.,  prol.  6-8.  «  Anaxippus,  fr.  8. 


ADVENTURES  203 

taken  from  life  as  it  was  commonly  spent  in  a  sanctuary. 
I  think  this  was  the  case  in  the  comedies  bearing  the  titles 
' A^q^idgecog  and  TQocpcovioq,  and  possibly  in  Philemon's 
IIvQcpoQog.  A  sentence  in  the  Urooxri  must  have  been  con- 
nected with  the  sacrifice  of  a  cake  to  Artemis ;  ^  two  frag- 
ments of  the  Aevxadia  may  be  parts  of  a  prayer  or  of  a 
religious  song;  ^  in  this  play,  a  ^axoQri — that  is  to  say,  a 
sort  of  female  sacristan — was  asked  to  light  a  fire;^  in 
the  Rudens  the  priestess  of  Venus  harbours  Palaestra  and 
Ampelisca,  sends  one  of  them  to  fetch  water  from  the 
neighbouring  farm,  and  tries  to  protect  the  suppliants 
against  the  violence  of  Labrax.  In  the  course  of  the 
same  play  the  two  unhappy  women  take  refuge  at  an 
altar,  and  similar  steps  must  have  been  taken  more  than 
once  in  several  cases  by  slaves  who  had  been  caught 
wrongdoing. 

Incidents  occurring  in  the  lives  of  slaves  do  not,  by 
the  way,  appear  to  have  interested  the  writers  of  the  via 
as  much  as  they  had  those  of  the  foregoing  period.  Never- 
theless I  may  cite  a  line  from  the  Oexralri  in  which  a  slave, 
as  I  believe,  tells  of  his  escape;  *  and  I  may  also  recall 
the  theft  committed  by  Strobilus  in  the  Aulularia.  A 
fragment  of  the  'Ydqia  reminds  one  of  a  very  similar  exploit, 
which  was  possibly  likewise  performed  by  a  slave.'^ 

The  treasure  that  Strobilus  appropriates  had  been 
buried,  discovered,  and  buried  a  second  time.  This  is 
the  kind  of  incident  that  apparently  enjoyed  favour  in 
comedy.  With  slight  modifications  it  recurs  in  two  of 
the  many  plays  called  0)]oavQ6g — the  07]oavQ6g  by  Phile- 
mon, of  which  the  Trinummus  is  an  imitation,  and  in  the 
07]oavQ6g  by  Menandcr.  In  the  'Ydgia  and  in  the  AvoxoXog  ^ 
we  likewise  hear  of  buried  money.  In  the  Rudens  Gripus 
brings  up  a  bag  filled  with  gold  from  the  bottom  of  the 
sea  as  though  it  were  a  fish. 

Hiding  in  a  corner  in  order  to  watch  the  acts  and  to 
overhear    the    plans    of    others,    listening    at    the    door, 

1  Philemon,  fr.  67.  *  Ibid.,  fr.  312,  313.  ^  ji,;,^^  fr.  311. 

*  Ibid.,  fr.  232.  »  Ibid.,  fr.  468.  «  Ibici.,  fr.  128,  468. 


204  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

indiscreet  peeping  between  half-open  doors,  are  devices  of 
which  comic  actors,  and  especially  those  who  play  the  part 
of  slaves,  made  frequent  use.  Strobilus  climbs  up  a  tree 
to  spy  on  Euclio;  in  the  Miles,  and  in  the  Synaristosae,^ 
inquisitive  people  watch  from  their  roof  what  is  going 
on  in  their  neighbour's  house.  ElscAvhere,  a  person  who 
is  asked  to  deliver  a  letter  loses  it  or  allows  it  to  be 
taken  from  him.^  In  the  " EnixQenovreq,  the  Cistellaria, 
the  Vidularia  and  the  Rudens,  tokens  that  lead  to 
recognitions  {yvcoQiOjuara)  are  lost  for  a  time,  and  their 
disappearance  baffles  those  concerned. 

In  the  Rudens,  and  in  the  Vidularia,  shipwrecked  people 
are  brought  upon  the  stage.  A  storm  has  cast  Pasibula, 
"  the  Andrian,"  and  her  father  on  the  shore  of  Andros. 
The  same  sort  of  mishap  is  clearly  indicated  by  the  title 
Navayog,  with  which  we  meet  in  each  of  the  three  periods  of 
Greek  comedy.  Another  accident  to  which  travellers  are 
exposed  in  comedy  is  the  encountering  of  pirates.  Pirates 
carried  off  Palaestrio  on  the  high  seas.^  If  we  can  believe 
Chrysalus,  pirates  were  on  the  look-out  for  Mnesilochus  at 
the  entrance  to  the  harbour  of  Ephesus,^  and  it  seems  that 
they  played  a  part  in  Menander's  '  AheiQ  ^  and  in  Turpilius' 
Lemniae.^  Certain  titles,  such  as  ' AvdQOfpovog,  'AxovriC- 
ojuevog,  HcpaxxoiASVOQ,  Z(paxrof.ievr],  'Ajtayxo/usvog, ' AnoxaQxegaJv 
(the  man  who  starves  himself  to  death),  ZwanoOvrjoxovreg, 
Kcovsia^ojuevai,  seem  rather  tragic  for  comedies,  and  it  is 
probable  that  the  murders  or  suicides  to  which  they  allude 
were  not  actually  committed  and  possibly  not  seriously 
contemplated.  In  the  Aevxadia  the  heroine  threw  herself 
into  the  sea,  but  she  was  rescued  by  her  lover.  In  the 
Avxdv  TiEvOcbv  by  Menander,  a  trickster  made  people  think 
he  was  dead,  and  wore  mourning  for  himself. 

The  title  \4.QyvQiov  acpavio^og,  which  is  taken  from  the 
fxeor}  if  not  from  the  dgxaia,  recalls  the  familiar  exploits 
of  a  Geta  and  a  Davus.     The  title  "Ofioioi,  likewise  taken 

^  Caecilius,  Synaristosae,  fr.  1.  ^  Turpilius,  Philopator,  fr.  XIII. 

*  Miles,  117etseq.  *  Bacch.,  278  et  seq. 

*  Men.,  fr.  15.  ^  Turpilius,  Lemniae,  fr.  IV.,  V. 


ADVENTURES  205 

from  the  i^iEorj,  would  fit  such  a  comedy  as  the  Menaechmi, 
in  which  two  people  who  resemble  one  another  are  con- 
stantly confused.  Other  titles  such  as  Navfiaxia,  'Ogyy], 
Eig  TO  cpQeaQ,  ' A(pani^6ju£vog,  ' AyQVJtrovvreg,  ZvjunMovoai, 
IlaQaTrjQovoa,  Nefiojtisvoi,  nQOOxedavvvjuevog  —  rouse  our 
curiosity  without  evoking  the  idea  of  any  particular 
adventure ;  and  the  same  way  be  said  of  many  fragments. 
However  entertaining  the  guessing  game  may  be  to  which 
these  documents  invite  us,  I  do  not  wish  to  indulge  in 
it  here. 


CHAPTER    V 

RECAPITULATION 

REALISM    AND    IMAGINATION    IN    NEW    COMEDY 

LITERARY    SOURCES    AND    REPETITIONS 

I  HAVE  pointed  out  and  classified,  as  carefully  as  pos- 
sible, such  material  of  the  vda  as,  notwithstanding  the 
loss  of  nearly  all  the  original  works,  can  still  be  identified. 
I  must  now  determine  its  quality  and  indicate  its  sources. 


Customs 

Let  us  first  give  our  attention  to  the  matters  that  come 
within  the  domain  of  customs. 

At  the  beginning  of  my  survey  I  showed  that  the  vea 
avoided  the  supernatural  and  that  it  almost  always 
respected  physical  probability  and,  I  may  now  add,  the 
elementary  social  probabilities.  Considered  as  a  whole, 
its  adventures  and  actors  generally  have  a  realistic  charac- 
ter. In  order  to  form  a  correct  opinion  of  the  talent  for 
invention  displayed  by  comic  writers,  I  think  it  will  be 
interesting,  first  of  all,  to  emphasise  my  earlier  statement 
and  to  inquire  to  what  extent  it  can  be  verified  in  detail. 

Such  an  inquiry  is  fraught  with  great  difficulty.  The 
descriptions  that  are  commonly  made  of  the  state  of  Greek 
society  at  the  close  of  the  fourth  and  during  the  third 
century  are,  to  a  very  large  extent,  based  on  fragments 
of  comedies.  This  fact  exposes  us  to  the  danger  of  con- 
stantly moving  in  a  vicious  circle,  unless  we  are  on  our 
guard  against  doing  so;  and  if  we  do  avoid  this  danger, 
we  shall  only  too  often  have  to  recognise  that  we  lack  any 
assured  points  of  comparison. 

However,  they  are  not  lacking  everywhere ;  for  in  more 

than  one  instance,  when  we  come  to  consider  a  person  or 

an  episode  that  at  first  may  appear  purely  conventional, 

some  document  informs  us  of  similar  adventures   or  of 

similar  persons  that  have  an  historical  character. 

206 


RECAPITULATION  207 

For  instance,  the  misdeeds  of  pirates,  whieh  arc  so  com- 
mon in  comedy,  must  have  been  equally  common  in  actual 
life.  To  be  exact,  such  proof  as  we  have  for  this  assertion 
dates  from  a  jicriod  subsequent  to  that  in  which  the  proto- 
types of  Plautus'  and  Terence's  comedies  were  written — 
from  the  latter  part  of  the  third  century  and  from  the 
second  century.  But,  even  long  before  that  time,  great 
insecurity  prevailed  at  sea  and  along  the  coasts.  Isocrates, 
Demosthenes  and  Hegesippus  confirm  this  for  the  middle 
of  the  fourth  century ;  at  about  this  time  Cleomis,  tyrant  of 
Methymna,  is  praised  in  an  Attic  decree  for  having  ran- 
somed certain  citizens  who  had  been  prisoners  of  XrjoraL ;  ^ 
another  decree,  made  at  the  instance  of  Moerocles,  ordained 
"the  clearing  of  the  sea;  "  ^  by  the  treaty  of  343-342 
Philip  bound  himself  to  join  with  the  Athenians  in  fight- 
ing piracy ;  ^  in  335-334  an  Athenian  fleet  was  equipped 
em  Ttjv  (pvXaKrjv  rcov  Irjoxajv;  *  and  ten  years  later  another 
fleet  was  sent  to  protect  the  commerce  of  the  Adriatic 
against  the  Tyrrhenian  pirates ;  ^  at  Delos  the  accounts 
for  the  year  299  mention  equipments  elg  rr]v  cpvXaKi]v  xoJv 
TvQQ7]v(i)v.^  "  Archpirates  "  appear  in  the  wars  between 
the  Diadochi  and  the  Epigoni  of  the  first  generation.' 
Theophrastus'  coward,  when  he  risks  himself  at  sea,  takes 
certain  reefs  for  fjiuoXiai — that  is  to  say,  for  pirate  ships ;  ^ 
and  one  of  Leonidas'  funeral  epigrams  is  dedicated  to  a 
victim  of  Cretan  h]OTai,  whose  exploits  are  treated  as 
something  quite  common.^ 

Speaking  broadly,  kidnapping  cannot  have  been  so 
exceptional  and  melodramatic  a  thing  in  a  state  of  society 
where  slavery  existed  as  it  is  in  our  modern  world.  It 
was   a  commercial   operation,    criminal,    but   of  common 

1  Dittenberger,  Syll^.,  135. 

'  [Demosthenes],  Adv.  Theocr.,  §  53  ot  seq. 

^  Hegesippus;  De  Halonn;  §  14. 

*  Dittenberger,  SyW^.,  530,  lino  280. 
'-  Ibid.,  153,  lines  226-227. 

*  Homolle,  Archives  de  Vintendance  sacree,  pp.  116-117. 

7  Diod.,  XX.  82,  4;  Polyaenus,  IV.  6,  18;  Pans.,  I.  7;  Dittenberger, 
SylP.,  213,  lines  10  et  seq. 

«  Thoophr.,  Char.,  XXV.  {AuKlas),  2.  »  Leonidas,  Ep.,  5,  Geffcken. 


208  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

occurrence.  The  ygacp))  drdQaTiodiojuov,  which  could  be 
brought  not  only  against  those  who  stole  a  slave,  but  also 
against  any  one  who  unlawfully  reduced  a  free  person  to 
slavery,  is  mentioned  quite  frequently  in  literature.  The 
word  drdQ(uiodioT/]g  is  used  by  Hyperides — in  the  oration 
against  Atlienogenes,  which  is  almost  contemporary  with 
the  beginning  of  Menander's  career — to  designate  a  knave 
or  any  kind  of  rascal,^  apparently  because  there  was  at 
the  time  frequent  occasion  to  use  the  word  in  its  proper 
sense. 

As  for  criminal  assaults  and  rape  committed  on  the 
public  highways,  they  were,  no  doubt,  never  of  such 
common  occurrence  in  actual  life  as  they  are  in  the  come- 
dies of  the  via ;  but  it  is  equally  certain  that  these  incidents, 
which  were  so  much  favoured  by  the  poets,  cannot  have 
shocked  the  audience  on  account  of  their  great  lack  of 
probability.  The  streets  of  ancient  Greek  towns  were,  so 
to  speak,  not  policed,  or  rather  the  functions  of  the  police 
were  limited  to  regulating  traffic.  Especially  at  night, 
when  the  streets  were  almost  deserted,  lonely  wayfarers 
ran  all  kinds  of  risks,  and  the  description  of  highwaymen 
robbing  people  who  walk  about  at  night  is  a  commonplace 
of  the  portray ers  of  Athenian  customs.  In  a  famous  scene 
of  the  Ecclesiazousae  Blepyrus  expresses  his  scepticism 
about  the  excellence  of  the  new  state  of  society  which  his 
wife  proposes  to  introduce;  she  has  just  assured  him  that 
there  will  be  no  more  thieves,  and  he  exclaims  :  "  What ! 
People  will  not  be  robbed  at  night  ?  "  At  a  period  that 
is  nearer  to  New  Comedy,  Alexis  lets  one  of  his  actors  say, 
as  he  sees  a  troupe  of  comastai  approaching  :  "  May  I 
never  meet  you  alone  at  night  .  .  . ;  I  should  not  bring 
my  cloak  home  with  me,  unless,  indeed,  I  were  to  grow 
wings;  "2  and  elsewhere  the  same  poet  says:  "When 
a  man  buys  abundant  provisions,  and,  though  otherwise 
a  beggar,  always  has  enough  to  do  so — that  fellow  robs 
passers-by  at  night."  ^  Such  statements  suggest  the 
thought  that  where  men  ran  the  risk  of  losing  their  cloaks, 

1  Hyp.,  Adv.  Athen.,  §  12.         *  Alexis,  fr.  107.       *  Ibid.,  fr.  78. 


RECAPITULATION  209 

women  might  run  the  risk  of  losing  other  things.  If  the 
objection  were  raised  that  the  young  men  who,  in  comic 
literature,  are  guilty  of  rape  are  not  infamous  criminals, 
but  gentlemen's  sons,  and  that  they  cannot  have  been 
capable  of  such  brutality,  it  would  imply  a  too  favourable 
opinion  of  the  "  refined  "  gentleman  of  the  fourth  and 
third  centuries.  Many  an  act  of  which  we  get  know- 
ledge from  sources  other  than  comedy,  proves  that  the 
ways  of  the  jeunesse  doree  were  at  that  period  rather  coarse. 
In  the  company  of  the  most  refined  and  most  elegant 
courtesans  young  blades  came  to  blows,  like  the  lowest 
rabble,^  and  the  courtesans  themselves  were  occasionally 
exposed  to  discourtesy  and  violence.  Gnathaena  and  her 
daughter  were  one  day  besieged  in  their  dwelling  ^  by 
a  band  of  impatient  lovers  who  loudly  declared  that  they 
had  brought  axes  and  mattocks,  and  spoke  of  doing  nothing 
less  than  tearing  down  the  house,  so  that  it  is  easy  to  imagine 
to  what  lengths  they  would  have  gone  had  they  got  the 
two  women  in  some  out-of-the-way  spot.  When  violence 
was  committed  against  a  respectable  young  girl,  it  exposed 
its  perpetrator  to  serious  inconvenience — to  a  prosecution 
^latcov,  to  the  necessity  of  marrying  his  victim  or  of  pay- 
ing damages.  But  in  the  darkness  of  night,  young  fellows, 
in  the  hope  of  not  being  recognised  and  sometiines  even  not 
knowing  with  whom  they  had  to  deal,  might  fail  to  con- 
sider the  consequences  of  their  acts,  and  might  behave 
towards  any  one  as  they  would  behave,  if  it  so  happened, 
towards  women  of  loose  morals,  the  only  women — or 
practically  the  only  ones — whose  company  they  ordinarily 
sought.  Moreover,  it  appears  that  the  majority  of  delin- 
quents acted  under  the  influence  of  liquor.  For  these 
various  reasons  the  crime  charged  against  so  many  young 
men  cannot  have  appeared  to  their  contemporaries  as 
something  unheard  of  or  monstrous ;  but,  what  might  seem 
less  credible,   is  that  young  girls  should  have  ventured 

1  Demosth.,  Adv.    Con.,   §    14;     Thoophr.,  Char.,  XXVII.  ("Oifi^aeras). 
9;  Ath.,  p.  551  A,  584  C. 

*  Ath.,  p.  585  A.     Cf.  Theophr.,  op.  cit.  (read  erai^os  and  dvf)ais). 
P 


210  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

out  after  nightfall.  Wc  must  not  forget,  however,  that 
many  of  the  heroines  of  comedy  were  ravished  during  a 
festival  (navvvxig) ;  for  night  festivals  were  quite  frequent 
in  ancient  times,  and  even  if  we  had  no  formal  evidence 
like  that  of  Cicero  in  the  De  legibus,  we  could  easily  surmise 
to  what  perils  they  exposed  feminine  virtue.^ 

Next  to  rape,  I  may  mention  exposure  of  the  children, 
who  were  often  its  outcome.  Mahaffy  thinks  that  cases 
of  this  sort  were  rare  outside  the  theatre  and,  in  sup- 
port of  his  opinion,  he  points  out  that  even  in  comedy 
an  abandonment  is  always  relegated  to  the  past  incidents 
of  the  plot,  as  though  an  effort  had  been  made  to  with- 
hold its  odious  and  abnormal  character  from  the  criticism 
of  the  audience.^  This  statement,  however,  is  not  strictly 
correct;  for  in  the  Hecyra  an  abandonment  is  planned, 
and  planned  by  people  whom  the  poet  certainly  did  not 
wish  to  render  odious.  Moreover,  if  the  abandonment 
of  an  infant  usually  takes  place  before  the  plot  opens, 
this  is  due  to  the  very  great  popularity  of  other  incidents 
which  necessarily  took  place  many  years  later;  for  ex- 
ample, the  recognition  of  a  child  that  had  been  exposed — 
most  frequently  a  girl — and  the  marriage  of  that  girl  with 
the  young  hero.  Mahaffy's  doubts  do  not,  therefore, 
appear  to  me  to  be  well  founded.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
hardly  anywhere  in  Greece  did  the  law  prohibit  the 
abandonment  of  infants,^  and  sometimes  it  even  officially 
authorised  it.  Plato  prescribes  it  for  the  citizens  of  his 
ideal  republic,  under  certain  conditions,  and  Aristotle 
tolerates  it.  It  was  practised  not  only  by  girls  who  had 
been  seduced,  by  guilty  wives,  and  by  courtesans,  but  also 
by  respectable  married  people.  Polybius  points  out  that 
the  unwillingness  of  his  contemporaries  to  bring  up  their 
children,  even  when  they  are  legitimate,  was  one  of  the 
chief  causes  of  the  decrease  in  the  population  of  Greece,* 

1  Cic,  De  legihus,  II.  9,  2 ;    14,  35. 

^  Mahaffy,  Greek  Life  and  Thought  from  the  Age  of  Alexander  to  the 
Roman  Conquest,  p.  120. 

^  See  the  article  Expositio  in  the  Dictionnaire  des  Antiquites  (Darem- 
berg  and  Saglio).  *  Polyb.,  XXXVII.  9,  7-10  (Hultsch). 


RECAPITULATION  211 

and  there  is  no  convincing  evidence  that  Greek  parents 
were  more  scrupulous  a  century  and  a  half  earlier. 

Though  substitution  of  children  was,  even  in  comedy, 
less  frequent  than  the  abandonment  of  infants,  it  cannot 
have  given  the  impression  of  being  a  fanciful  incident 
in  the  fourth  and  third  centuries.  As  practised  by  cour- 
tesans who  wish  to  retain  their  lovers,  this  form  of  deceit 
is  common  to  all  periods.  In  Greek  society,  and  particu- 
larly at  Athens,  married  women  were  perhaps  tempted 
to  practise  it  on  account  of  the  unjust  laws,  which  gave 
the  husband  an  unlimited  right  to  repudiate  his  wife 
whenever  he  chose.  Wives  who  had  not  presented  their 
husband  with  the  heir  he  desired  for  the  perpetuation  of 
the  family,  and  those  who  were  barren  or  had  only 
daughters,  might  well  fear  that  their  barrenness  or  the 
chance  that  had  given  them  only  female  issue  might  be 
a  cause  for  divorce,  and  so  they  sought  a  remedy  in  the 
substitution  of  a  child.  Mnesilochus,  in  Aristophanes' 
Thesmophoriazousae,  points  out  with  great  emphasis  that 
to  feign  a  confinement  is  one  of  the  tricks  that  women  are 
up  to,  and  he  reverts  to  the  subject  no  less  than  four  times. ^ 
The  orators  likewise  speak  of  the  substitution  of  children. 
Demosthenes  charges  Midias  with  being  a  supposititious 
child,  and  proceeds  to  make  a  sarcastic  comparison  of  his 
two  mothers,  the  real  and  the  supposed  one.- 

What  we  have  found  to  be  the  case  in  certain  kinds 
of  especially  important  incidents  might  be  established  in 
regard  to  many  others.  Breaking  through  a  party-wall 
in  order  to  set  up  a  secret  communication  between  two 
houses,  as  is  done  in  the  0dojua  and  in  the  Miles,  would  at 
first  sight  appear  to  be  a  stage  device.  But  it  will  appear 
in  a  different  light  when  we  recall  how  fragile  private 
houses  were  in  Greece  during  the  classic  period.  Athenian 
thieves — roixcoovxoi,  as  they  were  called — passed  through 
the  walls  in  order  to  enter  a  house.  The  discovery  of  a 
buried  treasure  is  an  extremely  rare  occurrence  in  our  day, 

1  Aristoph.,  Thesmoph.,  340,  407-409,  502--51G,  5G4-565. 
*  Demosth.,  Adv.  Mid.,  §  149. 


212  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

but  at  a  time  when  it  was  more  difficult  to  invest  money, 
and  when  banking  concerns  were  less  known,  and  when, 
furthermore,  an  insufficient  police  and  frequent  wars 
caused  great  insecurity,  the  idea  of  burying  his  ready  cash 
might  readily  occur  to  many  a  hoarder,  or  even  to  many 
an  ordinarily  economical  and  prudent  person.^  We  know 
the  great  detail  with  which  Plato,  in  the  eleventh  book  of 
the  Laws,  prescribes  what  the  finder  of  a  hidden  treasure 
should  do,  and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  such  happy 
finds  were  quite  common  in  his  day,  and  that  the  hope  of 
making  one  engrossed  many  a  mind.^ 

Comedy  affords  more  than  one  instance  of  swindling 
or  cheating  under  cover  of  the  law,  and  it  may  well  be 
asked  whether  all  these  frauds  would  have  been  possible 
in  actual  life.  As  for  some  of  them,  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
For  instance,  the  plot  of  the  Phormio  has  been  closely 
examined  and  studied  step  by  step,  with  the  help  of 
knowledge  gained  from  other  sources  of  the  legal  proce- 
dure and  pettifogging  of  this  period,  and  the  conclusion 
arrived  at  is  that  the  comic  poet  adhered  to  the  truth 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  his  play.^  The  fraud 
concocted  by  Curculio,  in  the  play  which  bears  his  name, 
is  of  a  kind  that  might  be  practised  any  day.  That  rascal 
steals  a  token  of  recognition  and  by  means  of  it  with- 
draws the  money  which  the  soldier,  Therapontigonus, 
had  deposited  with  a  banker,  and  uses  it  to  pay  a  pander. 
But  it  is  strictly  in  accordance  with  fact  that  the  Greeks 
received  payments  made  through  trapezitae  or  bankers  with 
whom  they  had  an  account,*  and  also  that,  in  default 
of  witnesses,  they  used  tokens  or  ovjii^oI.a  to  establish 
their  identity,  and  that  these  tokens  were  frequently  rings 

1  Plato,  Leg.,  pp.  913  A  et  seq. 

*  Cf.  Aristoph.,  Birds,  599  et  seq. ;  Xen.,  Ages.,  X.  1.  Need  we  recall 
how  the  Phocians,  during  the  Sacred  War,  dug  in  the  soil  of  the  temple 
at  Delphi,  in  the  hope  of  finding  marvellous  treasures  ?  (Diod.,  XVI. 
56),     Demosth.,  Adv.  Steph.,  I.  §  81. 

'  Cf.  Lallier,  Le  Proces  de  Phormion,  in  the  Annuaire  de  V Association 
des  Etudes  Grecques,  XII.  (1878),  pp.  49  et  seq. 

*  [Demosth.],  Adv.  Callipp.,  §  4. 


RECAPITULATION  218 

or  broken  coins,  the  practice  being  especially  referred  to 
by  Lysias,  in  his  pleading  on  Aristophanes'  inheritance. ^ 

In  the  Persa,  of  which  I  think  it  permissible  to  speak, 
although  it  belongs  to  middle  comedy,  we  find  the  same 
regard  for  the  conditions  of  real  life.^  It  is  certainly  not 
very  probable  that  a  man  who  is  accustomed  to  business, 
and,  moreover,  to  questionable  business,  should  purchase 
a  slave  girl  without  any  guarantee,  especially  when  the 
seller  appears  to  lay  great  weight  on  such  a  provision ;  but 
this  is  an  improbability  of  a  psychological  kind  which  I 
shall  not  consider  for  the  present.  If  we  admit  this,  what 
follows  affords  no  difficulty,  and  Dordalus — like  his  col- 
league Lycus,  in  the  Poenulus — is  really  caught  in  the 
trap.  He  has  no  redress  against  those  who  have  swindled 
him,  although  their  bad  faith  is  frankly  admitted,  for  at 
Athens,  just  as  in  Rome,  swindling  did  not  lead  to  a 
charge  of  fraud.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  Dordalus  who 
gets  into  hot  water  with  the  young  girl's  father  :  a  ygacprj 
dvdQaTcodiofiov  is  instituted  against  him.  Hence  it  is  easy 
to  understand  his  fright  and  also  that  which  several  of 
his  ilk  manifest  under  similar  circumstances;  rather  than 
appear  in  court,  these  honourable  gentleman,  who  steal 
or  harbour  free  girls,  act  wisely  in  compromising,  even  on 
onerous  terms. 

Apart  from  all  fraud  and  chicanery,  certain  contracts 
of  which  comic  writers  speak  would  in  our  day  be  regarded 
as  extraordinary.  For  instance,  we  repeatedly  see  a 
courtesan,  a  free  courtesan,  hiring  herself  out  to  a  lover 
for  a  fixed  period  of  time,  and  agreeing  to  pay  a  forfeit 
if  she  fails  to  carry  out  the  terms  of  the  contract.^  This 
seems  the  dream  of  a  crazy  imagination,  but  it  is  nothing 
of  the  sort.  UogvEta  y.axa  ovyyQacpijv  was  actually  prac- 
tised at  Athens  and  in  ancient  Greece.^     The  orators  have 

^  Lysias,  De  bonis  Aristoph.,  §  25. 

*  Cf.  Dareste,  Le  Persan  de  Plautc,  in  the  Melanges  Weil  (1898),  pp.  107 
et  seq. 

'  Bacchides,  Asinaria,  Hecyra. 

*  Cf .  SchOmann-Lipsius,  Der  attische  Prozess,  pp.  732-733 ;  Beauchet, 
Droit  privi  de  la  republique  athdnienne.  Vol.  IV.  p.  42. 


214  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

even  preserved  for  us  the  record  of  certain  contracts — 
they  use  the  technical  term  ovvOTjxai  to  designate  them — 
which  are  even  more  scandalous  than  those  found  in 
comedy;  for,  of  the  two  parties  to  the  contract,  neither 
is  a  woman. 1  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  addition  to  such 
cases  as  these,  where  it  is  easy  to  establish  the  conformity 
existing  between  the  stage  and  real  life,  there  are  others 
about  which  it  is  very  difficult  to  form  a  sound  judgment. 
But  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  our  knowledge  of  Greek 
law,  and  even  of  Attic  law,  is  very  imperfect.  The  essen- 
tial point  is  that,  as  far  as  we  know,  no  writer  of  New 
Comedy  can  anywhere  be  caught  in  a  flagrant  disregard 
of  facts,  and  that  we  can  nowhere  prove  that  in  order  to 
meet  the  exigencies  of  his  plot  he  invented  a  literary 
jurisprudence  or  a  fanciful  method  of  dealing  with  things. 

Nor  does  the  vea  appear  to  have  portrayed  the  family 
differently  from  what  the  laws  and  the  custom  of  the  time 
made  it.  In  a  curious  passage  of  the  first  oration  against 
Aristogeiton  (written  when  Menander  was  a  boy)  we 
detect  the  motives  of  a  Micio,  a  Laches,  a  Philoxenus  and 
of  other  lenient  fathers  in  comedy  :  "  Such  and  such  a 
house  contains  a  father,  grown-up  sons  and  occasionally 
even  the  children  of  these  sons.  It  is  inevitable  that  many 
entirely  divergent  tastes  should  be  manifested,  for  youth 
and  old  age  do  not  take  pleasure  either  in  the  same  talk 
or  in  the  same  deeds.  However,  if  the  young  people  are 
discreet  they  behave  in  a  manner  that  enables  them  to 
conceal  their  pranks,  if  possible ;  or  if  that  be  not  possible, 
in  such  a  manner  that  one  can  easily  see  that  they  had  the 
intention  of  escaping  notice.  The  old  men,  for  their  part, 
if  they  see  that  the  young  people  incline  too  much  towards 
extravagance,  drink  and  love,  see  it  without  appearing 
to  see  it.  In  this  wise  each  follows  his  own  bent  and  all 
is  well."  2 

Let  us  next  consider  the  manifestations  of  paternal 
authority.     Has  Chremes,  in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos, 

»  Lysias,  Adv.  Sim.,  §  22;   Aeschines,  Adv.  Tim.,  §§  158,  160,  165. 
*  Demosth.,  Adv.  Aristog.,  I.  §  88. 


RECAPITULATION  215 

really  the  right  to  leave  his  son  penniless,  as  he  pretends 
that  he  means  to  do,  and  to  give  everything  to  his  daughter  ? 
It  appears  that  at  Athens  a  father  could  not  disinherit  his 
son  in  his  will ;  but  he  could  during  his  lifetime  disown 
him  and  sever  all  existing  ties,  and  exclude  him  from  the 
family  and  from  his  succession,  by  means  of  uTioxyJQV^Lg,^ 
and  it  is  probably  with  djiomjov^tg  that  Chremes  threatens 
Clitipho.  We  have  seen  in  how  many  instances  a  father 
in  comedy  sets  his  heart  on  having  the  young  hero  marry, 
or  on  keeping  him  from  getting  married.  In  real  life, 
however,  Athenian  fathers  had  no  power  to  force  their 
sons  to  marry  or  to  prohibit  their  doing  so ;  but  they  could 
not  be  compelled  to  give  their  rebellious  sons  the  where- 
withal to  establish  a  household.  Hence  they  were  in  a 
position  to  make  their  sons  pay  severely  for  disobedience, 
and  could  flatter  themselves  with  the  hope  of  gaining 
their  point  by  intimidation;  and  comedy  does  not  claim 
more  than  this.  As  far  as  daughters — and  even  married 
daughters — are  concerned,  the  father  continued  to  be 
their  xvQiog,  and  always  had  the  right  to  take  them  back 
from  their  husbands.  This  was  done  by  Polyeuetus,  with 
whom  a  speech,  attributed  to  Demosthenes,  is  concerned; 
he  was  displeased  with  his  son-in-law  Leocrates,  and  took 
his  daughter  from  him  to  give  her  to  Spoudias.^  This 
example  proves  that  when  the  two  young  women  in  the 
Stichus,  who  are  so  devoted  to  their  absent  husbands, 
display  such  anxiety  about  their  father's  intentions,  there 
was  good  reason  for  their  doing  so.  Nor  is  the  tyranny 
of  the  wife  with  a  dowry  an  invention  of  the  comic  poets. 
In  the  sixth  book  of  the  Laws,  Plato  says  that  there  are 
women  whose  dower  makes  them  insolent,  and  husbands 
who  cringe  before  them,^  and  the  danger  appears  to  him 
to  be  so  great  that  in  his  ideal  legislation  he  absolutely 
prohibits  dowries.*     In  the  'HOiy.a  Nixo/Ltdxeia,  Aristotle 

*  SchOmann-Lipsius,  Der  attische  Prozess,  pp.  537-538 ;  Beauchet,  Droi^ 
privd  de  la  rtpublique  ath..  Vol.  II.  pp.  128  et  seq. 

2  Demosth.,  C.  Spud.,  §  4.  ^  Plat.,  Legg.,  p.  774  C. 

*  Op  cit.,  p.  742  C. 


216  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

also  says  that  it  is  sometimes  the  women  who  command, 
when  they  inherit  large  fortunes.^ 

In  some  comedies  we  see  unmarried  sons  of  good  family 
in  the  possession  of  property,  borrowing,  selling  and  buy- 
ing. There  is  no  question  but  that  the  majority  of  them 
had  the  right  to  act  as  they  do ;  Athenian  youths  came  of 
age  very  early — at  the  age  of  eighteen — and  from  that 
time  onwards  they  were  allowed  to  make  contracts  of 
every  kind.  In  the  Mostellaria  Philolaches  speculates, 
as  it  is  said,  with  borrowed  money,  and  it  would  have 
been  in  his  power  to  do  what  Tranio  says  he  did,  even 
without  the  consent  of  Theopropides,  since  he  did  not 
involve  his  father  in  the  transaction  at  all,  while  he 
would  have  the  means  to  do  so,  as  the  property  pur- 
chased would  have  served  as  surety  for  the  loan.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  like  so  many  young  gentlemen  in  comedy, 
Tranio  borrows  simply  to  defray  the  cost  of  his  dissipa- 
tions, and  the  lender  has  absolutely  no  guarantee  and 
no  claim  whatsoever  on  Theopropides.  For  all  that,  there 
is  nothing  improbable  in  his  behaviour,  nothing  more  im- 
probable than  there  is  in  the  behaviour  of  many  a  usurer 
of  our  day.  He  relies  on  the  fear  of  scandal  to  make  the 
old  man  yield,  and  if  the  worst  comes  to  the  worst,  he  is 
prepared  to  await  his  death  and  the  opening  of  his  will. 
People  who  buy  anything  from  Lesbonicus,  in  the  Tri- 
nummus,  take  greater  risks,  for,  as  the  young  man's  father 
is  still  alive,  he  is  selling  what  does  not  belong  to  him. 
But  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Charmides  is  away, 
has  been  away  a  long  time,  and  that  the  audience  may 
think  he  is  dead.  Moreover,  the  only  purchaser  who  is 
mentioned,  Callicles,  is  a  true  friend  of  the  family,  who 
certainly  does  not  propose  to  insist  on  the  bargain  when 
Charmides  comes  back. 

The  liberties  taken  by  slaves  on  the  comic  stage,  their 
familiarity,  their  insolence  and  also  their  slyness,  were 
probably  conventional  characteristics.  A  Roman  audience 
could    not    trust    their    eyes   when    they   saw   a    race   of 

1  Arist.,  Eth.  Nicom.,  VIII.  12,  p.  1161  A;  cf.  Polit.,  II.  6,  11  (p.  1270  A). 


RECAPITULATION  217 

slaves  drinking,  making  love  and  inviting  one  another 
to  supper;  and,  to  make  such  a  sight  tolerable,  Plautus 
declares  that  such  things  did  happen  in  Attica,  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  even  in  Greece  the  free  ways  of  Athenian 
slaves  occasioned  surprise  and  occasionally  gave  offence. 
At  Athens,  says  the  'AOrjvaicov  noXLieia,  which  is  sup- 
posed to  have  been  written  by  Xenophon,  a  slave  will 
refuse  to  move  out  of  your  way.^  Demosthenes  says 
the  slaves  at  Athens  enjoy  liberty  of  speech  and  speak 
their  minds  more  freely  than  the  citizens  of  many  other 
states.2  On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
the  conditions  under  which  slaves  lived  favoured  the 
development  of  shameless  craftiness,  of  a  great  gift  of 
dissimulation  and  of  complete  unscrupulousness.  By  this 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  it  was  solely  a  strict  adher- 
ence to  truth  that  led  to  the  development  and  success  of 
the  type  of  the  servus  callidus.  I  believe  that  we  must 
here  make  allowance  for  a  certain  Pharisaism  on  the 
part  of  the  poets  and  of  the  spectators,  to  whom  it  was 
distasteful  to  represent  or  to  see  free  men  in  positions 
that  were  unworthy  of  them.  In  the  vea  free  men,  as 
a  class,  hate  lies ;  at  the  close  of  the  Miles  Gloriosus 
Pleusicles  is  embarrassed  by  his  disguise  as  a  sailor  and 
begs  the  audience  to  excuse  this  trick  for  the  sake  of 
his  love.^  In  the  Trinummus  Callicles  apologises  for 
indulging  in  rascality,  although  his  motive  for  doing  so 
is  a  good  one."*  When  Pamphilus  in  the  Andria,  and 
Chremes  in  the  Ileauton  Timoroumeyios,  are  requested  to 
take  part  in  a  trick,  they  at  first  bluntly  refuse  to  do  so.^ 
It  is  the  business  of  slaves  to  spare  people  who  are  so 
virtuous  the  annoyance  of  being  compromised.  In  the 
Persa  Toxilus  lies  and  steals  on  his  own  account;  the 
slaves  under  him  lie  and  steal  on  behalf  of  their  masters. 

As  for  other  characters  known  to  comedy,   there  are 
some  whose  close  resemblance  to  living  prototypes  need 

1  [Xen.],  'A0.  TTo\.,  I.  10.  2  Demosth.,  In  Philipp.,  III.  §  3. 

»  Aliles,  1284  et  seq.  «  Trin.,  787. 

^  Andr.,  383  et  seq. ;  Hcaut.,  782  et  seq. 


218  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

not  be  demonstrated  at  length;  for  example,  that  of  the 
courtesan.  This  literary  type  was  developed  in  Attica, 
and  we  need  only  glance  through  Book  XIII  of 
Athenaeus  or  certain  works  of  the  orators  to  see  that, 
during  the  entire  fourth  century,  there  was  no  dearth  of 
living  models,  and  to  find  material  for  numerous  compari- 
sons between  the  stage  and  actual  life.  The  nicknames 
of  several  such  women — I  need  only  mention  that  of 
Clepsydra,  who,  we  are  told,  was  named  thus  eneidri 
TiQog  xXexpvdQav  ovvovotaCev  §ojg  xevcodfj  ^ — the  anecdotes 
that  were  current  about  some  of  them,  such  as  the 
story  which  tells  of  Gnathaena  between  two  lovers,  a 
OTQaTicjrrjg  and  a  /uaoriyiag,^  are  sufficient  proof  that  the 
courtesans  of  real  life  quite  equalled  the  heroines  of  the 
comic  stage  in  point  of  cynicism.  Other  surnames  and 
episodes  were  founded  upon  their  greed  :  Phryne  is 
called  Sestos,  6td  to  ojcooyjOsLV  xal  anodveiv  xovq  ovvovrag 
avrf].^  Hippe  "  devours  "  a  dealer  in  forage  in  order  not 
to  give  the  lie  to  her  name.^  The  speeches  of  Isaeus  tell 
us  of  young  fools  who  allow  themselves  to  be  so  capti- 
vated by  women  of  loose  morals  as  to  marry  them ;  ^  of 
old  libertines  who  desert  their  wives  in  order  to  live  with 
prostitutes.®  Lysias  and  Apollodorus  denounce  the  great 
indelicacy  of  lovers  who  are  satisfied  to  share  one 
and  the  same  mistress  with  a  number  of  other  men.' 
In  Hyperides,  and  in  the  speech  against  Neaera,  we 
meet  with  the  superannuated  courtesans  Antigone  and 
Nicarete,  who  are  still  clever  inveiglers,  and  have  become 
procuresses.^  In  the  writings  of  Lynceus  of  Samos  we 
find  Gnathaena — a  competitor  of  Cleareta — grown  old  and 
regulating  the  love  affairs  of  her  daughter,  and  seeing 
to    it    that    they    are    lucrative.^     Again,    in    the    speech 

1  Ath.,  p.  567  D.      «  Ibid,,  p.  585  A.      »  Ibid.,  p.  591  C. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  583  AB.     ^  Isaeus,  De  Pyrrhii  hered.,  §  17. 

*  Ibid.,  §  18  et  seq. 

'  Lysias,  De  vulnere  ex  industria,  §  10  and  16;   Apollod.,  Adv.  Neaer., 
§  26  et  seq.,  29  et  seq.,  46  et  seq.,  cf.  Ath.,  p.  585  A. 

*  Apollod.,  Adv.  Neaer.,  §  18  et  seq. ;  Hyper.,  Adv.  Athenog.,  §  2  et  seq. 
»  Ath.,  p.  584  C. 


RECAPITULATION  219 

against  Neaera  there  is  the  ruffian  Stephanus ;  ^  in  the 
speech  against  Timocrates,  a  brother — more  guilty  than 
Saturio — who  is  accused  of  having  sold  his  sister.^  And 
finally,  in  a  few  lines  of  the  Life  of  Phocion,  we  get  a 
glimpse  of  a  grasping  pander  who  exploits  the  young  men 
who  are  in  love  with  his  charges.^  Examine  historical 
documents  even  for  a  moment,  and  all  the  characters  who 
on  the  stage  lead  a  life  of  debauchery  answer  to  their 
names. 

This  applies  also  to  parasites  and  intriguers.  Theo- 
pompus  declares  that  Athens  is  full  of  flatterers,  rascals, 
false  witnesses  and  sycophants.*  The  speeches  and 
orations  of  the  period  would  seem  to  show  that  he  is 
right.  Here  we  see  denunciators  who  grow  rich  through 
their  calumnies,  obsequious  swindlers  who  become  the 
body-servants  of  the  rich,  cut-throats  who  are  ready  for 
any  scandal.^  Here  we  hear  it  declared  that  it  is  always 
easy  to  find  witnesses  who  will  ensure  the  success  of  an 
imposture.*^  As  for  the  poor  devils  who  merely  plied  the 
trade  of  spungers,  their  tribe  was  very  well  represented. 
Among  the  plagues  that  were  unknown  at  Pera,  the  ideal 
city  of  the  cynics,  Crates  does  not  forget  to  mention 
"  the  voracious  parasite "  {judgyog  nagdoirog).'^  A  para- 
site who  is  an  historical  character  appears  as  early  as  in 
Xenophon's  Sv/unooiov — the  buffoon  Philippus.^  Others 
who  were  celebrated  at  the  time  of  middle  comedy,  or 
even  at  a  still  later  period,  and  who  are  mentioned  by 
Matron,  Machon,  and  by  Lynceus  of  Samos,  appear  to  be 
very  similar  to  the  parasites  in  comedy  :  such  are  Corydus, 
Tithymallus,  Philoxenus,  Pternocopis,  Archephron, 
Democles,  surnamed  Lagunio,  and  Chaerephon,  the  most 

^  Apollod.,  Adv.  Neaer.,  §  39  et  soq.,  G-4  ot  seq. 

*  Demosth.,  Adv.  Timocr.,  §  202. 

3  Plut.,  Phoc,  §  38.  *  Ath.,  p.  254  B. 

*  Apollod.,  Adv.  Neaer.,  §  39,  68;  Domosth.,  Adv.  Mid.,  §  138-139  {cf. 
123-124);   Adv.  Steph.,  I.  §  66-67;   Adv.  Con.,  §  34-35,  37,  39. 

*  Demosth.,  Adv.  Apat.,  §  37 ;   cf.  Adv.  Pataen.,  §  48. 

'  Crates,   fr.    4,   Wachsm.,    3.     In    Thoophrastus,    'A7)5iar,    Chap.    XX. 
§  10,  the  parasite  appears  as  the  usual  adjunct  of  a  well-to-do  house. 

*  Xen.,  Sympos.,  I.  11  et  seq.,  II.  21  et  seq. 


220  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

famous  of  them  all.  Athenaeus  recounts  some  acts  and 
sayings  of  his  which  are  sufficiently  amusing.  We  see 
him  hurrying  quite  a  long  way  into  the  country  to  take 
part  at  a  wedding  dinner, ^  complaining  to  the  carver 
about  the  portion  that  had  been  served  to  him,  which 
contained  too  much  bone.^  Once  when,  as  was  his 
practice,  he  had  come  to  a  banquet  without  being  invited 
and  occupied  the  last  seat,  the  gynaeconomoi  came  to  count 
the  guests.  When  they  found  one  more  than  the  allotted 
number  and  invited  our  friend  to  go  away,  he  calmly 
replied,  "  Count  once  more,  beginning  with  me."  ^  These 
incidents  and  others  of  the  same  sort  may  have  been 
derived  from  a  comedy.  But  I  need  not  add  that  the 
grossest  flattery  of  the  xolaxsQ  on  the  comic  stage  had 
their  equivalents  in  real  life.  It  must  suffice  to  recall 
one  or  two  of  the  anecdotes  preserved  by  Athenaeus  and 
Lucian.  When  Alexander  was  devoured  by  flies,  one  of 
his  courtiers  exclaimed  :  "  Oh,  surely  these  flies  will  be 
much  stronger  than  others,  because  they  have  tasted  your 
blood."  *  One  day  when  Poliorcetes  coughed,  his  courtier 
Cynaethus  exclaimed  that  he  coughed  musically.^  But 
this  had  already  been  surpassed  by  the  flatterers  of 
the  tyrant  Dionysius.  I  quote  Athenaeus'  own  words  : 
ajionxvovxoi;  de  rov  Aiovvoiov  nolXdxii;  naqelxov  xa  ngoocona 
xarajiTveodat  xal  dnoXeixovTeg  rov  oialov,  en  de  rov  ejuerov 
avrov,  jLieXiTog  eXeyov  elvai  yXvxvregov.^  We  see  that 
Strouthias  and  Artotrogus  may  have  been  copied  from 
nature. 

The  boastful  soldier  was  likewise  to  be  met  with  in  real 
life  in  the  age  of  New  Comedy.  It  goes  without  saying 
that  swaggerers  existed  at  every  period,  in  Greece  as  well 
as  elsewhere,  but  from  the  fourth  century  onwards  various 
circumstances  co-operated  to  propagate  this  genus,  and 
supplied  increasingly  rich  material  for  malicious  remarks 
on  the  part  of  the  writers  of  comedy.  In  the  first  place, 
there  was  the  growing  importance  of  mercenaries.     Their 

1  Ath.,  p.  243  E.    2  Ibid.,  p.  243  F.        "  Ibid.,  p.  245  A. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  249  DE.   «  Lucian,  Pro  imag.,  20.   «  Ath.,  pp.  249-250. 


RECAPITULATION  221 

livelihood  depended  on  their  courage  and  efficiency  as 
soldiers,  and  they  were  naturally  })rone  to  exaggerate 
both  of  these  qualities,  and  to  strike  martial  attitudes 
that  would  impress  the  imagination.  The  Argive  Nico- 
stratus  went  to  battle  dressed  like  Heracles,  with  lion's 
skin  and  club.^  Adacus,  a  captain  in  the  service  of 
Macedonia,  made  such  pompous  reports  that  he  was 
called  "  Philip's  rooster."  ^  Then  came  the  campaigns  of 
Alexander  and  the  victories  won  by  a  handful  of  men 
over  a  horde  of  enemies,  the  capture  of  fabulous  treasures, 
the  triumphant  exploration  of  very  distant  regions  that 
were  inhabited  by  people  of  another  race  and  afforded  a 
view  of  strange  customs.  And  then  followed  the  gigantic 
conflicts  of  the  age  of  the  Diadochi,  the  clash  of  immense 
armies,  which  were  made  even  more  formidable  by  the 
presence  of  barbarian  troops  and  by  the  use  of  outlandish 
weapons,  sieges  in  which  both  sides  displayed  a  skill  and 
employed  resources  hitherto  unknown.  It  was  an  easy 
matter  for  the  soldiers  of  this  wonderful  age  to  astound 
the  inhabitants  of  the  old  Greek  cities  with  their  bluster. 
There  is  hardly  a  boast  of  a  Bias  or  of  a  Pyrgopolinices 
for  which  a  parallel  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  justification 
cannot  be  found  in  the  real  life  of  the  period.  If  they 
boast  that  they  had  cleft  asunder  whole  clouds  of  adver- 
saries, we  can  quote  the  incident  of  Alexander  among  the 
Oxydrachi,  when,  single-handed,  he  stormed  the  walls  of 
a  town  he  was  besieging,  and  for  quite  a  while  alone  with- 
stood the  attacks  of  its  garrison.^  If  they  claim  to  have 
killed  a  captain  of  the  enemy  in  single  combat  before 
the  arrayed  armies,  there  is  the  case  of  Pyrrhus,  who 
under  similar  conditions  killed  Pantauchus,  a  general  of 
Demetrius'  army,  a  Mamertine  captain  and  the  Spartiate 
Evalcus.*  If  the  stage  soldier  gives  us  to  understand  that 
he  is  rolling  in  wealth,  the  veterans  of  the  campaigns  of 
Asia  had  actually  been  able  to  accumulate  rich  booty  : 
witness    those   Argyraspides    who,    in    317,    handed    over 

1  Diod.,  XVI.  44.  *  Atli.,  p.  532  E. 

»  Diod.,  XVII.  99.  *  Plut.,  Pyrrh.,  §  7,  24,  30. 


222  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

their  general  Eumenes  to  Antigonus  in  order  to  get  back 
their  baggage.^  If  he  imagines  that  he  is  adored  by 
women,  it  is  because  he  comes  from  a  country  where  the 
women,  stooping  under  the  yoke  of  slavery,  throng  round 
their  master  in  a  submissive  band,  and  are  only  too  happy 
to  gain  his  favour.^  If  he  lays  claim  to  divine  parentage, 
did  not  Alexander,  whom  all  the  world  imitates,  have  the 
oracle  proclaim  that  he  was  the  very  son  of  Ammon  ? 
Were  not  some  of  his  successors  the  object  of  a  cult 
during  their  lifetime  ?  And  do  not  people  in  Athens 
itself  say  that  Poliorcetes  is  the  offspring  of  Poseidon  and 
Aphrodite  ?  ^ 

Of  all  the  characters  in  the  vea,  the  cook  is  perhaps 
the  most  conventional.  In  ancient  times,  Athens  was 
regarded  as  a  city  in  which  people  ate  moderately,  and  it 
would  seem  as  though  the  culinary  artist  was  of  little 
consequence  there.  And  yet,  w^hatever  we  may  think 
and  whatever  may  have  been  said  about  the  sobriety  of 
the  Athenians,  it  is  undeniable  that  at  Athens,  as  in  the 
entire  Greek  world,  luxury  in  eating  increased  and  became 
more  common  in  the  course  of  the  fourth  century.  Some 
of  Plato's  utterances  show  this  quite  clearly.'*  Moreover, 
we  know  of  some  Athenian  gourmets,  or  at  least  of 
some  who  lived  at  Athens ;  ^  and  at  about  the  same 
period  in  which  New  Comedy  flourished,  Attica  made  its 
contribution  to  culinary  literature.  It  is  an  Athenian 
banquet  {axrixov  delnvov)  that  Matron  of  Pitane  describes 
in  a  poem  that  was  no  doubt  written  at  Athens.^  A 
parasite,  Chaerephon,  of  whom  we  have  already  spoken, 
deals  with  a  similar  subject  in  a  prose  epistle  addressed 
to  Cyrebion.'  It  is  from  Athens  that  Lynceus  of  Samos 
sends  his  correspondent  Hippolochus  an  account  of  three 
great  feasts  in  three  enioroXal  dEinvrixixaL.^  The  same 
Lynceus,    in   a  fourth   letter,    compares   the   gastronomic 

1  Plut.,  Bum.,  §  17.         2  Cf.  Diod.,  XVII.  77.         »  Ath.,  p.  253,  CE. 

*  Plato,  Gorgias,  pp.  462  D,  464  D,  500  B,  501  A,  518  B,  521  E. 

*  Hyperides,  Callimedon,  Cyrebion,  etc. 

*  Parodorum  epicorum  graecorum  reliquiae,  ed.  Brandt,  pp.  53  et  seq. 
7  Ath.,  p.  244  A.  8  Ibid.,  p.  128  AB,  cf.  100  E,  101  E. 


RECAPITULATION  223 

resources  of  Athens  with  those  of  Rhodes.^  In  a  fifth 
epistle,  written  to  the  poet  Poseidippus,  he  praises  the 
figs  of  Attica.2  In  a  community  in  which  such  things 
occupied  people's  minds  a  cook  might  well  feel  himself 
at  home,  and  although  the  haughtiness  which  the  comic 
poets  attribute  to  him  is  rather  surprising  in  a  concocter 
of  sauces,  yet  certain  documents  afford  trustworthy 
proof  of  it.  We  detect,  for  instance,  in  the  statement  of 
Heracleides  of  Syracuse  and  of  Glacus  of  Locris,  who 
wrote  the  'OxpaqrvxiyA,  towards  the  end  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury, that  the  functions  of  a  cook  could  not  be  exercised 
by  slaves  or  even  by  the  first  comer  among  free  men.^ 
Sometimes  the  title  of  a  treatise  on  cooking,  such  as  the 
title  of  a  work  by  Parmeno  of  Rhodes,  who  must  have 
lived  in  the  third  century — MayeiQim)  didaoxaXta  (and  not 
'OxpaQxvrixd) — implies  an  intention  of  placing  cookery  on 
a  level  with  the  rational  and  systematic  sciences.  The 
stage  cook  would  gladly  pass  himself  off  as  a  physician.^ 
Why  should  we  be  surprised  at  this,  when  physicians 
wrote  books  UeqI  edeorcov,  Jlegl  XQocpriQ,  entered  into  the 
details  of  the  dishes  that  were  suitable  for  this  or  that 
patient,  and  even  brought  out  an  'OrpaQTvrixog,  or  gave 
an  account  of  a  ovjutiooiov  ?  ^  The  cook  poses  as  a  wise 
man,  as  a  benefactor  of  mankind ;  "^  is  he  not  entitled  to 
do  so,  when  Epicurus  declares  that  all  happiness  comes 
from  the  stomach,  and  when  the  masses,  without  any 
wish  to  follow  the  philosopher  any  further,  gleefully  adopt 
this  formula?  And,  indeed,  when  the  via  was  at  its 
height,  circumstances  were  very  favourable  for  throwing 
a  sort  of  halo  around  cooks,  and  we  may  be  sure  that 
they  took  fullest  advantage  of  the  fact. 

In  a  word,  the  characters  of  comedy,  like  its  adventures, 
corresponded  in  their  day  to  actual,  or  at  least  to  possible, 
people  in  real  life.     Their  like  was,  I  believe,  to  be  met 

1  Ath.,  p.  109  D.  «  Ibid.,  p.  652  C.  ^  j^id.^  p.  661  E. 

*  Damoxenus,  fr.  2,  Nicomachus,  fr.   1,  lines  18,  30  et  seq. 

^  Susemihl,  Oeschichte  der  griechischen  LiUeratur  in  der  Alexandrinerzeit, 
I.  p.  879. 

*  Athcnion,  fr.  1. 


224  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

pretty  nearly  everywhere,  if  allowance  be  made  for  the 
justifiable  exaggeration  of  comedy,  and  they  themselves 
were  no  more  the  creatures  of  fancy  than  their  names,  the 
majority  of  which  were  borrowed  from  actual  names  of 
the  period.^ 

But  it  does  not  follow  that,  as  far  as  customs  are 
concerned,  the  rea  always  made  its  own  observations. 
Before  its  time  there  existed  literary  works  in  which  cer- 
tain elements  of  which  the  via  made  use  had,  as  it  were, 
been  selected  and  prepared  in  advance,  and  it  could  not 
fail  to  profit  by  them. 

The  cases  must  have  been  rare  in  which  a  comedy  of 
the  new  period  borrowed  its  plot  or  its  dramatis  personae 
from  a  written  story.  The  almost  complete  absence  of 
plays  with  legendary  subjects  puts  epic  poems  and  the 
ancient  mythological  tales  out  of  question.  Novels  and 
short  stories  remain  to  be  considered;  but  the  existence 
of  novels — novels  of  everyday  life  or  novels  of  adventure — 
at  the  time  of  the  vea  is  an  open  question;  and  if  the 
Greeks  had  short  stories  at  so  early  a  period,  we  know 
practically  nothing  about  them.  Still,  one  parallel  must 
be  pointed  out.  Several  stories  of  quite  different  date 
and  origin  have  a  striking  similarity  with  the  plot  of  the 
Miles?  The  resemblance  is  particularly  marked  between 
that  comedy  and  a  story  coming  from  Cairo — the  story 
of  Kamaralsaman  and  the  wife  of  the  jeweller.  In  both 
cases  the  lovers  come  together  through  a  secret  passage 
which  connects  two  adjoining  houses;  in  both  cases  the 
woman  plays  a  double  part,  and  the  person  who  enter- 
tains suspicions  about  her  is  reassured  on  finding  her  at 
home  as  often  as  he  goes  to  seek  her;  in  both  cases  the 
departure  of  the  enamoured  couple  takes  place  before  the 
eyes  of  the  person  who  is  being  deceived,  and  meets  with 
his  complete  approval;  finally,  in  both  cases,  the  fugitive 

^  See  K.  Schmidt,  Oriechische  Personennamen  bei  Plautus  in  the  Hermes 
for  1902. 

*  Cf.  Zarncke,  Parallelen  zur  Entfuhrungsgeschichte  im  Miles  Oloriosus 
{Rhein.  Mus.,  XXXIX.  1884,  pp.  1  at  seq.). 


RECAPITULATION  225 

woman  robs  her  dupe  of  a  part  of  his  belongings,  and 
takes  with  her  a  servant  who  is  her  accomphce.  The 
construction  of  the  story  is,  by  the  way,  more  logical  than 
that  of  the  comedy.  In  the  Miles  the  passage  through 
the  wall  does  not  in  any  way  serve  to  ensure  the  escape  of 
Philocomasium ;  in  the  story  it  serves  the  manoeuvres  of 
the  lovers  and  helps  in  the  mystification  of  the  husband 
to  the  very  end.  This  fact  seems  to  me  to  exclude  the 
possibility  that  the  Cairo  story  was  copied,  directly  or 
indirectly,  from  Plautus'  play  or  from  its  Greek  prototype, 
if,  indeed,  there  was  only  one  prototype.  If  this  is 
correct,  an  Ionic  story  may  have  been  the  source  of  both 
works,  and  in  that  case  the  author  of  the  'A?iaCd)v  would 
have  combined  the  episodes  that  were  of  a  kind  to  bring 
out  the  character  of  his  chief  personage.  If,  however,  we 
assume  that  the  Miles  is  a  "contaminated"  play,  the 
above  arguments  evidently  lose  all  their  force,  for  the 
concluding  scenes,  in  which  Philocomasium  escapes  with- 
out making  use  of  the  mysterious  passage,  do  not  then 
come  from  the  same  original  as  the  scenes  in  which  she 
plays  her  double  part.  But  if  we  consider  these  scenes 
only,  we  find  in  them  something  less  simple  and  less 
natural  than  in  the  Cairo  story,  as  though  the  latter  repre- 
sented the  original  version  and  the  first  scenes  of  the 
Miles  a  variation  upon  it.  In  the  story,  it  is  to  the 
person  chiefly  interested,  to  her  husband,  that  his  wife 
appears  alternately  under  her  own  name  and  under  that 
of  another  person;  in  the  Miles  it  is  to  a  subordinate 
personage — the  vigilant  Sceledrus.  In  the  Miles  it  might 
occasion  surprise  that  Sceledrus,  who  gives  expression 
to  his  suspicion,  does  not  demand  that  the  two  sisters 
should  appear  together;  in  the  Cairo  story  the  husband's 
failure  to  do  so  can  readily  be  understood,  for  he  does 
not  openly  express  his  uneasiness.  Whatever  opinion  we 
may  form  of  the  composition  of  the  Miles,  it  certainly  seems 
that  this  play — or  at  all  events  its  second  act — affords  an 
example  of  borrowing  from  a  story,  that  is  to  say  from  a 
narrative  work;  but  it  is  an  isolated  example. 
Q 


22G  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

On  the  other  hand,  the  dependence  of  the  via  on  earher 
drama,  wliether  comic  or  tragic,  is  shown  in  many  ways. 
Some  of  the  plaj^s  may  have  been  re-editings  or  diaoxevai 
of  older  comedies. ^  Partial  re-editing  and  the  borrowing 
of  types  and  incidents  are,  at  any  rate,  frequent  and 
clearly  recognisable. 

The  cook,  for  instance,  is  not  an  invention  of  the  via, 
nor  of  Attic  comedy  in  general.  The  Athenian  writers  of 
comedy  took  him  over  from  the  Dorian  farce — in  which, 
under  the  name  of  Maiocov,  he  was  the  delight  of  the 
audience — and  probably  from  the  comic  writings  of 
Epicharmus.  It  is  true  the  stupid  and  greedy  Dorian 
Maiocov  had  little  resemblance  to  the  infatuated  artist 
with  whom  we  have  met  in  the  via ;  but  even  at  an  earlier 
period,  middle  comedy,  in  which  merry-making  scenes 
were  of  frequent  occurrence,  and  which,  if  I  may  say  so, 
exhaled  a  constant  odour  of  feasting,  had  afforded  the 
cook  excellent  opportunities  for  the  display  of  his  talents 
and  of  his  vainglorious  disposition.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
fragments  of  Antiphanes  and  other  specimens  of  the  juiorj, 
particularly  fragments  of  Alexis,  some  of  which  probably 
antedate  the  beginning  of  the  new  period,  show  us  the 
cook  pretty  much  as  he  appears  later  on — self-important 
and  loquacious. 2 

The  swaggering  soldier  has  ancestors  in  very  old  works 
of  Hellenic  literature.  A  fragment  of  Archilochus  already 
contains  a  picture  of  him.^  We  know,  too,  how  ready 
Attic  comedy  of  the  fifth  century  was  to  make  fun  of 
sword-danglers  like  the  terrible  Lamachus  and,  above  all, 
of  men  like  Peisander  and  Cleonymus,  who  pretend  to 
be  brave;  and  this  tradition  was  preserved  in  the  fourth 
century.     Ephippus,    Antiphanes    and    Heracleides    make 

1  Ath.,  p.  127  B;  Clem.  Alex.,  Strom.,  VI.  2,  26;  cf.  Euseb.  Praep. 
evang.,  X.  3,  13. 

*  Antiphanes,  fr.  217,  222,  284,  300;  Philetaerus,  fr.  14-15;  Cratinus 
the  Younger,  fr.  1;  Ephippus,  fr.  22;  Anaxilas,  fr.  19;  Epicrates,  fr.  6; 
Mnesimachus,  fr.  4 ;  Axionicus,  fr.  8 ;  Sotades,  fr.  1 ;  Alexis,  fr.  48,  84, 
124,  127,  129,  133,  149,  172,  173,  174,  175,  186,  187,  188,  189. 

2  Archilochus,  fr.  68,  Kergk,  3. 


RECAPITULATION  227 

fun  of  certain  notorious  swaggerers  of  their  day.^  Alexis 
ridicules  the  way  in  which  generals  knit  their  eyebrows. ^ 
In  a  play  called  0i?u7t7iog,  Mnesimachus  introduced  a 
warrior  who  claimed  that  he  ate  swords,  torches  and 
javelins,  and  used  nothing  but  shields  and  cuirasses 
as  cushions.  Some  other  fragments  of  Antiphanes,  of 
Alexis  and  of  Ephippus  contain  boastful  statements  by 
travellers  that  leave  nothing  to  be  desired  in  their 
effrontery;  for  instance,  that  the  King  of  Paphos  had 
himself  fanned  by  doves  wdiich  were  attracted  by  his 
perfumes ;  ^  or  that  people  at  a  banquet  were  sprinkled 
with  scent  by  birds  that  had  just  come  out  of  an  aromatic 
bath,  instead  of  receiving  it  in  flasks ;  ^  or  that  somewhere 
words  froze  in  winter  and  thawed  in  summer;  ^  or  that 
the  great  king  had  to  mobilise  whole  races  of  people  for 
months  at  a  time,  in  order  to  get  a  gigantic  fish  cooked.^ 
The  first  of  these  marvellous  tales  was  certainly  told  by 
a  soldier,  and  the  others  may  well  have  been  invented  by 
some  forerunner  of  Pyrgopoliniees  and  Antamoenides. 

The  courtesan  had  appeared  upon  the  stage  as  early  as 
the  latter  part  of  the  fifth  century.  During  the  middle 
period  she  w-as  installed  as  its  queen.  We  know  that 
more  than  one  comedy  of  this  period  had  the  name  of 
some  real  or  imaginary  woman  of  this  class  as  its  title — 
Chrysis,  Neottis,  Nannion,  Clepsydra,  Melitta,  Malthake, 
Plangon,  Neaera,  and  the  like.  Furthermore,  many 
extant  fragments  denounce  the  greed  of  prostitutes,  their 
duplicity,  their  impudence,  their  utter  heartlessness, 
and  their  coquettish  tricks.'  Indeed,  one  may  say  that 
the  works  of  Antiphanes,  Aristophon,  Amphis,  Anaxilas, 
Epicrates  and  Timocles  had  established  the  type  of  the 
wicked  courtesan  in  all  its  details,  while  the  type  of 
the  "  good  courtesan "  must  have  existed,  at  least  in 
outline,  if  we  may  judge  by  fragment  212  of  Antiphanes. 

'  Antiphanes,  fr.  303;  Ephippus,  fr.  17;    Herac,  fr.  6. 
2  Alexis,  fr.  16.  »  Antiph.,  fr.  202.  *  Alexis,  fr.  62. 

*  Antiph.,  fr.  304.  «  Ephippus,  fr.  5. 

'  Antiph.,  fr.  2;  Philetaerus,  fr.  5,  8;  Amphis,  fr.  1;  Ephippus,  fr.  6; 
Anaxilas,  fr.  22 ;    Timocles,  fr.  23 ;    Xenarchus,  fr.  4. 


228  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

As  for  the  pander,  he  plays  quite  an  important  part  in 
the  only  play  of  the  //eo?;  that  has  survived — the  Persa.  A 
pander  appeared  in  the  Toxiorr'jg  by  Nicostratus,  in  the 
ZvvTQExovcEQ  by  Sophilus,  and  possibly  in  the  ' AgTiaCojuivr] 
by  Antiphanes.  One  of  Eubulus'  plays  and  one  of 
Anaxilas'  had  the  names  of  panders  for  their  titles. 
Dordalus,  in  the  Persa,  who  has  insults  heaped  upon  him, 
is  really  more  ingenuous  than  wicked;  but  his  fellow  in 
the  IIoQvo^ooxog  of  Eubulus  ^  is  distinctly  portrayed  as  a 
harsh  man,  a  grasping  rascal  and  a  skinflint;  and  we  may 
assume  that  he  deserved  his  reputation. 

The  parasite,  like  the  above-mentioned  characters,  had 
already  had  a  long  dramatic  career  when  the  via  began 
to  be  written.  The  chorus  of  a  play  by  Eupolis  consisted 
of  parasites  who  went  by  the  name  of  xo^axeg.  One  of 
Alexis'  plays,  written  before  the  death  of  Plato,  and  one 
by  Antiphanes,  which  probably  belongs  to  the  same 
period,  had  the  title  IlaqdoiTOQ,  and,  no  doubt,  had  a 
parasite  as  their  chief  hero.  From  the  beginning  of  the 
fourth  century  onwards,  if  not  even  earlier,  the  parasite 
is  an  acknowledged  type  in  comic  literature.  The 
essential  features  of  this  type,  in  the  shape  in  which  we 
are  acquainted  with  them,  are  already  outlined  in  a  frag- 
ment of  Epicharmus;  ^  they  are  reproduced,  made  more 
definite  and  repeated  ad  nauseam,  in  many  fragments  of 
the  early  period,  and  especially  of  the  fieor].^  It  is  among 
the  remnants  of  the  latter  that  we  find  most  of  the  first- 
hand evidence  of  the  shameless  gluttony  of  the  parasite, 
of  his  sufferings  as  a  scapegoat,  of  his  talents  as  a  jester, 
and  of  his  readiness  to  act  as  jack-of-all-trades.  Saturio, 
in    the    Persa,    is    no    less    expert    an    entertainer    than 

1  Eubulus,  fr.  88.  *  Epich.,  fr.  34-35,  Kaibel. 

»  Eupolis,  fr.  146,  148,  159,  162-163,  172,  178;  Aristophanes,  fr.  167, 
272,  675;  Phrynichus,  fr.  57;  Ameipsias,  fr.  1,  19,  24;  Theopompus,  fr. 
34;  Sannyrion,  fr.  10;  Antiphanes,  fr.  80,  82,  144,  159,  226-230,  243- 
244,  298;  Anaxandrides,  fr.  10;  Eubulus,  fr.  72,  115,  119;  Amphis,  fr. 
10,  39;  Aristophon,  fr.  4;  Alexis,  fr.  116,  195,  201-202,  210,  212,  231, 
256-257,260;  Antidotus,  fr.  2 ;  Axionicus,fr.  6;  Epigenes,  fr.  2 ;  Sophilus, 
fr.  6;   Timocles,  fr.  8,  13. 


RECAPITULATION  229 

Ergasilus,  nor  is  the  unnamed  parasite  of  Antiphanes' 
Jlgoyovoi  a  less  desperate  rascal  than  Phormio,  In  a 
word,  with  all  due  deference  to  Gnatho,  "  to  please  the 
man  who  foots  the  bill,  to  admire  what  the  rich  man 
says,"  is  a  rule  that  found  a  place  on  the  programme  of 
the  professional  parasite  from  the  very  start. ^  The  only 
step  in  advance  the  parasite  in  the  vea  appears  to  have 
taken  is  to  attach  himself  more  particularly  to  the  person 
of  the  boasting  soldier,  whose  silly  vanity  swallows  every 
compliment,  and  does  not  see  that  it  is  being  laughed  at. 

The  slave  belongs  to  the  first  beginnings  of  Greek 
comedy.  Among  the  superannuated  characters  whom 
Aristophanes  claims — rightly  or  wrongly — to  have  ousted 
from  the  stage,  he  mentions  that  of  the  whining  slave, 
who  has  fun  poked  at  him  by  a  fellow-slave  after  he  has 
been  flogged. ^  His  Xanthiases  and  Carios,  in  more  ways 
than  one,  herald  the  coming  of  the  Syruses  and  Davuses 
of  the  vea.  Like  the  latter,  they  are  greedy,  lewd,  lazy, 
mendacious,  rascally  and  indiscreet.^  The  only  fault 
that  they  lack  in  order  to  be,  even  at  this  early  period, 
the  equals  of  their  descendants,  is  craftiness,*  but  in  the 
course  of  the  middle  period  the  slave  in  comedy  perfected 
himself  in  that  direction.  Toxilus  and  Sagaristio,  in  the 
Persa,  can  stand  comparison  with  their  two  colleagues 
in  the  Pseudolus — Pseudolus  and  Simla;  and  the  waggish 
Paegnium  can  hold  his  own  with  Pinacium  in  the  Stichus. 
Arguing  and  philosophising  slaves  are  met  with  in  Anti- 
phanes and  in  Alexis,^  while  some  expressions  of  these 
two  poets  and  of  Theophilus  show  that  there  was  such  a 
thing  as  an  honest  slave  who  was  loyally  devoted  to  his 
master.^ 

1  Epich.,  fr.  35,  4;    Eupolis,  fr.   159,  9-10,   1G3,   178;    Epilycus,  fr.  2; 
Anaxandrides,  fr.  42,  49;    Anaxilas,  fr.  33. 

*  Peace,  742  et  seq. 

'  Ibid.,  90  et  seq.,  256;   Frogs,  opening  scenes,  508  et  seq.,  738  et  scq. ; 
Phdus,  17  et  seq.,  190  et  seq.,  644  et  seq. ;  etc. 

*  Still,  it  is  worth  noting  the  following  significant  words  in  a  passage  of 
the  Peace:  rolis  Bov\ov^  tovs  f^anaTwvras  (743). 

^  Antiphanes,  fr.  86;    Anaxandrides,  fr.  4;    Alexis,  fr.  25. 

*  Antiphanes,  fr.  265;    Theophilus,  fr.   1. 


230  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

As  for  the  portrayal  of  family  customs,  the  course  that 
the  vea  pursued  had  been  laid  out  much  earlier.  The 
IxioYj,  the  tragedies  of  Euripides,  the  comedies  of  Aristo- 
phanes, the  Doric  farce — to  quote  dramatic  writings 
only — had  vied  with  each  other  in  having  a  hit  at  the  fair 
sex.  Women  were,  indeed,  chiefly  reproached  for  what 
New  Comedy  mentions  least — greediness,  drunkenness  and 
incontinence.  But  occasionally  they  were  scoffed  at  for 
their  inquisitiveness,  their  silliness  and  garrulousness,^ 
their  indolence  and  fondness  for  spending  money ;  ^  and 
their  lack  of  loyalty,  their  indiscreetness,'  their  stubborn- 
ness, their  sharp  tongues  and  tyrannical  dispositions  ^ 
were  stigmatised.  The  comic  household  in  which  the 
husband  inveighs  against  his  wife,  but  is  humble  in  her 
presence,  or  in  which  the  wife  wishes  to  be  master  and 
teaches  her  husband  his  duty  towards  her,  is  not  without 
its  analogies  in  the  heroic  world  as  it  was  represented  on 
the  stage  by  the  author  of  the  Medea,  the  Ion  and  the 
Iphigeneia.  In  the  Clouds,  Strepsiades,  who  is  so  unluckily 
mated  with  the  haughty  Coesyra,  foreshadows  by  a  century 
the  poor  husband  in  the  IIloxiov  and  his  numerous  com- 
panions in  misfortune.  Some  of  the  actors  in  the  works 
of  Antiphanes,  of  Anaxandrides  and  of  Alexis  curse  the 
tyranny  of  the  wife  who  has  a  dowry  in  as  gloomy  and 
fierce  a  fashion  as  do  Menander's  characters ;  ^  one  of 
them  complains  of  woman's  inquisitiveness  in  almost 
the  same  terms  that  Menaechmus  uses.^  In  fact,  long 
before  the   beginning   of  the    new   period,   comic   writers 

^  Eur., /p/i.  .4.,  231  et  seq. ;  PTioew.,  194  et  seq.,  198;  Aris toph.,  E'ccZes., 
120;   Antiphanes,  fr.  253;   Alexis,  fr.  92;   Xenarchus,  fr.  14. 

*  Eur.,  EL,  1068  et  seq. ;  Hec,  923  et  seq. ;  Hipp.,  630  et  seq. ;  Med., 
1156  et  seq. ;    Or.,  1426  et  seq. ;   fr.  324. 

3  Soph.,  fr.  742;  Eur.,  And.,  85;  Hipp.,  480-481;  Iph.  T.,  1032, 
1298;  Or.,  1103;  fr.  323,  532,  673;  Antiphanes,  fr.  261;  Xenarchvis, 
fr.  6. 

*  Eur.,  fr.  604,  772,  801,  804;  cf.  Andr.,  213;  El,  931,  1052;  StippL, 
40 ;  fr.  466,  549 ;  Plato,  fr.  98 ;  Antiphanes,  fr.  46 ;  Amphis,  fr.  1 ;  Alexis, 
fr.  146,  5-6 ;    Amphis  and  Alexis  wrote  plays  called  rvvatKOKparia. 

^  Antiphanes  (?),  fr.  329;  Anaxandrides,  fr.  52;  cf.  Alexis,  fr.  146; 
Euripides,  fr.  504,  772. 

*  Alexis,  fr.  262. 


RECAPITULATION  231 

regarded  marriage  as  a  mistake,  a  calamity,  a  sort  of 
suicide.^ 

As  for  the  types  of  parents  and  of  children  that  I  have 
already  analysed,  their  prototypes  are  less  distinctly 
recognisable  in  the  extant  parts  of  earlier  comedy.  And 
yet  such  a  passage  from  Antiphanes  as,  "  Whoever  at 
this  age  still  blushes  in  his  parents'  presence  cannot  be 
bad,"  2  reminds  one  of  the  attitude  of  Aeschinus.^  It 
may  well  be  that  fragment  156  of  Alexis  represents  the 
meeting  of  a  strict  father  and  a  lenient  father,  a  Demea 
and  a  Micio,  a  Chrcmcs  and  a  Mcnedemus;  and  I  suspect 
that  one  or  the  other  of  the  old  fops,  whom  we  meet 
now  and  again,*  was  like  Philoxenus  or  Demaenetus,  the 
sharer  of  his  son's  debauches. 

When  we  come  to  consider  adventures,  we  find  that 
such  of  them  as  serve  as  the  framework  for  so  many  plays 
in  the  new  period  were  already  old  stage  devices  before 
the  time  of  Philemon  and  Menander;  for  example,  rape, 
the  exposing  or  substituting  of  infants,  and  recognitions. 
The  stage  history  of  all  these  episodes  dates  back  to 
tragedy  in  the  fifth  century,  especially  to  the  works  of 
Euripides.  In  his  plays  many  young  people — Creusa, 
Auge,  Canace,  among  others — had  been  ravished.  Just 
like  Pamphila  or  the  daughter  of  Euclio,  Auge  had  been 
ravished  during  a  religious  festival,^  and  just  like  Lyco- 
nides,  her  brutal  lover,  Heracles,  apologises  for  his  crime 
on  the  ground  that  it  was  committed  in  the  excitement 
of  drunkenness.^  Ion,  Telephus  and  Oedipus  are  the  best 
known  of  the  many  examples  of  heroes  who  had  been 
exposed  immediately  after  birth.  The  substitution  of  a 
child  was  one  of  the  incidents  of  the  Melanippe  Desmotis; 

1  Antiphanes,  fr.  221,  292;  Anaxandrides,  fr.  52;  Eubulus,  fr.  116; 
Aristophon,  fr.  5;  Alexis,  fr.  262. 

»  Antiphanes,  fr.  261.  »  Ad.,  643. 

*  Philetaerus,  fr.  6;  Amphis,  fr.  19;  Alexis,  fr.  282;  Xenarchus,  fr.  4 
(9-10);  Thoopliilus,  fr.  4;  Nicostratus,  fr.  19;  Eubulus,  fr.  112,  125; 
Ephippus,  fr.  21;   Eriphus,  fr.  1;   Anaxandrides,  fr.  1  (?). 

*  Cf.  the  fragment  of  the  Progymnasmata  by  Moses  of  Chorene  (Une  iii), 
in  which  Wilamowitz  has  recognised  an  abstract  of  Euripides'  Auge. 

*  Euripides,  fr.  267. 


232  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

Demosthenes'  sarcastic  remarks  in  paragraph  149  of  his 
speech  against  Meidias  show  that  it  was  not  an  unusual 
thing.  As  for  recognitions,  and  particularly  recognitions 
owing  to  a  orjjuelov — a  basket,  a  ring,  a  necklace,  or  some 
similar  object — Aristotle  vouches  for  the  fact  that  the 
tragic  writers  whose  works  he  had  read  made  extensive 
use  of  them.i  Beginning  with  the  early  part  of  the 
fourth  century,  comedy  followed  the  practice  of  tragedy 
regarding  these  matters.  Aristophanes  himself,  so  one 
of  his  biographers  tells  us,  had  in  one  of  his  latest  works, 
the  KdixaXoQ,  introduced  a  rape,  a  recognition  and  other 
episodes  that  were  taken  up  later  by  Menander.^  Cratinus 
the  younger  wrote  a  WevdvTio^oXifiaiog.  Anaxandrides,  as 
we  know  from  a  note  by  Suidas,  made  "  the  love  and 
the  misfortunes  of  virgins  "  familiar  on  the  comic  stage, ^ 

However,  it  is  not  only  in  their  openings  and  in  their 
denouements  that  certain  plots  of  the  via  recall  earlier 
plots.  The  only  product  of  the  /.leor]  that  we  know  in 
its  entirety — the  Persa — affords  throughout  material  for 
comparison  with  other  plays  by  Terence  and  by  Plautus. 
The  attitude  of  Toxilus,  for  instance,  who  enjoys  himself 
to  his  heart's  delight  while  his  master  is  travelling, 
resembles  that  of  Tranio  in  the  Mostellaria  or  that  of 
Stasimus  in  the  Trinummus.  The  transfer  of  money 
effected  by  Sageristio  has  its  more  or  less  exact  parallel 
in  the  Bacchides,  the  Phormio,  the  Asinaria  and  the 
Truculentus ;  the  plot  devised  against  the  pander  recurs 
in  the  Poenulus.  Fragment  212  of  Antiphanes  speaks  of 
the  beginnings  of  a  love  affair  in  terms  that  would  almost 
fit  into  the  Andria,  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos  and  the 
Phormio.  Fragment  239  reproaches  young  men  of  the 
/ii€07]  with  exploits,  the  tradition  of  which  is  piously  pre- 
served by  the  young  men  of  the  vea — squandering  their 
patrimony,  enfranchising  prostitutes,  breaking  open  other 
people's  doors.  The  disguises  that  are  common  in  the 
via  are  already  met  with  in  tragedy  :  Odysseus  disguises 

1  Aristotle,  Poet.,  XI.  2-4;  XVI.  "   Vit.  Aristoph.,  §  10. 

'  Suidas,  s.v.  'Ava^av8pi5r}s. 


RECAPITULATION  288 

himself  as  a  beggar  in  order  to  enter  Troy;  ^  Telephus 
does  likewise  in  order  to  appear  among  the  Greeks;  in 
order  to  spy  upon  the  Bacehantes,  Pentheus  dresses  as  a 
woman;  in  Aristophanes,  Mnesilochus,  the  father-in-law 
of  Euripides,  does  the  same,  whereas  the  Ecclesiazusae 
usurp  male  attire.  The  lying  messengers  of  comedy, 
Curculio,  Simia,  Trinummus,  might  quote  Orestes  as  their 
authority,  when  he  brings  the  false  news  of  his  own  death 
to  his  mother  and  Aegistheus.  At  the  close  of  Euripides' 
Helena,  Menelaus  plays  a  part  very  similar  to  that  played 
by  Pleusicles  in  the  concluding  scenes  of  the  Miles 
Gloriosus;  and  Theoclymenus,  like  Pyrgopolinices,  frankly 
favours  the  escape  of  the  woman  who  had  deceived  him. 
The  fathers  who  return  home  to  their  families  after  a  long 
absence  and  find  everything  in  disorder  have  their  historic 
forbears  in  Aeschylus'  Agamemnon,  Euripdcs'  Heracles 
and  Diomedes ;  ^  and  several  fragments  of  Eubulus,  of 
Cratinus  the  younger  and  of  Alexis  give  us  a  glimpse 
of  them  in  middle  comedy.^  The  prophetic  dreams  of 
Cappadox,  of  Daemones  and  of  Demipho  may  be  com- 
pared with  certain  episodes  of  the  Persae,  the  Choephoroc, 
the  Electra,  the  Hecuba  and  the  Iphigeneia  in  Tauris.  The 
scene  in  the  Curculio,  in  which  the  cook  expounds  the 
pander's  dream,  may  be  compared  with  the  scene  in 
the  Wasps,  where  Sosias  interprets  the  dream  of  Xanthias. 
The  attacks  of  frenzy — or  of  pseudo-frenzy — that  befall 
Casina,  Charinus  and  Menaechmus  have  their  parallel  in 
the  ravings  of  Orestes  or  of  Heracles.  The  scenes  in 
which  Palaestra  and  her  companion  seek  an  asylum  at 
the  altar  of  Venus,  and  the  pander  threatens  to  dislodge 
them  by  force  from  their  place  of  refuge,  or  even  to  burn 
them,  remind  one  of  various  passages  in  the  Heracleidcs, 
the  Oedipus  at  Colonus,  the  Mad  Heracles  and  the  Andro- 
mache. The  episode  that  supplied  the  comedy  of  the 
' EniTQenovxeg  with  its  title  must  have  been  copied  from 
Euripides'  Alope.^ 

1  Cf.  Eur.,  Hec,  239  et  seq.  *  Diomedes  in  the  Oeneua. 

»  Eubulus,  fr.  133;    Cratinus  the  younger,  fr.  9;    Alexis,  fr.  297. 
*  Hyginus.,  fab.  187.     Cf.  Eevue  de  Philologie,  1908,  pp.  73-74. 


234  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

Many  more  similar  instances  might  be  quoted,  and  in 
its  portrayal  of  manners,  in  its  choiee  of  incidents  for  the 
construction  of  its  plots,  the  via  follows  very  frequently 
an  old  and  beaten  track.  But  the  chief  literary  source 
from  which  the  dramatists  of  this  period  draw  their 
inspiration,  or  at  least  the  source  where  we  can  best  observe 
their  borrowings,  is  the  drama  of  their  own  contemporaries 
or  of  their  immediate  predecessors.  New  Comedy  repeats 
itself;  we  have  seen  that  it  introduces  certain  types  and 
certain  incidents  again  and  again.  Coincidences  of  a  more 
exact  kind  can  be  traced  quite  frequently.  Let  me  point 
out  a  few  of  them. 

In  the  Hecyra,  the  misfortunes  of  the  young  married 
couple  are  very  nearly  the  same  as  in  the  'EnitQeTcovreg. 
Pamphilus,  like  Charisius,  has  ravished  a  young  girl  whom 
he  did  not  know  and  who  subsequently  becomes  his  wife; 
like  Pamphila,  Philumena  is  confined  a  few  months  after 
her  marriage,  and  her  husband  is  on  the  point  of  leaving 
her,  although  he  continues  to  love  her.  In  both  plays  the 
recognition  takes  place  thanks  to  the  same  object — the 
ring  which  the  young  man  has  left  in  the  possession  of 
his  victim — and  owing  to  the  intervention  of  a  kindly 
courtesan  who  is,  or  had  been,  the  mistress  of  the  culprit. 
Here,  it  is  true,  we  have  only  to  deal  with  a  similarity 
of  setting.  Elsewhere,  there  is  a  resemblance  between 
two  well-defined  incidents,  between  two  complex  situations. 
In  one  of  the  early  scenes  of  the  Pseudolus  a  pander 
engages  in  a  discussion  with  a  young  lover ;  ^  despite  a 
formal  promise,  he  has  sold  the  young  man's  sweetheart 
to  a  soldier,  and  ought  to  hand  her  over  to  him  on  that 
very  day.  He  turns  a  deaf  ear  to  appeals,  pretending 
he  has  urgent  business  that  calls  him  away.  Obliged, 
nevertheless,  to  stay  and  listen,  he  assumes  a  dogged 
indifference,  is  unmoved  by  all  offers  and  incredulous 
towards  all  promises.  He  maintains  that  he  has  done  no 
wrong  in  selling  a  slave  who  belonged  to  him,  frankly 
acknowledges   having  broken   his   promise   and  cynically 

^  Pseud.,  250  et  seq. 


RECAPITULATION  235 

explains  that  he  did  so  from  selfish  considerations.  Finally, 
half  seriously,  half  ironically,  he  declares  himself  ready 
to  let  the  weeping  lover  have  one  last  chance  :  if  he  gives 
him  an  agreed  sum  before  the  soldier  appears,  the  other 
bargain  is  not  to  hold  good,  and  the  fair  one  is  to  belong 
to  the  claimant  who  arrives  first  with  full  hands.  Here 
we  have  a  scene  that  abounds  in  details ;  well,  it  is  repro- 
duced, feature  by  feature,  in  the  third  act  of  the  Phormio.^ 

In  the  Curculio  the  lover's  accomplice  pretends  to 
be  an  emissary  of  his  rival ;  disguised  as  an  officer's 
servant,  and  putting  on  the  airs  of  a  swaggering  soldier, 
he  comes  to  claim  the  young  woman  whom  his  supposed 
master  has  purchased.  A  letter  sealed  with  the  latter's 
seal — the  trophy  secured  by  a  previous  act  of  rascality — 
that  prepares  the  way  for  his  rascally  act,  serves  to  accredit 
him,  and  allays  all  suspicion.  Under  the  very  nose  of 
the  pander,  and  with  his  consent,  he  leads  away  the  beauti- 
ful slave  girl.  Here,  again,  the  episode  is  of  a  very  special 
kind,  and  yet  it  reappears,  practically  in  the  same  form, 
in  another  extant  comedy — the  Pseudolus.  At  the  close  of 
the  Miles,  Pleusicles  disguises  himself  as  a  pilot  in  order  to 
carry  off  his  mistress ;  ^  a  passage  in  the  Asinaria  mentions 
the  same  disguise  as  being  used  at  a  similar  juncture.^ 

When  Polemo,  in  the  UeQixEigojuev?],  comes  to  attack 
the  house  of  Moschio,  whither  Glycera  has  betaken  herself, 
he  reminds  one  of  Thraso,  in  the  Eiinuchiis  (that  is  to  say, 
of  Bias,  in  the  Kola^).  The  0dofia  and  the  Miles  Gloriosus 
both  contain  the  episode  of  the  secret  passage-way  cut 
through  a  party  wall.  The  episode  of  the  intercepted 
transfer  of  money  occurs  both  in  the  Asinaria  and  in  the 
Truculentus ;  in  each  case  it  is  a  question  of  the  price  of  a 
herd.  There  are  many  plays  in  which  two  young  men 
aid  one  another;  in  the  Adelphi  and  in  the  Heauion 
Timoroumenos,  the  mistress  of  the  one  is  taken  over  by 
the  other  on  his  behalf.  Cleaenetus'  offer  of  marriage, 
in  the  FEcogyog,  recalls,  in  more  than  one  point,  that  of 

1  Phorm.,  485  et  seq.  *  Miles,  1176  ot  scq.,  1296  et  seq. 

'  As.,  68  et  seq. 


236  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

Megadonis,  in  the  Aulularia;  apparently  both  offers 
are  made  under  similar  conditions,  and  must  have  evoked 
emotions  of  the  same  kind  in  several  actors  of  both  plays. 
In  the  Mercator  and  in  the  Phormio,  a  son  plays  the  part 
of  arbiter  and  conciliator  between  his  parents ;  the  same 
thing  took  place  in  Menander's  'E7iixh]Qog,'^  The  Mosiellaria 
and  the  Asinaria  both  introduce  an  interrupted  banquet, 
the  Asinaria  and  the  Menaechmi  a  parasite  who  acts  as 
an  informer.  We  may  add  that  Mcnaechmus  takes  the 
same  liberties  with  his  wife's  belongings  as  Demaenetus 
proposes  to  take ;  ^  he  steals  one  of  her  cloaks  in  order  to 
give  it  to  his  mistress.  The  scene  in  the  Mercator  in 
which  Lysimachus  tries  in  vain  to  silence  the  cook,  recalls 
the  scene  of  the  Menaechmi  in  which  Peniculus  does 
not  allow  either  the  signs  that  Menaechmus  makes,  or 
his  entreaties,  to  interrupt  him;  and  also  that  scene  of 
the  Phormio  in  which  Phormio  indefinitely  prolongs  the 
agony  of  poor  Chremes.  The  Vidularia  and  the  Rudens 
both  interested  the  audience  in  a  travelling-bag  that  had 
been  lost  in  a  shipwreck,  recovered  from  the  water  by  a 
fisherman,  and  claimed  from  the  fisherman  by  some  one 
who  knew  that  it  did  not  belong  to  him.  This  leads  to 
arbitration  and  finally  helps  to  bring  about  a  recognition. 
Thus  we  see  how  often,  in  that  small  part  of  comic 
literature  which  we  know,  analogous  combinations  and 
identical  situations  are  repeated,  sometimes  even  in  two 
plays  by  the  same  author.  How  many  repetitions  should 
we  not  have  to  record  if  the  whole  of  that  literature  had 
come  down  to  us  ?  Plautus  and  Terence  repeatedly  call 
especial  attention  to  the  novelty  of  an  incident  or  of  a 
variant.^  Bacchis,  in  the  Hecyra,  and  Thais,  in  the 
Eunuchus,  themselves  point  out  that  their  virtuous 
sentiments  make  them  different  from  the  mass  of  cour- 
tesans.*     When  the  father,  in  the  Asinaria,  is  indulgent 

1  Cf.  Rhet.  anon.  Spengel,  Vol.  I,  p.  432,  17.  *  As.,  884-886. 

3  Ibid.,   256-257;    Pseud.,    1239-1241;    Hec,    866-867;    Men.,   prol.    7 
et  seq. ;    True,  482  et  seq. ;   Capt.,  1029  et  seq. 
*  Hec,  776,  834 ;   Eun.,  198. 


RECAPITULATION  237 

towards  the  pranks  of  his  son  and  the  mother  is  less 
obhging,  Demaenetiis  points  out  the  anomaly  of  the 
situation.^  In  a  scene  of  the  Eunuchns  which  is  borrowed 
from  the  Kola^,  Gnatho,  a  refined  courtier,  does  not  wish 
to  be  considered  as  one  of  the  old-style  parasites;  he 
poses — wrongly,  by  the  way — as  the  founder  of  a  school, 
as  an  evQext'jQ  :  ^  "In  times  gone  by,  a  century  ago,  it  was 
thus  that  one  earned  a  livelihood.  We  have  a  new  method 
and  I  am  the  inventor.  .  .  ."  Statements  such  as  this, 
which  probably  go  back  to  Greek  originals*  are  of  the 
greatest  interest;  they  inform  us  of  the  current  practice 
of  the  comic  writers,  and  prove  that  they  were  in  the 
habit  of  introducing  things  on  the  stage  which  had  been 
seen  there  before.  There  must  even  have  been  cases 
where  entire  plays  were  repeated.  Many  titles  of  comedies 
— some  of  which  are  not  entirely  commonplace — occur 
several  times  in  the  works  of  contemporary  poets.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  example  of  Philemon's  0dofia  and 
of  the  0a.o/ua  by  Menander,  that  of  two  plays  by  the  same 
authors  which  were  both  called  0r]oavQ6g,  and  that  of  the 
'AdeXipot  a.  and  ' Adelcpol  ^',  prove  that  like  titles  did  not 
necessarily  imply  like  contents.  Indeed,  it  may  have 
been  considered  smart,  at  intervals  of  several  years  or 
of  several  months,  to  produce  totally  different  plots  under 
the  same  title.  Nevertheless,  I  imagine  that,  in  many 
cases,  comedies  which  bore  the  same  title  had  other  things 
in  common  besides  their  name.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
comic  writers  of  the  new  period — like  those  of  earlier  days — 
do  not  appear  to  have  hesitated  to  repeat  certain  of  their 
own  works  with  slight  alterations.  Witness  what  Terence 
says  in  the  prologue  of  his  Andria  about  Menander's  'Avdgia 
and  UsQivOia :  Qui  utramvis  recte  norii,  amhas  noverit ; 
non  ita  sunt  dissimili  argumento  ^  ...  In  all  probability 
this  was  not  an  isolated  case. 

Even  in  ancient  times  fault  was  found  with  the  via 
for  its  frequent  repetitions  of  details  and  whole  plots. 
Aristophanes  of  Byzantium  wrote  a  book  called  JlagakXy^Xoi 

»  As.,  76  et  seq.  *  Eun.,  240-247.  »  Andr.,  prol.  10. 


238  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

MevdvdQov  re  xal  acp*  mv  ixlexpev  Exkoyat;  ^  and  a  certain 
Latinus  wrote  a  treatise  in  six  books,  IIeqI  rcov  ovx  idicov 
MevdvdQov?  Nor,  I  suspect,  were  these  works,  and  par- 
ticularly the  latter,  free  from  malicious  criticism  of 
Menander.  Even  an  actual  comic  writer,  Xenarchus, 
who  still  belongs  to  the  middle  period,  makes  a  tirade 
against  the  incessant  repetitions.  "  The  poets,"  he  says — 
and  he  is  thinking,  I  imagine,  of  his  closest  colleagues, 
the  comic  poets — "  the  poets  are  mere  babble  {^.tjqoq)  ; 
they  invent  nothing  new;  none  of  them  does  anything 
beyond  furbishing  up  and  re-arranging  the  same  old 
fooleries ;  fishmongers  have  more  fertile  imaginations.  .  .  ,"  ^ 
Under  a  playful  form  Xenarchus  gives  expression  to  a 
very  serious  criticism. 

No  doubt,  the  circumstances  under  which  the  comic 
writers  of  the  fourth  and  third  centuries  wrote  for  the 
stage  make  their  course  excusable  to  a  certain  extent. 
Many  of  the  plays  that  were  written  for  a  particular 
competition  were  performed  but  once;  those  which  were 
repeated  were  not  repeated  often,  nor  in  quick  succession. 
Hence,  if  an  incident,  a  situation,  or  the  construction  of 
a  plot  had  met  with  favour,  its  author  had  a  perfect  right 
to  use  it  again  in  one  of  his  subsequent  works.  Some 
poets,  too,  were  extremely  productive;  Menander  wrote 
more  than  a  hundred  plays  in  the  course  of  thirty  years. 
If  he  had  written  only  thirty  plays,  each  of  which  had, 
after  the  manner  of  our  days,  "  held  the  boards  "  for  weeks 
and  months,  Latinus  and  Aristophanes  of  Byzantium 
would  have  found  fewer  repetitions  and  plagiarisms  to 
point  out  in  his  works.  At  the  time  of  the  vea  there  were 
many  festivals  during  which  comedies  were  performed, 
and  in  order  to  satisfy  the  demand  novelties  had  to  be 
produced  by  the  bulk.  Is  it  surprising  if  many  of  them 
were  not  as  novel  as  might  have  been  hoped  ?  These 
considerations  should  keep  us  from  being  too  hasty  or  too 
violent  in  throwing  stones  at  the  colleagues  of  Xenarchus ; 

^  Porph.  ap.  Euseb.,  Praep.  evang.,  X.  3,  12,  p.  465  D. 
*  Ibid.  '  Xenarchus,  fr.  7. 


RECAPITULATION  289 

but,  of  course,  they  do  not  invalidate  my  earlier  conclusions. 
Though  an  excuse  has  been  found  for  their  frequency  the 
repetitions  certainly  do  exist.  There  is  no  disguising  the 
fact  that  in  ancient  Greece  writers  of  comedy,  and  especially 
the  latest  of  them — that  is  to  say,  the  authors  of  the  vea — • 
must  often  have  worked  according  to  a  formula.  If  we 
still  had  all  their  works,  and  if  we  could  compare  them 
with  earlier  productions,  many  of  them  would  perhaps 
appear  to  us,  as  the  German  comedies  of  eighty  years  ago 
appeared  to  Heine,  as  games  of  "  patience  "  in  which 
there  is  no  element  that  had  not  already  appeared  in 
previous  combinations. ^ 

Certain  features  of  extant  plays  seem  to  point  to  the  plot 
or  to  the  actors  of  other  comedies  that  have  disappeared. 
When  Demaenetus  praises  the  trick  that  his  father  plays 
on  a  pander,  he  may  possibly  be  repeating  the  chief 
episode  of  Menander's  NavxXrjQog;  while  it  has  been 
suggested  that  some  words  spoken  by  the  slave  in  the 
Pseudolus  recall  occurrences  in  the  Orjoavgog.^  When 
Chrysalus,  in  the  Bacchides,  speaks  with  superb  scorn  of 
"  the  Parmenos  and  the  Syruses  who  secure  two  or  three 
minae "  ^  for  their  masters,  he  is  evidently  thinking 
primarily  of  the  rascally  slaves  of  comedy.  These  details 
betray  the  fact  that  the  poets  had  rather  a  tendency  to 
regard  the  world  of  the  stage  as  a  separate  world  w^hich 
lived  and  went  its  way  outside  the  borders  of  real  society ; 
and  for  those  of  them  who,  from  indolence  or  in- 
capacity, gave  in  to  this  tendency,  the  work  of  studying 
manners  and  customs  was  singularly  lightened  and  its 
value  correspondingly  diminished.  They  were  merely 
called  upon  to  exercise  a  sort  of  judicious  control  over 
the  copies  of  copies  and  the  variants  of  variants  from 
which  their  new  plays  were  to  be  constructed,  and  en- 
deavour not  entirely  to  lose  contact  with  the  real  life 
that  surrounded  them.  As  a  rule,  they  did  exercise 
this    control    and    maintain   this   contact.     However,    we 

»  Leiler  to  Lcwald,  February  1838.  *  Pseud.,  412. 

»  Bacch.,  649-650. 


240  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

occasionally  meet  with  the  older  forms  of  an  incident 
dressed  up  in  a  newer  garb,  with  a  corresponding  loss  of 
realism.  The  type  of  the  "  good  courtesan  "  is  less  con- 
vincingly true  than  that  of  the  heartless  courtesan,  with 
which  it  is  intentionally  contrasted.  The  philosophising 
cook,  who  pretends  to  have  scientific  attainments,  must, 
if  he  existed  at  all,  have  been  much  rarer  than  the  cook 
who  was  simply  proud  of  his  sauces.  When  Pseudolus 
openly  defies  Simo  and  tells  him  that  he  means  to  steal 
from  him,i  one  would  be  inclined  to  think  that  he  seeks 
to  improve  on  the  audacity  of  Chrysalus ;  but  his  impu- 
dence goes  too  far,  and  I  think  that  a  master,  even  though 
he  were  an  Athenian  master,  w^ould  have  replied  to  such 
impertinent  talk  with  his  whip.  Similarly,  when  Simo 
warns  Ballio  that  he  had  better  be  on  his  guard,^  his 
attitude,  which  makes  it  harder  for  the  slave  to  succeed, 
lends  a  new  interest  to  a  commonplace  intrigue.  Is  it 
likely  that  a  respectable  citizen  would  thus  ally  himself 
with  a  man  of  evil  repute,  a  pander?  There  are  many 
other  instances  of  the  same  kind,  and  it  is  not  without 
its  dangers  for  portrayers  of  manners,  how^ever  skilful 
they  may  be,  to  restrict  their  sphere  too  closely,  and 
allow  the  intervention  of  too  many  literary  reminiscences 
between  themselves  and  the  society  whose  image  they 
wish  to  present. 

§2 
Psychology 

The  psychology  of  the  via  suggests  reflections  similar 
to  those  I  have  just  made  about  adventures  and  manners, 
but  they  can  be  presented  in  briefer  terms. 

This  psychology,  as  we  find  it  in  the  fragments  and 
in  the  Latin  imitations,  is  not  flawless.  Such  traits  of 
characters  as  vanity,  boastfulness,  cynicism,  indifference 
to  insults,  servility,  suspicion,  brutality,  greed  and  stingi- 
ness are  manifestly  exaggerated.  Lovers  are  too  quick 
to  indulge  in  high-flown  language  about  despair  and  death ; 

1  Pseud.,  507  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  896  et  seq. 


RECAPITULATION  241 

they  lose  their  heads  too  easily;  their  curses  are  some- 
times puerile,  and  deserve  Cicero's  mocking  remarks. 
People  like  Hegio,  in  the  Captivi,  and  Nicobulus,  in  the 
Bacchides,  are  quite  too  ingenuous,  and  their  credulousness 
is  excessive.  Others,  like  Menaechmus  and  Sosicles, 
persist  with  a  singular  perseverance  in  not  feeling  the 
most  natural  suspicions  and  in  failing  to  understand  what 
is  going  on  about  them,  and  both  in  their  narrations  and 
elsewhere  imprudently  tell  their  business  to  the  first 
comer.  Others  practise  an  exaggerated  reserve;  and 
there  are  some  who,  at  a  critical  moment,  and  when 
hard  pressed,  take  delight  in  misplaced  pleasantries  and 
waste  time  in  talking.  Finally,  there  are  those  who 
contradict  themselves  from  one  scene  to  another  and  are 
hardly  recognisable  as  the  same  persons.  I  do  not  blame 
Demea  or  the  "truculent"  Stratilax  for  their  conversion, 
which,  I  believe,  is  merely  feigned.  Nor  do  I  blame  Euclio 
for  the  way  in  which  he  consoles  himself  for  having  lost 
what  he  could  not  keep.  I  am  quite  willing  to  admit 
that  the  good  Menedemus  should  for  a  moment  yield  to  the 
pleasure  of  making  fun  of  the  man  who  gives  him  advice,^ 
that  misfortune  should  embitter  the  heart  of  Hegio,  and 
make  him  more  cruel  than  was  his  wont.^  But  I  find  it  hard 
to  admit  that  one  and  the  same  person — Chremes,  in  the 
Eumichus — should  within  a  space  of  a  few  minutes  be  so 
frightened  and  so  resolute ;  ^  that  a  matron — Myrrhina 
at  the  opening  of  the  Casina — who  is  capable  of  counselling 
one  of  her  friends  to  be  resigned  to  her  married  state, 
should  almost  immediately  afterwards  second  this  friend 
in  her  acts  of  retaliation;  that  Megadorus,  an  inveterate 
bachelor,  should  at  once  follow  the  advice  given  him  to 
marry ;  that  a  sober  and  crabbed  old  man,  like  Nicobulus, 
should,  even  after  holding  back  for  a  long  time,  or  even 
for  the  purpose  of  recovering  some  of  his  money,  allow 
himself  to  join  his  son  in  merrymaking.  For  such  short- 
comings the  poets  of  the  new  period  are,  doubtless,  not 

^  Heaut.,  910  et  seq.  *  Capt.,  659  et  seq.,  7G4-765. 

^  Eun.,  754  et  seq.,  797-803. 
R 


242  NEW    GRjEEK    COMEDY 

always  responsible.  Some  of  them  must  be  the  work  of 
their  imitators,  and  may  be  due  to  the  substitution  of 
one  person  for  another,  or  to  the  fusion  of  two  roles  into 
one,  as  was  probably  the  case  in  the  Eunuchus.  Or,  again, 
it  may  be  that  a  trait  which  was  merely  sketched  in  out- 
line, or  a  casual  characterisation,  was  exaggerated  and 
clumsily  accentuated  when  it  was  transferred  from  the 
original  to  the  copy.  Nevertheless,  considerations  or 
hypotheses  of  this  kind  do  not  suffice  to  exculpate  the 
Greek  comic  writers  entirely.  Yet  it  must  be  noted  in  their 
defence  that,  in  the  palliatae,  some  inconsistency  in  psycho- 
logy is  often  the  price  paid — and  I  believe  freely  accepted — 
in  order  to  gain  advantages  of  another  sort,  and  we  shall 
see  this  more  clearly  when  we  study  the  construction  of  the 
plays,  the  springs  of  the  action  in  them  and  the  sources  of 
the  comic  element ;  for  the  present,  I  need  only  call  atten- 
tion to  it.  Now,  to  sacrifice  the  truth  and  naturalness  of  a 
character  for  the  sake  of  furthering  the  plot  or  the  desire 
to  amuse  the  audience  is  certainly  a  mistake;  this  mis- 
take does  not,  however,  necessarily  prove  that  those  who 
committed  it  lacked  the  capacity  for  close  observation. 

In  short,  if  we  except  certain  classes  of  roles  that  are 
a  heritage  from  the  jueor],  and  that  were  always  more  or 
less  sacrificed,  the  psychology  of  the  vea  appears,  as  a  rule, 
to  have  been  true.  That  is  to  say,  it  was  true  but  super- 
ficial— and  by  this  I  mean  that  the  observation  of  the 
comic  writers  did  not,  as  a  rule,  deal  with  the  springs  of 
human  activity  and  connections  of  thought  and  action 
which  were  not  absolutely  obvious  even  to  the  least  experi- 
enced observer.  We  have  seen  that  people  who  have  a 
very  clearly  defined  character,  or  who  are  marked  examples 
of  a  particular  vice  or  a  particular  shortcoming,  are  rare 
in  comedy.  This,  in  itself,  is  significant ;  for  such  people 
are  either  not  met  with  at  all  in  actual  life,  or  else  it  is 
not  easy  to  recognise  them  at  first  sight.  Long  and 
patient  observation  is  needed  in  order  to  assemble  the 
scattered    elements   of  their   personality.      Now,    the   vea 


RECAPITULATION  243 

does  not  take  so  much  trouble.  Generally  speaking,  one 
may  say  that  it  concerns  itself  little  with  exceptional 
cases  or  with  anything  out  of  the  commonplace. 

Indeed,  in  that  part  of  it  which  has  come  down  to  us, 
the  characteristics  whose  psychological  truthfulness — or 
falseness — cannot  be  seen  at  a  glance  so  as  to  need  no 
argument,  are  very  rare.  Among  them  we  may  quote  the 
sudden  decisions,  the  unexpected  changes  of  attitude  of 
several  actors  in  the  Zajuia.  The  reasoning,  in  fact,  by 
which  Demeas  establishes  Moschio's  innocence  is  certainly 
unexpected — so  much  so,  indeed,  that  the  poet  himself 
makes  his  actor  say :  naqafioloq  6  Xoyoq  tocog  sot",  dvdgEg, 
dXX'  d?.rj0iv6g.^  Later  on,  Niceratus  passes  from  extreme 
rage — he  wishes  to  beat  Demeas  and  to  slay  Chrysis — to 
a  resigned  gentleness ;  ^  and  when  Moschio  discovers, 
rather  late  in  the  day,  that  his  father  has  wronged  him, 
he  gives  way  to  a  singular  caprice.^  It  requires  a  moment's 
reflection  to  show  that  these  unexpected  and  sudden 
changes  are  not  untrue  to  nature.  We  must  remember 
that  there  are  good-natured  people  who  refuse  to  see  the 
guilt  of  those  whom  they  love  or  fear,  and  who,  in  perfect 
good  faith,  impute  it  to  others ;  hot-headed  persons  who 
get  excited  and  become  calm  again  in  the  twinkling  of 
an  eye ;  and  capricious  people  whose  habit  of  criticising 
makes  them  discover  something  to  resent  everywhere ; 
and  that  Demeas,  Niceratus  and  Moschio  may  each  belong 
to  one  of  these  classes.  The  attitude  taken  by  Mnesilochus, 
in  the  Bacchides,  while  he  believes  that  he  is  being  betrayed, 
has,  it  is  true,  something  disconcerting  about  it.  One 
would  expect  to  see  him  in  despair,  but  he  delights  in 
thinking  how  disappointed  Bacchis  will  be  when  she  sees 
him  with  empty  hands.'*  In  order  to  understand  his 
thinking  exclusively  of  revenge,  one  must  remember  one 
of  the  earlier  scenes  in  which  Mnesilochus  appeared  to  be 
extremely  anxious  to  acknowledge  another  man's  good 
offices.^     A  spiteful  disposition  and  a  tendency  to  console 

»   2a^.,  113-114.  »  Ibid.,  211  et  seq.  '  Ibid.,  271  et  seq. 

*  Bacch.,  512  et  seq.  '  Ibid.,  39-1  et  seq. 


244  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

oneself  for  misfortunes  by  planning  revenge,  frequently, 
if  I  may  say  so,  have  gratitude  as  the  reverse  of  the  medal. 
Being  what  he  is,  Mnesiloehus  must  feel  as  he  does. 

No  doubt  we  might  find  in  the  extant  plays  or  parts 
of  plays  yet  other  instances  of  stage  psychology,  and  yet 
other  situations,  the  possibility  of  which  might  be  con- 
tested by  a  hasty  observer.  But  I  repeat  that  they  are 
of  rare  occurrence.  In  a  very  great  majority  of  cases 
the  feelings  entertained  by  the  actors,  the  thoughts  they 
express,  and  their  line  of  conduct  are  what  everybody 
might  expect  them  to  be,  and  what  everybody  regarded 
as  inevitable.  To  recognise  this  fact  is,  in  a  certain  sense, 
to  praise  the  poets ;  for  it  amounts  to  saying  that  their 
portraits  are  true  portraits  of  ordinary  everyday  folk; 
though  this  also  implies  that  they  never  depict  anything 
more  rare,  subtle,  or  profound.  Regarded  in  this  light, 
it  is  no  longer  praise. 

As  for  the  axioms  that  certain  characters  proclaim,  very 
few  of  them  can  have  been  new  to  the  audience.  Easy 
success  makes  people  vain;  he  who  fails  in  all  his  under- 
takings becomes  amenable  to  the  suggestions  of  others ; 
misfortunes  are  doubled  by  comparing  them  with  the 
happiness  of  one's  neighbours ;  one  enjoys  happiness 
more  after  having  lived  in  misery;  unhappy  people  seek 
the  society  of  comrades  in  misfortune;  the  young  are 
sorry  for  the  young,  the  old  are  sorry  for  the  old;  it  is 
easier  to  criticise  or  to  advise  than  to  act,  to  preach 
resignation  and  good  behaviour  than  to  practise  them; 
we  recognise  our  own  faults  much  less  readily  than  we 
do  those  of  others ;  we  are  often  better  judges  of  a  stranger's 
affairs  than  of  our  own;  we  only  appreciate  the  serious- 
ness of  a  mistake  when  it  is  too  late;  foolish  people  find 
fault  with  fortune;  time  is  the  great  consoler;  man  is 
shaped  by  contact  with  his  fellow  men,  he  is  corrupted 
by  bad  company ;  he  who  is  not  moved  by  insults  is  good 
for  nothing ;  he  who  can  blush  is  honest ;  wrath  obscures 
judgment ;  the  unexpected  disconcerts ;  and  so  forth.  None 
of  the    above    statements   betrays    exceptional    sagacity. 


RECAPITULATION  245 

From  the  time  of  the  vea  onwards,  the  experience  of  Gnatho 
and  of  the  worthy  Chrcmes,  their  knowledge  of  love  and 
of  jealousy  were  no  doubt  commonplaces/  and  I  think 
there  was  more  originality  in  the  following  remark  by 
Charinus,  which  may  come  from  the  negivOia  :  Postquam 
me  amarc  dixi  complacitast  tihir  But  such  remarks  are 
rare. 

Thus  it  is  not  so  much  by  the  keenness  of  their  vision 
that  the  psychologists  of  New  Comedy  distinguished 
themselves,  as  by  its  quickness  and  accuracy.  Their 
observation  does  not  penetrate  very  far,  and  one  cannot 
say  that  it  "  goes  to  the  bottom  of  people's  character," 
but  it  eagerly  seizes  upon  even  the  slightest  outward 
manifestations  of  various  passions  and  moods.  For 
example,  it  will  not  fail  to  make  a  note  of  the  sophistries 
indulged  in  by  an  over-thrifty  man  who  has  not  spent 
anything  on  his  daughter's  wedding,^  or  by  a  lover  who, 
after  having  sworn  that  he  would  never  again  see  the 
woman  who  had  been  his  mistress  for  three  days,  comes 
back  and  hangs  about  her  at  the  end  of  an  hour,*  or  by  a 
father  who  runs  away  at  the  very  moment  when  he  ought 
to  assert  his  authority.^  Nor  will  it  fail  to  notice  the 
artless  selfishness  of  a  Clitipho,  when  he  advises  his  accom- 
plice Syrus  not  to  allow  himself  to  be  caught,  as  though 
Syrus  were  not  the  first  person  concerned  in  the  matter ;  ^ 
or  the  surprise  of  a  Simo,  who  is  almost  disappointed  at 
not  having  to  meet  with  unforeseen  obstacles ;  '  or  the 
agitation  of  a  Pamphilus,  who,  in  order  to  get  rid  of  an 
inconvenient  person,  sends  his  slave  to  the  Acropolis, 
but  forgets  to  tell  him  what  he  is  to  do  there ;  ^  or  the 
impetuous  unfairness  of  a  Phaedimus,  who  in  good  faith 
complains  that  people  are  "  making  a  row  with  him " 
when  it  is  he  who  is  making  it  with  others ;  ^  and  so  on. 
These  are  all  delightful  details,  and  though  the  invention 

1  Heaut.,  570  et  seq. ;    Eun.,  439  et  seq.,  812-813. 

*  Andr.,  645.  »  Aul,  379  et  seq.  *  Eun.,  63G  et  seq. 

6  Bacch.,  408  et  .seq.,  494  et  seq.  «  Heaut.,  352. 

">  Andr.,  421,  435-436.  »  Hec,  436. 

»  In  the  Ghoran  Papyrus  ;  of.  Hermes,  XLIII  (1908),  p.  51  (linos  165-166). 


246  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

of  tlicm  may  not  have  called  for  much  effort  or 
required  a  very  keen  mind,  they  do  show  that  the  comic 
poets  had  a  happy  faculty  for  seeing  the  spectacle  of  life 
clearly — a  gift  that  is  not  granted  to  every  one — and, 
what  is  even  less  common,  for  remembering  what  they 
had  seen. 

Even  though  we  lacked  details  of  this  kind  which  are 
peculiarly  fitted  to  attract  attention,  the  sustained  natural- 
ness of  so  many  scenes  in  which  the  most  ordinary  feelings 
of  the  human  heart  are  expressed,  bear  witness  to  the 
presence  of  this  capacity.  We  have  seen  how  easy  is 
the  flow  of  certain  conversations  in  the  Bacchides.^  Read 
in  the  same  play — which  abounds  in  excellent  passages — 
the  scene  beginning  at  line  640.  Chrysalus  comes  on  the 
scene  filled  with  pride  at  his  recent  exploit,  and  very  well 
satisfied  with  his  rascality.  The  embarrassment  displayed 
by  his  two  friends,  Mnesilochus  and  Pistoclerus,  begins  to 
cause  him  anxiety ;  word  by  word  he  draws  out  of  Mnesi- 
lochus an  account  of  what  has  taken  place  during  his 
absence.  When  the  decisive  sentence  is  spoken  {omne 
aurum  iratus  reddidi  meo  patri),  his  first  thought,  free  from 
all  false  shame,  is  of  his  own  affairs  and  of  the  punishment 
that  awaits  him.  Mnesilochus  reassures  him,  and,  glad 
to  have  been  able  to  prove  that  he  has  by  no  means  acted 
like  an  ungrateful  person,  he  uses  the  opportunity  forth- 
with to  make  a  new  appeal  for  help.  Chrysalus  retorts 
that  for  the  moment  he  has  run  dry;  and  Mnesilochus, 
whose  memory  of  the  outbursts  of  paternal  wrath  is  quite 
fresh,  has  no  alternative  but  to  acquiesce.  But  the  re- 
marks of  Nicobulus,  which  Mnesilochus  repeats  to  him, 
rouse  the  energy  of  Chrysalus;  the  old  man's  challenge 
goads  him  on  and  he  promises  all  that  is  asked  of  him. 
The  young  men,  as  often  happens,  mistake  what  they 
desire  for  what  they  have  a  right  to  expect,  and  their 
dejection  changes  to  joy.  In  the  space  of  a  few  lines  the 
most  contradictory  feelings  possess  the  souls  of  the  actors, 

1  Cf.  above,  p.  83  et  seq. 


RECAPITULATION  2 17 

following    one    another,  perhaps,  somewhat   too    quickly^ 
but  in  a  very  natural  progression.^ 

If  we  look  for  scenes  containing  less  psychological 
variety,  we  shall  find  one  in  the  'EmrQinovreg.  After 
Onesimus  has  told  the  charcoal-burner  why  he  has  not 
yet  shown  the  ring  that  is  to  reveal  the  secret,  Habrotonon, 
who  had  been  present  during  their  talk,  approaches.^ 
What  she  lias  just  heard  reminds  her  of  something  she 
had  seen  the  year  before,  during  the  night  of  the  Tauro- 
polia,  when  Charisius  lost  his  ring  :  a  young  girl  who  had 
become  separated  from  her  comrades  had  come  back  to 
them  bathed  in  tears  and  with  her  garments  torn.  Even 
before  he  gives  expression  to  the  suspicion  which  this 
communication  must  have  awakened,  Onesimus  asks  who 
the  young  girl  was.  Habrotonon  docs  not  know,  but  it 
is  easy  for  her  to  find  out.  She  does,  however,  know  that 
it  was  a  pretty  girl  and  that  she  was  of  good  family. 
Onesimus  is  overjoyed  at  the  thought  that  it  might  well 
have  been  Charisius'  victim.  Habrotonon,  who  agrees 
with  him,  urges  him  to  inform  the  young  man,  but  his 
recent  experiences  have  made  him  discreet,  and  he  wishes 
first  of  all  to  find  the  unknown  girl  of  the  Tauropolia. 
The  courtesan,  on  the  other  hand,  refuses  to  set  out  on 
her  search  there  and  then ;  how  could  she  make  public  the 
misfortunes  of  a  respectable  girl,  and  so  compromise  her, 
before  being  quite  sure  that  Charisius  was  the  culprit  and 
was  disposed  to  make  reparation  for  his  crime  ?  Affecting 
to  have  the  greatest  deference  for  Onesimus'  superior 
wisdom,  she  proposes  the  following  plan  :  she  is  to  enter 
the  banqueting  hall,  wearing  the  ring  so  that  it  can  be 
plainly  seen.  Charisius  will  see  it  and  will  ask  Habrotonon 
where  she  got  it;  she  will  pretend  that  it  was  left  in  her 
hand  during  the  night  of  the  Tauropolia  when  an  unknown 
man  ravished  her.  Charisius — for  he  is  already  a  bit 
intoxicated,  and  besides,   what  harm  is  there  in  having 

^  Similar,  and  no  leas  natural,  changes  of  front  must  have  been  portrayed 
in  a  passage  of  the  UeptK(ipofj.tvn,  the  text  of  wliich  is  unfortunately 
mutilated  (77  et  seq.). 

^  'Exirp.,  247  et  seq. 


248  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

crunij)led  the  dress  of  a  prostitute  in  the  dark? — will 
unsuspectingly  declare  that  he  is  the  unknown  man. 
Then  the  child  is  to  be  brought  to  him,  and  Habrotonon 
will  say  that  she  is  its  mother  and  he  will  not  be  in  a 
position  to  deny  it ;  whereupon  a  search  is  to  be  made  for 
the  real  mother.  Onesimus  approves,  but  he  has  one  fear  : 
he  does  not  place  much  faith  in  Habrotonon' s  word.  No 
doubt  she  hopes  that  Charisius  will  enfranchise  her  while 
he  thinks  that  she  is  the  mother  of  his  son ;  but  what  if, 
her  object  thus  attained,  she  leaves  him  in  the  lurch  and 
takes  no  further  interest  in  the  matter?  The  courtesan 
reassures  him  :  does  she  look  like  a  woman  who  wishes  to 
take  on  the  burden  of  a  child  ?  Onesimus  does  not  insist, 
but,  to  make  matters  safer,  he  declares  that  he  will  find 
a  way  to  revenge  himself  if  he  is  deceived.  Habrotonon 
is  also  suspicious  and  makes  him  repeat  again  and  again 
that  he  approves  her  plan ;  and  the  compact  is  made. 
During  this  entire  conversation  both  participants  reason 
quite  correctly;  their  attitude  accords  entirely  with  their 
respective  positions,  interests  and  characters. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Eunuchus,'^  when  Phaedria  once 
comes  face  to  face  with  Thais,  he  is  defeated  at  once,  and 
is  well  aware  of  it.  For  all  that,  he  makes  a  show  of 
defence,  the  phases  of  which  are  very  cleverly  described. 
He  begins  with  a  bitter  allusion  to  the  occurrences  of  the 
previous  day,  to  the  brutal  treatment  of  which  he  had  been 
the  victim.  Then,  when  Thais  affects  to  treat  the  matter 
as  of  no  consequence,  comes  a  protest  which,  on  the  part 
of  the  unhappy  lover,  is  at  once  a  reproach  addressed  to 
the  heartless  one  and  an  admission  of  his  own  folly. 
Thais  tells  the  story  of  the  young  girl  in  whom  she  takes 
so  much  interest,  and  Phaedria  lets  her  do  so,  as  he  is  most 
anxious  to  believe  in  her  sincerity  and  to  find  an  excuse 
for  her.  The  mention  of  a  hated  rival  irritates  him  for 
a  while,  calls  forth  a  cry  of  jealousy,  and  leads  him  to  seek 
for  a  confirmation  of  his  suspicions  even  in  Thais'  story. 
But  in  her  reply  the  courtesan  has  only  to  pronounce  a 

^  Eun.,  86  et  seq. 


RECAPITULATION  249 

few  words  that  are  honey  to  his  ears,  and  he  cHngs  to  them 
with  the  whole  force  of  a  reviving  hope ;  "he  yields, 
conquered  by  a  single  word,"  and  eagerly  grasps  the 
chance  to  surrender.  In  the  first  scene  of  the  Cistellaria  ^ 
Selenium's  repugnance  to  confessing  her  love,  especially 
in  the  presence  of  vulgar  women  who  are  unable  to  under- 
stand it,  can  be  read  between  the  lines  of  the  dialogue. 
In  order  to  find  courage  to  make  her  confidence,  the 
love-lorn  girl  expatiates  upon  the  affection  she  feels  for 
Gymnasium  and  her  mother,  of  their  devotion  and  their 
readiness  to  serve  her.  But  the  cynical  remarks  of  the 
old  procuress  frighten  her;  she  shrinks  back  into  herself 
and  for  a  long  while  breaks  the  silence  only  by  a  distinctly 
disapproving  sentence  :  at  satins  fuerat  earn  viro  dare 
nuptum  2iotius.  Finally,  the  picture,  so  complacently 
outlined,  of  the  life  of  shame  that  threatens  her  fills  her 
with  despair;  without  uttering  a  word  she  becomes  con- 
fused and  turns  pale.  Then  it  is  Gymnasium  who  plies 
her  with  questions  and  from  the  rather  vague  replies 
gathers  the  truth  :  amat  haec  mulier  !  Elsewhere,  in  the 
Menaechmi,  in  the  Mercator,  and  in  the  Casina,  there  is 
an  amusingly  truthful  portrayal  of  the  embarrassment 
of  a  person  who  has  been  caught  red-handed  and  has  no 
good  excuse  to  offer  and  cannot  invent  a  bad  one.^  In 
the  Euniichus  there  is  the  anxiety  of  a  coward  who  would 
rather  withdraw  to  seek  support  than  stand  his  ground 
against  the  enemy ;  ^  in  the  Zajuia  the  indecision  of  a 
spoiled  child  who  wavers  between  a  wish  to  frighten  his 
family  by  pretending  to  go  abroad  and  the  fear  that  he 
will  be  allowed  to  go.^  In  the  'EjcitQenovxeg  we  see  the 
amazement  of  an  angry  man  who,  owing  to  impertinent 
harangues,  forgets  his  wrath  for  a  few  moments ;  ^  in  the 
Heauton  Timoroumenos  the  ecstacy  of  a  lover  who  is 
drunk  with  joy,  who  does  not  listen  to  what  is  said  to 

^  Ciat.,   1  et  seq. 

'  Menaech.,  609  et  seq. ;  Merc,  719  et  seq. ;  Cos.,  236  et  seq. 

^  Eun.,  761  et  seq.  *  2o;u.,  387  et  seq. 

*  'EniTp.,  488  ot  seq. 


250  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

him,  and  interrupts  people  who  speak  to  him;^  in  the 
JJEQtxeiQojuh'r]  the  confusion  of  another  lover  who  is  at  the 
same  time  moved  by  remorse,  by  fear,  and  by  hope.^ 
Elsewhere  we  meet  with  an  irritated  person  who,  without 
any  note  of  warning,  opens  the  conversation  with  rebukes 
and  accusations ;  ^  or  with  an  affectionate  mother  who  at 
once  reveals  her  kindness  of  heart  by  the  first  words  she 
addresses  to  her  son  :  Gaudeo  venisse  salvum.  Salvan 
Philumenast  ?  ^     And  so  on. 

In  order  to  produce  pictures  that  were  at  once  as  super- 
ficial and  as  minute  as  I  think  many  of  their  pictures 
were,  the  authors  of  the  via  doubtless  did  not  feel  the 
need,  nor  had  they  always  the  opportunity,  of  imitating 
older  works.  The  things  they  described  could  be  seen 
in  real  life  quite  as  well  as  in  some  written  description; 
and  in  many  cases  they  consisted  of  details  which  were 
so  fixed  as  not  to  permit  of  any  variants.  Still,  though 
they  had  no  models,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  for 
the  psychology  they  depicted,  they  had  literary  antecedents, 
and  some  mention  must  be  made  here  of  those  which  were 
most  important  and  most  nearly  contemporaneous. 

Love,  which  these  authors  so  often  portrayed  upon  the 
stage,  had  been  the  theme  of  many  dramatic  performances 
before  their  time.  While  it  had  hardly  found  a  place  in 
the  tragedies  of  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles,  it  had,  from  the 
time  of  Euripides  onwards,  gained  a  preponderating  place 
in  tragedy,  and  had  appeared  under  the  most  varied 
aspects.  Middle  comedy,  for  its  part,  did  not  stop  at 
relating  amorous  adventures;  some  fragments  discuss  the 
passion,^  while  others  express  its  delights.^  Furthermore, 
when  Menander  appeared  upon  the  scene,  the  stage  already 
possessed  a  poetic  interpretation  of  love.  For  example, 
it  was  recognised  that  people  who  are  in  love  cannot  hide 

^  Heaut.,  690  et  seq.  *  HepiK.,  325  et  seq. 

="  Andr.,  908  et  seq. ;   Phorm.,  264  et  seq.  *  Hec,  353-354. 

*  Aristophon,  fr.  II.;  Anaxandrides,  fr.  61;  Amphis,  fr.  15;  Alexis, 
fr.  20,  70,  234,  239,  245. 

«  Timocles,  fr.  10;    Theophilus,  fr.  12;    Eubulus,  fr.  104. 


RECAPITULATION  251 

their  feelings  any  more  tlian  intoxicated  people  can  :  ^ 
Toxilus,  in  the  Pcrsa,  betrays  his  state  of  mind  by  a  tired 
look  and  by  the  customary  pallor.^  At  a  much  earlier 
period  Phaedra  had  displayed  the  languor  and  the  neg- 
lected garb  that  are  marks  of  Selenium's  grief,  and  had 
also  set  the  example  for  the  rambling  talk  in  which  Aleesi- 
marchus  and  Charinus  indulge.  The  soliloquies  in  which 
the  young  lovers  of  the  vea  make  confession  of  their  love 
to  the  moon,  possibly  had  their  prototypes  in  Euripides' 
tragedies.  Were  our  opportunities  for  comparison  not 
so  limited,  we  should,  no  doubt,  be  able  to  point  out  even 
more  exact  parallels.  Did  not  Andromeda,  who  declares 
to  her  liberator  :  dyov  de  fx  ,  (h  ^ev,  ehe  nqoonolov  OeXeig, 
etr  bloypv,  stre  djucotda,^  serve  as  a  model  for  women  who 
were  in  love  and  also  grateful  to  the  man  they  loved,  for 
slave  girls  who  were  picked  out  by  their  master  and  set 
free,  or  for  poor  girls,  like  Pasicompsa,  Philematium  and 
Antiphila,  who  were  rescued  from  a  life  of  poverty  ?  Was 
not  Laodamia,  who  implores  the  gods  to  restore  to  her 
her  well-beloved  Protesilaus,  and  then  follows  him  to  the 
grave,^  the  ancestress  of  affectionate  courtesans  such  as 
Philaenium,  who  complain  to  a  cruel  mother  at  being 
separated  from  their  lover,  and  respond  to  the  latter's 
declared  intention  of  committing  suicide  by  promising 
not  to  survive  him  ?  Did  not  Medea  teach  the  Leueadian  ^ 
woman,  or  any  of  her  imitators,  the  madness  of  jealousy  ? 
Did  not  the  courtesans  who  go  to  consult  a  sorceress 
have  in  mind  tragic  heroines  like  Medea  or  Deianeira, 
who  employed  philtres  to  revenge  themselves,  or  to  make 
themselves  beloved.  We  know  that  Menander  and  other 
poets  of  the  vea  admired  and  imitated  Euripides ;  ^  and 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  they  imitated  him 
more  particularly  in  the  very  thing  that  brought  both 
him  and  them  so  much  fame — in  that  most  intimate  link 
between  tragedy  and  comedy — the  portrayal  of  love. 

1  Antiphanes,  fr.  235.  «  Persa,  24.  ^  ]-:ur.,  fr.  133. 

*  In  the  Protesilaus  by  Euripides.  *  AfvKaSia  of  Menander. 

•  Philem.,  fr.  130;    Diph.  fr,  00;    Quint.,  X.  1,  69. 


252  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

The  portrayal  of  moral  types,  as  well  as  that  of  passion, 
had  been  essayed  in  drama  before  the  time  of  New  Comedy. 
The  titles  of  several  plays  of  the  early  and  middle  periods, 
some  of  which  crop  up  again  later  on,  denote  faults  of 
character,^  and  in  addition  to  the  evidence  of  these  titles 
we  have  that  of  a  few  fragments.  I  have  already  said 
that  the  type  of  the  flatterer,  of  the  swaggerer  and  of  the 
rustic  became  fixed  very  early.  Phrynicus'  juovorgoTiog 
was,  according  to  the  description  he  gives  of  himself,  a 
worthy  precursor  of  Cnemon  :  "I  lead,"  he  says,  "  the 
life  of  Timon,  without  a  wife  or  a  servant,  full  of  anger 
(divOvjuov),  unapproachable,  not  knowing  how  to  laugh,  not 
talking  with  any  one,  with  ideas  of  my  own  {idioyvoifjcova)." 
Timon, 2  to  whom  the  /.lovorgonog  compares  himself,  must 
have  appeared  in  person  in  one  of  Antiphanes'  come- 
dies, that  was  named  after  him.  Lucian's  little  work, 
called  Tljucov,  was  perhaps  inspired  by  this  play — I  believe 
it  was  certainly  inspired  by  a  comedy  ^ — and  gives  us 
some  idea  of  how  the  comic  writers  represented  the  hero. 

Two  other  types  of  character  for  the  portrayal  of  which 
the  comic  writers  of  the  vea  may  have  drawn  on  the  earlier 
literature  are  the  miser  and  the  superstitious  man.  At  a 
very  early  date  superstition  had  provoked  the  ridicule  of 
Athenian  wits.  Cratinus,  in  his  TgocpchvioQ  and  in  his 
Oqaxxai,  and  Aristophanes  in  almost  all  his  works, 
delighted  in  poking  fun  at  it.  In  the  fourth  century 
Antiphanes  *  rails  at  the  Metragyrtes,^  and  one  of  his 
comedies  was  called  MEXQayvQxr]!;,  and  another  OiayvioxrjQ. 
After  Cratinus  and  before  Menander,  Cephisodorus  and 
Alexis  had  each  written  a  TgocpoivioQ.  Among  the  works 
of  Alexis  we  also  find  quoted  a  Mdvxsig  and  a  OeocpoQrjXOQ. 
These  titles  are,  as  it  appears  to  me,  suggestive,  but  they 
are  merely  titles ;  and  of  all  the  plays  cited  above,  nothing 
of  interest  has  survived. 

^  ""AypoiKos,    ""AypoiKoi,     AvckoXos,    ^ETnxaip^KaKos,    Me/j.\pi/jLotpos,    MtcronSuTipos, 
yioyoTpowos,  Tlo\virpdy/j.a:p,  ^ixdpyvpos,  ^iXapyvpoi.      See  Kock's  Index. 
2  Phrynichus,  fr.    18. 
^  Cf.  Revue  des  Etudes  anciennes,  XI  (1907),  pp.  132  et  seq. 

*  Antiphanes,  fr.  159. 

*  Priests  of  Cybele  wbo  went  about  begging.( — Tr.). 


RECAPITULATION  258 

About  the  antecedents  of  the  miser  we  are  better  in- 
formed. Apart  from  Phihseus'  play,  misers  appeared,  in 
the  age  of  the  /<£or/,  in  the  AvaxoXog  by  Mncsimaehus,  in 
the  "OjLioioi  by  Ephippus,  possibly  in  the  Tijuojv  by  Anti- 
phanes,  in  the  same  author's  Neoxxlq  and  in  Anaxilas' 
"AyQoixoQ.  Like  their  fellows  in  the  via,  the  misers  of  the 
middle  period  appear  chiefly  to  have  been  close-fisted  men 
who  dread  being  in  want.  One  of  Antiphanes'  misers 
lives  more  penuriously  than  the  followers  of  Pythagoras. 
Another,  on  his  return  from  market,  boasts  that  he  has 
made  magnificent  purchases  in  preparation  for  a  wedding, 
but  to  judge  from  the  details  he  gives  of  them  one  may 
suppose  that  this  magnificence  is  quite  relative.  In  a 
play  by  Mncsimaehus,  an  uncle  who  is  rather  a  curmudgeon, 
but  otherwise  a  good-natured  man,  explains  to  his  nephew 
how  he  should  set  about  making  his  demands  less  galling  : 
"  Use  diminutives  and  put  me  on  a  wrong  scent.  Fish, 
for  example — call  them  little  fish  {IxOvdia).  If  you  speak 
of  another  dish,  call  it  a  little  dish  {oxpaQiov).  Then  I 
would  ruin  myself  much  more  readily."  In  the  "Ojlioiol 
it  is  the  miser  who  treats  himself  in  this  fashion;  and 
these  two  passages  give  proof  of  keen  insight. 

In  addition  to  dramatic  works  there  is  another  kind  of 
literary  product  whose  relations  to  New  Comedy  must 
here  claim  our  attention— the  essays  in  moral  philosophy 
that  were  so  popular  from  the  fourth  century  onwards. 

Of  the  numerous  works  on  love  of  whose  existence  there 
is  a  record  we  know  very  little.  We  know  that  the  volume 
written  by  Clearchus  of  Soli,  about  which  our  ignorance 
is  least  absolute,  contained  a  study  of  certain  usages 
of  gallantry  then  current,  and  inquired  into  their  origin 
and  discussed  their  symbolism.  Apparently  its  author 
had  more  interest  in  the  manifestations  of  love  than  taste 
for  abstract  analysis,  and  so  it  may  be  that  he,  and 
others  like  him,  suggested  to  the  comic  poets  the  idea 
of  certain  dramatic  situations,  or  even  certain  subjects 
for  plots.  But  as  we  lack  all  documentary  evidence  we 
cannot  state  this  positively. 

We    are    better    informed    about   the    descriptions    of 


254  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

characters.  Aristotle's  works,  pseudo-Aristotelian  writings, 
and  the  work  of  Theophrastus  contain  some  examples, 
and  the  very  names  of  their  authors — Aristotle,  whose 
Poetics  contains,  in  its  second  half,  a  theory  of  comedy; 
Theophrastus,  who  wrote  a  treatise  IIeqI  xcojucodiag  and 
who  was  Menander's  teacher — invite  us  to  make  com- 
parisons in  this  matter.  As  far  as  Aristotle's  works  are 
concerned,  these  comparisons  are — it  must  be  admitted — 
not  very  profitable.  Many  of  the  characters  which  the 
philosopher  studied  do  not  fit  into  comedy.  Besides, 
the  descriptions  he  gives  of  them  are  not  of  a  kind  to  be 
appropriated  by  dramatic  authors.  Aristotle  seeks  the 
essence  of  things ;  he  points  out  the  mainsprings  of  man's 
actions  in  all  kinds  of  circumstances,  but  does  not  quote 
individual  examples.  The  perusal  of  his  works  may  have 
developed  the  comic  writers'  taste  for  observing,  and  may 
have  sharpened  their  sense  of  observation,  but  it  cannot 
have  supplied  them  with  ready-made  observations,  and* 
under  the  circumstances,  the  extent  of  his  influence  cannot 
be  accurately  determined. 

The  case  is  different  with  Theophrastus.  As  a  rule,  he 
gives  his  attention  to  simple  defects  that  are  ridiculous 
rather  than  objectionable ;  he  studies  them  from  without, 
and  illustrates  them,  if  I  may  use  that  word,  by  a  mass  of 
small  details,  some  of  which  doubtless  are  not  suitable 
for  reproduction  on  the  stage,  while  many  of  them  are. 
The  points  of  contact  between  his  collection  and  comic 
literature  are  clear;  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  it  has  been 
supposed  that  the  Characters  were,  to  a  great  extent, 
taken  from  the  drama.  Without  entering  into  a  com- 
prehensive discussion  of  this  view,  I  may  merely  recall  the 
fact  that  two  chapters — Chapter  VIII  {AoyoTtouag)  and 
Chapter  XXIII  {' AXa^oveiag) — appear  to  contain  allusions 
to  certain  events  of  the  year  319,^  and  in  all  probability 
the  entire  work  dates  back  to  this  period ;   in  other  words, 

^  See  tlie  essay  by  Cichorius,  Die  Abfassungszeit  von  Theophrasts 
Charakteren,  at  the  beginning  of  the  publication  of  the  Philologische 
Oesellschajt  of  Leipzig  (1897),  pp.  Ivii-lxii. 


RECAPITULATION  255 

it  is  just  about  contemporaneous  with  the  beginnings  of 
the  vea,  and  earher  than  nearly  all  of  Menandcr's  writings. 
We  may  therefore  treat  it  as  a  possible  source,  and,  to 
take  it  up  in  detail,  several  of  the  boastful  remarks  that 
Theophrastus  attributes  to  his  dXaCcov  reappear,  with 
hardly  any  modifications,  on  the  lips  of  soldiers  in  comedy. 
For  example,  the  following  :  (bg  juez'  ' AXe^dvdQov  iozQa- 
revoaxo,  xal  drtcog  avrco  eIxb,  xal  Soa  h0ox6lh]za  Tior/jQia 
ixo/xioe,'^  or:  yQcxfijuara  .  .  .  wg  naQeoxi  naqd  'AvxindTQOV 
TQiTzd  dr]  Xeyovza  naQayivEoOai  avzov  eig  Maxedoviav.^  Gnatho's 
behaviour,  when  he  dies  with  laughter  at  hearing  Thraso's 
witticisms,  is  foreshadowed  in  the  Characters.^  Like  the 
truculentus,  the  dygoixog  speaks  very  loudly,^  and  has  a 
contempt  for  perfumes.'^  A  detail  contained  in  Chapter  X 
{MiKQoloytag)  —  oyjcovdjv  jurjdiv  ngidfisvog  elaeWetv  (§  12)— 
is  made  use  of  in  the  Aulularia ;  ^  another — dnayoQevoai  zfj 
yvvaixi  [nqze  dlag  ^(^QrivvvEiv  fxrjZE  eXIvxvlov  [irjZE  xvfxivov  ixr\ZE 
oQiyavov  fxriZE  oXdg  [nqZE  ozififiaza  fx^ZE  OvrjX'^fiaza  (§  13) — 
reminds  one  pretty  closely  of  some  of  Euclio's  injunctions.' 
Several  details  in  Chapter  VI  {^ Anovoiag) — d/udoai  za^v, 
xoHciJg  dxovoai,  XoidoQodfjvai  bvvdfiEvog  (§  2),  dEivdg  Se  xat 
navdoxEvoai  xat  noqvofiooxrjoai  (§  5),  djidysoOai  xlonfjg  (§  6) — 
make  one  think  of  the  Ballios  and  Lyeuses  of  comedy. 
Instances  of  superstition  that  are  quoted  in  Chapter  XVI 
{AEioibaiiMoviag) — xat  edv  tdrj  dcpty  iv  zfj  oixiq.  xzX.  (§  4),  xal 
idv  juvg  OvXaxov  dXcpizoiv  diaq)dyr]  xzX.  (§  6),  xdv  yXavxeg 
^adiCovzog  avzov  dvaxgdycoaiv  xzX.  (§  8),  xal  ozav  evvnvLov 
tdr]  xzX.  (§  11) — are  also  cited  in  fragments  of  the  new 
period.  Cases,  indeed,  of  similarity,  whether  close  or 
distant,  between  the  Characters  and  the  via,  are  by  no 
means  lacking,  but,  as  a  rule,  they  are  of  a  kind  that 
can  be  explained  as  the  result  of  a  coincidence.  In  the 
majority  of  instances  it  is  extremely  improbable  that 
they  were  due  to  borrowing,  whilst  in  no  case  was  it  very 
probable. 

1  Theoph.,  Char.,  XXIII.  3.  ""  Ibid.,  4. 

»  Char.,  II.  4.  *  Ibid.,  IV.  5.  '  Ibid.,  3. 

•  AuL,  371  et  seq.  '  Ibid.,  91  et  seq. 


256  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

In  a  word,  all  that  we  can  properly  affirm  is  that  the 
works  of  the  philosophers  must  have  encouraged  the 
writers  of  comedy  to  study  moral  types.  A  certain 
number  of  comedies  have  the  same  titles  as  certain  chapters 
of  Tlieophrastus.^  Possibly  this  shows  that  in  some  cases 
the  attention  of  the  comic  writers  was  called  to  one  or 
the  other  shortcoming  by  what  the  philosophers  had  said 
about  it.  To  assume  that  there  was  any  closer  affinity 
between  the  two  groups  of  authors  would  assuredly  be 
hazardous. 

§3 

Language 

Hitherto  I  have  dealt  with  the  realistic  treatment  of 
manners,  characters  and  emotions.  In  order  to  give  a 
more  complete  idea  of  the  excellence  of  observation  shown 
in  the  via,  a  few  words  must  be  added  regarding  the 
language  spoken  by  the  actors. 

An  ancient  grammarian  says  of  the  poets  of  the  middle 
period  :  "  They  did  not  attempt  to  use  a  poetic  style,  but, 
employing  the  language  of  ordinary  life,  they  had  the 
excellences  of  prose."  ^  Another  grammarian  contrasts 
the  strength  and  grandeur  of  ancient  comedy  with  the 
lucidity  of  the  new  (to  oacpeoxEQov).'^  Plutarch,  in  his 
Comparison  of  Aristophanes  and  Menander,  finds  fault 
with  the  patchwork  style  of  Aristophanes,  in  which  are 
mingled  "  the  tragic,  the  comic,  the  pretentious  (to  oo^aqov), 
the  ultra -commonplace,  the  obscure  and  the  simple, 
pompousness  and  loftiness  {oyxog  xal  diagjua),  gossip  and 
futilities  that  turn  one's  stomach."  *     He  adds  that,  in 

^  K6\a^,  AypoiKOS,  AeicnSai/xcav,  ''Attio'tos,  'AXa^c^v,  ^oi^oSerjj  (SeiAi'a),  ^iXdpyvpos 
(/xiKpoAoyia),  ^'lAapxos  {oAiyapxia.). 

"  Anon.  Didot  III,  Trepl  Kco/aqiSias  {—  Kaibel  II.),  §  12.  (When  applied 
to  middle  comedy,  this  remark  calls  for  reservations).  Compare  Plutarch's 
words  (Quaest.  conviv.,  VII.  8,  3,  7)  :  ^  re  yap  Xe'|ij  ijSe'ta  Ka\  tte^^  ktA. 

'  I.  Tzetzes,  Trepl  Kw/j-ajSias,  §  14  (Kaibel,  pp.  17-18)  =  Didot  IX.  a, 
lines  73-75. 

*  Plut.,  Compar.  Aristoph.  et  Men.,  I.  5. 


RECAPITULATION  257 

spite  of  so  many  incongruities,  the  author  has  not  suc- 
ceeded in  allotting  to  each  of  his  actors  the  language  that 
he  ought  to  speak. ^  But  he  finds  nothing  of  this  sort 
in  Mcnander.  "  His  style  is  so  polished  and  so  consistent 
in  its  harmonious  construction  that,  whatever  passion 
or  whatever  character  it  has  to  express  {did.  nolloyv  dyo/nevt] 
naOcbv  xal  7)0ojv),  and  even  where  it  adjusts  itself  to  the 
most  diverse  persons  {jiavrodaTtoig  icpaQfidrrovaa  nQoaomoig), 
it  retains  its  unity  [jiua  (paiveraL)  and  always  remains  the 
same  {xijv  ojuoidrrjxa  rrjQel),  because  it  employs  common 
expressions  that  are  familiar  and  in  current  use.  Among 
all  the  noted  artisans  that  have  ever  existed,  no  one, 
whether  he  was  a  cobbler,  a  tailor,  or  plied  some  other 
trade,  was  able  to  make  a  boot,  a  mask  or  a  cloak,  that 
would  fit  a  man,  a  woman,  a  child,  an  old  man,  or  a  slave 
equally  well;  but  Menander's  style  is  such  that  it  suits 
every  character,  every  station  and  every  age.  .  .  ."  ^ 
We  see  that  this  critic  has  special  praise  for  the  unity  of 
Menander's  style,  but  it  is  clear  that  he  does  not  mean  a 
uniformity  that  would  sin  against  dramatic  truthfulness; 
for,  if  he  did,  the  antithesis  he  makes  between  the  two 
authors  would  be  curiously  imperfect.  Unity  and  even- 
ness do  not  mean  uniformity;  evenness  of  style  excludes 
incongruities,  but  it  does  not  exclude  delicate  and  discreet 
shading.  Though  the  clauses  diu  7io?da)V  d.yo/j.evr]  naOcov  xal 
ridoiv,  navxodanolq  iq^aQfidrrovoa  nQooojnoiQ  in  Plutarch's 
statement  are  grammatically  subordinate,  they  are  quite 
as  important  as  the  others.  What  is  praised  in  Menander's 
style  is,  roughly  speaking,  the  appropriateness  and 
accuracy  of  his  language. 

Other  ancient  critics,  the  Atticists  at  the  time  of  the 
Antonines,  who  certainly  have  no  intention  of  praising 
Menander,  give  similar  testimony.  They  examined  the 
text  of  Menander  as  minutely  as  professors  of  language 
and  grammar  would  examine  a  pupil's  task;  they 
found  fault  with  many  details,  and  occasionally  their 
pedantic  indignation  is  expressed  with  amusing  vehemence. 

*  Plut.,  Compar.  Aristaph.  et  Men.,  I.  6.  «  Ibid.,  II.   1-2. 

S 


258  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

"  By  Heracles  !  "  declares  Phrynichus,  one  of  the  most 
important  of  them,  "  I  am  surprised  to  see  the  most  dis- 
tinguished minds  of  Greece  taking  such  a  huge  interest  in 
this  maker  of  comedies  .  .  .  who  used  a  lot  of  words  of 
base  alloy  {xi^drjXa  dvaQiOjia]Ta  djuadfj),  thereby  proving  his 
ignorance."  ^  Elsewhere  he  exclaims  :  "  Oh,  Menander, 
where  did  you  collect  all  this  mire  of  unclean  words  {ovojudrcov 
ovQcpexov)  with  which  you  soil  the  language  of  your 
fathers  ?  "  2  He  finds  fault  with  the  word  alxjuaXcoriCeiv, 
and  says  :  "  It  is  such  base  alloy  that  even  Menander  did 
not  make  use  of  it,"  ^  There  is  the  same  severity,  though 
expressed  with  less  peevish  pedantry,  in  the  Onomasticon 
by  Julius  Pollux.  There  we  read  :  "  Menander  is  not  an 
author  who  writes  good  Greek,  nor  one  whom  one  must 
always  follow;  but  when  the  proper  word  with  which  to 
designate  this  or  that  is  lacking,  one  may  consult  him ;  for 
all  categories,  all  things  and  all  objects  the  names  of  which 
do  not  appear  in  other  authors,  one  may  consider  oneself 
lucky  to  get  them  even  out  of  Menander."  *  In  another 
passage,  after  having  pointed  out  the  use  of  the  feminine 
forms  fj,edvor],  /biedvoxQia,  to  designate  a  drunken  woman, 
Pollux  scornfully  adds :  d  ydg  fisBvooq  em  dvdQMV  Mevdvdqco 
dedooOco.^  These  criticisms  are  well  worth  collecting,  and 
it  is  easy  to  convert  them  into  praise.  What  fault,  in 
a  word,  did  the  Atticists  find  with  Menander?  That  he 
did  not  speak  like  Plato,  like  Aeschines  the  Socratic,  or  like 
Demosthenes.  But,  in  actual  life,  no  one  had  ever  spoken 
thus,  and,  above  all,  no  one  spoke  thus  at  the  time  when 
Menander  wrote.  In  course  of  time  language  was  gradually 
transformed;  differences  of  dialect  disappeared;  even  in 
the  streets  of  Athens  a  more  cosmopolitan  language,  the 
xoiv^,  little  by  little,  took  the  place  of  pure  Attic.  When 
Menander  introduced  new  expressions,  and  words  that  a 

1  Rutherford,  The  New  Phrynichus,  p.  492,  No.  CCCXCIII. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  497,  No.  CCCC.  Cf.  p.  492,  No.  CCCXCII;  p.  499,  No. 
CCCCIV;   p.  491,  No.  CCCXCI. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  500,  No.  CCCCVII.  Cf.  p.  479,  No.  CCCLXVI ;  p.  500, 
No.  CCCVI. 

*  Pollux,  0710771.,  III.  29.  ^Ibid.,  VI.  25.     Cf.  IV.  161. 


RECAPITULATION  259 

person  like  Phrynichus  considered  incorrect,  vulgar  and 
semi-barbaric,  he  no  doubt  merely  reproduced  the  usages 
of  language  which  had  been  adopted  by  his  contemporaries 
and  the  living  prototypes  of  the  characters  whom  he 
brought  upon  the  stage.  In  other  words,  he  was  a  realist. 
Greater  realism  and  a  greater  conformity  with  the 
language  of  current  speech — or,  rather,  more  consistent 
realism  and  more  sustained  conformity  with  the  common 
idiom — these  are,  according  to  the  testimony  of  the 
ancients,  the  features  that  marked  the  difference  between 
the  style  of  the  vea  and  that  of  the  earlier  periods.  It  is 
only  within  recent  times  that  we  have  been  able  to  judge 
for  ourselves  how  far  this  realism  went.  Had  the  writers 
of  Latin  comedy  thought  it  their  business  to  make  accurate 
translations — and  this  was  not  the  case — they  would 
merely  have  given  us  a  vague  idea  of  it,  as  all  translations 
are  but  an  approach  to  the  original.  In  order  to  form  a 
judgment  of  the  nature  of  the  language  of  New  Comedy 
we  must  go  back  to  the  fragments.  Now  the  fragments 
that  were  formerly  known,  and  which  are  found  in  Kock's 
collection,  offer  little  of  interest  in  this  regard.  Most  of 
them  are  too  short.  Many  of  them  consist  of  maxims  or 
of  brief  dissertations,  which  the  philosophers  who  com- 
piled them  had  culled  either  from  the  least  dramatic  parts 
of  the  comedies  or  from  such  parts  as  gave  very  little 
idea  of  the  plays  in  their  entirety.  Occasionally  one  can 
observe  in  these  fragments  how  certain  poets  had  the 
gift  of  presenting  philosophical  reflections  in  a  lively 
fashion  and  without  pedantry,  by  either  cutting  up  the 
argument  into  a  sort  of  dialogue  or  into  a  discussion 
that  the  thinker  maintains  with  himself,^  or  else,  by 
putting  the  thought  into  the  mouth  of  an  assumed 
speaker.2  One  can  also  occasionally  observe  how  certain 
poets  temper  the  expression  of  serious  thought  and  of 
deep  feeling  by  employing  familiar  terms  and  pro- 
verbial sayings  and  by  the  use  of  an  easy  unconstrained 

1  Men.,  fr.  363,  460,  472,  633,  536,  537,  541 ;   Philem.,  fr.  213. 
*  Ihid.,  fr.  223. 


260  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

syntax.^  But  such  testimony  is  rare  and  merely  illustrates 
a  certain  kind  of  aptitude,  and  that  not  one  of  which  comic 
writers  had  most  commonly  to  give  proof;  whilst  of  other 
aptitudes  which  are  more  essential — for  example,  skill 
in  handling  dialogue — we  only  get  a  glimpse  in  one  or 
two  fragments  that  remain. ^  Fortunately,  however,  the 
discoveries  of  the  last  ten  years,  and  chiefly  those  at  Kom 
Ishkaou,  have  furnished  us  with  documents  of  a  much 
greater  importance.  As  far  as  Menander,  at  least,  is  con- 
cerned, we  are  now  in  a  position  to  judge  of  the  correctness 
of  the  statements  made  by  the  ancients. 

I  may  at  once  say  that  the  passages  edited  by  Nicole 
and  Lefebvre  make  a  very  favourable  impression  when  they 
are  read  through  with  special  attention  to  their  stylistic 
qualities.  In  the  ideas  expressed  in  them,  in  the  themes 
which  they  develop — in  what,  that  is  to  say,  Aristotle 
calls  didvoia — there  is  nothing,  or  almost  nothing,  out  of 
keeping  with  the  intellectual  or  moral  qualities  of  the 
dramatis  personae.  This  remark  applies  more  especially 
to  two  kinds  of  elements  :  the  maxims  and  the  allusions 
to  mythology.  A  priori  one  might  fear  that  both  of  these 
would  be  out  of  place  when  spoken  by  simple  folk,  such  as 
the  greater  part  of  the  characters  in  comedy  were.  Several 
passages  of  the  Za/uia  and  of  the  'EniTQeTiovreg  are  all 
that  could  be  desired  to  dissipate  such  a  fear.  Let  us 
listen  to  Demeas  talking  with  Niceratus,  and  to  Syriscus 
pleading  before  Smicrines. 

"  Have  you  not  heard  tragedians  relate  how  Zeus  changed 
himself  into  a  shower  of  gold,  and  drifting  through  a  roof, 
made  love  to  a  young  girl  who  was  shut  up  inside.  .  .  .^ 
You  have,  I  am  sure,  seen  tragedies  performed  ;  well,  then, 
you  know  of  what  I  am  thinking — of  a  certain  Neleus,  of 
Pelias.  It  was  an  old  goat-herd  who,  like  myself,  was  clad  in 
the  skin  of  a  she-goat,  who  found  those  heroes."  *  Thus  it 
is  through  tragedy  that  our  actors  know  of  the  adventures 

1  Men.,  fr.  65,  302,  402,  403,  530,  532,  635. 

»  Ibid.,  fr.  283,  348.        ^  ^a/i.,  244  et  seq.        *  'Eirirp.,  108  etseq. 


RECAPITULATION  261 

of  Danae,  of  Pclias  and  of  Nelcus.  Now,  in  Menander's 
day,  tragedy  was  a  popular  form  of  entertainment;  at 
the  time  of  the  Country  Dionysia  it  found  its  way  even  to 
the  most  humble  villages ;  it  was  owing  to  it  that  boorish 
rustics  who  wore  skins  of  she-goats  learned  the  story  of 
legendary  heroes,  without  having  to  leave  their  homes. 
That  Sophrona  should  seriously  threaten  to  recite  to 
Smicrines  an  entire  tirade  from  Euripides'  Auge  ^  is  no 
doubt  a  bit  of  exaggeration,  of  poetic  licence.  But  neither 
the  knowledge  of  mythology  displayed  by  Dcmeas  or  by 
Syriscus,  nor  the  use  they  make  of  it,  go  beyond  the  bounds 
of  probability,  any  more,  it  seems  to  me,  than  does  the 
wisdom  of  this  or  that  actor,  or  even  his  knowledge  of 
philosophy.  We  knew  beforehand,  through  Orion,  this 
passage  of  the  'ETZLZQenovreg :  "  Under  all  conditions 
justice  must  prevail  everywhere.  He  who  happens  to  be 
present  by  chance  must  make  his  best  efforts  to  help 
accomplish  this.  It  is  the  common  interest  of  all  men."  ^ 
Left  isolated  and  by  itself,  this  passage  appears  rather 
sententious  for  a  scene  in  comedy.  But  let  us  put  it  back 
into  the  context.  It  is  the  worthy  Syriscus  who  pronounces 
it,  when  he  begs  Smicrines  to  act  as  arbiter  between 
himself  and  Daos.  In  such  a  situation  a  maxim  gains 
the  weight  of  a  detailed  argument ;  moreover,  it  conveys 
the  sentiments  which  animate  the  entire  role  of  Syriscus, 
and  one  cannot  deny  its  propriety  without  at  the  same 
time  condemning  the  entire  character.  Another  passage 
of  the  'EnirQejiovTEg,  which  belongs  to  the  part  of  Onesimus, 
was  known  by  David  the  Armenian  and  by  Johannes 
Philoponus,  who  quoted  it,  the  former  in  order  to  convey 
an  idea  of  the  atheism  of  the  ancient  Greeks,  the  other  in 
order  to  illustrate  one  of  Epicurus'  theories  :  "  Do  you 
believe,  Smicrines,  that  the  gods  have  sufTicient  leisure  to 
distribute  good  and  evil  to  each  of  us  every  day?"^ 
These  words  and  some  that  follow  them  certainly  imply 
that    Onesimus    had    a    certain    amount    of   philosophical 

^  'Ennp.,  527.  *  Men.,  fr.  173  ^'EiriTp.,  15  ot  seq. 

*  Ibid.,  fr.  174  =  'Eirirp.,  54-4  ot  soq. 


262  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

training,  a  certain  acquaintance  with  the  systems  that 
were  then  in  vogue.  But  is  there  anything  inadmissible 
in  that?  Charisius,  Onesimus'  young  master,  was  well 
educated;  he  had  taken  lessons  of  the  philosophers; 
from  these  lessons,  from  this  education,  the  slave  who  was 
attached  to  his  person  may  have  gathered  some  scraps. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  "  style  " — the  U^iq — in  the 
exact  sense  of  that  word.  The  first  thing  that  strikes  us 
in  the  lengthier  fragments  of  Mcnander  is  the  fact  that 
restrictions  occasioned  by  the  metre  are  hardly  ever  felt. 
Rarely,  and  at  long  intervals,  a  word — and  most  frequently 
a  simple  particle,  such  as  be,  diq,  ydg,  and  their  like — is 
shifted  from  its  natural  position,  in  order  to  comply  with 
metric  or  rhythmic  laws.  As  a  rule,  however,  the  con- 
struction is  just  what  logic  requires  or  sense  demands, 
and  in  point  of  suppleness  and  vivacity  the  versified 
speech  of  the  FecoQ-yoc;,  of  the  Zafiia,  and  of  the  ' EnaQenovxEQ 
has  no  need  to  envy  prose. 

Furthermore,  the  general  tone,  phrasing,  and  vocabulary 
of  almost  all  the  scenes  are  strikingly  natural.  Glance 
through  the  Lefebvre  fragments.  Twice  or  three  times, 
at  the  very  most — at  the  beginning  of  Charisius'  soliloquy,^ 
in  the  "  imprecations  "  of  Demeas,^  and  in  an  expression 
of  Parmeno's  ^ — one  might  point  out  an  exaggerated 
dignity  and  some  traces  of  pompousness.  And,  even 
then,  in  two  or  three  instances  the  pompousness  is  in- 
tentional and  is  meant  to  amuse.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  great  many  expressions  appear  to  be  borrowed  from 
current  speech,  from  the  language  that  the  gentle  classes, 
or  even  the  masses  at  that  time,  used  in  their  conversation. 
This  applies  to  some  metaphors,  like  :  dneoxkr],  he  dried 
up,  meaning  "  he  died  " ;  ivTedQicuxe,  ioxevaxs,  Moschio 
took  Niceratus  in,  he  fixed  him  in  fine  style;  xaTaxonreig, 
you  cut  me  up,  meaning  "  you  weary  me  " ;  ^ovKolelQ, 
you  deceive  me,  literally  you  lead  me  out  to  pasture 
(equivalent,  I  think,  to  you  are  leading  me  a  pretty  dance) ; 
el  f.ii]  xaxajiETtoiKE,  unless  he  swallowed  something  (this  refers 

1  'E-KiTp.,  429  et  seq.  ^  2a^.,  110-111.         »  Ihid.,  329. 


RECAPITULATION  263 

to  things  that  Daos  is  by  law  obhgcd  to  return) ;   noixilov 
dQLorov,  SL  variegated,  haphazard  breakfast;    etc. 

—  to  some  expressions  hke  rdv  /mxQuv,  the  little  fellow ; 
iv  eavrov  elvai,  to  be  quite  at  one's  ease;  nqlv  nrvaai, 
quieker  than  you  can  spit,  meaning  "  in  the  twinkUng  of 
an  eye";  to  Jtegag,  after  all  is  said  and  done;  to  delva, 
"I  mean"  {"' thingamahoh,^''  "■what-do-you-call-it ?'")•, 

—  to  interjections  like  nd^,  silence ;  nav  (for  nave), 
stop  it; 

—  to  insults  or  insulting  adjectives  :  Ufiq)og,  dnoTtXrjxzog, 
TiaxvdeQjuog,  oxaTO(pdyog,  eQyaoTrjQiov,  fiaoTiyiag,  Xouxdorgia, 
legoovXag,   0)]Qiov; 

—  to  hyperbole  that  has  become  commonplace :  delov 
juloog,  xaxov  na^fieyedeg,  ndvdeiva  ngdyjiiara; 

—  to  threats  and  exaggerated  curses  :  xard^m  rt)v 
Kscpalriv  oov,  anoxxevu)  oe,  dnoacpayeup; 

—  to  decidedly  brutal  expressions  :  eiocpdeigsodai,  dnorpOei- 
geodai,  to  go  to  the  devil ;    xsxQayevai,  to  bawl ; 

—  to  familiar  diminutives  :  naiddqiov,  yvvaiov,  [AeiqaxvXha, 
ixaiQidiov,  noQvidiov,  oixidiov; 

—  possibly  to  certain  compound  words,  for  example, 
to  words  with  the  prefix  ovv-,  like  ovvcmaLzelv,  ovvaQeoxeiv, 
ovvevQioxeiv,  ovvexxeloOai ; 

—  to  nouns,  verbs,  and  adjectives  that  are  either  rare 
or  are  used  in  a  special  sense  :  xsQ/^idriov,  a  little  sum, 
change ;  IfjQog,  a  mere  nothing ;  negiegyog,  preoccupied ; 
i^dvg,  a  good  fellow ;  xaxc^Orig,  a  rogue ;  /btergiog,  not  bad ; 
[liXrjixa,  the  object  of  one's  affections ;  diafpoQOjg,  in  a  superior 
way;  xaQiEvxojg,  nicely;  lakelv,  to  say,  to  speak  without 
meaning  anything,  like  gossiping ;  nagdyeiv,  to  go,  to  betake 
oneself  somewhere ;  ovvdyeiv,  to  sit  down  at  table ;  x^^^^^ 
to  lose  one's  head;   ^Xeneiv,  to  see  nothing  but; 

—  to  abstract  terms  that  are  used  in  preference  to  other 
forms  of  expression  :  dog  xi]V  xdgtv;  xard  zijv  dooiv  rfjg 
/arjTQog;  ovx  evQeoig  xom  eoxiv,  alX^  dcpaiQeoig;  ovx  Iveaxiv 
ovde  elg  nag'  ijuol  /aegiofidg ;  civ  ovvageor]  ooi  xovjudv  ivOvfirj/Li 
&ga;  xat  xaxdkafi^dveig  dialXaydg  Ivoeig  x  exeivojv  xcov 
xaxd)v;  vvvl  6'  dvayvcogia/iidg  avxolg  yiyove;    avxrj  iaxlv  i] 


26 1  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

ocor7]Qia  xov  Tigdyjuaxog;  cpoqa  yciQ  yeyove  rovzov  vvv  xaXri, 
etc. 

Above  all,  the  vocabulary  of  these  fragments  has  one  thing 
in  common  with  that  of  ordinary  conversation — the  fact 
that  there  is  but  little  variety  in  it.  Words  with  general 
meanings  that  are  inexact  and  colourless  recur  at  every 
turn.  For  instance,  such  ultra-commonplace  expressions 
as  TO  TtQdyjua,  to  yeyovdg;  "general  utility"  verbs  like 
exsi-v,  lafi^dvEiv,  which  could  often  be  replaced  to  advantage 
by  other  verbs  with  a  more  definite  meaning ;  the  various 
forms  of  the  perfect  yeyovevai ;  likewise  Xalelv,  which  has 
already  been  mentioned  in  another  connection;  juavddveiv 
and  its  composites ;  ^adiCeiv,  rrjQelv ;  also  f^gaxv,  ddzTov, 
ocpddga,  ETiieixaJg,  dxQi^aJg,  nvxvd,  ixnodcov;  also  rdXag  and 
dvojuoQog,  very  often  used  in  exclamations ;  novrjQog,  deivog, 
iroifiog,  evTiQETirig,  xofxxpog,  xoofxiog,  dorelog,  ovvijdrjg,  TZQOJierijg, 
EVTQEJiTJg,  dzonog ;  zagax^  and  its  derivatives ;  fisgog,  mean- 
ing role ;  /naiveoOai,  olfj,d)CeLv ;  fxdxEoQai,  to  pick  a  quarrel ; 
d(paviCEiv,  to  suppress,  etc.  Repetitions  of  words  are 
especially  frequent  in  Lefebvre's  fragments.  The  same 
verb  or  composites  of  the  same  verb  are  often  repeated 
in  several  successive  lines. ^  One  actor  has  no  scruples 
about  repeating — sometimes  after  a  very  short  interval — 
a  phrase  that  either  he  or  some  other  actor  has  already 
used.^ 

As  to  word-form,  perhaps  the  most  noticeable  thing  is 
the  frequent  occurrence  of  pronouns  or  of  adverbs  in  -i, 
which  the  Athenians  must  have  used  regularly.  There 
are  no  abnormal  or  faulty  forms,  and  such  forms  as  crabbed 
purists  attacked  and  criticised  with  severity  in  Menander's 
comedies  were,  certainly,  very  few  and  far  between.  As 
a  general  rule,  the  poet  did  not  allow  his  love  of  linguistic 
truthfulness  to  carry  him  to  the  point  of  admitting  jargon 
and  barbarisms  into  the  speech  of  even  his  most  humble 
characters.     His  use  of  case,  time  and  mood  is   almost 

1  'ETTirp.,  60-62,  274-277 ;  Sa^t.,  46-48,  etc. 

*  Ibid.,  45-46  and  118;  297-300  and  314-315;  UeptK.,  35-36  and 
110-111,  etc. 


RECAPITULATION  265 

always  in  accord  with  the  laws  of  classical  grammar.  At 
the  very  most,  we  might  find  a  few  passages  in  which 
the  perfect,  without  any  apparent  reason,  is  used  in 
preference  to  the  aorist,  the  present  or  the  imperfect. 

The  phraseology  is  neither  more  correct  nor  more  com- 
plex than  one  would  expect  in  familiar  conversation. 
There  are  no  long,  learnedly  constructed,  articulated  and 
well-balanced  sentences,  such  as  orators  use.  If  there  is 
an  echo  of  a  lawyer's  eloquence  in  the  talk  of  Daos  and  of 
Syriscus,  it  is  a  distant  and  faint  echo.  Where  Daos 
attempts  to  point  out  what,  in  his  opinion,  is  paradoxical 
in  the  claims  of  his  adversary,  he  expresses  himself  as 
follows — 

el  xal  fiadiCcov  evnev  a./.i    i/uol  tavra  x[al 
■^v  xoivoQ  'EQ/ifjg,  ro  juev  dv  ovrog  £2a[/?e  dr), 
TO  d'  iyd).     Movov  d'evgovrog.  ov  naqibv  \ov  ye 
anavt'  exstv  oiet  oe  delv,  ifie  6'  ovds  ev ;  ^ 

As  Croiset  remarks,  his  reasoning  is  really  as  follows  : 
Even  had  both  of  us  made  the  find,  I  ought  to  have  had 
my  part ;  I  made  it  all  by  myself,  how  can  I  agree  to  have 
nothing?  But  Daos,  who  is  an  indifferent  logician,  and 
has  no  experience  as  an  orator,  cannot  refrain  from  adding 
extraneous  ideas  to  the  essential  one,  thereby  obscuring 
it.  By  heaping  up  the  details  of  a  picturesque  story,  he 
runs  the  risk  of  his  argument  being  lost  sight  of.  As  for 
the  symmetry  of  his  words,  it  is  by  no  means  rigidly  main- 
tained. As  soon  as  he  states  what  he  is  asked  to  state, 
he  loses  his  coolness ;  up  to  this  time  he  had  spoken 
of  Syriscus  in  the  third  person;  now  he  addresses  him 
directly.  In  Syriscus'  speech,  which  is  not  bad,  con- 
sidering that  he  is  a  charcoal-burner,  there  is  no  sentence 
that  exceeds  five  or  six  lines.  One  of  the  longest  of  them 
suggests  an  alternative — 

Nvv  yvcoorSov, 
^eXtloxs.,  001  ram    eotlv,  tog  i^ol  doxel, 

^  'EiTiTp.,  6(5  ct  seq. 


266  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

ra  XQVo"  fj  ravO'  6  ri  nor'  eoxi  noxeqa  del 
xaxa  n)v  dooiv  rfjg  ^rjTQog,  rjzig  ^v  noxe, 
Tcp  naidicp  x7]QeioO'  ecog  dv  exXQacpfj, 
r)  xov  XeXconodvxriKox'  avxov  xam    ey^eiv, 
el  JiQOJXog  evqe,  xaXXoxQia.^ 

The  development  of  the  thought  is  clear  and  correct,  but 
although  somewhat  lengthy,  it  lacks  fullness,  and  needs 
somehow  to  be  rounded  off.  Each  line  carries  the  ex- 
pression of  the  thought  a  step  further,  as  it  were,  and  one 
might  say  that  the  speaker  was  not  able  at  once  to  get  a 
complete  view  of  what  he  had  to  present,  and  that  he 
discovered  it  bit  by  bit. 

The  author  of  the  treatise  IleQl  egjurjveiag  mentions  the 
frequent  omission  of  the  connecting  particle  as  one  of  the 
characteristics  of  Menander's  style. ^  And,  indeed,  this 
is  perfectly  true  of  the  extant  fragments.  Daos'  speeches 
alone  supply  many  examples — 

'Avedoju'rjv  '  anrjldov  olxaS'  am    e^MV  ' 
TQeq)eLv  efiellov '  xam    &do^e  fioi  xoxe.^ 

Toiovxooi  xig  '^v.     ' Enoi[iaivov  ndliv 
icodev.     ^HWev  ovxog.  .  .  .^ 

"OXfjv  xrjv  rifjieQav 
xaxexQirpe  '  Xmaqovvxi  xat  neidovxi  jue 
VTieoxojurjv.     "EbcoK  '  anfilQev,  juvQia 
evx6/j,evog  dyadd '  Xa/i^dvcov  /uov  Kaxecpilei 
xdg  %elQag.^ 

I  might  quote  similar  passages  by  the  dozen;  and  the 
omission  of  the  connecting  particle  is  not  less  frequent 
when  the  tone  of  a  passage  is  impassioned.  Let  us  listen 
to  Smicrines  storming  when  he  comes  to  take  back  his 
daughter — 

'^Av  jurj  xaxd^oj  xrjv  xe(palr]v  oov,  ZocpQovr}, 
xdmox'  dnoloLfirjv.     Novdexijoeig  koI  ov  jue ; 

1  'EiriTp.,  90  et  seq.  *  Demetr.,  Hepl  ipix-qv.,  193. 

'  'ETTiTp.,  33-34.  *  Ibid.,  39-40.  «  Ihid.,  53  et  seq. 


RECAPITULATION  267 

ngojierajg  dndyo)  rr)v  OvyareQ',  lEQoovh  ygav ; 
'yl/lAd  TiEQifiEivco  xaracpayelv  rrjv  tiqoIku.  jliov 
rov  %Qy]or6v  avrfjg  dvdqa  xai  loyovq  Xeyoj 
TiSQi  rcbv  ijiiavrov ;   ravra  ovjuneideig  jue  ov ; 
OvH  6^v?iafir]oai  xqeIxxov,   OIjuoj^el  /uaxQU, 
av  hi  lalfiQ  XL.     Kgivojiiai  ngog  Z(0(pQ6vr]v; 
"  3lExdnEioov  avxt^v,  dxav  t^//?."     Ovxo)  xi  fJLOi 
dyaOov  ysvoixo,  Zcjcpgovrj,  xxX.  .  .  .^ 

With  the  mute  text  before  us,  it  is  really  puzzling  to 
distinguish  how  much  of  this  violent  passage  Smicrines 
speaks  in  his  own  name  and  how  much  he  attributes  to 
Sophrona,  how  much  of  it  is  to  be  taken  literally  and  how 
much  is  to  be  regarded  as  ironical.  We  certainly  have 
before  us  the  jerky,  breathless  utterance  of  a  man  who  is 
choked  with  anger,  an  utterance  which  needs  to  be  inter- 
preted by  the  accents  and  the  gestures  of  the  speaker. 
The  asyndetic  style — Xe^iq.  XeXvixevi-] — was,  so  says  the 
treatise  IIeqI  EQiirjvelag,  entirely  adapted  to  the  stage, 
vTioxQLXixi],  for  in  its  very  disconnectedness  it  resembled 
the  language  that  was  actually  spoken. 

Besides  these  asyndeta,  the  parentheses,  the  bold 
elisions  and  the  careless  or  almost  incorrect  constructions 
which  distinguish  Menander's  style,  in  many  instances, 
co-operate  in  making  it  resemble  everyday  language. 
"Eoxi  d'dvdgaHEvg  (I  must  tell  you  that  he  is  a  charcoal- 
burner),  Daos  casually  observes,  when,  in  the  course  of 
his  speech,  he  first  mentions  Syriscus.^  When  speaking  of 
the  matters  in  dispute,  he  says  :  Mihqo.  ds  ijv  xavxa  xal  XfjQog 
xig,  ovdiv  (it  was  a  small  matter,  a  bagatelle,  a  nothing).^ 
To  xiXfi*  Eidsg  nagiovaa;  (Did  you  see  the  pond  as  you 
passed  by?),  asks  Smicrines,  stopping  in  the  middle  of  a 
sentence  in  which  he  threatens  Sophrona  with  a  prolonged 
immersion  in  cold  water.^ 

When    I    begin    to    cite    elliptical    phrases,    the    choice 

becomes  embarrassing.     Tig  ovv;   asks  Daos ;  ^   he  means 

to  say,  "  Who  will  act  as  judge  between  us?"   Ti  ydg  aoi 

1  -ETTiTp.,  464  et  seq.  «  Ibid.,  40.  «  Ibid.,  59-60. 

*  Ibid.,  474.  5  Ibid.,  4. 


268  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

jneredidovv ;  "Why  did  I  give  you  a  share  of  ivhat  I  found  t  "  ^ 
Mlxqov  y  dvcoOev,  deelares  the  same  Daos  a  Uttle  further  on, 
at  the  beginning  of  his  harangue ;  ^  he  means  to  say  : 
"  I  shall  recur  to  the  matters  referred  to  a  little  while 
ago."  IIqIv  eljielv,^  juovov  d'evgdviog^ — in  both  these  cases 
the  personal  pronoun — ifie,  ijuov — is  omitted,  and  must  be 
inferred  from  the  context :  "  Ti  ydg  ;  "  eyay  "  TceQiegydg  eifxi''^ 
iyo),  standing  by  itself,  means,  "  said  /."  Ovxovv  kyo)  fxera 
ravra^ — one  must  mentally  add  U^co.  "Oreo  ^ovXeoO' 
kniXQineiv   hi    Idyo)    hoifiOQ'^ — the    word    £f//t    is    lacking. 

KoLvdv     koXL     TM     ^LO)     TldvXOiV,^     TlEQl     XOVTCOV     EOXl,^     OVX     ^OXl 

dlxaiov,'^^  dgags,'^^  naidiov  'oxiv,  ovx  kfid,^^  vvvi  d'vndvoiav  xal 
xaQaxi]v  exei,^^  ovxovv  ovvageoxEL  ooi,^'^  xal  ydg  dixaiov ;  ^^ 
in  all  these  instances  the  subject  must  be  supplied.  Else- 
where the  object  or  the  attribute  must  be  supplied.  Zv 
d'k7id7]adg  /ae  6ovg,^^  that  is  to  say:  av  d'kTidrjadg  jue  xvqiov 
xov  naidiov  dovg  to  naidiov.  Kaxiddiv  ixexovoav,^"^  that  is 
xov  daxxv?dov.  Elsewhere,  an  adverb  stands  for  a  whole 
sentence.  Avqiov  de,^^  until  to-morrow,  then.  Oimco  ydg,^^ 
certainly  not,  /  did  not  know  it  before.  Elsewhere  the 
same  is  true  of  nouns.  Bgvxrjd/xog  evdov,  xd/udg,  exoxaoig 
ovxvij,^^  means:  he  roared,  he  tore  his  hair,  he  repeatedly 
fell  into  fits.  Occasionally  words  of  the  greatest  importance 
must  be  added  to  the  text.  Ti  ovv  xdze,  ox'  eXd/x^avov 
xovx\  ovx  djiTjXovv  xavxd  oe,^^  but  why,  you  will  say  .  .  .  ? 
Koivog  'Egjurig,^^  a  find  by  both  of  us,  you  claim  !  The 
following  are  some  colloquial  instances  of  brachylogy  : 
Tgacpelg  sv  eqydxaig  vnegoxpsxai  xavxa^^ — here  xavxa  signifies 
the  life  of  the  egydxai.  "Idcojuev  el  xovx"  Soxiv  ^^ — let  us  see 
whether  what  we  surmise  is  actually  the  case.  Here  is  a 
clumsily  constructed  phrase  :  Tov  diafiagxelv  /urjde  h  nQoxeqa 
Xeyovoa;^^  word  for  word  it  means  "  in  order  to  deceive 

1  'ETTLTp.,  5.  .  '  Ibid.,  23.  *  Ibid.,  47.  *  Ibid.,  68. 

*  Ibid.,U-'io.  «  Ibid.,  77.  '  Ibid.,  198-199.  «  Ibid.,  18-19. 

»  Ibid.,  30.  1"  Ibid.,  131.  "  Ibid.,  185.  i''  Ibid.,  186. 

13  Ibid.,  240.  1*  Ibid.,  333.  ^^  Ibid.,  346.  i«  Ibid.,  90. 

1'  Ibid.,  299.  "  Ibid.,  197.  i'  Ibid.,  262.  «<>  Ibid.,  414. 

"  /6irf.,  96-97.  ^^  Ibid.,  100.  "  Ibid.,  lOi-105.  ^^  Ibid.,  336. 
"  Ibid..  307-308. 


RECAPITULATION  269 

me  not  even  in  one  point  by  being  the  first  to  speak," 
instead  of  "  saying  nothing  first,  in  order  to  deceive  me." 
And  so  on. 

Yet  another  detail  must  be  pointed  out  :  eomie  actors 
who  give  an  account  of  some  adventure  very  often  intro- 
duce, in  direct  discourse,  remarks  which  they  themselves 
have  made  or  which  they  have  heard.  In  the  " EniZQiTiovreg 
Daos  quotes  the  words  of  Syriscus,  his  own  words,  and 
even  what  he  has  said  to  himself — always  in  direct  dis- 
course.^ Onesimus  frequently  quotes  the  exclamations 
and  the  laments  of  his  master.^  In  the  neQixeiQo/j,ivr] 
Daos  repeats  verbatim  the  harangue  with  which  he  was 
greeted  in  Myrrhina's  house. ^  In  the  Za/xia  Demeas 
repeats  the  exclamations  of  the  busy  servants,  the  gossip 
with  the  old  nurse  and  her  conversation  with  the  little 
maid;^  and  Daos,  in  the  Fecogydg,  the  despairing  cries  of 
Cleanetus'  servants ;  ^  and  so  on.  Need  I  say  that  this  is 
the  usual  procedure  of  popular  rhetoric  ? 

I  hesitate  to  continue  this  analysis.  Realism  in  style 
is  something  more  easily  felt  than  described.  In  order 
to  appreciate  the  language  of  Menander's  actors,  one  must 
read,  in  the  original  text,  the  soliloquies  and  the  dialogues 
which  fortunate  discoveries  have  recently  restored  to  us. 
We  must  compare  the  passages  whose  tone  is  the  loftiest 
and  the  most  affecting — like  the  soliloquy  of  Charisius  or 
the  lamentations  of  Polemo — with  the  most  purely  pathetic 
passages  in  the  tragedies  of  Euripides,  or  almost  any 
passage  of  dialogue  with  those  conversations  in  Aristo- 
phanes' plays  in  which  caricature  is  least  in  evidence,  and 
with  the  conversations  of  Herondas'  characters ;  or  the 
narrations  of  a  Daos  or  of  Demeas  with  analogous  passages 
in  the  works  of  the  best  prose-writers — such  as  Lysias 
or  Hyperides,  who  were  also  past  masters  in  the  art 
of  portraying  character  {fjOonoiia).  The  difference  will, 
assuredly,   be  perceived  at  once.     More  than  any  other 

1  'ETTirp.,  36-38,  44etseq.       *  Ihid.,  207-208,  409,  411-412,  415et8eq. 
'  rifpi/f.,  129  et  seq.  *  2au.,  12,  27  et  seq.,  37  ot  seq. 

'  Pfttipy.,  57. 


270  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

piece  of  Greek  writing,  certain  passages  of  Menander  give 
the  reader  the  feeHng  that  he  is  hstening  to  Hve  men 
expressing  themselves  in  their  own  vernacular. 

What  is  true  of  certain  scenes  of  the  'EnitQeTiovreg, 
of  the  ZajLua,  of  the  JIsQixeigo/uevr]  and  of  the  Fecogydg 
was,  no  doubt,  as  a  rule,  not  true  of  all  the  plays  of  the 
vea.  In  some  eases  the  comic  poets,  with  a  view  to  pro- 
voking laughter,  deliberately  imputed  language  to  an  actor 
that  was  not  in  harmony  with  his  social  standing  or  with 
the  dramatic  situation — a  point  to  which  I  shall  revert 
when  I  review  the  comic  elements  of  the  plays.  Some- 
times it  was  through  negligence  or  incapacity  that  the 
poets  were  untrue  to  nature.  In  fragment  531  of  Menander 
an  old  servant  lectures  his  ward,  and  apologises  for  using 
an  expression  that  is  borrowed  from  tragedy.  More  than 
one  actor  in  comedy  must  have  been  guilty  of  similar 
borrowings  without  apologising  for  them.  Of  this  the 
scene  from  the  IleQixEiQO/Lih'rj,  which  Korte  has  recently 
published,  1  affords  an  interesting  proof.  Here  we  read 
sentences  like  the  following — • 

Kqyjvyiv  xlv   \elne\  xal  xonov  <y'>  vtiooxlov.  (367) 

Tig  d'  ovxoQ  iariv;  ei  defxig,  xdjuol  tpgdoov.  (369) 

Ti  yLvexai  nod' ;  ax;  XQefno,  xdXaiv    [eyw].  (375) 
"Hxovoa  xr}V  vavv,  rj  nagelx'  7)f.uv  XQoq)^v, 

[dEiv]dv  xaXvy^ai  neXayoQ  Aiyaiag  dXdg.  (378-379) 

TdXaiv    eycoys,  xfjg  Tv^rjg  icpoXxiov.  (380)  ^ 

In  this  entire  passage  the  speaker  is  changed  only  at  the 
end  of  a  line,  often  from  line  to  line,  after  the  manner  of 
tragedy.  Hence  a  certain  formality,  a  certain  stiffness, 
which  is  all  the  more  noticeable  because  several  half-lines — 
again  after  the  manner  of  tragedy — are,  to  speak  frankly, 
mere  padding,  and,  as  it  stands,  the  passage  might  perfectly 
well  occur  in  a  tragedy.  It  deals  with  an  dvayvcoQio/iog, 
and  probably  the  author  did  not  think  it  necessary  to 

^  In  the  Berichte  der  sacks.  Ges.  der  Wissenschaften,  1908,  pp.  147  etseq. 
*  For  the  reader's  greater  convenience,  the  Hnes  are  numbered  according 
to  Korte's  Menandrea,  Editio  Minor  (Teubner,  1910). ( — Tr.). 


RECAPITULATION  271 

trouble  himself  about  realism  in  treating  a  hackneyed 
theme.  If  we  had  the  complete  works  of  Menander  we 
should,  I  believe,  find  more  than  one  defect  of  this  sort, 
especially  in  his  earlier  plays.  It  was  not  all  at  once — 
so  Plutarch  assures  us — that  the  author  of  the  'EniTQe- 
novTEg  acquired  the  mastery  we  have  admired. ^ 

As  for  his  rivals  and  successors,  there  is  reason  to  believe 
that  they  were  inferior  to  him  in  style  as  well  as  in  other 
respects.  The  author  of  the  treatise  IIeqI  EQ/urjveiag  says 
so  quite  clearly,  as  far  as  Philemon,  the  most  famous  of 
them,  is  concerned. ^  If  we  may  believe  him,  the  latter's 
style  was  of  that  periodic  and  closely  connected  kind 
{Xiiig  ovvriQT7]jusvr]  xai  olov  '^0(paha/xev7]  roli;  ovvdeo/uoK;), 
which  is  better  adapted  for  reading  than  for  the  stage ; 
and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  some  of  the  extant  fragments  \ 
appear  to  justify  this  opinion.  In  fragment  94  we  read  : 
"  The  just  man  is  not  the  man  who  commits  no  act  of 
injustice,  but  the  man  who  is  in  a  position  to  commit 
them  but  does  not  wish  to  do  so  (ov/  o  jlo)  ddixajv,  dW 
SoTig  .  .  .) ;  not  the  man  who  refrains  from  stealing 
little  things,  but  he  who  has  the  strength  not  to  steal 
big  things  when  he  might  take  them  and  keep  them 
with  impunity  {ovS'  og  .  .  .,  aXV  og  .  .  .);  not  he  who 
merely  observes  these  rules,  but  he  who  has  an  honest 
and  sterling  character,  and  desires  to  be  just  and  not 
merely  to  seem  to  be  so  (for  the  third  time  :  ovd* 
Sg  .  .  .,  dW  6g  .  .  .)."  It  must  have  been  hard  for 
the  actor  who  had  to  speak  this  ponderous  passage  to 
avoid  appearing  pedantic.  Elsewhere  absurd  conceits 
disfigure  Philemon's  style.  For  example,  in  fragment  23  : 
"  nothing  is  more  charming  or  more  worthy  of  a  well- 
brought-up  man  than  to  be  able  to  exercise  self-control 
when  hurt.  For  if  he  who  is  hurt  docs  not  show  it,  he 
who  hurts  is  hurt  while  hurting  "  (d  hidogcTjv  ydg,  dv  6 
XoidoQov f.iEvog  /ut)  nQoonoifjXai,  XoidoQElxai  XoidogoJv). 

Through  the  medium  of  Plautus'  adaptations  (in  more 
than  one  passage  of  the  Trinummus,  the  Mercator,  or  the 

^  Plut.,  Compar.  Aristoph.  et  Men.,  II.  3.      *  Dcmetr.,  rifp!  fpixi)v.,  193. 


272  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

MosteUaria)  we  can  still  trace  how  the  language  of  the 
Greek  prototype  was  sometimes  too  pretentious  and  too 
formal,  or  how  the  development  of  the  theme  was  too  lofty 
for  the  comic  stage.  Nor  are  the  plays  translated  from 
Philemon  the  only  ones  which,  on  examination,  confirm 
this  remark.  In  other  plays  translated  from  Diphilus, 
like  the  Rudens  and  the  Casina,  or  from  unknown  authors, 
like  the  Amphitryon  and  the  Poennlus,  we  occasionally 
find  traces  of  affectation  or  of  a  loftiness  of  tone  that  ill 
accord  with  the  bourgeois  spirit.  The  inappropriate  and 
unintentional  imitation  of  tragic  style  which  had  been 
common  at  the  time  of  the  /n^or] — many  fragments  of 
Antiphanes  and  of  other  comic  writers  of  the  same  period, 
as  well  as  several  passages  from  the  Persa,  give  proof  of 
this — cannot,  when  everything  is  taken  into  consideration, 
have  been  of  rare  occurrence  in  the  comedies  of  the 
subsequent  period. 

We  must  not,  therefore,  be  too  optimistic  in  generalising 
from  such  conclusions  as  we  have  been  led  to  by  the  perusal 
of  a  few  pages  of  Menander.  Even  in  the  most  flourishing 
period  of  New  Comedy  truth  and  naturalness  of  style  was, 
beyond  question,  the  distinctive  merit  of  the  greatest 
writers  and  a  characteristic  of  their  best  works.  But 
wherever  it  was  found  it  contributed,  I  believe,  in  a  very 
large  measure  to  the  success  of  the  work  and  of  its  author. 
When  Quintilian  sings  the  praises  of  Menander,  of  whom 
he  says  that  he  knew  how  to  picture  to  the  life  every 
variety  of  character,  he  lauds  his  gift  of  language  [eloquendi 
facultas)  quite  as  much  as  his  talent  for  psychology;  ^ 
and  other  ancient  critics  appear  to  give  similar  testimony. 
Possibly  it  is  chiefly  to  the  realism  of  their  style,  which 
is  distinguished  above  all  others  by  its  lightness,  its 
minuteness  of  detail  and  its  delicacy  of  touch,  that  the 
comedies  of  the  prince  of  the  vda  owed  that  atmosphere 
of  real  life  which  Aristophanes  of  Byzantium  so  greatly 
admired  and  which  he  extolled  in  his  well-known  saying  : 
^^  MevavdQE  xat  /5/e,  ndregog  ciq  vncbv  noxeqov  efxifxrioaxo ; 
1  Quint.,  X.  1,  70. 


PART    TWO 

THE     STRUCTURE     OF    THE     PLAYS    OF 
NEW    COMEDY 


CHAPTER    I 

THE     EXTENT    TO     WHICH     THE     LATIN    COMEDIES 

ENLIGHTEN     US    ABOUT    THE     COMPOSITION 

OF    THEIR    PROTOTYPES 

WE  are  not  in  possession  of  nearly  as  many  documents 
for  the  study  of  the  composition  of  the  comedies 
of  the  new  period  as  for  the  study  of  their  contents.  Of 
course,  recent  discoveries  have  unearthed  important  parts 
of  certain  plays ;  still,  we  are  not  yet  in  a  position  to  read 
the  text  of  a  complete  comedy  by  Menander.  As  for  the 
abstracts  of  lost  comedies,  they  are  incomplete  and  give 
few  details.  We  must  still  turn  to  the  imitations  by 
Plautus  and  Terence  if  we  wish  to  know  how  the  original 
works  looked  in  their  complete  state.  But  the  idea  that 
we  can  form  from  these  imitations  cannot  possibly  be  exact. 
Some  conventional  touch,  some  particular  shade  of  feel- 
ing, or  some  mannerism  may,  indeed,  have  a  nationality 
which  immediately  distinguishes  it ;  but  this  is  not  true 
of  the  plot,  the  treatment,  and  the  proportions  of  the 
various  parts,  of  qualities  of  logic,  of  probability,  of  truth 
to  life — nor  of  the  corresponding  defects — which  appear 
in  the  economy  of  a  dramatic  work.  We  have  positive 
testimony  for  the  fact  that  the  writers  of  Latin  comedy 
did  not  always  preserve  the  composition  of  the  plays 
which  they  imitated.  Let  me,  therefore,  begin  this  second 
part  of  our  study  by  endeavouring  to  determine  how  far 
one  can  rely  upon  them. 

§1 

Contamination 

Additions,  Omissions,  and  Substitutions 

One  particular  liberty  which  the  Latin  comic  writers 
often  took  with  their  models — and  it  is  the  liberty  of 
which  I  propose  to  speak  most  frequently — soon  came  to 
be  designated  by  a  special  term  :  contaminatio.  "  Con- 
tamination "  consists  in  the  fusion  of  two  or  more  originals, 

276 


276  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

and  it  is  my  task  to  point  out,  as  far  as  may  be,  how  this 
fusion  was  brought  about. 

As  far  as  Terence  is  concerned,  we  get  valuable  informa- 
tion from  his  own  statements  and  from  the  commentaries 
of  Donatus.  Three  out  of  six  plays — the  Adelphi,  the 
Andria,  and  the  Eunuchus — are  certainly  contaminated. 
The  chief  model  of  each  of  these  plays  was  a  comedy  by 
Menander,  the  'Ade}.(pot  /3',  the  'Avdgia,  and  the  Evvovxog. 
But  an  episode  in  the  ZvvanodvfjoxovTEg  by  Diphilus  is 
introduced  in  the  Adelphi — namely,  the  carrying  off  of  the 
courtesan.^  The  first  scene  of  the  IleQivdia  was  bodily 
transferred  into  the  Andria,  with  the  exception  that  in 
the  IleQivdia  the  father  talked  with  his  wife  and  not  with 
a  freed  man.^  The  roles  of  Byrria  and  of  Charinus,  neither 
of  which,  as  we  are  told,  occurs  in  the  'Avdgia,  may  like- 
wise have  been  taken  over  from  the  JleQivOia;  at  any 
rate,  we  can  for  the  present  assume  that  this  was  the  case. 
Finally,  the  soldier  and  his  parasite  in  the  Eunuchus  ^ 
are  borrowed  from  the  Kola^.^  That  is  all  we  learn  from 
the  ancients  on  this  subject,  and  modern  scholars  have 
made  many  attempts  to  interpret  this  information,  but 
they  have  not  always  reached  trustworthy  and  universally 
accepted  conclusions,  and  will,  no  doubt,  never  succeed 
in  doing  so.  Nevertheless,  I  do  not  believe  that  in  putting 
forward  certain  facts,  as  I  intend  to  do,  I  shall  run  the  risk 
of  encountering  any  very  serious  objections. 

In  the  Adelphi  the  passage  borrowed  from  Diphilus 
must  extend  from  line  155  to  line  196.  Possibly  it  takes 
the  place  of  a  scene  in  which  the  young  man  and  his  com- 
panion passed  quickly  across  the  stage,  leading  the  cour- 
tesan away.  Or  else,  if  in  Menander' s  play  the  carrying 
off  had  already  taken  place  and  the  ravishers  had  already 
secretly  entered  the  house  before  the  opening  of  the  play, 
it  was  interpolated,  just  as  it  was,  between  two  scenes 

1  Ad.,  prol.  6  et  seq. 

*  Donat.,  note  to  line  13  of  the  prologue  to  the  Andria. 
3  Ibid.,  note  to  line  301. 

*  Eun.,  prol.  30  et  seq.,  Donat.,  note  to  line  228. 


LATIN    COMEDIES  277 

derived  from  the  'AdeXq^ot — the  conversation  between  the 
two  old  men  and  the  soHloquy  of  the  pander,  as  he  follows 
his  slave  at  a  distance.  It  is  not  likely  that  Terence  would 
have  made  other  changes — or,  at  least,  other  appreciable 
changes — in  the  context  of  a  play  in  order  to  introduce 
this  passage  which  did  not  fit  into  it.  Suetonius  says  that 
Varro  preferred  the  beginning  (princijniim)  of  the  Latin 
Adelphi  to  that  of  Menander's  'AdeXcpoL^  This  does  not 
necessarily  mean  that  the  opening  scenes  differed  greatly, 
when  regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  dramatic  economy. 
It  may  be  that  Varro  was  thinking  merely  of  differences 
of  detail  and  expression.  In  any  case,  all  that  we  can  take 
for  granted  is  that  the  'AdE^q^oi  opened  with  a  soliloquy 
by  Syrus,  telling  of  the  kidnapping  as  an  accomplished 
fact,  and  explaining  the  attendant  circumstances ;  and 
that  thereupon  Micio,  who  had  been  kept  in  ignorance  of 
his  son's  return,  gave  free  vent  to  his  paternal  solicitude 
just  as  he  does  in  Terence's  play. 

In  the  first  scene  of  the  Andria,  the  dialogue,  which  is 
borrowed  from  the  JleQivdia,  was  substituted  for  the  father's 
soliloquy,  which  served  the  same  purpose  at  the  beginning 
of  the  'AvdQia — to  explain  the  plot  of  the  play.  The  differ- 
ence between  the  two  was,  no  doubt,  merely  a  difference 
in  wording.  As  for  Byrria  and  Charinus,  it  is  clear  that 
their  parts  could  be  cut  out  of  the  Andria  without  depriving 
that  play  of  a  complete  and  satisfactory  plot — the  plot 
of  the  'AvdQia.  True,  this  is  not  the  case  with  all  the  scenes 
(or  parts  of  scenes)  in  which  these  actors  appear.  While 
there  are  some  scenes  like  Act  II.  scene  i.,  Act  V.  scenes  v. 
and  vi.,  or  the  first  part  of  Act  IV.  scene  i. — that  may 
have  been  taken  from  the  JlsQivOia  and  simply  added  to 
the  'Avdgia;  others — like  Act  II.  scene  ii..  Act  II.  scene  v., 
the  end  of  scene  i.  Act  IV.,  and  Act  IV.  scene  ii. — must 
necessarily  have  had  their  equivalents  in  the  'Avdgia. 
However,  the  changes  which  the  introduction  of  new 
characters  into  these  various  passages  may  have  called 
for  cannot  have  been  very  radical.      They  consisted  in 

1  Suet.,  Vita  Ter. 


278  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

simple  additions,  in  the  introduction  of  a  few  asides,  of  a 
few  replies  and  a  few  bits  of  dialogue.  Moreover,  we  are 
not  sure  that  Terence  took  the  responsibility  of  modifying 
his  principal  model  in  all  the  above  passages.  We  know 
that  the  'Avdgia  and  the  UEQivQCa  dealt  with  approxim- 
ately the  same  subject.^  The  neqivdia,  from  which  we 
have  assumed  that  the  characters  of  Byrria  and  Charinus 
were  borrowed,  admitted  of  scenes  analogous  to  those 
which  I  am  discussing,  and  it  may  very  well  be  that  several 
of  the  above  scenes  were  borrowed  by  the  Latin  poet. 

In  the  Eunuchus,  Terence  did  not  invent  the  character 
of  Phaedria's  rival ;  he  certainly  existed  in  the  'Evvovxog, 
and  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  he  was  also  a  soldier  in 
that  play.  Nor  did  Terence  conceive  the  idea  of  letting 
this  rival  of  Phaedria's  invite  the  courtesan  to  dinner 
and  make  her  a  present  of  a  young  girl ;  nor  do  I  think 
that  the  idea  of  an  altercation  arising  from  the  recognition 
of  this  young  girl  and  the  fact  that  she  was  entrusted  to 
her  brother's  care  developed  in  Terence's  mind.  Lines 
265-288;  Doria's  speech,  Act  IV.  scene  i. ;  that  of  Chremes, 
Act  IV.  scene  vi.,  excepting  the  allusion  to  the  aggressor's 
troops  (line  755) ;  even  some  portions  of  Act  IV.  scene  vii. — 
those  in  which  Chremes  appears  as  a  coward,  and  those 
in  which  there  is  reference  to  the  gift  presented  to  Thais 
and  to  the  freedom  of  Pamphila,  lines  785-786,  792-795, 
804-813; — all  these  passages  may  or  should  come  from 
the  EvvovxoQ.  On  the  other  hand,  the  following  passages 
are  borrowed  from  the  Kola^ :  without  a  doubt,  Gnatho's 
soliloquy  in  Act  II.  scene  ii.,  lines  232-265 ;  probably 
also  those  portions  of  Act  IV.  scene  vii.  in  which  the 
aggressor  puts  on  the  airs  of  a  bully,  while  Chremes  shows 
himself  to  be  a  determined  fellow,  and  in  which  Pamphila 
might  be  a  mistress  coveted  by  both  of  them — lines  771- 
783,  786-791,  796-803,  814-816.  In  these  various  scenes, 
elements  that  are  borrowed  from  diverse  sources  are  simply 
placed  next  to  one  another,  or  practically  so.  Of  the 
remaining  scenes  of  the  Eunuchus,  in  which  Thraso  and 

1  Andr.,  prol.  10-11. 


LATIN    COMEDIES  279 

• 

Gnatho  appear,  Act  III.  scene  ii.  certainly  had  its  parallel 
in  the  Evvovxoq.  The  introduction  of  the  sham  eunuch 
and  Thais'  advice  to  Pythias  are,  at  any  rate,  drawn  from 
the  same  source.  Scene  i.  of  Act  III.  is  by  no  means 
necessary  for  the  development  of  the  plot,  and  it  may  be 
that  this  is  an  instance  of  an  addition  that  Terence  made 
to  his  chief  model.  The  greater  part  of  the  scene,  from 
line  395  to  line  433,  must  have  occurred  in  the  same  form 
in  the  Kola^.  On  the  other  hand,  the  four  or  five  lines 
at  the  beginning  (lines  391-395)  and  the  second  part  of 
the  dialogue  (lines  434-453)  cannot  have  been  derived 
from  that  play,  for,  in  the  Kola^,  the  woman  whom  Bias 
and  Phcidias  desire  to  possess  was  the  slave  of  a  pander, 
and  it  was  not  her  love,  but  her  person,  that  was  the 
object  of  contention.  If  scene  i.  of  Act  III.  was  added  by 
Terence,  these  two  passages  very  probably  are  the  points 
at  which  he  joined  the  new  to  the  old.  But  it  may  also 
be  that,  in  the  EvvovxoQ,  Chaerestratus'  rival  was  impatient 
to  know  what  effects  his  present  had  made,  and  that, 
like  Thraso,  he  came  to  get  his  thanks.  If  this  was  the 
case,  lines  391-394,  and  434-453  must  have  been  transla- 
tions of  a  scene  in  the  Evvovxog  into  the  midst  of  which  an 
entire  episode  of  the  Kola^  had  been  inserted;  and  in 
scene  ii.  Act  III.  Terence  must  have  copied  the  Evvovxog 
when  he  allows  the  soldier  to  witness  the  presentation  of 
the  gift.  On  the  other  hand,  we  know  that  a  detail  of 
scene  ii.  Act  III.  was  taken  from  the  Kola^  (fr.  297). 
Still  other  details — as,  for  example,  the  harsh  words  ex- 
changed by  Parmeno  and  Gnatho — may  come  from  the 
same  source.  We  have  still  to  consider  the  three  conclud- 
ing scenes,  vii.,  viii.  and  ix.  of  Act  V.  Lines  1054-1060 
and  1067-ad  fin.,  in  which  the  soldier,  through  the  media- 
tion of  the  parasite,  makes  a  compromise  with  his  rival, 
seem  to  me  to  come  from  the  KoXa^.  It  may  be  that,  at 
the  close  of  the  Evvovxog,  Chaerestratus'  rival  made  a 
last  attempt  to  make  friends  with  Chrysis,  and  that  he 
was  definitely  rebuffed.  If  so,  scene  vii.  of  Act  V.,  the 
remarks  contained  in  lines  1037,  1043-1044  and  1053,  as 


280  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

well  as  the  violent  statements  in  lines  1061-1066,  must 
have  oceurrcd  in  the  prineipal  model,  the  part  of  Gnatho 
being  played  by  the  buffoon's  attendant.  If  this  hypo- 
thesis is  not  accepted,  scene  vii.  of  Act  V.  and  lines  1061- 
1066  may  be  regarded  as  passages  from  the  Kola^  which 
have  been  slightly  changed  on  account  of  Chaerea. 

Terence  was  not  the  first  poet  to  practise  contamination. 
He  says  very  clearly  that  the  earliest  Roman  comic  poets, 
and  Plautus  in  particular,  had  set  the  example.^  But 
Plautus  nowhere  explains  his  method  of  procedure,  and 
no  ancient  commentator  gives  us  the  slightest  information 
on  the  subject.  So  we  have  no  choice  but  to  turn  to  the 
comedies  themselves  in  our  effort  to  discover  the  secret 
of  their  construction.  Many  scholars  have  done  so,  and 
I  cannot  attempt  to  give  an  abstract  of  all  their  works 
here.  I  shall  merely  explain  how  Leo,  one  of  the  scholars 
who  has  studied  this  problem  most  methodically,  regards 
the  construction  of  a  few  of  the  most  suspected  plays. 

Miles  Gloriosus.  According  to  Leo,^  this  comedy  is 
made  up  of  parts  which  were  borrowed  from  two  original 
works — the  ' AXat,(xiv  and  a  comedy  called  Aidvjuai.  Lines 
1-137  and  the  great  majority  of  lines  813-ad  fin.,  come 
from  the  'AXaCa)v,  and  the  greater  part  of  lines  136-812 
from  the  Aidvjuai.  The  points  where  the  passages  from 
the  'AXa^cov  were  fitted  into  the  Miles  Gloriosus  are  : 
lines  867-869;  the  allusion  to  the  secret  passage-way, 
lines  1088  et  seq. ;  the  mention  of  the  pretended  sister, 
lines  974-975,  and  1102-1107.  As  for  the  portions  which 
are  derived  from  the  Aidv/zai,  Leo  appears  to  consider 
lines  138-155,  596-611,  765-804,  and  810-811  as  the 
points  of  juncture.  Granted  that  this  was  a  case  of  con- 
tamination, it  may  also  be  that  the  passage  138-155  was 
a  fragment  of  a  prologue,  and  that  passages  596-611  and 
765-804  were  derived  from  the  'AKaCcov. 

Poenulus.     The  Poenulus — according  to  Leo  ^ — was  the 

1  Andr.,  prol.  18. 

*  Leo,  Plautinische  Forschungen  (1895),  pp,  161  et  seq. 

'  Ibid.,  pp.  153  et  seq. 


LATIN    COMEDIES  281 

outgrowth  of  the  combination  of  a  play  called  Kaqxriddvioq 
and  of  a  comedy  by  an  unknown  author.  The  Kaqxri^oviog 
supplied  lines  1-158,  449-503;  the  greater  part  of  lines 
821-918;  lines  920-922  and  930-1337.  The  anonymous 
comedy  supplied  the  episode  159-189  which,  by  the  way, 
occurs  much  earlier  in  Plautus'  play  than  in  the  original ; 
lines  203-409;  the  episode  410-448  (except  lines  415-416), 
which,  in  the  Greek  comedy,  came  next  to  the  episode 
159-189;  lines  504-816.  The  points  of  juncture  are, 
in  the  body  of  the  play,  at  lines  190-202,  415-416,  817-820, 
908-909  and  919  (lines  923-929  are  a  mere  repetition). 
At  the  close  of  the  play  the  endings  of  the  two  original 
works  must  originally  have  been  merged  as  we  see  them 
in  lines  1338-1422,  or,  to  be  more  precise — and  leaving 
out  the  repetitions  which  extend  from  line  1355  to  line 
1397— in  lines  1338-1355  and  1397-1422. 

Pseudolus.^  From  the  chief  original  work  Plautus 
borrowed  scenes  ii.,  iii.  and  iv.  of  the  first  act,  the  second 
act — with  the  possible  exception  of  scene  i.,  which  Leo 
assumes  to  be  of  his  own  composition — and  the  third  and 
fourth  acts.  Scenes  i.  and  v.  of  the  first  act  and  scene  ii. 
of  the  fifth  act  (the  first  scene  was  by  Plautus  himself), 
were  derived  from  a  less  important  original.  Points  of 
juncture  are  few  and  imperfect.  In  scene  i.  Act  I. 
Plautus  substituted  for  the  original  text  of  Phoenicium's 
letter  a  text  that  was  rather  clumsily  fitted  into  the 
principal  original  work.  In  scene  v.  Act  II.  he  inter- 
polated a  passage  of  a  dozen  lines  (524-537),  in  which  the 
extortion  of  the  twenty  minae,  which  had  just  before — 
as  in  model  2 — been  represented  as  an  independent  under- 
taking, is  changed  into  a  result  of  the  pander's  discomfiture 
and  thus  takes  us  back  to  model  1.  Finally,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  scene  ii.  Act  V.,  and  in  the  course  of  that  scene, 
a  few  lines  that  do  not  fit  in  well  with  line  1314 — lines  1283 
and  1308  and  those  following  it — seem  to  go  back  to  an 
episode  of  model  1. 

Stichus.     In  the  Stichus  Leo  recognises  three   passages 

^  Leo,  Gott.  Nachrichtcn,  1903,  pp.  347  et  seq. 


282  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

borrowed  from  three  different  plays. ^  He  thinks  that 
scenes  i.  and  ii.  Act  II.  are  borrowed  from  Menander's 
'AdE}.q)oi  a  ;  that  scene  iii.  Act  I.  and  Acts  III.  and  IV.  are 
borrowed  from  a  second  play.  (In  this  play,  the  scene 
which  served  as  a  model  for  scene  iii.  Act  I.  probably 
followed  the  scene  of  which  Act  III.  is  an  imitation; 
apparently  line  459  ought  to  coincide  with  the  first  appear- 
ance of  the  parasite.)  Finally,  Act  V.  appears  to  Leo  to 
be  derived  from  a  third  play  which  possibly  belonged  to 
the  middle  period.  In  order  to  connect  the  parts  that 
were  borrowed  from  these  three  plays,  Plautus  added  a 
few  lines  at  the  close  of  scene  ii.  Act  I.  in  which  Panegyris 
declares  that  she  intends  to  send  the  parasite  to  the 
harbour.  In  scenes  i.  and  ii.  Act  II.  he  introduces  the 
part  of  Gelasimus,  and  in  order  to  explain,  as  well  as  might 
be,  his  sudden  departure,  he  invented  the  joke  in  line  388. 
In  the  portion  that  was  derived  from  the  second  play  he 
made  occasional  allusions  to  the  wives  of  the  two  brothers 
who  did  not  have  any  part  in  that  play.  In  scene  i. 
Act  III.  he  inserted  lines  419-453  which  were  either 
supplied  by  the  same  play  as  Act  V.  or  freely  invented 
in  order  to  prepare  the  way  for  Act  V. ;  at  the  beginning 
of  scene  ii.  Act  III.  he  inserted  lines  454-457  in  order  to 
connect  this  scene  with  what  had  gone  before. 

These  examples  show  what  a  contaminated  play  must 
have  been — a  mosaic  made  up  of  scenes,  or  portions  of 
scenes,  taken  from  works  which  resembled  one  another  in 
their  episodes  and  their  situations.  Long  or  short  passages 
taken  from  diverse  sources  were  placed  next  to  one  another 
and  joined  together  more  or  less  skilfully,  but  they  hardly 
affected  one  another.  The  habitual  work  of  the  con- 
taminator  can  be  summed  up  in  two  words :  addition 
and  substitution. 

Thus  contamination  was  a  procedure  both  clumsy  and 
lacking  in  courage,  while  we  may  assume  a  priori  that 
the  authors  who  indulged  in  it  resorted  to  other  simple 
practices  as  well ;  for  example,  to  omissions  and,  in  case  of 

^  Leo.,  Oott.  Nachrichten,  1902,  pp.  375  et  seq. 


LATIN    COMEDIES  28.3 

need,  to  transpositions.  Indeed,  we  know  that  Plautus  left 
out  an  episode  in  his  transhition  of  the  ZvvanoOvfjoxovreg  ^ 
and  that  he  cut  down  the  part  of  the  lover  as  well  as  several 
scenes  at  the  close  of  the  KXrjQov/ievoi.^  On  the  other 
hand,  we  can  hardly  regard  it  as  likely  that  these  same 
authors  submitted  the  plays  which  they  imitated  to  more 
serious  alterations — a  process  which  would  imply  a  creative 
activity  and  real  originality — or,  at  least,  that  it  w^as  usual 
for  them  to  do  so.  To  write  original  stories,  even  though 
making  use  of  borrowed  elements,  to  change  the  develop- 
ment of  a  plot  or  to  embellish  it  with  new  episodes — any 
such  procedure  presupposes  a  turn  of  mind  directly  the 
opposite  of  that  of  the  contaminator  who  respects  his 
models  even  when  he  disfigures  them.  Yet  the  writers 
of  palliatae  may  sometimes  have  taken  the  risk  of  doing 
so.  According  to  Leo,  certain  scenes  of  the  Pseudolus 
are  entirely  by  Plautus ;  this  has  also  been  said — but 
without  sufficient  reason,  as  it  appears  to  me — of  the 
passage  in  the  Mercaior  in  which  Demipho  relates  his 
dream ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that,  at  the  close  of  the  Casina, 
the  speech  of  Olympio,  who  suffers  from  the  same  dis- 
appointment as  Lysidamus,  is  a  repetition  of  his  master's 
speech.  If  Plautus  really  gave  proof  of  his  independence 
in  these  various  passages,  these  were,  no  doubt,  exceptional 
eases.  I  think  that,  as  a  rule,  he  and  his  rivals  were 
content  to  be  mere  transcribers.  This  is  even  more  likely 
to  have  been  the  case  with  writers  who  were  more  refined 
and  more  appreciative  of  the  merits  of  Attic  works  than 
were  Plautus  or  Naevius.  When  Varro  says  of  Caecilius 
that  he  deserves  the  prize  for  the  construction  of  his  plays 
{in  argumentis  poscit  palmam),  I  think  he  means  to  say 
that  this  poet  chose  models  that  were  especially  well 
constructed,  and  that  he  did  not  mar  their  composition. 
Terence  apologises  for  having  practised  contamination.^ 
Consequently  I  cannot  believe  that  he  took  still  greater 

1  Emu,  prol.  9-10. 

*  Cos.,  prol.  64-66,  79  et  seq.  and  1012-1014. 

'  Andr.,  15  et  seq. 


% 


284  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

liberties,  and,  for  example,  invented  the  entire  second 
part  of  the  Ileauton  Timoroumenos,  or  the  ending  of  the 
Adelphi,  or  that  the  characters  of  Byrria  and  Charinus, 
instead  of  being  borrowed  from  the  TleQivdia,  were  his 
own  invention. 

The  practice  of  the  Latin  comic  writers  having  been  thus 
outlined,  I  return  to  the  question,  asked  in  the  opening 
lines  of  this  chapter — How  far  do  their  imitations  allow 
us  to  form  a  judgment  about  the  construction  of  the 
works  of  the  veal 

In  Terence's  plays,  the  alterations  which  he  himself 
admits,  or  which  ancient  commentators  assert  that  he 
made,  are  probably  the  only  ones — or,  let  us  say,  the 
only  important  ones — which  distinguish  the  copy  from 
the  original.  We  know  how  bitterly  the  poet's  enemies 
reproached  him  for  his  contaminations,  and  with  how 
much  care  he  repeatedly  explained  his  action  in  this 
matter.  Under  these  circumstances  the  assumption  that 
he  ever  "  contaminated "  without  mentioning  the  fact 
is  not  admissible.  Now,  neither  the  prologue  of  the 
Hcauton  Timoroumenos,  nor  that  of  the  Phormio,  nor 
either  of  the  prologues  of  the  Hecyra  mention  two  original 
works.  Apart,  then,  from  contamination,  had  Terence 
permitted  himself  to  do  any  serious  re-touching  we  must 
assume  that  the  "  malicious  old  poet"  and  the  advocates 
of  servile  imitation  would  not  have  failed  to  reproach  him 
for  doing  so,  and  that  he  would  not  have  failed  to  defend 
himself  against  their  charges.  But  we  do  not  meet  with 
any  trace  of  such  controversies  in  the  prologues.  On  the 
other  hand,  Donatus'  commentaries  point  out  a  certain 
number  of  divergences  between  Terence  and  his  proto- 
types ^  in  the  matter  of  construction.  Most  of  these 
divergences  are  slight  enough;  had  there  been  others, 
and,  above  all,  more  serious  ones,  Donatus'  list  would 
doubtless  have  contained  them. 

The  evidence  of  Plautus'  comedies  cannot  be  relied  upon 

^  Donat.,  Commentary  to  line  14  of  the  Andria,  to  lines  639  and  1001 
of  the  Eunuchus,  and  to  line  825  of  the  Hecyra. 


LATIN    COMEDIES  285 

with  nearly  so  much  confidence.  In  the  first  place,  his 
comedies  are  not  preserved  intact;  their  text  has  been 
altered,  either  through  accidental  omissions  or  by  excisions 
made,  at  various  periods,  by  rather  unscrupulous  theatrical 
managers,  by  arbitrary  arrangement  and  retouching,  by 
interpolations,  or  by  re})etitions.  All  this  must,  as  far  as 
possible,  be  taken  into  consideration  before  adopting  the 
opinion — sometimes  a  purely  subjective  one — of  the  most 
authoritative  Plautine  scholars.  Even  when  we  think 
that  w^e  have  before  us  what  Plautus  himself  wrote,  it  is 
frequently  diflicult  to  determine  where  the  responsibility 
of  the  imitator  begins,  and  wdiere  that  of  the  writers  of 
the  original  works  ends.  At  least,  the  incoherencies  of 
certain  comedies  are  such,  and  the  faults  of  construc- 
tion found,  here  and  there,  in  several  of  them  are  so 
serious,  that  we  cannot  suppose  the  Latin  poet  took 
much  personal  interest  in  their  composition.  He  cer- 
tainly did  not  improve  upon  his  models,  and  the  only 
question  that  presents  itself  is  to  what  extent  he  spoiled 
them. 

In  my  opinion,  many  slips  consisting  of  a  few  words  or 
a  few  sentences — in  other  words,  slips  easily  accounted 
for  by  the  carelessness  of  a  translator  who  allows  his  mind 
to  wander — can  be  fairly  charged  against  Plautus.  But 
in  any  case  these  are  venial  errors  which  would  not  affect 
the  reputation  of  a  dramatist  very  seriously,  and  whether 
they  are  traced  back  to  the  original  Greek  writers  or  not, 
the  merit  of  the  latter  would  hardly  be  affected  one  way 
or  the  other. 

But  it  is  important  to  determine  the  source  of  serious 
clumsiness  and  of  faults  of  construction  which  affect 
the  framework  of  the  edifice.  The  remarks  I  have  made 
above  may  be  of  some  use  here.  It  appears  to  me 
that  the  activity  of  the  Latin  transcribers  was  almost 
always  restricted  to  making  omissions  and  to  practising 
contamination.  If,  therefore,  certain  defects  cannot  be 
explained  on  the  theory  of  omissions  or  of  contamination, 
it  would  appear  that  they  belong  to  the  vea.     It  is  only 


286  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

when  the  contrary  is  the  case  that  Plautus  can  be  suspected 
of  being  the  culprit. 

I  say  that  Plautus  can  be  suspected,  but  not  that  his 
guilt  ought  to  be  proclaimed  at  once.  It  would,  indeed, 
be  quite  arbitrary  to  credit  the  comic  writers  of  the  new 
period  with  never-failing  perfection.  The  vea  lived  on — 
or  vegetated — for  a  long  time ;  its  authors  wrote  in  various 
surroundings  that  differed  in  point  of  refinement ;  it  had 
mediocre  representatives  whom  Plautus  occasionally  did 
not  disdain  to  take  as  his  models.^  Doubtless  the  works, 
even  of  its  great  poets,  were  not  all  masterpieces ;  before 
becoming  masters,  in  full  possession  of  their  powers,  they 
had  been  inexperienced  and  awkward  beginners.  The 
majority  of  them  wrote  a  great  deal,  which  means  that 
they  w^orked  quickly,  and  were  sometimes  careless,  espe- 
cially when  they  wrote  for  the  theatre  of  some  small  town. 
I  am  quite  willing  to  believe  that  Menander's  'AdElcpol  a 
was  not  so  rude  a  thing  as  the  Stichus;  but  I  am  less 
inclined  to  admit  that  a  Greek  poet,  living  far  away  from 
Athens  and  writing  in  a  time  of  decadence,  could  have 
produced  a  KaQxrjdovioQ  as  good  as  the  Poenulus,  and 
particularly  as  good  as  the  Poenulus  when  improved  by 
the  transposition  of  Acts  III  and  IV. 

The  defects,  which  in  a  Latin  play  reveal  divergences 
from  Greek  originals,  are  not  always  the  most  serious 
ones  when  regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  construc- 
tion. While  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  Miles  is 
contaminated,  it  is  not  because  it  has  a  double  plot,  nor 
because  there  is  no  more  talk,  so  to  speak,  in  the  second 
part  of  the  secret  passage-way  which  is  of  such  importance 
in  the  first  part,  nor  because  the  trick  employed  in  the 
second  part  was  entirely  superfluous,  if  Philocomasium 
could  have  made  her  escape  through  the  adjoining  house. 
Why  should  not  a  Greek  poet  have  introduced  such  con- 
tradictions while  fusing  two  tales  into  one  ?  In  my  opinion, 
such  imperfections  of  detail  as  the  inappropriateness  of 
lines  805  et  seq.,  and  the  clumsy  wording  of  lines  1107 

^  For  instance,  Demophilus,  whom  Plautus  imitated  in  the  Aainaria. 


LATIN    COMEDIES  287 

et  seq.,  betray  the  hand  of  the  contaminator  much  more 
than  do  the  serious  defects  of  whicli  I  have  just  spoken. 
An  original  poet  who  attempted  to  handle,  side  by  side, 
the  two  stories  that  are  combined  in  the  Miles,  would 
certainly  have  avoided  calling  attention  to  the  first  story 
at  the  very  moment  when  he  was  about  to  drop  it  in 
order  to  develop  the  second,  and  thus  clumsily  accentuating 
the  lack  of  unity  in  his  work.  Lines  805  et  seq.  must  come 
from  a  play  in  which  the  master,  as  well  as  the  servant, 
is  obliged  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  two  Philoco- 
masiums — from  a  play  of  which  the  Latin  poet  has  only 
retained  the  first  half.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  rather 
improbable  that  so  clumsy  a  dialogue  as  that  contained 
in  lines  1107  et  seq.  should  have  been  composed  in  this 
form  at  first  hand,  Ubi  matrem  esse  aiehat  soror  ?  asks 
Pyrgopolinices,  This  query  in  itself  is  curious ;  it  will 
seem  even  more  curious  if  we  read  the  answer,  in  which 
Palaestrio  says  that  he  gets  his  information,  not  from 
Philocomasium's  sister,  but  from  the  nauclerus  who  has 
brought  her  mother.  Probably  the  reference  to  the  sister 
does  not  come  from  the  original  text.  It  is  Plautus  who 
introduced  it  at  this  point,  and  he  introduced  it  in  order 
to  connect  the  two  portions  of  the  play  which  he  was 
the  first  to  fuse  into  one  comedy.  Perusal  of  the  Pseudolns 
suggests  observations  of  the  same  kind.  If  Pseudolus 
promises  more  than  he  fulfils,  if  one  of  the  two  exploits 
that  he  boasts  of  having  performed  is  simply  conjured 
out  of  existence,  this  bit  of  sleight  of  hand  may  possibly 
be  traced  back  to  a  Greek  comedy ;  it  may  have  served  to 
characterise  the  fellow's  impudent  cleverness,  or  else  it 
may  have  been  a  scheme  or  trick  on  the  part  of  the  author 
to  whet  the  appetite  of  the  audience  by  announcing  a 
plot  which  was  rich  in  matter. 

Nor  is  the  serious  contradiction — or  rather  the  premature 
agreement — between  Phoenicium's  letter  and  lines  342  et 
seq.  necessarily  explained  by  the  merging  of  two  plots. 
The  lamentations  of  Simo  in  the  last  scene — excessive 
lamentations  since  he  is  to  receive  as  much  from  Ballio  as 


288  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

he  had  ^ivcn  to  Pseudolus — the  promise  Pseudohis  gives 
him  to  restore  a  part  of  the  twenty  minae — a  promise 
that  cannot  be  fulfilled,  since  these  twenty  minae  are 
needed  to  reimburse  Charinus  and  to  satisfy  the  pander — 
these  things  are  possibly  mere  buffoonery.  The  sudden 
disappearance  of  Callipho  from  the  plot  is  more  significant. 
He  comes  upon  the  scene,  not  merely  in  order  to  receive 
the  confidence  of  Simo  and  serve  him  as  a  foil,  but 
Pseudolus  asks  for  his  friendly  neutrality  or  even  for  his 
help.  Callipho  grants  this  request,  agrees  to  stay  at  home, 
ready  to  come  at  a  moment's  notice,  promises  himself 
much  pleasure  in  watching  the  promised  rascalities — then 
quits  the  stage  and  is  never  seen  or  heard  of  again.  This 
cannot,  by  any  possibility,  have  been  the  case  in  an 
original  play,  in  which  lines  547-560  would  necessarily 
have  been  followed  by  something  more.  We  must,  there- 
fore, assume  that  Plautus  mutilated  his  model  by  putting 
a  sudden  end  to  Callipho' s  part,  or  else  that  he  constructed 
the  Pseudolus  out  of  parts  borrowed  from  several  plays. 

The  reader  has  seen  how  carefully  one  must  weigh 
hypotheses  about  the  changes  to  which  the  original  plays 
were  subjected  by  the  Roman  imitator.  In  a  word,  it 
does  not  suffice  that  these  hypotheses  explain  certain 
defects  in  the  comedies  of  Plautus;  they  must  explain 
them  in  the  most  probable,  or  in  the  only  probable  way. 
And  this  is  a  point  which  modern  scholars  have  too  often 
failed  to  consider. 

Furthermore,  however  carefully  one  may  proceed,  it  is 
unavoidable  that  personal  views  should  have  considerable 
influence  in  reconstructing  the  plots  of  the  via,  and  of  all 
my  work  this  is,  perhaps,  the  most  delicate  part  and  the 
task  in  which  there  are  most  pitfalls.  For  my  previous 
observations  will  hardly  serve  as  general  principles  of 
procedure ;  in  many  cases  I  shall  have  to  come  to  a 
decision  without  deriving  any  aid  from  them.  I  shall, 
therefore,  point  out,  either  in  the  text  or  in  the  notes, 
the  special  reasons  which  have  led  to  my  decisions,  and 
the  reader  will  be  the  judge. 


LATIN    COMEDIES  289 

§2 

Violations  of  the  Law  of  Five  Acts 
and  of  the  rule  of  tliree  actors 

Hitherto  I  have  only  dealt  with  peculiarities  of  literary 
composition  as  possible  indications  of  changes  made  in 
the  original  Greek  works  by  Plautus  or  by  Terence.  Do 
not  the  details  of  dramatic  structure  afford  other  indica- 
tions which  might,  in  many  instances,  enable  us  to  form 
a  more  trustworthy  judgment  ? 

Possibly,  the  violations  of  the  well-known  law  of  five 
acts  will  be  the  first  thing  to  strike  the  reader,  for  the 
discoveries  of  recent  years  have  made  it  more  and  more 
probable  that  this  law  holds  good  for  New  Comedy.  Never- 
theless, at  the  risk  of  appearing  timid,  I  dare  not  as  yet 
accept  this  assumption  as  a  demonstrated  truth.  I  pro- 
pose to  make  the  analyses  of  Latin  comedies  serve  as  a 
help  in  recognising  and  determining  the  external  structure 
of  the  original  Greek  works,  rather  than  in  measuring  the 
divergences  between  Plautus  and  Terence  and  their  models. 
These  analyses  will  be  found  in  Chapter  IV,  §  1.  The 
reader  who  is  convinced  in  advance  that  the  vda  observed 
the  rule  of  five  acts,  may  turn  to  them  and  read  them  at 
once  in  a  spirit  that  will  differ  slightly  from  that  in  which 
they  were  written.  He  will  see  that  they  point  out  few 
violations  of  the  rule,  and  that  the  majority  of  these 
violations  simply  mean  the  omission  of  pauses  or  breathing 
spells  with  which  a  vulgar  audience  would  have  little 
patience ;  but  that  they  do  not  imply  serious  changes. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  think  I  ought  to  say  at  once  what, 
in  my  opinion,  is  to  be  thought  of  that  other  supposed 
criterion  which  is  afforded  by  the  distribution  of  the 
parts. 

The  view  is  current  among  modern  writers  that  the 
Greek  comic  poets  had  only  three  actors  at  their  disposal ; 
u 


290     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

and  it  must  be  admitted  tliat,  at  first  sight,  this  view  seems 
to  rest  on  good  evidence.  In  the  Poetics,  Aristotle  does 
not  mention  a  definite  number,  but  he  appears  at  least 
to  state  that  the  actors  were  limited  in  number.^  Ac- 
cording to  a  grammarian,  this  number  was  three,  from 
the  time  of  Cratinus  onwards,  just  as  in  tragedy.  In 
third-century  inscriptions  ^  from  Delphi,  the  xcojucpdoi  are 
grouped  in  companies  of  three,  to  each  of  which  must 
have  been  entrusted  the  performance  of  a  play.^  In  an 
inscription  from  Ptolemais,  six  HOj/xcodoL  are  enumerated 
opposite  two  noirjtal  y.cojLicpduov;  and  this  indicates  the 
same  distribution.*  And,  finally,  Lucian,  in  one  of  his 
comparisons,  gives  us  to  understand  that,  as  a  general 
rule,  the  xcojucodiai  contained  three  nqooconaJ' 

Now  let  us  glance  at  the  plays  of  Plautus  and  of  Terence. 
There  is  hardly  a  single  one  that  could  have  been  per- 
formed by  only  three  actors.  Many  of  them  contain 
scenes  in  which  four  or  more  actors  appear  and  speak  at 
the  same  time,  and  though  it  sometimes  happens  that 
some  of  them  are  mere  supernumeraries  whose  part  is 
insignificant,  quite  as  frequently  all  the  speakers  are 
important  actors.  Later  on  I  shall  come  back  to  these 
scenes  with  many  roles,  but  even  in  the  plays  in  which 
there  are  not  so  many  parts  the  distribution  of  the  text 
among  three  actors  is,  as  a  rule,  impossible  unless  one 
cuts  up  the  parts  in  a  ruthless  fashion.  Even  if  this 
sorry  expedient  were  adopted  it  would  not  overcome  all 
the  difficulties.  For  example,  in  order  to  make  it  possible 
for  three  actors  to  perform  the  Hecyra,  one  of  them  would 
have  to  take  off  Parmeno's  costume  and  put  on  that  of 
Laches  or  Phidippus  (between  lines  443  and  445) ;  between 

1  Aristotle,  Poet.,  p.  1449  B.,  lines  4-5. 

*  I.  Tzetzes,  Xlepl  KwfxcfSias,  §  16. 

'  Collitz,  Dialekt-Inschriften,  Nos.  2653  (of  the  year  272),  2564  (of  the 
year  271),  2565  (of  the  year  270),  2566  (of  the  year  269).  Cf.  Kelley  Rees, 
Rule  of  Three  Actors,  p.  69. 

*  Dittenberger,  Orientis  graeci  inscr..  No.  51.  The  inscription  from 
Ptolenials  belongs  to  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Philadelphus,  or  to  the  begin- 
ning of  the  reign  of  Euergetes. 

^  Lucian,  De  Calumnia,  6. 


LATIN    COMEDIES  291 

lines  497  and  516  Pamphilus  would  have  to  transform 
himself  into  Myrrhina;  between  lines  613  and  623  Sostrata 
would  have  to  beeome  Phidippus,  thus  calling  for  miracles 
of  quickness  which  must,  of  course,  be  regarded  as  im- 
possible. But  there  is  no  need  of  lengthy  demonstrations 
to  show  that  between  the  rule  of  "  three  actors  "  and  the 
Latin  stage  there  is  evident  incompatibility. 

Does  this  force  us  to  the  conclusion  that,  contrary  to 
what  we  said  a  little  while  ago,  the  writers  of  the  palliatae 
completely  altered  the  plot  and  the  structure  of  their 
models  ? 

Let  us  examine  the  extant  Greek  comedies.  Kelley 
Recs  has  recently  pointed  out  all  the  details  of  construc- 
tion in  fifth-century  plays  that  appear  to  him  to  call  for 
the  simultaneous  appearance  of  more  than  three  actors.^ 
On  consulting  his  lists,  one  will  find  that  Aristophanes 
alone  supplies  more  examples  than  the  three  tragic  writers 
put  together.  If  the  State  did  not  place  more  than  three 
actors  at  the  disposal  of  the  comic  poets  in  this  early 
period,  the  latter  must  frequently  have  secured  additional 
actors  in  one  way  or  another.  Can  one  say  that  con- 
ditions changed,  and  that  the  regulations  became  more 
stringent  between  the  fifth  century  and  the  time  of  the 
vea'i  Let  us  ask  Menander  himself,  as  we  are  now  able 
to  do  so.  In  the  lengthy  fragments  of  his  works  recently 
published,  there  are  never  more  than  three  persons  speak- 
ing and  acting  on  the  stage  at  the  same  time.  But  it 
does  not  follow  that  the  UeQiy.eiQofXEvy]  or  the  ^ EnixQEnovxeq 
could  be  performed  by  three  actors.  Up  to  line  201  of 
the  "" EnixQEnovxEQ  Syriscus  is  constantly  on  the  stage ;  up 
to  line  158  he  is  there  with  Smicrines  and  Daos ;  up  to 
line  159  with  Daos  only;  beginning  with  line  165  with 
Oncsimus.  If  three  actors  had  to  perform  the  play,  one 
of  them  would  have  had  to  change  his  costume  and  his 
role  between  line  153,  or  line  159,  and  line  165.  After 
line  398   Sophrona  and  Habrotonon    go  into  the    house, 

^  Kelley  Rees,  The  So-called  Rule  of  the  Three  Actors  in  the  Classical 
Greek  Drama  (Chicago,  1908). 


292     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

and  Onesimus  rushes  out  into  the  street ;  at  line  429 
Charisius  appears.  If  there  were  only  three  actors,  Habro- 
tonon  or  Sophrona  must  have  doffed  female  attire  and 
put  on  the  appearance  of  a  young  man — rather  quickly, 
I  imagine — during  the  time  that  it  took  Onesimus  to 
speak  about  twenty  lines.  Such  rapid  transformations 
are  not  any  more  probable  in  the  ' EmtQenovreg  than  they 
are  in  the  Hecyra.  But  here  is  a  case  that  leaves  no 
room  for  doubt ;  at  line  352  of  the  UeQixeigojuevri  Polemo 
goes  into  his  house;  he  is  followed,  after  line  354,  by 
Doris ;  immediately  afterwards,  at  line  355,  Pataecus  and 
Glycera  appear;  at  line  359  Polemo  again  appears.  Can 
one  imagine  that  between  lines  352  and  355  one  actor 
could  transform  himself  from  Polemo  into  Pataecus  or 
Glycera,  and  another  change  from  Doris  into  Polemo, 
between  line  354  and  line  359?  Such  an  arrangement  is 
manifestly  impossible.  At  line  359  the  part  of  Polemo 
must  be  played  by  the  same  actor  as  at  line  352.  Hence 
it  follows  that  there  must  have  been  a  separate  actor 
for  each  of  the  parts  of  Doris,  Glycera  and  Pataecus. 
In  other  words,  the  neQixeiQOfxevri  cannot  have  been 
performed   by  less  than   four   actors. 

The  passages  quoted  a  little  while  ago  cannot  prevail 
against  such  evidence.  Note  that  Aristotle  does  not  say 
anything  definite,  that  the  authority  of  the  anonymous 
grammarian  is  questionable  from  the  very  fact  that  he 
pretends  to  know  more  about  the  matter  than  Aristotle 
does,  and  that  Lucian  was  a  very  late  writer.  The  in- 
scriptions from  Delphi  and  from  Ptolemais  which  are 
contemporary  with  the  vea  are  certainly  very  awkward. 
Still,  they  are  later  by  twenty  years  or  more  than 
Menander's  death,  and  later  than  the  period  in  which 
the  greater  part  of  the  plays  imitated  by  Plautus  and 
Terence  were  written.  It  may  be  that,  at  the  very  time 
when  these  inscriptions  were  made,  the  conditions  which 
they  vouch  for  did  not  obtain  universally.  Tragedy  began 
without  actors ;  when  it  began  to  have  them,  it  first  had 
one,  then  two,  and  then  three;  that  is  to  say,  they  went 


LATIN    COMEDIES  298 

on  increasing  in  number.  Comedy,  on  the  contrary, 
appears  to  have  begun  by  having  an  unHmited  number  of 
actors.  If,  at  a  given  period,  it  had  to  be  content  with 
only  three  actors,  this  was  probably  the  result  of  successive 
restrictions  of  none  of  which  we  know  the  date.  May  we 
not,  then,  assume  that  the  first  restriction  was  made  at 
the  instance  of  the  companies  of  technitae,^  and  that  it 
only  became  precise  about  the  middle  of  the  third  century  ? 
Or,  is  it  not  conceivable  that  this  restriction  was  never 
more  than  a  nominal  one,  and  that  the  inscriptions  which 
mention  three  xco/nwdot  merely  enumerate  the  chief  actors 
of  a  comedy,  but  not  all  those  who  took  part  in  its  per- 
formance? I  must  say  quite  frankly  that  neither  of  the 
above  hypotheses  satisfies  me  entirely ;  but  I  would  rather 
adopt  one  or  the  other  of  them  than  reject  the  testimony 
of  Menander  for  the  finest  and  most  productive  period  of 
the  via. 

And  now,  what  are  we  to  think  of  the  scenes  in  which 
more  than  three  persons  speak  and  act  at  the  same  time  ? 
They  are  not  only  contrary  to  the  rule — which,  as  we  have 
just  seen,  is  quite  hypothetical — which  would  have  re- 
stricted the  number  of  actors  in  a  comedy  to  three,  but 
also  to  another  rule,  formulated  by  Horace,  probably  on 
the  authority  of  Greek  theorists,  or  as  a  result  of  his  own 
study  of  plays  written  in  Greek :  ncc  quarta  loqui  persona 
laboret.^  Acron,  Porphyrio  and  Diomedes  define  the 
meaning  of  this  phrase  precisely;  when  more  than  three 
persons  are  on  the  stage,  the  fourth,  the  fifth  and  all 
those  in  excess  of  the  three,  must  remain  silent,  or  merely 
speak  a  few  words  by  way  of  acquiescing  in  a  command.' 
Diomedes  declares  that  this  was  the  almost  universal 
practice  among  the  Greeks  and,  as  we  have  seen,  this  is 
what  takes  place  in  the  long  fragments  of  Menander ;  but 
the  Latins,  Diomedes  goes  on  to  say,  increased  the  number 
of  speakers  in  order  to  make  the  play  more  attractive. 

»  Actor's  Guilds. (—Tr.).  "  Horace,  Ep.  ad  Pis.,  192. 

'  Porphyr.,  ad  loc. ;  Acr.,  ad  loc;  Diom.,  De  pocmat.,  IX.  2,  p.  491 
Keil  (=  Kaibel,  p.  60). 


294     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  several  of  Terence's  scenes  in  which 
four  persons  take  part  appear  to  be  the  result  of  con- 
tamination. On  the  other  hand,  other  scenes  of  the  same 
nature,  in  Plautus  and  in  Terence,  are  such  that  they 
certainly  do  not  owe  their  origin  to  the  practice  of  con- 
tamination nor  to  the  mere  wish  to  enliven  the  play  by 
increasing  the  number  of  actors  at  every  turn  and  without 
need,  but  are  such  that,  if  we  were  mentally  to  discard  a 
single  character,  the  essentials  of  the  plot  and  the  general 
plan  of  the  play  could  no  longer  subsist.  When,  towards 
the  end  of  the  Miles  Gloriosus  {^ Alal^chv),  Philocomasium 
escapes  from  Pyrgopolinices'  house,  there  are  four  persons 
on  the  stage :  the  fair  lady  and  her  lover,  the  soldier  and 
Palaestrio.  Now,  could  the  play  dispense  with  any  one 
of  these  four  ?  Of  course,  there  can  be  no  question  about 
Pleusicles  and  Philocomasium,  who  are  the  centre  of  the 
scene.  But  this  scene  would  lose  all  its  piquancy  w^ere 
not  the  sentimental  and  stupid  Pyrgopolinices  present 
to  watch  the  escape  of  his  mistress ;  and  the  rashness  of 
the  lovers  would  jeopardise  the  success  of  the  trick  were 
not  Palaestrio — who  could  not  have  stayed  in  Pyrgo- 
polinices' house  after  having  derided  him  so  maliciously — 
there  to  explain  away  their  aberrations.  Nor  does  the 
scene  in  the  Rudens  in  which  Gripus  and  Trachalio 
quarrel  about  the  travelling  bag  in  the  presence  of 
Daemones,  whom  they  have  chosen  as  arbiter,  and  where 
Palaestra  describes  its  contents,  admit  of  the  elimination 
of  an  actor.  At  the  close  of  the  Bacchides  each  of  the 
two  fathers  is  inveigled  by  one  of  the  courtesans;  if  one 
of  the  former  or  one  of  the  latter  were  missing,  this  pretty 
scene  would  be  impossible.  In  the  Phormio  the  gentle 
Chremes,  alone  and  unaided,  would  certainly  not  be  the 
man  to  exhaust  Phormio' s  patience  and  provoke  the  final 
outburst ;  and  the  scene  with  which  the  comedy  ends,  and 
in  which  Phormio  struggles  between  the  two  old  men, 
while  Nausistrata  appears  at  her  door  or  at  her  window 
and  hears  the  parasite's  denunciatit)n,  must  either  be 
accepted   or  rejected   in   its   entirety.     One   may   say  as 


LATIN    COMEDIES  295 

much  about  the  majority  of  the  seenes  with  many  actors. 
To  admit  that  they  were  invented  by  the  writers  of  the 
palliata  would  amount  to  crediting  tlicm  with  a  very 
large  share  of  initiative. 

Is  it  proper  to  do  so  ?  Remember  that  Diomedes  him- 
self does  not  absolutely  oblige  us  to  do  so;  in  Graeco 
dramate  fere  ires  personae  solae  agunt.  In  short,  the  scenes 
in  which  more  than  three  persons  appear  are  few  in  Plautus 
and  in  Terence,  and  we  may  also  say  of  Latin  comedies 
that,  as  a  rule,  only  three  actors  played  simultaneously. 
Diomedes'  additional  remark — at  Latini  scriptores  com- 
plures  personas  in  fabulas  introduxerunt  ut  speciosiores 
frequentia  facerent — may  possibly  have  referred  to  only  a 
very  few  scenes,  such  as  were  the  result  of  contamination. 
But  what  we  must  have  regard  for,  above  all,  is  the  spirit 
rather  than  the  letter  of  the  rule  formulated  by  Horace, 
and  also  for  the  character  of  the  scenes  which  at  first 
sight  seem  to  be  in  conflict  with  that  rule. 

Why  is  it  desirable  that  not  more  than  three  actors 
should  speak  in  the  same  scene?  Because,  if  there  be 
more,  there  is  danger  that  the  dialogue  will  be  confused 
and  difficult  to  follow.  Picture  to  yourself  four  or  five 
actors,  who  wear  masks  that  preclude  facial  expression, 
conversing  together  and  keeping  up  a  running  fire  of 
remarks  in  a  vast  ancient  theatre  open  to  the  sky.  Is 
it  not  likely  that,  while  watching  such  a  performance, 
a  part,  at  least,  of  the  audience  would  have  been  put 
out,  that  many  of  the  listeners  would  have  become 
confused  and  would  not  have  rightly  understood  which 
actor  was  speaking  and  to  whom  his  words  were  ad- 
dressed, and  that,  in  the  end,  they  would  have  lost 
interest  in  the  play  ?  In  contrast  to  this,  picture  to  your- 
self, instead  of  from  four  or  five  persons  engaged  in  the 
same  conversation,  two  groups,  of  one,  two  or  three  actors, 
each  soliloquising  and  conversing  separately.  The  danger 
I  spoke  of  above  will  no  longer  exist  except  to  a  far 
slighter  degree.  As  long  as  the  two  groups  are  some  dis- 
tance apart,  the  audience  will  in  each  instance  know  from 


29G     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

which  of  the  two  groups  the  words  they  hear  come ;  and 
as  each  group  consists  of  only  a  very  restricted  number  of 
actors,  they  will,  without  much  effort,  recognise  by  whom 
these  words  are  spoken.  In  such  a  case  as  this,  there  will 
no  longer  be  conversation  between  a  considerable  number 
of  speakers,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word;  there  will 
simply  be  a  succession  of  soliloquies  or  of  dialogues  between 
two  or,  at  most,  three  persons,  and  these  soliloquies  and 
dialogues  will  be  quite  as  intelligible  as  though  the  other 
actors  were  not  in  sight  while  they  are  being  pronounced. 
In  other  words,  the  important  thing  is  not  so  much  the 
number  of  actors  as  the  manner  in  which  their  conversa- 
tions are  managed.  It  is  conceivable  that  a  scene  with 
four  or  five  persons  may  be  clearer  than  a  dialogue  between 
three  persons. 

Hence  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  say  that  a  scene  in 
Plautus  or  Terence  violates  the  rule  merely  because  it 
introduces  more  than  three  important  characters.  If  one 
takes  the  trouble  to  examine  passages  that  are  suspected 
of  doing  so,  it  will  soon  be  noticed  that  many  of  them 
consist  of  several  parts  in  which,  at  most,  three  actors 
alternate  in  carrying  on  the  conversation.  This  is  notably 
the  case  in  two  of  the  scenes  that  I  have  quoted — the  one 
in  the  Rudens  and  the  one  in  the  Miles.  Only  three  per- 
sons share  in  the  dialogue  in  the  first  part  of  these  plays  : 
Daemones,  Trachalio  and  Gripus.  Though  Palaestra  is 
at  hand  from  the  outset,  and  though  she  is  very  directly 
concerned  in  the  matter  that  is  being  discussed  in  her 
presence,  she  does  not  breathe  a  word ;  indeed,  her  silence 
even  surprises  Gripus,  and  the  author  does  not  think  it 
superfluous  to  let  Trachalio  make  apologies  for  it.^  On 
the  other  hand,  the  moment  that  Palaestra  takes  part  in 
the  conversation — that  is  to  say,  beginning  with  line  1127 — 
Trachalio  is  silent.  In  the  scene  in  the  Miles  the  con- 
versation takes  place  successively  between  :  Palaestrio  and 
Philocomasium  (lines  1311-1313),  Palaestrio  and  Pyrgo- 
polinices  (lines  1313-1314),  Philocomasium  and  Pleusicles 
1  Rud.,  1113-1114. 


LATIN    COMEDIES  297 

(lines  1315-1319),  Pyrgopolinices,  Palaestrio  and  Philoco- 
masium  (lines  1320-1330),  Palaestrio  and  Pyrgopolinices — 
with  the  exception  of  a  few  words  spoken  by  Pleiisicles — 
(lines  1330-1343),  Pleusicles  and  Philocomasium  (lines 
1344-1 345a),  and  between  Pyrgopolinices  and  Palaestrio 
(from  line  1346  onwards).  In  no  part  of  this  scene  do  all 
four  actors  take  part  at  the  same  time.  Many  a  scene  in 
Latin  comedy  is  constructed  like  that  in  the  Rudcns,  or 
like  that  in  the  Miles.  In  fact,  more  than  three  actors 
rarely  take  an  actual  part  in  the  dialogue,  and,  even  where 
they  do,  the  exchange  of  remarks  is  sometimes  conducted 
in  a  manner  that  precludes  all  confusion.  Confusing 
dialogues,  which  might  appear  to  violate  Horace's  rule, 
are  very  few  and  far  between.  Neither  in  number  nor 
in  importance  do  they  go  beyond  what  the  Greek  poets — 
if,  as  I  believe,  they  had  more  than  three  actors  at  their 
disposal — could  and  must  have  permitted  themselves. 

So  w^e  arrive  at  a  negative  conclusion.  The  number  of 
actors  who  speak  and  act  in  the  course  of  one  and  the 
same  scene  does  not  itself  enable  us  to  determine  whether 
that  scene  comes  from  the  original  play. 


CHAPTER  II 

INTERNAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  COMEDIES 
THE  PLOT  OR  ACTION 

BROADLY  speaking,  a  comedy  of  the  new  period  repre- 
sents a  movement  or  action — that  is  to  say,  a  change 
from  one  situation — usually  precarious,  and  impatiently 
supported  by  one  of  the  characters,  to  another  which  is 
stable  and  definite.  Once  the  initial  situation  is  made 
plain  to  the  audience,  all,  or  nearly  all,  parts  of  the  work 
contribute  to  the  realisation  of  this  change,  and  once  it 
is  completed,  the  play  is  ended.  This  arrangement  is,  of 
course,  not  peculiar  to  the  works  of  New  Comedy;  we 
meet  with  it  in  most  dramatic  works  of  whatever  kind, 
ancient  as  well  as  modern.  But  it  is  worth  while  to  point 
out  that  it  seems  to  have  been  more  constant  and  more 
strictly  adhered  to  by  comic  writers  after  the  time  of 
Alexander  than  it  was  by  their  predecessors. 

§1 
Structure  of  the  Plot — Digressions 

It  is  well  known  how  small  a  part  the  plot  plays  and 
how  little  it  amounts  to  in  several  of  Aristophanes'  comedies. 
Let  us  consider  the  Acharnians.  At  line  720  Dicaeopolis 
has  succeeded  in  passing  from  the  tribulations  of  war  to 
the  blessings  of  peace,  and  the  plot  is  at  an  end.  For 
all  that,  the  play  runs  on  for  more  than  five  hundred  lines. 
And  of  what  does  this  entire  latter  part  consist  ?  Of 
independent  scenes  which  have  no  other  connecting  link 
than  the  continued  presence  of  the  principal  actor,  and 
which  illustrate,  in  so  many  pictures,  the  result  of  the 
change  that  has  come  about.  The  Peace  and  the  latest 
of  the  poet's  works,  the  Plutus,  which  was  written  in  388, 
are  constructed  on  an  analogous  plan.  So  we  see  that  to 
the  end  of  his  days  Aristophanes  wrote  comedies  that 
were  not  wholly  given  up  to  the  development  of  a  plot, 

298 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  299 

and  we  may  assume  that  his  contemporaries  had  no 
scruples  about  doing  likewise.  In  the  fourth  century 
the  generation  of  Antiphanes,  of  Anaxandrides  and  of 
Eubulus  must  have  retained  something  of  this  loose 
method.  One  of  Lucian's  Dialogues,  Timon  or  the  Mis- 
anthropist, is  supposed  to  be  an  imitation  of  Antiphanes' 
Tificov.  If  this  is  true,  the  structure  of  that  play  must 
have  been  similar  to  that  of  the  Acharnians,  of  the  Peace 
and  of  the  Plutus.  The  change  in  the  hero's  fortunes, 
which  constituted  the  plot,  was  effected  long  before  the 
end  of  the  play,  and  just  as  people  of  all  kinds — parasites, 
flatterers,  sycophants  and  philosophers — passed  in  review 
before  Dicaeopolis,  Trygaeus  or  Chremylus,  each  of  them 
affording  occasion  for  a  scene,  so  they  pass  before  the 
misanthropist  who  has  once  more  become  wealthy.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  many  a  comedy  of  the  middle  period 
had  a  proper  name,  the  name  of  a  politician,  of  a  man- 
about-town,  or  of  a  courtesan  as  its  title.  More  than 
one  comedy  may  have  been  made  up  of  "interludes"  or 
episodes  that  were  very  slightly  connected,  and  which,  like 
the  Heracleides  or  the  Theseides  at  which  Aristotle  scoffs, ^ 
may  have  had  no  other  unity  than  that  afforded  by  the  hero. 
Apparently,  this  is  no  longer  the  case  from  Alexander's 
time  onwards.  Of  all  Plautus'  or  Terence's  plays,  only 
one,  the  Stichus,  runs  on  considerably  beyond  the  end  of 
the  plot,  which,  in  this  case,  is  indicated  by  the  return 
of  the  two  brothers  from  their  journey  and  their  restora- 
tion to  the  good  graces  of  old  Antipho.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Casina  stops  short  before  the  expected  solution 
of  the  plot.  In  the  Truculentus  our  attention  is  directed,  in 
turn,  to  various  questions,  some  of  which  are  not  answered. 
But,  in  each  instance,  these  anomalies  must  be  laid  at  the 
door  of  the  Latin  author,  who  was  either  an  unscrupulous 
abridgcr  or  a  ruthless  contaminator.  So  we  cannot  cite 
anyone  of  these  three  plays  in  refutation  of  the  testimony 
given  by  other  much  more  numerous  plays,  in  which  the 
plot    constitutes,    as    it    were,    the    framework    and    the 

1  Aristotle,  Poet.,  VIII.  p.  1451  A,  lines  19  ot  scq. 


300     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

scaffolding  of  the  composition.  True,  the  plays  imitated 
by  Plautus  and  Terence  represent  but  a  very  small  part  of 
the  entire  literature  of  the  vea,  but  the  unanimous  testi- 
mony of  more  than  twenty  plays  by  various  authors  and 
of  various  dates  is,  for  all  that,  important.  Moreover, 
it  appears  to  be  corroborated  by  such  knowledge  as  we 
have  or  such  surmises  as  we  can  make  about  some  of  the 
original  works  :  the  ' EnLTQenovreg,  the  "Hqcoq,  the  Zajuia, 
the  Fecogyog,  the  JfleQixEigojuevrj,  the  0dojua,  the  IlXoxiov, 
etc.  On  the  other  hand,  while  we  have  so  many  well- 
constructed  plays,  we  cannot  cite  a  single  example  of 
loose  construction.  Comedies  having  the  name  of  an 
individual  as  their  title — and  they  are  the  ones  that  are 
especially  suspected  of  having  been  pieces  "  a  tiroirs  "  ^ — 
were,  as  we  know,  less  frequent  after  the  time  of  Alex- 
ander than  they  had  been  previously.  As  for  the  plays 
that  may  have  been  chiefly  devoted  to  the  portrayal  of 
a  character  or  of  a  type,  the  Aulularia  affords  sufficient 
proof  that  they  did  not  necessarily  lack  a  sustained  plot. 

This  is  not  to  be  understood  as  meaning  that  the  vea 
proscribed  all  digressions.  From  time  to  time  it  admitted 
them,  and  we  must  explain  their  nature. 

In  the  first  place,  I  must  point  out  the  unpopularity 
of  two  kinds  of  composition  which  seem  to  have  been  in 
high  favour  in  the  preceding  period. 

Many  fragments  of  the  [xeori,  and,  among  others,  several 
of  the  lengthiest  and  most  refreshing  of  them,  affect  the 
descriptive  form.  For  example,  they  describe  the  prowess 
of  a  gourmand,  the  wiles  of  a  coquette,  the  impertinence 
of  a  fishmonger.  These  passages  suggest  the  idea  of  a 
comedy  in  which  there  was  more  conversation  than 
action ;  their  form  and  their  tone  are  satirical  rather  than 
dramatic.  In  the  extant  works  of  the  vea  such  passages 
as  these  are  rare.  In  Plautus  I  might  point  out,  as  being 
of  a  somewhat  similar  style,  Megadorus'  diatribe  against 

^  A  piece  with  loosely  connected  episodes  very  much  like  a  modern 
"  revue. "( — Tr.). 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  801 

the  extravagances  of  women, ^  Pcripleeomenus'  remarks 
about  the  disadvantages  of  marriage  and  of  having  a 
family,^  and  Lysiteles'  arraignment  of  love ;  '  and  that  is 
about  all. 

Another  observation  which  I  think  I  ought  to  make 
has  reference  to  banqueting  scenes.  While  they  occur  in 
both  periods  they  were  not  dealt  with  in  the  same  way. 
As  far  as  we  can  see,  the  fjLsari  made  a  point  of  describing 
them,  and  it  devoted  itself  to  this  task  with  minvitc  care. 
With  the  advent  of  the  via  this  form  of  treatment,  which 
is  better  suited  for  a  mime  than  for  comedy,  is  no  longer 
so  much  in  fashion.  In  the  comedies  of  Plautus  and  of 
Terence,  with  the  exception  of  the  Persa,  which  goes  back 
to  the  middle  period,  only  two  banquets  take  place  upon 
the  stage  or  are  described  for  their  own  sake  :  one  at  the 
close  of  the  Pseudolus,  in  a  passage  which  competent 
critics  regard  as  a  piece  of  original  work  by  Plautus;  the 
other  at  the  close  of  the  Stichus — that  is  to  say,  in  a  con- 
taminated play,  copied  from  an  unknown  model,  which 
may  have  belonged  to  the  jueorj.  Wherever  else  it  occurs, 
the  banquet  merely  supplies  a  background,  which  serves  as 
a  frame  for  something  more  interesting  and  helps  to  place 
it  in  relief  :  in  the  Mostellaria  it  is  the  case  of  a  dissipated 
son  who  is  disturbed  by  the  unexpected  return  of  his 
father;  in  the  Asinaria  it  is  the  infidelity  of  an  aged 
husband ;  in  the  Eunuchus,  the  brutality  of  a  soldier ;  in 
the  Bacchides,  the  anguish  of  an  old  man  who  thinks 
that  his  son  is  guilty  of  adultery  and  that  a  most  humiliat- 
ing punishment  awaits  him;  and  so  on.  In  all  these 
instances  the  plot,  even  in  the  midst  of  orgies,  moves  on 
towards  its  culmination. 

What  most  frequently  diverts  the  writers  of  New  Comedy 
from  the  plot  is  the  desire  to  give  a  clear  picture  of  the 
character  and  morals  of  their  dramatis  personae.  Appar- 
ently they  did  not  think  that  the  incidents  of  the  plot  in 
themselves  always  sufficed  for  this  purpose.  They  were 
willing  to  devote  one  or  several  special  scenes  to  it — either 

^  Aul.,  505  et  seq.         *  Miles,  685  et  seq.  *  Trin.,  237  et  seq. 


302     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

a  soliloquy  in  which  the  actor  describes  himself  and,  as 
it  were,  makes  a  confession  of  faith,  or  a  conversation  in 
which  he  shows  what  kind  of  man  he  is,  or  else  an  arraign- 
ment of  his  misdeeds.  These  passages,  in  so  far  as  they 
are  concerned  with  the  chief  characters  of  the  play,  ought 
probably  not  to  be  regarded  as  digressions  at  all.  Though 
they  do  not  further  the  plot,  they  at  any  rate  secure  for 
it  an  appearance  of  reality  by  displaying  before  our  eyes 
in  a  separate  setting  and  in  a  vivid  light  some  of  the 
motives  which  it  brings  into  play.  Or  else  these  scenes 
dispose  the  audience  to  take  a  greater  interest  in  the 
play  by  making  one  or  the  other  of  its  characters 
sympathetic  or  the  contrary.  But  it  is  not  only  of  the 
chief  actors  that  the  poet  endeavours  to  give  us  a  clear 
picture;  occasionally  mere  supernumeraries  monopolise 
our  attention  for  a  while.  The  interminable  confidences 
of  Periplecomenus,  in  the  Miles,  are  manifestly  out  of 
proportion  to  the  very  insignificant  part  that  he  plays. 
So  is  the  bluster  of  the  cook  and  of  Antamoenides  in  the 
Pseudolus  and  in  the  Poenulus,  in  which  they  are  mere 
episodical  figures.  This  is  also  true  of  the  gossip  of 
Ergasilus,  in  the  Captivi,  whose  only  business  is  to  bring 
a  bit  of  news ;  of  Peniculus,  in  the  Menaechmi,  who  merely 
denounces  Menaeehmus  to  his  wife,  and  of  Gelasimus,  in 
the  Stichus,  who  does  nothing  at  all.  Of  course,  retouching 
by  Latin  imitators,  additions  and  contaminations  may 
occasionally  have  impaired  the  relations  in  which  char- 
acters of  this  kind  stood  to  the  plot,  but  these  digressions 
must  more  frequently  be  imputed  to  the  original  Greek 
poet.  As  far  as  parasites  and  cooks  are  concerned,  there 
is  no  denying  the  fact  that  the  vea  took  undue  delight  in 
portraying  them.  Cooks  can  never  have  had  more  than 
a  slight  influence  on  the  development  of  the  plot,  while 
parasites  occasionally,  but  only  in  exceptional  cases,  had 
a  greater  influence.  Yet  a  glance  at  the  collected  frag- 
ments is  enough  to  show  how  much  space,  in  the  plays 
as  a  whole,  is  allotted  to  the  speeches  of  these  two  classes. 
Parasites  and  cooks  are  people  who  provoke  laughter. 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  303 

Hence  their  popularity,  hence  the  frequent  side  episodes 
for  which  they  provide  an  op]:)ortunity ;  and  we  must 
forgive  the  comic  ]wets  if  they  sometimes  made  undue 
sacrifices  to  the  desire  to  amuse.  In  Menander's  'Em- 
TQinovxeq,  the  comedy  of  which  wc  have  the  most  know- 
ledge, an  episode  which  is,  no  doubt,  in  better  taste  than 
the  jests  of  a  cook,  though  it  is  of  just  as  little  use  to 
the  plot,  occupies  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  lines 
out  of  a  total  that  cannot  have  exceeded  a  thousand — 
the  great  trial  scene  from  which  the  play  derives  its  title. 
What,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  the  dramatic  problem  which 
constitutes  the  plot  of  the  ' EniTQenovreq'^.  It  hinges  on 
the  question  whether  the  misunderstanding  between 
Charisius  and  his  wife  is  to  be  happily  ended.  For  this 
purpose  it  is,  of  course,  necessary  that  the  ring,  on  which 
the  solution  depends,  should  be  seen  by  Onesimus.  But 
the  question  would  have  been  exactly  the  same  if,  instead 
of  being  the  subject  of  a  quarrel,  both  the  ring  and  the 
child  had  been  found  at  once  by  Syriscus.  By  creating 
the  part  of  Daos  and  by  inventing  the  episode  of  the 
arbitration,  Menander  lost  time  in  superfluous  prelimi- 
naries, and  thus  affords  another  instance  where  the  taste 
for  r}donoua  ^  outweighed  the  author's  care  for  the 
construction  of  the  play. 

Notwithstanding  these  shortcomings,  we  may  say  that, 
during  the  fourth  century,  and  especially  towards  its 
close,  comedy  became  more  orderly  and  accepted  with 
increasing  docility  the  discipline  exacted  by  the  plot. 
We  can  still  trace  quite  clearly  the  influences  that  made 
for  this  progress. 

One  of  these  acted  from  afar — namely,  the  influence  of 
tragedy.  A  hundred  years  before  Alexander  and  Menander 
the  writers  of  x\ttie  tragedy  wrote  only  such  plays  as  were 
a  complete  representation  of  a  crisis  or  of  a  change  of 
fortune,  and  contained  a  complication  and  a  solution.  It 
was  natural  that  comedy,  as  the  younger  sister,  should 

^  Representation  of  character. ( — Tr.). 


304     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

imitate  the  elder,  and  during  the  middle  period  its  authors 
got  into  the  habit  of  doing  so  through  parodying  a  great 
number  of  tragic  works ;  for  it  was,  in  all  likelihood,  not 
only  their  style  and  a  few  of  their  isolated  episodes  that 
were  thus  parodied,  but  some  plays  in  their  entirety  must 
have  been  subjected  to  this  treatment,  their  plots  being 
followed  step  by  step.  In  the  course  of  the  succeeding 
chapters  I  shall  repeatedly  have  occasion  to  point  out 
that  the  works  of  the  via  employed  the  same  motives  or 
adopted  the  same  general  arrangement  as  did  the  dramas 
of  Euripides,  and  these  similarities  of  detail  will  corro- 
borate what  I  have  just  said  in  general  terms  about  the 
influence  of  the  tragic  drama. 

A  second  influence  to  which  attention  must  be  called — 
a  more  direct  and  immediate  influence — is  that  which  was 
doubtless  exercised  by  the  theories  of  Aristotle.  We  know 
how  preponderating  an  importance  the  author  of  the 
Poetics  attaches  to  the  plot  in  tragedy  :  "  The  most  im- 
portant part  of  tragedy  is  the  combination  of  incidents 
(tJ  rcov  TZQayjudrcov  ovoraoig).  .  .  .  Without  a  plot  there 
could  be  no  tragedy;  without  dramatis  personae  there 
could  be  one.  .  .  .  The  plot  is,  therefore,  the  chief  thing, 
and,  as  it  were,  the  soul  of  tragedy ;  the  dramatis  personae 
occupy  only  a  secondary  place."  ^  In  Book  I  of  the 
Poetics,  the  only  book  that  has  come  down  to  us,  these 
remarks  apply  to  tragedy,  but  there  is  reason  to  believe 
that  in  Book  II  they  applied  to  the  other  great  order  of 
drama  as  well.  To  the  mind  of  the  famous  theorist 
whose  doctrines  were  spread  by  Theophrastus,  comedy 
was  bound,  above  all,  to  be  the  imitation  of  action,  and  the 
poets  of  the  new  period  did  not  fail  to  heed  this  advice. 

§2 

Simplicity  or  Intricacy  of  the  Plot 

In  several  of  Plautus'  comedies  the  plot  is  remarkably 
simple.     A   single   problem  is   presented  and   clearly   set 

1  Aristotle,  Poet.,  VI.  p.  1450  A,  lines  15,  23-25,  33-35,  38-39. 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  305 

forth  in  the  very  first  scenes,  and  undergoes  neither  change 
nor  compHcation  in  the  course  of  the  play.  This  problem 
is  solved  at  a  single  stroke,  and  if,  towards  the  end,  the 
results  obtained  are  occasionally  in  danger  of  being  called 
in  question,  the  suspense  is  of  short  duration,  and  some 
providential  occurrence  promptly  corroborates  them.  Let 
us  examine  the  Curculio.  At  the  very  outset  the  em- 
barrassing situation  in  which  Phaedromus  finds  himself 
is  apparent;  the  scheme  which  Curculio  conceives  to 
rescue  him  from  it  succeeds  without  hindrance ;  the 
retroactive  danger,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  which  appears  to 
be  on  the  point  of  arising  out  of  the  sudden  appearance 
of  the  soldier,  is  promptly  removed  by  an  opportune 
recognition.  From  beginning  to  end  the  plot  moves  on 
continuously  and  in  a  straight  line.  But  possibly  this 
is  not  a  good  example,  for  it  has  been  surmised  that  in 
the  Curculio  Plautus  mutilated  the  original  work  which 
had  served  as  his  model.  Let  us,  therefore,  rather 
examine  the  Asinaria,  the  Captivi,  the  Epidicus,  the 
Pseudolus  and  the  Trinummus,  in  which  the  original  plot 
of  the  plays  has  not  undergone  serious  curtailment.  The 
simplicity  of  their  plan  is  quite  as  great.  Occasionally 
the  plot  is  made  even  simpler  in  certain  points.  Thus, 
at  the  close  of  the  Pseudolus,  when  Harpax  and  Ballio 
discover  that  the  slave  has  deceived  them,  neither  the 
slave  nor  his  young  master,  Calidorus,  need  have  any 
fear  of  retaliation;  precautions  are  taken  to  secure  for 
them  the  fruits  of  their  success.  In  the  Trinummus, 
the  trick  which  Calliclcs  and  Megaronides  plan  is  dis- 
covered even  before  it  is  carried  out,  and  the  same  occur- 
rence that,  by  revealing  it,  precludes  its  being  carried  out — 
the  sudden  return  of  Charmides — also  makes  it  super- 
fluous. In  other  words,  of  the  three  periods  into  which 
the  action  is  subdivided  in  the  Curculio,  the  first  is  here 
suppressed  and  the  second  and  third  are  merged  into  one. 

Such,  then,  are  the  most  rudimentary  plots.  In  order 
to  produce  more  complex  and  more  ingenious  ones  the 
poets  make  use  of  various  methods. 


806     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

The  first  of  these  consists  in  not  presenting,  at  the 
outset,  all  the  diffieulties  of  the  problem  that  is  to  be 
solved,  but  in  showing,  in  successive  scenes,  how  it  grows 
more  delicate  and  acute.  In  the  Eunuchus  Phaedria  has 
at  first  only  to  fear  the  rivalry  of  Thraso ;  after  his  brother's 
crime  he  has  also  to  fear  the  anger  of  Thais,  and  after 
Parmeno's  confession,  the  bad  humour  of  his  father.  In 
the  recogydg  a  father's  matrimonial  plans  form  the  only 
difficulty  that  at  first  stands  in  the  way  of  the  lovers  getting 
married ;  subsequently  the  attitude  of  Cleaenetus  seriously 
increases  his  nephew's  embarrassment.  Similarly,  in  the 
Aulularia,  the  attitude  of  Megadorus  increases  the  per- 
plexity of  his  nephew.  In  the  ' ETtiTQenovxeg  the  dis- 
covery of  the  supposed  bastard  furnishes  Smicrines  with 
new  weapons  with  which  to  oppose  his  son-in-law,  and  to 
urge  his  daughter  to  leave  her  libertine  husband.  In  the 
Hecyra  it  is  only  after  Pamphilus  appears  upon  the  stage 
that  we  become  acquainted  with  the  complete  shipwreck 
of  his  married  life,  and  discover  what  are  the  obstacles 
that  almost  preclude  the  re-establishment  of  intimate 
relations  between  him  and  his  wife.  As  these  few  ex- 
amples show,  the  manner  in  which  the  problem  becomes 
complicated  is  not  always  identical.  Sometimes  the  new 
difficulties  which  develop  in  addition  to  those  already 
existing  have  an  origin  of  their  own  :  for  instance,  the 
conduct  of  the  young  Cleaenetus  is  in  no  way  determined 
by  the  plans  of  his  father.  Sometimes,  again,  the  new 
difficulties  arise  from  the  earlier  ones,  or  else  they  are 
due  to  a  conflict  that  had  already  begun  :  in  the  Eunuchus 
it  is  the  present  made  to  Thais  as  an  offset  to  Thraso' s 
generosity  that  suggests  to  Chaerea  the  idea  of  his  ques- 
tionable trick,  and  affords  him  the  means  of  carrying  it 
out.  This  last  kind  of  plot,  in  which  the  germ  of  some 
change  (negmeTeia)  is  contained  in  the  opening  situation, 
will,  no  doubt,  be  regarded  as  the  most  perfect  of  all. 
Incidentally  it  should  be  remarked  that,  in  several  in- 
stances, the  episode  which  gives  rise  to  a  reawakening  of 
suspense  appears  in  the  form  of  a  fortunate  occurrence. 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  807 

Might  it  not  be  a  piece  of  good  fortune  for  penniless 
girls,  like  the  daughter  of  Euelio  or  the  daughter  of 
Myrrhina,  to  be  sought  after  by  men  in  comfortable 
circumstances,  even  though  the  latter  are  no  longer  quite 
young  ?  Do  not  Sostrata  and  Parmcno,  in  the  Ilecyra, 
does  not  the  audience  itself,  hope  that  the  arrival  of 
Pamphilus  will  put  an  end  to  all  disagreements?  That 
sort  of  irony  of  fate  which  changes  good  into  evil  and 
upsets  reasonable  expectations,  manifests  itself  in  an 
especially  striking  manner  in  certain  episodes  in  tragedy 
— one  need  only  recall  the  unforeseen  part  which  the 
messenger  from  Corinth  plays  in  the  Oedipus  Tyrannus. 
Perhaps,  therefore,  the  comic  poets  borrowed  this  idea 
from  tragedy. 

In  the  works  of  the  vea  the  solution  of  a  problem  gives 
occasion  for  a  series  of  episodes  quite  as  often  as  does 
the  setting  forth  of  the  problem.  There  are  cases  where 
several  attempts  to  solve  it  fail  completely  before  one 
succeeds,  or  else  where  it  cannot  be  solved  at  one  stroke. 
In  order  to  thwart  her  husband's  intentions  regarding 
Casina,  Myrrhina  first  resorts  to  prayer,  then  to  drawing 
lots,  and  then  tries  to  make  trouble  between  Lysidamus 
and  his  accomplice  Alcesimus,  and  to  scare  him  with 
the  sham  raving  of  the  young  girl.  None  of  these  attempts 
succeeds ;  finally,  a  last  expedient,  the  dressing-up  of  the 
slave,  results  in  her  victory.  Syrus,  in  the  Heauton 
Timor oumenos,  and  Chrysalus,  in  the  Bacchides,  make  use 
of  several  tricks  in  succession  in  order  to  obtain  money. 
In  the  Aulularia  Euelio  imagines  that  his  precious  pot  is 
the  object  of  a  series  of  constantly  renewed  attacks.  In 
^he  MenaecJimi  it  is  only  after  many  mistakes  that  the 
'"identity  of  each  of  the  two  brothers  is  established.  In 
the  Zauia  ^  Demeas'  peace  of  mind  is  disturbed  and  the 
happy  consummation  of  his  son's  projected  marriage  with 
his  neighbour's  daughter  is  thwarted,  first  by  the  mistake 

*  To  bo  more  exact,  "in  the  extant  portions  of  the  2a/ii'a."  There  must 
originally  have  been  a  series  of  episodes  which  resulted  in  the  marriage  of 
Moschio  and  Plangon  being  decided  upon. 


308     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

Dcmcas  makes  regarding  the  parentage  of  the  child,  then 
by  Niceratiis'  angry  outburst,  and  a  third  time  by  Moschio's 
unexpected  caprice.  In  the  Rudens  Palaestra  escapes 
disaster  in  three  stages,  if  I  may  so  express  it.  First  she 
is  rescued  from  shipwreck,  then  from  slavery,  and  finally 
she  is  restored  to  her  parents.     And  so  on. 

This  method  of  developing  a  plot  by  reiteration  was 
sometimes  practised  without  much  skill.  In  the  Casina, 
for  example,  the  various  episodes  are  merely  placed  next 
to  one  another.  Other  plays  give  us  a  more  favourable 
idea  of  the  comic  poets'  skill.  Though  the  anger  of 
Niceratus  and  the  whims  of  Moschio,  in  the  Zajuia,  have 
nothing  to  do  with  one  another,  still  both  are  called  forth 
by  Demeas'  mistake  and  by  the  scandal  he  raised  by 
driving  away  Chrysis.  In  the  Menaechmi  the  series  of 
adventures  in  which  Menaechmus  of  Syracuse  is  taken  for 
his  brother  have  a  logical  connection,  and  each  of  them 
calls  for  the  ensuing  one;  the  matron's  importunity  is 
occasioned  by  Erotium's  amiability,  and  it  results  first 
in  the  interference  of  the  old  man,  and  then  in  that  of 
the  doctor.  In  the  Aulularia  Megadorus  asks  for  the 
hand  of  Phaedria,  and  Euclio  regards  this  as  the  first 
menace  to  his  treasure-trove.  This  offer  of  marriage  is 
the  occasion  for  the  invasion  of  the  cooks  into  the  old 
man's  house;  and  this  invasion,  in  turn,  results  in  the  theft 
of  the  treasure.  In  the  Bacchides  Chrysalus  is  not  dis- 
couraged by  the  failure  of  his  first  attempt  on  Nicobulus' 
purse,  and  makes  a  second  and  more  successful  assault. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  the  Andria,  Davus'  temporary 
success,  far  from  removing  the  danger,  only  makes  it 
more  immediate. 

The  heaping-up  of  obstacles  and  of  devices  for  over- 
coming them  in  a  play  does  not  keep  our  interest  from 
being  concentrated  on  a  single  problem — most  frequently 
a  kind  of  contest  between  two  adversaries  or  between  two 
groups  of  adversaries.  But  another  method  of  enriching 
the  plot  is  to  multiply  the  objects  of  interest  it  contains. 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  309 

The  poets  who  adopted  this  method  are  sometimes  content 
to  show  us  in  several  scattered  scenes  the  indirect  results 
of  the  main  story  in  the  lives  of  some  of  the  characters  : 
Smicrines,  in  the  'EniTQinovreg,  storming  at  the  cook, 
at  Sophrona,  at  Onesimus,  at  every  one  who  comes  near 
him;  or  Phidippus  and  Laches,  in  the  Ilccyra,  quarrelling 
with  their  wives ;  or  Lysimachus,  in  the  Mercator,  being 
suspected  of  adultery  by  his  wife ;  or  Gripus,  in  the  Rudcns, 
dreaming  of  a  fine  future,  and  quarrelling  about  his  booty 
with  Trachalio,  Dacmones  and  Labrax ;  and  so  on.  These 
are  digressions  of  a  kind  that,  for  a  moment,  divert  our 
attention  from  the  plot  itself  w^ithout,  however,  per- 
mitting us  to  lose  sight  of  it — digressions  w^ith  which  no 
fault  can  be  found  provided  they  do  not  occur  too  late 
in  the  play,  or  awkwardly  prolong  it  beyond  its  real 
conclusion,  as  is  the  case  in  the  Rudens.  In  other  plays 
we  find  a  complete  second  plot  running  side  by  side  with 
the  main  one.  Many  Latin  plays  of  the  class  that  Terence 
calls  fabulae  dupliccs  ^  follow  Greek  models  in  bringing 
two  love  affairs  upon  the  stage  simultaneously,  each  of 
which  claims  its  share  of  the  spectator's  interest.  In  the 
Aulularia  we  are  not  only  interested  to  know  whether 
Lyconides  is  going  to  marry  Phaedrium,  but  also  whether 
Euclio  is  going  to  keep  his  hoard.  In  the  0dofia  the 
honour  of  a  married  woman  is  at  stake,  quite  as  much 
as  the  marriage  of  two  young  people ;  in  the  IIIoxlov 
the  domestic  authority  of  a  shrew  is  involved.  In  the 
IlEQixeiQojuer^]  the  reconciliation  of  Polemo  and  Glyeera, 
no  doubt,  appeared  as  only  one  of  the  objects  aimed  at 
in  the  plot;  the  other  w^as  the  recognition  of  Moschio, 
who  was  in  danger  of  involving  himself  and  his  supposed 
mother  in  a  most  unfortunate  situation. 

Such  double  plots  as  these  involve  a  twofold  danger. 
There  is  a  danger  that  one  of  the  two  issues  dealt  with 
before  the  audience  may  appear  stale  and  insignificant  in 
comparison  wdth  the  other,  or  else  that  both  may  be  so 
slightly  related  as  to  destroy  the  unity  of  the  play.     This 

^  Heaut.,  prol.  6. 


810     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

twofold  difficulty  is  avoided  in  most  of  the  plays  of  which 
we  have  knowledge.  An  examination  of  the  Latin  come- 
dies in  which  two  love  affairs  occur  shows  that,  in  almost 
every  instance,  there  is  an  evident  connection  between 
them.  It  is  only  in  the  Phormio  that  the  adventures  of  the 
two  cousins,  Antipho  and  Phaedria,  run  parallel  and  with- 
out influence  upon  one  another  for  too  long  a  time.  Nor 
does  it  often  happen  that  one  of  the  two  lovers  becomes  a 
matter  of  indifference  to  the  spectator.  This  is,  indeed, 
the  case  with  Charinus,  in  the  Andria ;  but  perhaps  Terence 
is  to  blame  for  it.  In  the  Adelphi,  the  Heauton  Timorou- 
menos  and  the  Phormio,  what  follows  after  Aeschinus, 
Clinia  and  Antipho  once  get  over  their  troubles  would, 
no  doubt,  be  rather  dull  if  the  outcome  of  the  love  affairs 
of  Ctesipho,  of  Clitipho  and  of  Phaedria  were  the  only 
matters  involved;  but,  as  often  happens  when  a  con- 
summate rascal  fills  the  scene  with  his  tricks,  we  become 
interested  in  them  for  their  own  sake  and  independently 
of  the  object  they  have  in  view.  Will  Syrus,  in  the 
Adelphi,  succeed  in  deceiving  Demea  to  the  very  end  ? 
Will  Syrus,  in  the  Heauton  Timor oumenos,  succeed  in 
making  a  fool  of  Chremes  ?  Will  Phormio  win  his  fight 
against  Demipho  ?  These  questions  continue  to  present 
themselves  even  after  the  young  lover  in  each  play  has 
attained  the  object  of  his  desires.  I  must  add  that  two  of 
these  three  plays — the  Adelphi  and  the  Heauton  Timorou- 
inenos — contain  a  moral  problem  in  addition  to  the  dramatic 
problem  involved  in  the  plot,  and  that  for  its  solution  we 
are  obliged  to  wait  until  the  very  last  scenes ;  hence  there 
is  no  fear  of  our  attention  becoming  slack  before  the  end. 
In  the  Aulularia  the  story  of  the  pot  and  that  of  the 
marriage  of  Phaedrium  are  interrelated  as  closely  as 
possible;  it  was  with  a  view  to  this  marriage  that  a  god 
had  brought  about  the  discovery  of  the  pot ;  one  and  the 
same  occurrence,  the  step  taken  by  Megadorus,  puts  an 
end  to  the  anxiety  of  Lyconides  and  redoubles  Euclio's 
fears ;  the  slave  who  steals  the  treasure  is  an  emissary 
of  the  lover,  sent  by  him  to  spy  on  his  rival ;  and,  finally, 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  311 

it  is,  in  all  likelihood,  at  the  request  of  his  future  son-in- 
law,  and  in  order  to  give  his  daughter  a  dowry,  that 
Euclio  parts  with  his  money.  In  Plautus'  play  Lyeonides 
comes  upon  the  scene  very  late,  and  we  have  but  slight 
sympathy  with  his  anxiety  because  we  have  not  been 
informed  of  it  in  advance,  but  it  is  not  at  all  certain  that 
this  fault  was  so  noticeable  in  the  Greek  poet's  play ; 
some  remarks  of  the  young  man,  placed  at  the  opening  of 
the  play,  may  have  served  to  take  the  public  into  his 
confidence  and  secured  their  sympathy.  In  the  UeQixei- 
QOfdvy-j  the  fact  that  Glycera  takes  refuge  in  the  house  of 
the  matron  who  lives  next  door — an  episode  of  her  quarrel 
with  Polemo — gives  rise  to  the  twofold  dvayvcoQioig.  As 
for  the  0do/ua  and  the  IJXoxiov,  we  do  not  know  how 
they  were  constructed.  But  we  do  know  that,  in  the 
(pdoixa,  the  very  precautions  which  the  mother  takes, 
when  visiting  her  daughter  in  her  hiding-place,  prepared 
the  way  for  the  first  meeting  of  the  lovers.  From  a  line 
in  fragment  403  of  the  IIIokiov  it  appears  that  fear  of 
Corbyle's  anger,  which  is  so  acute  in  her  husband's  case, 
did  not  affect  him  alone ;  this  fear  must  have  explained 
the  subterfuges  of  the  lover,  and  the  hesitation  about 
making  good  his  fault. 

In  short,  there  is  abundant  evidence  that  certain  comic 
writers  of  the  new  period  possessed  a  remarkable  gift  of 
combination.  Is  it  a  mere  matter  of  chance  that  most 
of  the  well-constructed  plays  of  which  we  know  come  from 
the  pen  of  Menander?  I  may  here  aptly  quote  an  anec- 
dote that  was  current  about  the  great  poet  in  antiquity. 
Plutarch  relates  that  some  one  once  said  to  Menander  : 
"  How  is  this,  Menander?  The  Dionysia  are  approaching 
and  your  comedy  is  not  written  !  "  "  My  comedy  is 
written,"  he  replied.  "I  have  settled  the  plan;  I  have 
only  the  lines  to  write."  ^ 

»  Plut.,  De  glor.  Aihcn.,  111.  4. 


312  THE    NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

§3 

The  Mainsprings  of  the  Action 

We  have  found  that  there  was  a  dramatic  action  in  all 
the  works  of  New  Comedy;  we  have  studied  the  greater 
or  less  intricacy  of  this  action ;  now  we  must  examine  the 
mainsprings  which  move  it. 

One  of  these  mainsprings  is  chance — a  clumsy  device, 
the  use  of  which,  without  very  careful  adjustment,  shocks 
even  the  least  sensitive  spectator.  Let  us,  first  of  all,  see 
what  use  our  poets  made  of  it. 

While  analysing  the  episodes  of  the  extant  comedies 
one  must  be  struck  by  the  large  number  of  curious  coin- 
cidences that  are  common  to  all  of  them.  In  the  "Hgcog 
it  is  by  a  mere  chance  that  Myrrhina  becomes  the  wife  of 
the  man  who  had  ravished  her  without  even  knowing  her. 
There  is  the  same  fortunate  coincidence  in  the  Cistellaria, 
in  the  Hecyra  and  in  the  ' EnixQejiovxEg;  it  is  likewise  by 
chance  that  in  the  last  of  these  plays  Charisius  takes  as 
his  mistress  the  only  person  who  can  clear  up  the  mystery 
which  baffles  him,  and  who  can  thus  get  him  out  of  trouble. 
Again,  it  is  by  chance  that  Antipho,  in  the  Phormio,  had 
already  married  the  very  girl  who  had  been  chosen  for 
him,  and  that  in  other  plays  so  many  young  men  fell  in 
love  with  women  who  turn  out  to  be  very  proper  matches. 
A  friendly  chance  brings  Tyndarus  to  the  house  ofHegio, 
Palaestrio  to  the  house  of  Pyrgopolinices,  and  Pyrgo- 
polinices  to  the  dwelling  of  Periplecomenus,  the  devoted 
friend  of  his  rival  Pleusicles,  and  lands  Palaestra  within 
a  step  of  her  parents'  house.     And  so  on. 

A  good  number  of  happy  chances,  no  doubt  !  But  it 
should  be  noted  that,  for  the  most  part,  these  coincidences 
are  not  divulged  before  the  end  of  the  play.  In  this 
respect  the  Miles,  in  which  one  may  wonder  at  the  extent 
to  which  fortune  favours  the  interests  of  Pleusicles  (from 
the  prologue  onwards),  and  the  Curculio,  in  which  Curculio 
would    not  have  been   able  to  do  anything  had  he  not 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  313 

met  Phaedromus'  rival  before  the  opening  of  the  play,  are 
exceptions.  As  a  rule,  chance  only  intervenes  to  extricate 
the  actors  from  situations  that  are  sometimes  desperate, 
after  the  former  have  throughout  the  play  displayed 
qualities  of  real  energy  and  intelligence.  It  then  rewards 
their  ingenuity,  their  persistence  and  their  shrewdness,  and 
the  audience  is  glad  to  applaud. 

There  is  another  extenuating  circumstance.  When,  in 
one  of  the  last  scenes  of  the  Andria,  Crito  of  Andros 
appears  just  in  time  to  avert  an  impending  catastrophe, 
his  arrival,  unannounced  and  unexpected,  is  a  real  dramatic 
hit ;  here  we  have  chance  in  all  its  brutality,  if  I  may  so 
express  myself.  But  apparently  the  comic  poets  did  not 
often  introduce  such  surprises.  Ordinarily  the  happy 
coincidence  follows  upon  a  very  natural  chain  of  events. 
In  the  " EnixQenovxEQ,  for  example,  the  truth  is  revealed 
as  soon  as  Sophrona  and  Habrotonon  meet ;  as  chance 
has  made  Habrotonon  the  official  and  avowed  mistress  of 
Charisius,  it  is  almost  inevitable  that  some  time  or  another 
she  should  meet  Sophrona,  the  slave  and  confidante  of 
his  legitimate  wife.  In  the  Hecyra  it  is  the  meeting  of 
Bacchis  and  Philumena  that  brings  about  the  recognition ; 
but  there  is  nothing  fortuitous  about  this  meeting;  it  is 
arranged  most  judiciously  by  Philumena's  father-in-law 
himself.  In  the  JleQixeigo/i^vrj  it  was  probably  while 
examining  Glycera's  gowns  that  Pataecus  was  led  to 
suspect  that  she  might  be  his  daughter;  we  know  that 
this  examination  was  made  at  the  request  of  Polemo,  who 
was  anxious  to  prove  to  his  old  friend  how  much  he  spoiled 
his  mistress.  And  so  on.  Clearly,  although  the  solutions 
of  comic  poets  owe  much  to  chance,  they  are  none  the 
less  brought  about  by  means  of  human  intelligence.  In 
a  fragment  of  the  IIoir]oig  Antiphanes  ironically  envies 
writers  of  tragedy  for  the  device  of  the  deus  ex  machina ;  * 
and  his  successors  in  the  new  period  reserved  the  right 
to  do  the  same. 

Hitherto  we  have  only  seen  chance  behind  the  scenes; 

1  Antiphanes,  fr.  191,  13-16. 


3U  THE    NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

it  prepared  matters  in  advance,  and  then  allowed  the 
actors  to  play  their  parts  without  any  indiscreet  inter- 
ference of  its  own.  There  are  other  cases  where  chance 
ventures  on  the  stage  and  acts  under  the  very  eyes  of 
the  audience ;  but  were  we  to  collect  the  known  instances 
of  this  sort  of  interference  we  should  find  that  they  are 
not  numerous.  Only  in  two  plays — the  Rudens  and  the 
Menaechmi — are  the  actors,  almost  from  beginning  to  end, 
the  sport  of  a  waggish  fortune,  or,  what  is  practically  the 
same  thing,  of  supernatural  will ;  and  these  two  cases 
count  for  little  when  compared  with  so  many  other  come- 
dies in  which  the  machinations  of  a  crafty  slave  constitute 
the  essential  part  of  the  plot.  In  the  ' EnirQenovxeq  the 
plot  would  not  get  under  way  did  not  Onesimus — by 
chance — see  the  ring  which  his  master  had  lost,  in  the 
hands  of  Syriscus,  and  did  not  Habrotonon — by  chance — 
overhear  the  conversation  of  the  two  men.  Occurring,  as 
it  does,  at  the  opening  of  the  play,  this  coincidence  calls 
for  practically  no  criticism;  there  is  no  occasion  to  say 
that  without  it  the  actors  would  be  in  a  quandary,  for 
without  it  they  would  be  doing  nothing.  It  does  not  look 
like  an  expedient,  or  seem  improbable ;  it  is  a  dramatic 
starting-point  for  the  action,  and  as  such  is  quite  as 
acceptable  as  any  other.  There  is  more  room  for  criticism 
when  chance  plaj^s  a  part  after  the  plot  is  once  under 
way.  When,  in  the  Pseudolus,  Harpax  comes  on  the 
scene,  Pseudolus  does,  it  is  true,  pretend  to  have  worked 
out  a  plan  which  he  only  gives  up  when  he  sees  a  prospect 
of  succeeding  by  other  means. ^  But  there  is  no  indication 
of  what  that  plan  was,  and  I  have  a  strong  suspicion  that 
the  poet  himself  never  knew  anything  about  it;  which 
amounts  to  saying  that  Pseudolus  would  have  been  very 
much  embarrassed  had  not  fortune  at  the  proper  moment 
enabled  him  to  make  a  dupe  of  Harpax.  The  case  is 
similar  in  the  Asinaria;  here  Libanus  and  his  companion 
Leonidas  have  not  yet  hit  upon  any  plan  to  obtain  the 
twenty  minae  which  they  are  expected  to  pay,  when  the 

1  Pseud.,  601-602,  675  et  seq. 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  315 

donkey  dealer's  appearance  upon  the  scene  affords  them 
an  unexpected  windfall.  In  lines  249  et  seq.  Libanus 
frankly  admits  this.  A  thorough  examination  of  the 
plays  might  add  several  other  instances  to  these  well- 
defmcd  ones.  Would  not  Syrus,  in  the  Heauton  Timorou- 
menos,  have  been  completely  at  a  loss  but  for  the  recog- 
nition of  Antiphila  ?  Do  not  the  soldier  Cleomaehus  (lines 
842  et  seq.  of  the  Bacchidcs)  and  Chremes  (lines  732  et  seq. 
of  the  Andria)  come  upon  the  scene  too  much  in  the  nick 
of  time  ?  At  first  sight  they  might  appear  to  do  so,  but, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  unexpected  event  in  these  scenes 
only  brings  success  nearer,  and,  even  if  it  contributes  to 
it,  it  is  merely  because  a  shrewd  mind  knows  how  to 
profit  by  it  at  the  given  moment. 

Starting  the  action  and  bringing  it  to  an  end — that  is 
all,  or  about  all,  that  the  interference  of  chance  amounts 
to  in  the  via.  That  is  to  say,  it  can  easily  be  put  up 
with,  and  the  ancient  audiences  must  have  borne  with  it 
all  the  more  readily  because,  in  their  day,  Fortune  was 
commonly  regarded  as  the  supreme  arbiter  of  human 
affairs.  In  some  of  the  fragments  of  the  ''Yjio^oh/naloi; 
and  of  the  TMr],^  Menander  himself  clearly  formulates 
this  belief. 

More  objectionable  than  the  part  which  Fortune  takes 
in  the  action  of  the  play  are  the  psychological  improb- 
abilities at  the  cost  of  which  certain  characters  are  enabled 
to  assist  its  progress. 

Let  me  say,  however,  at  once  that  of  this  there  are 
but  few  instances  in  the  chief  fragments  of  INIcnander. 
Several  actors  in  the  Za/nia  behave,  no  doubt,  in  a  some- 
what paradoxical  manner.  But  although  their  perform- 
ances are  too  jerky,  though  their  changes  of  attitude 
surprise  and  disconcert  us,  yet  it  cannot  be  said  that 
they  are  unnatural,  and  I  have  already  expressed  my 
views  on  this  point. ^  In  the  ' EjiiXQenovrEQ  the  opening 
situation  will  hardly  stand  the  test  of  analysis.     Charisius 

1  Men.,  fr.  460,  482,  483.  *  Cf.  p.  242  et  seq. 


31G     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

knows  perfectly  well  what  he  did  at  the  time  of  the  Tauro- 
polia ;  Pamphila  knows  perfectly  well  what  happened  to 
her  at  the  time;  adventures  like  that  which  brought  them 
into  contact  with  one  another  cannot  have  taken  place 
by  the  dozen  at  one  and  the  same  nocturnal  festival. 
Therefore,  were  Charisius  to  ask  his  wife  for  information — 
and  why  should  he  not  do  so,  as  he  still  feels  affection  for 
her? — the  truth  would  soon  be  revealed.  In  order,  how- 
ever, to  construct  his  play,  Menander  lets  Charisius  and 
Pamphila  hold  their  peace  contrary  to  all  probability. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  behaviour  of  all  the  other  actors 
throughout  the  play  is  quite  natural.  Can  it  be  said  that 
Syriscus  is  unreasonably  obliging  when  he  trusts  Onesimus 
with  the  precious  ring,  that  Onesimus  is  rather  too  ready 
to  tell  Syriscus  and  Habrotonon  about  his  master's  affairs, 
that  Habrotonon  displays  excessive  eagerness  to  interfere 
in  matters  that  do  not  concern  her?  In  acting  as  they 
do  they  are  all  swayed  by  their  own  interests  or  by  their 
personal  inclination.  Syriscus  is  a  worthy  man  who, 
being  honest  himself,  readily  believes  that  others  are 
honest;  he  has  a  keen  sense  of  justice;  Onesimus — the 
slave  of  some  one  closely  connected  with  his  master — 
assures  him  that  the  ring  was  lost  by  Charisius ;  Syriscus 
does  not  wish  to  stand  in  the  way  of  its  being  duly  restored 
to  its  rightful  owner;  his  trust,  moreover,  is  not  blind 
trust,  and  when  the  time  comes  for  him  to  reclaim  the 
ring  he  does  so.^  Onesimus  himself  admits  that  his 
tongue  is  always  wagging ;  ^  like  Parmeno,  in  the  Hecyra, 
he  is  fond  of  gossiping,  and  this  fault,  which  may  account 
for  his  attitude  in  the  opening  dialogue,  also  explains  his 
telling  Syriscus  what  bothers  him.  As  for  Habrotonon, 
who  is  a  sly  puss,  it  is,  above  all,  her  hope  of  becoming 
free  that  leads  her  to  put  herself  forward.^  Would  any 
courtesan-slave  w^ho  knew  what  she  knew,  and  who  had 
a  reasonable  amount  of  cleverness,  have  done  less  in  her 
place  ?     Yet,  notwithstanding  her  cleverness,  Habrotonon 

1  'EiriTp.,  226  et  seq.         "  Ibid.,  205-206,  357  et  seq. 
»  Ibid.,  321  et  seq.,  340  et  seq. 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  317 

would  not  have  been  able  to  make  Charisius  sjicak  had 
he  wanted  to  keep  his  secret.  But  Charisius  is  drunk 
and  has  cast  prudence  aside ;  all  he  needs  is  a  little  urging 
to  confess  his  misdeeds.^ 

In  the  longest  original  fragments  the  relations  between 
actors  and  plot  and  the  influence  of  the  former  on  the 
latter  are  always,  or  almost  always,  quite  natural,  when 
viewed  from  a  psychological  point  of  view.  But  all  the 
poets  of  the  new  period  were,  of  course,  not  as  good  as 
Menander,  and  Menander  himself  had  his  faults.  There 
are  improbabilities  enough  in  Latin  comedies — in  Terence's 
as  well  as  in  Plautus' — and  the  majority  of  them  must 
have  existed  in  the  Greek  models.  I  shall  mention  a  few 
of  these  improbabilities  of  various  kinds. 

Occasionally  the  devices  and  tricks  conceived  by  the 
actors  have  no  raison  d'Hre,  or  else  there  is  no  possibility 
of  their  resulting  in  any  good.  What  purpose  can  Tranio's 
deceit  serve  in  the  Mostellaria  ?  Merely  to  put  off  the 
discovery  of  his  crimes  and  of  Philolaches'  misdeeds  for  a 
few  moments  or,  at  the  most,  for  a  few  hours.  If  it  be 
objected  that  during  this  short  space  of  time  Callidamates, 
the  alter  ego  of  Philolaches,  had  time  to  become  sober, 
and  so,  together  with  other  friends,  manages  to  pacify 
Theopropides  by  promising  that  he  will  not  have  to 
defray  his  son's  expenses,  it  must  be  said  that  this  inter- 
vention to  bring  about  peace  might  just  as  properly  have 
taken  place  after  an  interview  between  father  and  son, 
and  after  a  first  outburst  of  anger  on  the  part  of  Theo- 
propides. There  is  danger  that  Tranio's  lies,  which  Philo- 
laches certainly  abets  in  so  far  as  he  tolerates  them,  may 
increase  the  old  man's  resentment;  they  are,  therefore, 
useless  lies,  the  lies  of  a  virtuoso,  which  no  one  in  real 
life  would  permit  himself  to  utter.  In  the  Andria  it  is 
Simo  who  through  sheer  cheerfulness  of  heart  complicates 
a  simple  situation.  He  has  found  out  that  his  son  is  in 
love  with  Glycerium;  instead  of  reproaching  him  for  this 
directly,  he  pretends  that  Chremes,  one  of  his  old  friends, 

1  'Ettjt/).,  303-306. 


318     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

whose  daughter  Pamphihis  was  at  one  time  to  have 
married,  again  agrees  to  let  him  have  her,  and  without 
further  ado  tells  the  young  lover  that  he  must  marry 
that  very  day.  A  curious  expedient  !  In  his  reply  to 
Sosia,  who  is  surprised  at  this  turn  of  events,  he  makes 
an  effort  to  explain  it — 

"  If,"  says  he,  "  Pamphilus'  passion  makes  him  refuse 
to  marry  her,  that  will  give  me  an  opportunity  to  repri- 
mand him,  and  now  I  am  trying  by  means  of  this  suggested 
marriage  to  find  a  legitimate  cause  for  scolding  him  if  he 
refuses  his  assent.  At  the  same  time,  I  want  that  scoundrel 
of  a  Davus,  if  he  has  any  scheme  up  his  sleeve,  to  exhaust 
his  devilries  now  while  they  cannot  harm  us."  ^ 

But  of  the  two  reasons  he  alleges,  the  former  amounts 
to  nothing,  for  Simo  would  have  quite  as  much  right  to 
scold  if  he  obtained  a  negative  response  when  asking  his 
son  :  "  Will  you  leave  your  mistress  and  marry  ?  "  As  for 
the  second  reason,  it  is  not  worth  much  more  than  the  first  : 
Simo  does  Davus  great  honour  by  dreading  his  interference 
so  much ;  he  does  him  injustice  in  thinking  that  he  would 
not  interfere  more  than  once.  In  the  Heauton  Timorou- 
menos  it  seems  as  though  there  were  little  left  for  Syrus  to 
do  after  Antiphila  has  been  recognised.  It  is  only  necessary 
for  him  to  make  Chremes  hand  out  the  ten  minae  about 
which  he  has  spoken  to  him,  under  the  pretext  that  they 
would  serve  to  release  his  daughter,  and  to  give  this  money 
to  Bacchis  and  dismiss  her,  pretending  that  Clinia  is  leaving 
her  with  a  view  to  getting  married,  and  thus,  wdth  little 
effort,  protect  the  interests  of  all  his  employers.  But  rather 
than  follow  so  simple  a  course  our  man  devises  new  schemes 
in  which  his  accomplices  finally  get  entangled.  True,  his 
discomfiture  is  part  of  the  author's  plan.  It  might,  how- 
ever, have  been  brought  about  in  another  way — namely, 
by  an  inopportune  outburst  of  joy  on  the  part  of  Clinia 
or  by  an  impatient  outbreak  on  the  part  of  Bacchis.  So, 
here  again,  it  is  the  poet  who,  in  the  person  of  one  of  his 
actors,  is  over-elaborate  in  his  trickery.     Apparently  he 

^  Andr.,  155  et  seq. 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  319 

knew  that  in  doing  so  he  fell  in  with  the  taste  of  his  audi- 
ence. A  elcvcr  piece  of  trickery  always  had  the  merit 
of  interesting  the  Greeks ;  in  the  days  of  New  Comedy  the 
spectators  no  doubt  followed  the  machinations  of  a  Davus 
or  of  a  Chrysalus  with  quite  as  much  pleasure  as  their 
ancestors  had  felt  in  the  old  days  in  following  those  of  an 
Odysseus  or  of  a  Sinon,  those  heroic  liars  of  whom  one  of 
our  rascals  legitimately  proclaims  himself  the  heir.^ 

At  times,  then,  the  actors  in  the  vea  are  extravagant  in 
their  activity  and  cunning.  At  other  times,  on  the  con- 
trary, they  carry  their  inactivity  or  their  stupidity  to  excess. 
The  extreme  credulity  of  Pyrgopolinices,  who  is  blinded  by 
self-conceit,  fits  into  the  spirit  of  his  part.  The  ingenuous- 
ness of  Sceledrus,  in  admitting  the  existence  of  the  twin 
sisters  without  thinking  of  confronting  them  with  one 
another,  and  the  trustfulness  of  Harpax,  in  unhesitat- 
ingly and  for  no  known  reason  placing  the  letter  whieli 
establishes  his  credit  in  the  hands  of  a  stranger,  are  at 
best  conceivable  in  inferior  slaves.  But  there  are  other 
actors  who,  without  having  any  moral  or  social  excuse, 
really  display  a  degree  of  credulity  that  is  unnatural  : 
for  instance,  Hegio  in  the  Captivi  and  Nicobulus  in  the 
Bacchides — not  to  mention  Dordalus,  a  character  of  the 
middle  period.  Hegio  does  not  hesitate  for  a  moment  to 
believe  what  his  two  prisoners,  Tyndarus  and  Philocrates, 
tell  him.  He  takes  their  word  for  it  that  one  of  them — 
the  one  who  pretends  to  be  Philocrates  and  is  really 
Tyndarus — is  the  son  of  a  rich  citizen  of  Elis.  Before 
receiving  any  information  about  the  identity  of  the  other 
prisoner,  who  pretends  to  be  Tyndarus  and  really  is 
Philocrates,  he  sets  him  free.  Similarly  Nicobulus,  at 
the  critical  moment  of  the  Bacchides,  fails  to  use  the  most 
ordinary  precautions.  That  he  should  have  believed  in 
the  story  about  the  robbers  which  Chrysalus  tells  in  the 
first  part  of  the  play  is  conceivable,  but  what  follows  is 
not  so  easy  to  understand.  Chrysalus,  whose  trick  has 
been  discovered,   plans  another  deception.     He  tells  the 

1  Bacch.,  949. 


320     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

old  man  that  his  son  Mnesilochus  has  compromised  himself 
with  a  married  woman,  and  that,  in  order  to  save  himself, 
he  must  pay  damages  to  the  soldier  Cleomaehus,  the 
supposed  husband  of  the  adulteress.  Nicobulus  believes 
him,  and  hands  over  the  money.  Now,  might  he  not 
have  assured  himself  of  the  social  status  of  the  young 
woman  with  whom  Mnesilochus  had  found  favour  before 
he  loosened  his  purse-strings  ?  Is  it  likely  that  he  would 
again  trust  the  artful  Chrysalus  immediately  after  having 
been  deceived  by  him?  For  my  own  part,  I  find  it 
difficult  to  believe. 

After  these  instances  of  exaggerated  credulity  I  shall 
cite  a  few  instances  of  excessive  readiness *1;o  put  up  with 
anything.  In  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos  Clitipho  lets  his 
friend  Clinia's  mistress  come  to  his  father's  house  without 
giving  the  latter  any  intimation  of  his  intention.  Syrus 
goes  still  further  in  his  impudence,  and  dares  to  bring,  not 
a  modest  Antiphila,  but  a  showy  and  noisy  courtesan  to 
Chremes'  house.  It  is  a  wonder  that,  under  these  circum- 
stances, Chremes  puts  up  with  this,  and  that  he  does  not 
shut  his  door  in  the  face  of  these  unexpected  guests.  In 
the  Aulularia  Megadorus  very  quickly  falls  in  with  the 
idea  of  taking  a  wife.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  prologue 
suggests  that  his  sudden  change  of  attitude  is  ex- 
plained by  the  influence  of  a  god ;  but  I  question  whether 
Menander's  contemporaries  took  a  different  view  of  this 
explanation  than  that  which  we  take  to-daj^^ — in  other 
w^ords,  whether  they  saw  anything  else  in  it  than  a 
failure  in  inventiveness,  a  mere  pro  forma  apology.  This 
same  play  has  further  surprises  in  store  for  us ;  a  stage 
convention — soliloquy — of  which  I  shall  speak  later  on, 
is  carried  to  the  very  limit  of  psychological  improbability. 
I  refer  to  lines  608  et  seq.  and  673  et  seq.  The  persistence 
of  Euclio's  efforts  to  betray  himself  is  really  inconceivable. 
Nor  is  it  any  more  natural  that,  in  the  Curculio,  Thera- 
pontigonus,  when  a  stranger  accosts  him  on  a  public 
square,  should  forthw^ith  tell  him  what  he  intends  to  do  at 
Epidaurus,   and  about  the  bargain  he  has  made  with  a 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  8^1 

certain  person,  and  about  the  terms  of  that  bargain.  And, 
finally,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  scene  in  the  Cistellaria  in 
which  Lampadio,  who  is  neither  stupid  nor  ill  disposed, 
tells  the  first  woman  he  meets  about  the  youthful  mis- 
fortunes of  his  mistress.^  One  could  understand  his  doing 
so  if  he  had  had  any  reason  to  believe  that  Melaenis  might 
help  him  in  his  search;  but  he  must  think  that  the  old 
courtesan  is  questioning  him  from  pure  curiosity. 

Lastly,  I  shall  point  out  a  few  instances  where  the 
actors  violate  probability  by  omission.  -In  the  Menaechmi, 
V  Menaechmus  Sosicles  and  Messenio  display  an  incredible 
^  lack  of  sagacity.  All  the  curious  adventures  that  befall 
them  ought  to  make  them  suspect  that  some  mistake  is 
'being  made  about  the  identity  of  the  people  by  whom 
they  are  surrounded,  and  as  they  go  everywhere  for  the 
express  purpose  of  finding  Sosicles'  twin  brother,  it  would 
be  natural  that  they  should  think  of  him.  Hardly  has 
Messenio' s  master  landed  at  Epidaurus  when  he  is  addressed 
as  Menaechmus,  and  a  woman  is  able  to  tell  him  who  he 
is,  whence  he  comes  and  what  his  father's  name  was. 
And  yet  he  never  guesses  for  whom  this  woman  takes  him  I 
No  Syracusan  could  possibly  be  so  dull.  A  similar  criti- 
cism might  be  made  of  a  few  passages  in  the  Mercator.  Is 
it  conceivable  that  after  the  scene  of  the  mock-auction 
Demipho  should  not  understand  who  the  fair  Pasicompsa 
really  is  —  namely,  his  son's  mistress  ?  And  how  is  it 
possible  that  Lysimachus,  after  having  heard  Pasicompsa 
say  that  she  has  been  living  with  his  master  for  two  years 
and  after  having  heard  her  call  his  master  adulescens — 
how  is  it  possible  that  he  should  not  guess  the  truth  ? 
Other  old  men  in  comedy  are  unduly  credulous,  but  the  old 
men  in  the  Mercator  are  not  willing  to  see  what  is  obvious. 
Let  us  leave  Plautus  and  take  up  Terence.  At  line  670  of 
the  Ileauton  Timoroumenos  Clinia  comes  out  of  the  house 
of  Chremes,  who  has  just  recognised  Antiphila  as  his 
daughter.  He  is  beside  himself  with  joy.  In  front  of 
the  house  he  meets  Syrus,  and  it  is  with  great  difficulty 

^  Cist.,  597  et  seq. 


822     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

that  the  latter  persuades  him  to  contain  himself  and,  now 
that  his  love  affair  is  safe,  not  to  jeopardise  that  of  his 
friend  Clitipho.^  While  witnessing  Clinia's  transports  one 
naturally  asks  how  it  is  that  this  youth,  this  impatient 
lover,  who  is  so  little  able  to  control  himself  when  Syrus 
is  at  hand  to  admonish  him  to  do  so,  was  so  calm  before, 
when  he  suddenly,  and  probably  in  the  presence  of  Chremes, 
learned  that  Antiphila  was  a  citizen  and  that  he  might 
therefore  think  of  marrying  her  ?  Subsequently  Bacchis, 
in  her  turn,  comes  out  of  Chremes'  house.  She  is  tired  of 
waiting  for  the  ten  minae  that  Syrus  has  promised  her, 
and  tired  of  acting  a  part  and  of  pretending  to  be  Clinia's 
mistress.  She  bursts  out  and  noisily  prepares  to  go  off 
to  the  house  of  another  aspirant  for  her  favour.^  How 
comes  it  that  before  making  all  this  uproar  she  waits  until 
she  is  outside  Chremes'  house,  and  runs  no  risk  of  being 
heard  by  him?  Surely  this  is  a  curious  amount  of  con- 
sideration to  show  when  in  a  temper.  Or  take  a  final 
instance  from  the  Andria.  Davus  has,  without  at  the 
moment  believing  what  he  was  saying,  informed  Simo  that 
Glycerium  is  about  to  have  a  new-born  infant  placed 
before  Pamphilus'  door,  in  order  to  compromise  him. 
Subsequently  things  take  such  a  turn  that  Davus  is  quick 
to  resort  to  this  device  in  order  to  cure  Simo's  crony, 
Chremes,  of  his  wish  to  have  his  daughter  marry  Pam- 
philus. Meanwhile,  however,  Simo  has  seen  Chremes. 
How  comes  it  that,  though  he  has  been  informed  of  this 
plan  by  Davus,  he  does  not  think  of  warning  Chremes 
and  thus  ruining  the  success  of  the  plot?  Here,  again, 
this  discretion  seems  to  be  designed — at  the  cost  of  what 
is  natural — in  order  to  allow  the  action  to  run  its  course 
smoothly. 

I  have  compiled  a  long  list  of  shortcomings,  and  this 
list  might  be  extended  yet  further.  Still,  the  cases  in 
which  the  dramatis  personae  act  in  a  way  that  violates 
psychological  probability  constitute  a  very  small  minority 

^  Heaut.,  688  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  723  et  seq. 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  323 

when  we  consider  comic  literature  as  a  whole.  As  to  the 
cases  where  their  conduct  appears  true  to  nature,  there 
would  be  no  need  to  cite  instances  if  this  truth  which  is 
respected  were  always  an  average  and  commonplace  one. 
But,  as  we  have  seen,  the  actors  are  not  all  men  of  one  and 
the  same  type,  nor  are  their  feelings  limited  to  what  is 
conventional  in  human  life.  Each  of  them  has  a  special 
character  of  his  own,  which  supplies  him  with  special 
motives  for  his  acts.  To  construct  a  plot  with  such 
characters  is  a  more  delicate  task,  and  one  that  calls  for 
more  skill  than  merely  avoiding  a  formal  offence  against 
common  sense,  and  it  will  be  interesting  to  see  whether 
our  poets  succeeded  in  this  task. 

On  this  point  the  Kom  Ishkaou  fragments  afford  direct 
and,  for  the  most  part,  favourable  evidence.  I  have  said 
that  the  successive  sudden  changes  of  fortune  in  the  Za/uta 
were  due  to  the  good-nature  of  Demeas,  to  the  impetuous 
and  changeable  disposition  of  Niceratus,  and  to  the  sensi- 
tiveness of  Moschio.  We  have  seen  that  Syriscus'  con- 
ciliatory spirit,  Onesimus'  communicativeness,  and  Habro- 
tonon's  cleverness  and  the  perseverance  with  which  she 
works  for  her  enfranchisement,  were  the  essential  features 
of  the  plot  of  the  'EmrQenovreg.  As  much  may  be  said  of 
the  characters  of  young  Charisius  and  of  his  father-in- 
law,  Smicrines.  If  Charisius  had  been  brutal  he  would 
have  dismissed  Pamphila  and  would  have  informed  her 
father  of  the  unhappy  woman's  misfortune.  Had  he  been 
deliberate,  and  had  he  listened  to  reason,  he  would  from 
the  first  have  forgiven  a  supposed  fault  that  deserved  much 
more  pity  than  blame — as,  indeed,  he  is  inclined  to  do 
when  he  makes  his  soliloquy.  But  Charisius  is  both  a 
man  of  the  world  and  also  a  slave  to  prejudice.  One  of 
these  characteristics  accounts  for  his  saying  nothing  to 
Smicrines,  while  the  other  accounts  for  his  ravishing 
Pamphila.  The  importance  of  the  old  man's  harshness 
and  love  of  money  in  the  development  of  the  plot  is  mani- 
fest ;  a  father  with  a  different  disposition  would — like 
Antipho,    in    the    Stichus — no    doubt    have    been    slower 


324      THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

to  take  back  his  daughter  against  her  will.  In  the 
JJeQixeiQO/iievr]  Polemo's  impctuousness  and  irresolution 
show  their  effect  from  beginning  to  end  of  the  play.  In 
her  account  of  the  estrangement  of  the  two  lovers  Agnoia 
does,  it  is  true,  pretend  that  it  was  all  her  doing,  and 
that  she  drove  the  soldier  to  acts  of  violence  that  were 
contrary  to  his  nature,^  but  one  must  not  believe  her  too 
implicitly.  Fiery  and  impulsive  as  he  is,  Polemo  would 
have  been  perfectly  capable  of  treating  his  mistress 
brutally  without  the  aid  of  others.  Pataecus  has  no 
doubts  about  this  when,  in  one  of  the  closing  scenes,  he 
advises  him  to  drop  his  soldier  ways  and  not  to  indulge 
in  any  further  outbursts  of  anger  against  Glycera.^  It 
may  be  that,  in  maltreating  Glycera,  Polemo  went  beyond 
his  natural  bent,  but  he  did  not  act  in  a  way  that  was 
absolutely  foreign  to  his  character.  The  same  inclination 
towards  violence  that  he  displays  at  the  very  beginning 
of  the  play  accounts  for  one  of  the  later  episodes  of  the 
plot — the  attack,  or  rather  the  preparation  for  an  attack — 
on  Moschio's  dwelling.  On  the  other  hand,  Glycera  is 
entirely  free  to  move  over  to  her  neighbour's  house, 
merely  because  of  the  irresoluteness  of  Polemo,  who  had 
taken  only  half  measures  regarding  her ;  and  that  young 
woman  is  recognised  as  Pataecus'  daughter  merely  because 
Polemo,  who  is  incapable  of  acting  for  himself  when  it  is 
necessary  to  take  a  decisive  step,  had  conceived  the  idea 
of  asking  Pataecus  to  convey  his  sentiments  to  her. 

The  more  or  less  complete  abstracts  which  we  possess 
of  a  few  other  plays  and,  above  all,  the  Latin  imitations, 
enable  us  to  add  some  further  examples  to  those  supplied 
by  the  longer  original  fragments. 

To  begin  with,  the  following  are  two  instances  where  the 
character  of  one  of  the  dramatis  personae  has  a  decisive, 
though  indirect,  influence  on  the  events  that  take  place 
before  the  plot  begins.  In  the  Trinummus  it  is  clear  that 
it  was  Charmides'  distrust  of  his  son  Lesbonicus'  prudence 
in  financial  matters  that  led  him  to  bury  a  reserve  fund 

1  nept/c.,  44  et  seq.  ^  /^j^^  365-366. 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  325 

of  three  thousand  sesterces  in  his  garden  before  he  started 
for  Egypt.  A  similar  course  was  pursued  in  Menander's 
Orjaavgog.  The  hero  of  that  play,  a  young  man  who  has 
ruined  himself  in  riotous  living,  carries  out  one  of  his 
father's  last  wishes  by  having  a  connnemorative  banquet 
carried  to  his  tomb  ten  years  after  his  death.  On  this 
occasion  the  tomb  which  the  father  had  had  built  during 
his  lifetime  is  opened  and  is  found  to  contain  a  hoard  of 
money  which,  after  various  eventualities,  relieves  the 
son's  financial  distress.  Thus  the  old  father  had  foreseen 
his  son's  extravagance  which,  when  the  time  came,  would 
make  this  addition  to  his  fortune  necessary.  He  had  like- 
wise foreseen  the  obedience  and  filial  devotion  which  would 
lead  him  to  find  it. 

Now  that  I  have  dealt  with  the  events  that  take  place 
before  the  plot  begins,  I  shall  consider  the  plot  itself. 
Possibly  the  relations  between  the  chief  actor's  character 
and  the  course  of  events  can  be  better  and  more  con- 
stantly observed  in  the  Aulularia  than  in  any  other  Latin 
comedy.  Were  Euclio  not  so  afraid  of  becoming  poor, 
he  would  perhaps  not  be  so  ready  to  have  his  daughter 
marry  the  aged  Megadorus — without  a  dowry  ! — a  deci- 
sion which,  as  soon  as  it  becomes  known,  leads  Lyconides 
to  reveal  his  identity.  It  is  because  of  this  fear  of  becom- 
ing poor,  which  makes  him  suspicious  of  every  one  and  of 
everything,  that  he  carries  his  treasure-pot  about  with 
him  and  exposes  it  to  the  danger  of  being  stolen,  instead 
of  leaving  it  securely  at  home.  It  is  because  of  this  fear 
of  becoming  poor,  and  because  he  is  beset  by  a  dread  of 
being  wronged,  that  he  maltreats  Strobilus,  and  through 
his  brutal  treatment  inspires  him  with  a  so  much  greater 
desire  to  rob  him  of  his  treasure-pot.  It  is  quite  clear 
that  the  plot  of  the  Miles  Gloriosus  hinges  chiefly  on  the 
character  of  Pyrgopolinices.  People  count  on  his  incon- 
tinency  and  conceit  quite  as  correctly  as  they  count  on  the 
cupidity  and  vulgarity  of  the  pander  in  the  Persa  or  in 
the  Poenulus.  In  the  Eunuchus  the  character  of  each  of 
the  two  brothers  in  turn  influences  the  course  of  events. 


32G      THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

At  the  beginning  of  the  play  Phaedria  is  urged  to  allow 
his  rival,  the  soldier  Thraso,  to  enjoy  provisionally  the 
favour  of  his  mistress  Thais,  as  otherwise  Thraso  would 
not  give  back  the  young  girl  Pamphila  to  Thais,  and  the 
plot  could  not  proceed.  He  consents  because  he  has  a 
gentle  and  compliant  nature,  but  I  have  serious  doubts 
whether  his  brother  Chaerea  would  have  consented  under 
similar  circumstances.  It  is  this  young  brother  Chaerea 
who  subsequently  carries  on  the  plot  by  falling  in  love 
with  Pamphila  at  first  sight,  by  gaining  admission  to  her 
home,  and  by  taking  undue  advantage  of  a  idte-d-tete; 
all  of  which  shows  his  impetuous  nature.  In  the  Cistel- 
laria  the  eccentricity  of  Alcesimarchus,  which  is  a  mani- 
festation of  a  passionate  character,  leads  the  servant 
Halisca  to  drop  the  yvcoQio/uaxa  in  the  street;  and  this 
delays  the  solution  of  the  plot.  In  the  Bacchides  Mnesi- 
lochus'  suspicion  and  stupidity,  to  which  he  himself  pleads 
guilty,  account  for  the  error  into  which  he  falls.  In  the 
0do/j,a  the  romantic  passion  of  the  young  hero  harmonises 
with  the  temperament  revealed  in  fragment  530 — melan- 
choly weariness  of  life,  love  of  the  extraordinary.  In 
the  Hccyra  Philumena  would  not  have  been  able  to  take 
refuge  in  her  parents'  house  were  not  Philippus  what  he 
is,  kind  and  even  somewhat  weak;  Pamphilus  would  not 
be  beset  by  so  much  trouble  did  not  the  generosity  of 
Sostrata,  who  was  ready  to  make  any  concession,  deprive 
him  of  a  pretext ;  Bacchis  would  not  get  him  out  of  trouble 
were  she  not  better  than  the  average  woman  of  her  class. 
In  the  Andria  the  easy  compliance  of  Chremes,  who  is 
ready  to  stake  his  daughter's  happiness  on  the  word  of 
a  friend,  and  Simo's  suspicious  nature,  of  which  he  is  himself 
the  victim,  bring  about  the  sudden  changes  of  fortune 
in  the  plot.  The  outcome  of  many  a  love  affair  depends, 
in  large  measure,  on  the  mood  of  a  father.  If  we  consider 
the  end  of  the  Mostellaria,  of  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos, 
of  the  Adelphi  and  of  the  Bacchides,  we  shall  find  that 
each  one  is  different,  and  that  each  hinges  upon  the  deci- 
sion of  a  father  who  remains  true  to  his  real  nature  : 


INTERNAL    STRUCTURE  327 

Theopropridcs,  indifferent  to  everything  but  his  purse ; 
Chremes,  authoritative  and  determined;  Micio,  full  of 
gentleness ;  and  Philoxenus,  still  suffering  from  his  previous 
weakness. 

It  is  clear  that  it  is  not  only  chance  or  the  author's 
caprice  that  influences  the  current  of  events  in  the  come- 
dies of  the  new  period,  but  also  the  dramatis  personae 
themselves.  In  many  instances  characters  and  plot  are 
intimately  related  to  one  another. 


CHAPTER    III 

EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE    OF    THE    COMEDIES 
STAGE    CONVENTIONS 

HITHERTO  I  have  dealt  with  the  internal  structure 
of  the  comedies ;  now  I  shall  deal  with  their  ex- 
ternal structure.  I  shall  begin  by  examining  the  stage 
conventions  which  the  writers  of  the  via  introduced,  and 
the  devices  which  the  stage,  as  it  was  constituted  in  their 
day,  obliged  them  to  adopt. 

§  1 

Conventions  Regarding  The  Opening  Of  The  Play 
Soliloquies  and  Asides 

The  natural  and  most  usual  means  of  expression  in 
dramatic  poetry  is  the  dialogue;  several  persons  speak  in 
turn,  and  each  of  them  desires  and  intends  to  be  heard 
by  the  others.  But  we  need  only  glance  at  the  Latin 
imitations,  or  even  at  what  remains  of  the  original  Greek 
plays,  to  discover  that  this  was  not  always  the  case  in  the 
comedies  of  the  new  period.  Side  by  side  with  the  passages 
in  the  form  of  dialogue  there  were  passages — sometimes 
a  short  sentence  and  sometimes  a  long  tirade — that  were 
not  meant  to  be  heard  by  any  of  the  dramatis  person  ae  or 
supernumeraries;  in  other  words,  there  were  soliloquies. 
Let  us  see  by  what  conventions  the  comic  poets  were  led 
to  introduce  soliloquies. 

There  is  no  room  for  doubt  that  in  Plautus  and  Terence 
many  soliloquies  must  be  regarded  as  regular  speeches 
that  were  spoken  aloud.  The  best  proof  of  this  is  to 
be  found  in  the  fact  that  a  second  actor,  who  often  comes 
upon  the  scene  by  chance  or  is  set  there  to  watch,  listens 
to  the  actor  who  delivers  the  soliloquy  and  hears  what 
he  has  to  say.  But  are  so  many  discourses  delivered  in 
solitude  psychologically  probable  ? 

328 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  329 

Of  course,  we  must  accept  the  soliloquies  which  take  the 
form  of  prayer,  of  invocations,  or  of  addresses  to  the  gods, 
to  the  native  soil,  or  to  the  house  to  which  one  returns  or 
which  one  is  about  to  leave ;  ^  also,  if  need  be,  the  tirades 
that  contain  apostrophes  to  the  stars  or  to  the  elements,'* 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  idea  of  addressing  these 
inanimate  objects  savours  somewhat  of  artificiality.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  people  who  are 
greatly  moved  or  preoccupied  should,  when  they  think 
they  are  alone,  give  audible  expression  to  the  violent 
emotions  by  which  they  are  stirred.  In  the  Phortnio 
Demipho  is  furious  with  his  son,  who  has  married  while 
he  was  away  from  home ;  ^  in  the  Rudens  Palaestra  and 
Ampelisca  break  forth  in  lamentations  when  each  of  them 
in  turn  is  cast  upon  an  unknown  shore ;  ^  so  does  Euclio, 
after  his  treasure  has  been  taken  from  him ;  ^  in  the 
Andria  Pamphilus  expresses  his  indignation  at  his  father's 
unceremonious  methods ;  ^  Leonidas  intones  an  anticipa- 
tory song  of  triumph ;  '  Clinia  and  Chaerea  shout  their 
joy  to  the  surrounding  echoes,^  The  behaviour  of  these 
.various   actors   cannot   be   called   absolutely   improbable. 

I  would  also  include  here  a  particular  class  of  soliloquy 
uttered  by  certain  persons,  always  people  of  low  station, 
and  generally  slaves,  who  run  on  to  the  stage — Ergasilus, 
Cureulio,  Acanthio,  Davus  in  the  Andria,  Geta  in  the 
Adelphi,  and  Geta  in  the  Phormio ;  ^  etc.  It  is  natural 
for  people  whose  bearing  betokens  exaltation  to  think 
aloud. 

Notwithstanding  all  this,  there  are  enough  instances  in 
which  a  soliloquy  is  hard  to  justify.     Why  does  Mega-"^ 
dorus  explain  his  ideas  about  a  dowry  and  a  marriage  v 

1  e.  g.  Most.,  431  et  seq. ;   Merc,  830  et  seq. 

«  Cf.  Merc,  3-5;   Turpilius,  Leucadia,  fr.  XII.;    Thilem.,  fr.  79;    Men., 
fr.  739. 

»  Phorm.,  231  ot  seq.  *  Rial.,  185  ot  soq.,  220  ot  seq. 

*  AuL,  713  et  seq.  "^  Andr.,  236  et  seq.  '  As.,  2G7  et  seq. 

*  Heaut.,  679  et  seq. ;  Eun.,  1031  et  seq. 

*  Capt.,   768  et  seq.;  Cure,   280  et  seq.;  Merc,   111  et  seq.;  Andr., 
338  et  seq. ;  Ad.,  299  ot  seq. ;  Phorm.,  841  et  seq. 


330     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

aloud?  ^  Why  does  Harpax  proclaim  at  the  top  of  his 
voice  who  he  is  and  for  what  purpose  he  has  come  ?  ^  Why 
does  Lysidamus,  in  the  Casina,  feel  it  incumbent  upon  him 
to  announce — within  earshot  of  the  house  where  he  lives 
with  his  wife — that  he  is  in  a  hurry  to  go  where  he  believes 
that  love  awaits  him.'  Davus,  in  the  Andria,  stands  in 
front  of  his  house  and  loudly  declares  his  surprise  at  find- 
ing Simo  so  merciful ;  *  Syrus,  in  the  Heauton  Timorou- 
menos,  admonishes  himself  to  cheat  Chremes.^  Both  of 
them  miss  a  good  chance  to  hold  their  tongues.  I  could 
easily  add  a  great  many  more  examples  of  untimely 
soliloquies  to  those  already  quoted.  The  inhabitants  of 
southern  countries  may  be  expansive  in  real  life,  but  they 
can  never  have  been  as  expansive  as  were  the  actors  in 
the  comedies  of  Plautus  and  Terence.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  writers  of  comedy  made  undue  use  of  the 
soliloquy  in  a  loud  voice. 

Did  the  writers  of  ancient  comedy  also  introduce  a 
soliloquy  of  another  kind,  that  is  found  quite  commonly 
in  modern  dramatists — the  "mute"  or  low- voiced  soli- 
loquy which  conveys  to  the  audience  only  the  silent 
thoughts  of  the  actors  ?  At  first  this  seems  probable,  in 
view  of  the  passages  where  an  actor  stands  close  to 
another  whom  he  sees  and  distrusts,  and  says  things 
which  are  certainly  not  meant  to  be  heard  by  the  latter. 
When,  for  example,  Gnatho,  in  line  422  of  the  Eunuchus, 
after  having  begged  the  soldier  to  repeat  one  of  his  clever 
sayings,  adds  the  melancholy  remark :  Plus  millies  audivi, 
he  hopes,  I  imagine,  that  it  will  not  be  heard  by  the 
soldier.  This  is  also  true  of  the  rather  uncharitable  wish 
expressed  in  line  1028  :  Utinam  tibi  commitigari  videani 
sandalio  caput !  Asides  like  these  are  frequent  in  all  Latin 
plays,  and  occasionally  the  context  clearly  shows  that  the 
words  are  not  meant  to  be  overheard  on  the  stage.  Thus, 
in  line  497  of  the  Andria,  Simo,  who  has  overheard  the  ill- 

^  Aul.,  475  et  seq.  *  Pseud.,  594  et  seq. 

'  Cas.,  663  et  seq. ;  cf.  217  et  seq. 

*  Andr.,   175  et  seq.  *  Heaut.,  512  et  seq. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  331 

timed  gossip  of  Lcsbia,  gruffly  asks  Davus  :  "  Do  you 
wish  mc  to  believe  that  this  woman  (Glycerium)  has  just 
given  birth  to  a  child  of  whieh  Pamphilus  is  the  father?  " 
and  in  the  next  line  he  adds  :  "  Well,  you  say  nothing?  " 
In  the  interval  the  following  aside  is  allotted  to  Davus  : 
"  I  understand  liis  mistake  and  I  see  what  I  must  do," 
The  inevitable  conclusion  seems  to  be  that  Davus  has  said 
nothing  and  that  the  actor  who  played  his  part  spoke 
without  speaking,  and  that  the  audience  understood  his 
meaning.  However,  we  must  not  be  too  confident  about 
adopting  this  conclusion,  or  generalising  about  it.  Such 
remarks  as  follow  seem  to  me  calculated  to  undermine  it. 
V  In  comedy,  actors  fairly  often  converse  in  the  presence 
""of  one  or  more  other  persons  without  the  latter  hearing 
^•what  is  said.  It  is  easy  to  understand  this  when  the 
■speakers  converse  together  at  some  distance  from  the 
other  actors.  But  occasionally  they  manage  to  get  in  a 
few  words  surreptitiously  when  they  are  in  the  immediate 
vicinity  of  the  others ;  for  instance,  Libanus  and  Leonidas, 
in  lines  446-447  of  the  Asinaria ;  Menaeehmus  and  Messenio, 
in  lines  375-378,  383-386,  413-418  of  the  Menaechmi ; 
Palaestrio  and  Milphidippa,  in  lines  1066-1067,  1073-1074, 
1088-1091  of  the  Miles;  Davus  speaking  to  Pamphilus, 
in  lines  416-417  of  the  Andria;  Davus  speaking  to  Mysis, 
in  lines  751,  752-753  of  the  Hecyra;  Syrus  speaking  to 
Clitipho,  in  line  829  of  the  Heanton  Timoroumenos ;  etc. 
There  is  no  denying  that  these  persons  speak,  as  the  person 
whom  they  address  hears  what  they  say.  But  their  words 
are,  so  to  say,  hardly  audible.  The  stage  convention  that 
applies  in  their  case  is  not  that  of  a  speech  in  place  of  an 
unexpressed  thought,  but  that  of  words  in  a  high  voice  sub- 
stituted for  words  in  a  low  voice,  clear  articulation  in  place 
of  a  discreet  whisper.  Even  when  reduced  to  these  terms 
the  stage  convention  involves  serious  consequences.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  a  two-fold  convention  :  in  the  first 
place,  it  assumes  that  the  supposed  whispering  can,  at 
one  and  the  same  time,  be  heard  by  the  spectators  who  are 
seated  far  from  the  actor  who  whispers,  and  that  it  cannot 


332     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

be  heard  by  the  other  actors  who  are  quite  close  to  him; 
in  the  second  place,  it  assumes  that  the  actors  who  hear 
nothing  have  a  singularly  dull  sense  of  hearing,  or  else 
that  they  are  strangely  inattentive.  It  does  not  call  for 
a  greater,  or  even  as  great  a  stretch  of  the  imagination 
to  account  for  the  stage  asides  which  I  mentioned  above. 
Let  us  assume  that  they  are  spoken  low,  mumbled  between 
the  actor's  teeth ;  the  other  parties  to  the  conversation  may 
not  hear  them,  while  conventional  acoustics,  the  acoustics 
of  the  theatre,  will  accommodatingly  carry  them  to  the 
spectators'  seats.  Indeed,  it  is  in  this  light  that  the  poets 
themselves  must  have  chosen  to  look  at  the  matter. 
Witness  the  passages  in  which  either  an  aside  or  a  series 
of  asides  calls  forth  some  such  remark  as  the  following 
from  one  of  the  actors  on  the  stage  :  Quid  dixti  ?  Quid 
tute  tecum  ?  Quid  tu  solus  tecum  loquere  ?  Etiam  muttis  ? 
etc.^  Therefore  we  cannot  infer  from  the  mere  existence 
of  the  stage  asides  that  the  device  of  the  "  mute  "  soliloquy 
was  known  to  the  palliata,  and  we  must  conclude  that  such 
a  device  was  alien  to  it. 

In  a  word,  some  actors,  when  they  are  by  themselves 
or  believe  that  they  are  by  themselves,  think  aloud  more 
frequently  than  accords  with  probability;  others  are 
strangely  deaf  to  certain  things  that  are  said  in  their 
immediate  vicinity;  such  are  the  stage  conventions  with 
regard  to  means  of  expression  to  be  met  with  in  Plautus 
and  in  Terence.  No  doubt  both  of  these  abuses  go  back 
to  the  Greek  originals.  Asides  are  rare  in  the  fragments 
of  the  original  plays ;  still,  they  are  met  with  occasionally. ^ 
As  for  soliloquies,  there  are  plenty  of  them,  and,  just  as 
in  the  Latin  plays,  attention  is  repeatedly  and  specifically 
called  to  the  fact  that  they  are  spoken  soliloquies;  but 
of  several  of  them  it  may  be  said  that  neither  the  situ- 
ation nor  the  standing  of  the  person  who  utters  them  nor 
the  quality  of  his  words  justifies  so  much  volubility. 

Moreover,  neither  of  the  two  devices  employed  by  New 

1  e.g.  Amph.,  381;    Aul.,  52,  190;    Most.,  512;  551,  etc. 
»  'ETTiTp.,  19-20;    2a^.,  168,  230-237;    XlipiK.,  87-88. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  333 

Comedy  was  first  introduced  by  it.  The  Homeric  heroes 
spoke  aloud  to  themselves — to  their  heart,  as  Homer  says 
— and  occasionally  they  did  so  at  junctures  when  silent 
reflection  would,  I  believe,  have  been  more  natural.  As 
for  the  rare  soliloquies  in  the  dramatic  works  of  the  fifth 
century — tragedies  and  comedies  alike — the  context  hardly 
ever  shows  how  they  are  to  be  regarded.  But  most  prob- 
ably they  are  to  be  regarded  as  spoken  soliloquies.  The 
very  rareness  with  which  they  occur  leads  one  to  this 
assumption ;  for  the  fact  that  the  actors  in  Euripides  and 
Aristophanes  indulge  in  relatively  few  soliloquies  is,  no 
doubt,  due  to  their  being  embarrassed  by  the  practically 
constant  presence  of  the  chorus — in  other  words,  to  their 
fear  of  being  overheard.  If  we  examine  the  speeches 
pronounced  by  these  actors  when  the  chorus  is  absent 
and  they  are  by  themselves  on  the  stage,  or  when  they 
imagine  that  they  are  by  themselves,  or  else  when  they 
forget  that  this  is  not  the  ease,  we  shall  find  that  more  than 
one  of  them  calls  for  the  same  criticism  as  the  passages 
from  Plautus  and  Terence  of  which  I  have  just  spoken. 
This  is  true  of  most,  if  not  of  all,  the  introductory  solilo- 
quies in  Euripides,  which,  it  must  be  admitted,  are  of  a 
rather  special  kind;  and  also  of  the  slave's  soliloquy, 
lines  747  et  seq.,  in  the  Alcestis ;  of  that  of  Heracles,  lines 
837  et  seq.,  and  of  those  of  Menelaus,  lines  368  et  seq., 
483  et  seq.  in  the  Helena ;  and  of  many  others.  In 
Aristophanes  the  same  criticism  holds  good  for  the  soliloquy 
of  Dicaeopolis  at  the  beginning  of  the  Acharnians,  for 
that  of  Strepsiades  at  the  beginning  of  the  Clouds,  for 
that  of  Blepsidemus,  lines  355  et  seq.  of  the  Plutiis;  etc. 
One  and  the  same  play,  the  Ecclesiazusae,  contains  no  less 
than  half  a  dozen  soliloquies  which,  i?i  so  far  as  they  are 
spoken  soliloquies,  appear  to  be  somewhat  out  of  place. 
At  the  very  beginning  there  is  Praxagora's  soliloquy ;  at 
lines  311  et  seq.  the  soliloquy  of  Blepyrus;  at  lines  728 
et  seq.,  746  et  seq.,  the  soliloquies  of  the  good  and  of  the 
bad  citizen;  at  lines  877  et  seq.  the  soliloquy  of  the  old 
woman;   at  line  93^  that  of  the  young  man. 


334     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

As  for  stage  asides,  they  are  rather  out  of  keeping  with 
the  solemn  style  of  tragedy.  However,  we  do  find  a  few 
in  Euripides ;  in  the  Hecuba,  lines  736-738,  741-742,  745- 
746,  749-751,  and  possibly  lines  133  and  475  in  the  Helena. 
In  Aristophanes  they  are  rather  more  frequent;  lines 
752-755  and  1193-1194  of  the  Knights  must  be  spoken  as 
an  aside  by  the  eharcoal-burner ;  line  992  of  the  Wasps 
by  Bdelycleon;  the  exclamations  in  lines  603,  604  and 
609  of  the  Thesmophoriazusae  by  Mnesilochus;  line  1202 
by  Euripides.  New  Comedy  merely  found  justifieation 
in  its  more  intricate  plots  for  a  more  frequent  use  of  a 
device  which  had  been  introduced  a  hundred  years  earlier. 


§  2 

Conventions  Regarding  Length  of  the  Plays 

The  Entr'actes 

The  plot  of  most  Latin  comedies,  as  well  of  the  majority 
of  the  original  Greek  plays  of  which  we  can  form  an  idea, 
is  conceived  as  taking  place  within  a  single  day,  or,  at 
least,  within  twenty-four  hours.  The  plots  which  begin 
at  night  or  very  early  in  the  morning — and  they  were 
apparently  quite  numerous — end  before  the  ensuing  even- 
ing. The  Heauton  Timoroumenos  begins  towards  the  close 
of  an  afternoon,  when  Menedemus  comes  home  from  his 
work;  it  is  interrupted  during  the  night,  begins  again 
at  dawn  of  the  following  day,  and  ends  in  the  forenoon. 
Possibly  the  ' EniTQeTiovreg  Hkewise  extended  over  two 
days,^  and,  if  so,  it  may  have  exceeded,  though  only 
slightly,  the  exact  limit  of  twenty-four  hours.  It  is  only 
the  plot  of  the  Captivi  that  calls  for — or  seems  to  call  for — 

^  At  lines  197-198  Syriscus  agrees  to  wait  until  the  following  day 
before  finding  out  what  is  going  to  become  of  the  ring;  subsequently,  at 
lines  226-228,  after  an  entr^acte,  he  insists  on  being  satisfied  at  once. 
But  we  must  take  into  consideration  those  words  in  line  228  :  4K6e7y  5u  fxi 
vol,  by  which  he  apparently  explains  why  he  changes  his  mind. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  335 

a  much  longer  lapse  of  time.^  Indeed,  in  the  course  of 
this  play  there  appears  to  be  time  for  one  of  the  actors, 
Philocrates,  to  travel  from  Aetolia  to  Elis  and  to  return 
to  Aetolia,  And,  whatever  may  have  been  said  to  the 
contrary,  this  would  require  several  days.  On  the  other 
hand,  some  things  that  Ergasilus,  Tyndarus,  and  Hegio 
say  imply  that  the  interval  between  the  first  scenes  and 
the  last  is  not  longer  than  from  morning  to  evening.  It 
is  not  impossible  that  Plautus  omitted  some  details  that 
would  have  explained  these  contradictions  and  would 
have  made  it  possible  to  keep  the  plot  within  the  customary 
limits.  At  any  rate,  if  the  plot  of  the  original  play  ex- 
tended over  several  days,  it  was  certainly  an  exceptional 
case.  For  the  most  part,  the  plots  of  the  vea  appear  to 
have  been  short. ^ 

But  they  were  not,  as  a  rule,  as  short  as  the  perfor- 
mances in  which  they  were  produced.  There  must  have 
been  a  difference  between  the  actual  duration  of  the 
latter  and  the  supposed  duration  of  the  former,  and  it  is 
worth  our  while  to  examine  how  this  difference  was 
adjusted. 

In  the  first  place,  it  was  adjusted  by  means  of  entr'actes ; 
between  the  uninterrupted  series  of  episodes  which  fol- 
lowed upon  one  another  as  closely  as  possible  there  were 
more  or  less  long  intervals  without  any  dramatic  action. 
But  there  was  this  difference  from  the  practice  of  our 
modern  theatres,  that  while  the  spectators  could  no  longer 
watch  the  plot  during  the  entr^actes,  the  performance  went 
right  on.     I  must  enlarge  upon  this  point  in  order  to  give 

^  In  the  nepiKfipo/j.ei'ri  it  is  not  very  likely  tliat  the  quarrnl  wliich 
arose  between  Glycera  and  Polemo,  and  which  took  phico  in  the  evening, 
should  have  been  presented  to  the  audience  before  Agnoia's  speech ;  the 
plot  opened  the  next  morning,  if  not  several  days  later. 

*  In  many  plots  the  episodes  are  multiplied  owing  to  chance  coincidences  ; 
it  is  by  chance  that  Domipho  and  Chremes,  in  the  Pliormio,  and  Pampliilus 
and  Epignomus,  in  the  Stichus,  return  to  their  native  land  on  the  same 
day ;  that  Philumena,  in  the  Hecyra,  is  confined  on  the  very  day  of  I'am- 
philus'  return;  etc.  These  coincidences  are  certainly  surprising,  l)ut  tliey 
are  not  improbable. 


336     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  reader  a  correct  idea  of  a  theatrical  performance  at 
the  time  of  the  vea. 

Here  and  there  in  the  fragments  of  the  original  plays, 
where  there  is  a  break  in  the  sequence  of  events  and  the 
stage  remains  empty,  the  text  is  interrupted  by  the  notice : 
Xogov.  Moreover,  the  anonymous  author  of  a  life  of  Aris- 
tophanes assures  us  that  this  was  frequently  the  case  in 
the  manuscripts  of  New  Comedy.^  Now,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  of  the  meaning  of  the  word  Xogov;  it  means  that 
where  this  word  is  inserted — in  other  words,  in  the  entractes 
— there  was  a  performance  by  the  chorus.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  statements  of  Aeschines,^  and  of  Aristotle,^  and 
passages  in  inscriptions  *  show  that  the  comic  chorus 
continued  to  exist  at  least  down  to  the  middle  of  the  second 
century.  Of  what  did  its  performance  consist  ?  The  word 
XoQov  is  nowhere  followed  by  the  text  of  a  passage  to  be 
sung  by  the  members  of  the  chorus.  It  might,  therefore, 
at  first  sight  seem  as  if  they  did  not  sing  at  all,  but  merely 
danced;  but  before  drawing  such  an  inference  we  must 
inquire  who  constituted  the  chorus  and  what  were  its 
relations  to  the  actors  in  the  play. 

Certain  details  of  the  dialogue  which  in  each  instance 
are  near  the  sign  Xoqov,  have  led  to  the  conjecture  that, 
between  lines  201  and  202  of  the  'EmzQenovzeg,  the  chorus 
consisted  of  Charisius'  messmates,  who  are  on  the  point 
of  going  to  the  banqueting  hall,  and  that,  later  on  in  the 
play,  after  the  close  of  the  scene  published  by  Jernstedt,^ 
it  was  made  up  of  these  same  messmates  as  they  were 
leaving  the  hall  and  preparing  to  return  to  town;  that 
in  the  Za/uia,  between  lines  270  and  271,  it  consisted  of 
invited  guests  who  are  on  their  way  to  Demeas'  house  to 

^  Anon.,  XI.  Diibner. 

-  C.  Tim.,  §  157.     The  speech  against  Timarchus  was  dehvered  in  345. 

3  PoliL,  III.  p.  1276  B. 

^  Bull,  de  corres.  hell.,  1890,  p.  396,  line  85  (Delos,  in  the  year  279); 
Collitz,  Dialektinschr.,  No.  2563,  lines  67  et  seq. ;  No.  2564,  lines  71  at 
seq. ;  No.  2565,  lines  73  et  seq.;  No.  2566,  lines  71  et  seq.;  No.  2569, 
lines  18  et  seq.  (Delphi,  in  the  years  272,  271,  270,  269,  140-100). 

*  Considered  as  belonging  to  the  "E.iTirpiTTovTes  by  van  Leeuwen  and 
Capps  {Amer.  Journal  of  Philol.,  XXXIX.  1908,  pp.  417  et  seq.). 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  837 

take  part  in  his  son's  wedding  banquet ;  and  that,  in  the 
IleQixEiQojuevrj,  between  lines  76  and  77,  it  consisted  of  a 
company  of  young  men  wlio  covered  Glycera's  retreat  when 
she  moved  over  to  Myrrhina's  house,  or  else  of  a  group  of 
Polemo's  friends  preceding  him  on  his  way  from  the  house 
where  he  had  feasted — the  same  friends  who  a  little  later 
on  threatened  to  lay  siege  to  the  house  of  his  rival  Mosehio. 
It  has  even  been  conjectured  that,  in  the  'Eavxov  Tijlimqov- 
fXEvoq  of  Menander,  during  the  entr'actes  which  correspond 
to  those  that  follow  lines  409  and  478  in  the  Latin  play, 
the  chorus  was  made  up  of  Baechis'  female  servants.  But 
all  this  is  doubtful  and  not  highly  probable.  In  Plautus, 
the  advocati  in  the  Poenulus  are  no  more  comparable  to 
members  of  a  chorus  than  are  the  three  friends  of  Demipho 
in  the  Phormio.  As  for  the  fishermen  in  the  Rudens,  who, 
in  Plautus,  come  upon  the  stage  after  an  entr'acte,  one  might 
assume  that,  in  Diphilus,  they  filled  up  the  entr'acte  itself 
with  dances  and  songs.  If  this  was  the  case,  they  would 
have  afforded  an  example  of  a  chorus,  connected  Avith  the 
play — in  a  very  desultory  way  it  is  true,  for  their  entire 
part  consists  in  telling  Trachalio  that  they  have  not  seen 
his  master  Plesidippus.  But  this,  too,  is  far  from  certain. 
Until  we  have  proof  to  the  contrary  we  shall,  therefore, 
have  to  assume  that  in  comedies  of  the  new  period  the 
chorus  was,  as  a  rule,  in  no  way  connected  with  the  play.^ 
At  most,  the  chorus  is  sometimes  represented  as  being  a 
casual  passer-by,  an  intruder,  upon  whose  arrival  the  actors 
leave  the  stage.  That  is  what  happens  in  the  IleQixeiQOjuen] ; 
an  actor  sees  some  merry-making  youths  coming  {fieOvovza 
fxeiQuxia  ovjunoUa) ;  and,  at  the  approach  of  these  gay 
young  sparks,  he  and  his  comrades  withdraw. ^  A  similar 
but  even  clearer  instance  occurs  at  the  close  of  a  scene  which 
may  belong  to  the  'EmzQenovreg  ^  when  one  of  the  speakers 
says,  "  Let  us  go  and  find  Charisius  " ;  and  the  other 
answers,  "  Let  us  go,  for  here  comes  a  band  of  youngsters 

^  Note  that  no  mention  is  made  of   a  chorus  in  the  hst  of  the  ■!rp6(Tuira 
(dramatis  personae)  of  the  "Hpws. 

-  Ue^>lK.,  71  et  seq.  *  In  the  Jernstedt  fragment. 

Z 


338     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

who  arc  rather  tipsy  {/leiQaxvXXicov  6ylo<;  vno^e^gey^dvov) ; 
I  think  it  would  be  better  not  to  get  in  their  way."  There- 
upon both  speakers  leave  the  stage  and  the  chorus  enters. 
Before  Menander's  time  a  fragment  of  Alexis  suggests  a 
similar  situation.^  The  similarity  between  these  three 
passages  leads  one  to  believe  that,  at  the  time  of  the  fiiorj 
and  of  the  vSa,  the  chorus  frequently  represented  a  xa>/nog 
passing  through  the  streets.  The  coming  of  this  xajfiog, 
a  sort  of  homely  revival  of  the  ancient  Dionysiac  pro- 
cession, might,  on  occasion,  be  announced  by  the  actors 
as  they  left  the  stage,  in  which  case  it  was  in  a  sense  con- 
nected, in  a  quite  external  way,  if  I  may  say  so,  with  the 
episodes  of  the  plot.  I  imagine  that  very  often  there  was 
not  even  this  slight  connection.  The  members  of  the 
chorus  appeared  at  the  end  of  each  act  and  disappeared 
before  the  actors  came  back,  without  the  slightest  allusion 
to  their  presence  being  made  in  the  dialogue  or  in  the 
soliloquies  which  preceded  and  came  after  their  appear- 
ance. Their  performances  were  interludes,  in  the  strictest 
sense  of  the  word. 

As  the  chorus  has  so  little  to  do  with  the  plot,  we  are 
led  to  believe  that  its  songs — if,  indeed,  it  sang  songs — had, 
as  a  rule,  no  relation  whatsoever  to  the  dramatic  situation. 
They  may  have  been  any  sort  of  pieces,  without  literary 
merit,  written  by  a  different  author  from  the  rest  of 
the  play,^  and  different  ones  could  be  employed  for  any 
particular  entr'acte  of  a  particular  play  at  the  will  of  the 
impresario ;  in  a  word,  they  were  of  such  a  kind  as  to  be 
naturally  omitted  from  the  manuscripts  of  the  comedies. 
Hence  the  fact  that  no  lyric  couplets  follow  the  word 
XoQov  does  not  prove  that  the  y^oQevxal  xcof^ixoi  of  the 
new  period  did  not  sing.  For  my  own  part,  I  believe  that 
they  did  sing,  just  as  the  earlier  chorus  sang,  and  that 
they  accompanied  their  singing  with  dances  or  with 
rhythmic  evolutions.     In  a  word,  their  performance  was 

1  Alexis,  fr.  107. 

*  Not  a  single  fragment  of  the  new  period,  not  even  fragment  312  of 
Menander,  can  belong  to  a  choral  passage. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  339 

of  the  same  nature  as  that  of  the  i/x^okjua,  which  Agathon 
introduced  into  tragedy,^  and  of  which  they  kept  ahve 
the    tradition. 

As  for  the  convention  in  virtue  of  which  the  choral  parts 
might  represent  a  much  longer  interval  of  time  than  they 
themselves  actually  occupied — this  goes  back  to  the  early 
days  of  the  Greek  theatre.  Already,  in  the  tragedies  of 
the  fifth  century,  a  great  deal  is  supposed  to  take  place, 
unseen  by  the  audience,  during  the  recital  of  a  stasimon 
that  is  often  of  short  duration.  Such  a  fiction  as  this 
naturally  became  more  admissible  in  proportion  as  the 
songs  of  the  chorus  became  more  and  more  detached  from 
the  plot. 

Occasionally  events  followed  one  upon  another  much 
more  rapidly  behind  the  scenes  than  upon  the  stage, 
without,  however,  occasioning  a  break  in  the  sequence 
of  the  scenes  or  a  halt  in  the  plot.^  In  the  neQiKsigojuevi], 
Daos  enters  Myrrhina's  house,  tells  her  of  her  son's  return, 
is  snubbed  by  her,  and  comes  away  crestfallen,  during 
the  time  that  Moschio  speaks  the  five  lines  121-125. 
Further  on,  Sosia  enters  Polemo's  house  and  confirms  the 
fact  that  Glycera  has  escaped,  during  the  time  that  Daos 
speaks  the  five  lines  171-175.  Still  further  on,  between 
lines  333  and  338,  Doris  has  time  to  go  and  find  Glycera 
in  the  house  where  she  is  making  her  toilet,  to  ascertain 
that  she  is  in  a  conciliatory  mood,  and  to  come  back  to 
Polemo.^  In  the  Andria  the  midwife  Lesbia,  who  went 
into  Glycerium's  house  at  line  467,  has  already  come  out 
at  line  481,  after  having  attended  to  all  her  professional 
duties.  Between  line  326  and  line  352  of  the  Hecyra, 
Pamphilus  is  able  to  find  out  things  at  Myrrhina's  house 

1  Arist.,  Poet.,  XVIII.  7. 

*  Sometimes,  but  rarely,  the  opposite  is  the  case.  Thus,  in  the  Men- 
aechmi,  it  is  hard  to  understand  what  Messenio  has  been  doing  between 
hne  445  and  hne  966.  In  the  Adelphi,  Geta  waits  a  long  time  before 
telhng  Sostrata  of  the  carrying  off  of  the  singing  girl  wliich  took  place 
before  hne  81. 

»  See  also  2a,aia,  145-151,  203-210,  218-222,  319-324. 


840     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

which  it  subsequently  takes  him  more  than  forty  Hnes  to 
report.  In  the  M creator,  Syra,  an  old  "  slow  coaeh,"  finds 
Pasicompsa  in  Lysimachus'  house  and  rejoins  Dorippa 
at  the  door  between  line  677  and  line  686.  In  the  Heauton 
Timor oiimenos  Chremes  goes  to  see  two  of  his  neighbours, 
Simus  and  Crito,  in  order  to  apologise  for  not  being  able 
to  act  as  arbitrator  between  them,  during  the  time  that 
Menaechmus,  who  has  remained  on  the  stage,  speaks  the 
six  lines  502-507.  In  the  Captivi  they  go  to  liberate 
Tyndarus  from  jail  {latomiae),  which  is  extra  portam 
(line  735),  and  bring  him  to  Hegio,  between  line  950  and 
line  997.  And  so  on.  It  is  clear  that  these  are  slight 
liberties  when  compared  with  similar  passages  in  Aristo- 
phanes ;  for  example,  between  line  134  and  line  175  of  the 
Acharnians  Amphitheus  goes  to  the  Peloponnesus  and 
returns  with  the  famous  truce.  Still,  we  must  not  omit 
to  take  note  of  these  liberties,  such  as  they  are.  It  is 
to  be  observed  that  those  parts  of  the  text  during  which 
there  is  an  accumulation  of  episodes  behind  the  scene  are 
most  often  soliloquies.  Granting  that  a  soliloquy  is  really 
a  speech  which  the  actor  addresses  to  himself,  yet  it  may 
be  said  that  the  via  did  not  on  occasion  hesitate  to  regard 
it  in  another  light — as  an  abstract  or  epitome  of  a  period 
of  reflection  of  undetermined  length. 


§  3 
Conventions  Regarding  Stage-Setting 
Unity  of  Place 

As  a  rule,  the  stage-setting  of  a  Greek  drama  remained 
unchanged  from  beginning  to  end.  It  was,  therefore, 
necessary  for  it  to  unite  in  a  single  and  fixed  combination 
all  the  elements  which  were  to  form  the  background  for 
the  successive  episodes.  Evidently  this  could  not  always 
be  accomplished  without  violating  probability.  New 
Comedy  does  not  introduce  such  highly  fantastic  combina- 
tions  as   those   in   which   Aristophanes   indulged;     it   no 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  341 

longer  displays  the  house  of  Trygaeus  side  by  side  with 
that  of  the  king  of  the  gods,  nor  the  temple  of  Heracles 
next  to  the  palaee  of  Hades,  nor  the  Pnyx  alongside  of 
the  farm  in  whieh  Dieacopolis  celebrates  the  rural  Dionysia ; 
but  although  it  does  not  carry  stage  convention  so  far, 
it  does  not  renounce  it  entirely.  As  a  rule,  the  scene  of 
action  is  a  street  or  a  square — cither  in  a  big  town  or 
in  a  village — surrounded  by  private  houses  and  public 
buildings.^ 

Now  it  does,  no  doubt,  happen  more  than  once  that, 
where  the  episodes  of  the  plot  demand  it,  the  houses  shown 
in  the  setting  should  or  can  be  regarded  as  really  adjoin- 
ing one  another ;  for  instance,  the  house  of  Periplecomenus 
and  that  of  the  soldier  in  the  Miles,  which  have  a  party- 
wall  ;  the  house  of  Euclio  and  that  of  Megadorus  in  the 
Aulularia,  whose  closeness  to  each  other  influences  the 
latter' s  matrimonial  plans ;  the  houses  of  Myrrhina  and 
Polemo  in  the  IJsQixeiQoiuevr],  those  of  Demeas  and 
Niceratus  in  the  Za/uia,  those  of  Simo  and  Theopropides 
in  the  Mostellaria,  those  of  Chremes  and  Menedemus  in 
the  Heauton  Timoroumenos ;  etc.  In  other  plays  more  or 
less  serious  objections  can  be  raised  to  the  close  proximity 
shown  in  the  stage-setting.  Is  it  not,  for  example,  some- 
what imprudent  of  Stratippoeles,  in  the  Epidicus,  to  hide 
a  couple  of  steps  away  from  his  father's  house  ?  and  for 
Lysidamus  in  the  Casina,  and  Demipho  in  the  Mercator, 
to  borrow  the  house  of  their  nearest  neighbour  for  their 
merry-making?  Are  not  Phaedria  in  the  Eunuchus, 
Pamphilus  in  the  Andria,  Aeschinus  in  the  Adelphi, 
Menaechmus  and  Argyrippus  in  the  Asinaria,  foolish  to 
carry  on  illicit  love  affairs  at  the  very  doors  of  their  own 

^  Sometimes  the  setting  was  more  complicated.  In  the  Eudens  it 
included,  besides  the  temple  of  Venus  and  the  farm  of  Daemones,  rocks 
and  crannies  which  would  make  it  possible  for  Palaestra  and  Ampelisca 
to  be  hidden  from  one  another.  In  the  AixtkoKos  it  must  have  shown 
or  suggested  a  mountainous  region ;  in  the  AevnaSia  possibly  the  temenoa 
of  Apollo  Leukatas  ;  in  the  Vidularia,  and  in  the  play  to  which  the  anony- 
mous Latin  fragment  LVIII.  belongs,  a  bit  of  country  by  the  sea-side; 
etc. 


342     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

houses  ?  And  if  Bacchis,  in  the  Hecyra,  lives  quite  near 
Phikimcna's  parents  and  parents-in-law,  must  not  the 
latter  know  that  she  has  broken  off  relations  with  their 
son  and  son-in-law?  In  all  these  instances,  and  in  many 
others,  I  imagine,  the  stage-setting  was  certainly  open  to 
criticism. 

But,  after  all,  this  sort  of  improbability  is  not  glaring; 
we  may  even  assume  that  the  audience  often  did  not 
notice  it.  We  meet,  however,  with  improbabilities  that 
are  both  more  serious  and  more  noticeable. 

An  entirely  realistic  representation  of  certain  scenes 
in  Plautus  and  Terence  would  require  a  good  deal  of  space. 
To  this  class  belong,  in  the  first  place,  the  scenes  in  which 
an  actor  runs  on  to  the  stage  ^  and  before  reaching  his 
destination  indulges  in  occasionally  lengthy  tirades  in  full 
view  of  the  audience. ^  I  think  there  is  no  doubt  that  these 
scenes  are  imitations  of  Greek  originals ;  in  several  of 
them  certain  details  of  composition  indirectly  prove  this. 
When  Hegio,  in  the  Captivi,  speaking  about  Ergasilus, 
exclaims  :  ""  Eugepae,  edictiones  aedilicias  hie  quidem  habet; 
mirumque  adeost,  ni  hunc  fecere  sibi  Aetoli  agoranomum,^ 
I  cannot  help  thinking  that  this  sentence  was  translated 
from  an  original  in  which  the  word  dyogavo/xog  appeared. 
Consequently,  the  parasite  in  the  Greek  comedy  must  have 
spoken  much  as  the  parasite  in  the  Latin  comedy  speaks, 
and  in  all  probability  he  ran  as  he  spoke,  just  as  Plautus' 
Ergasilus  does.  The  list  of  Hellenic  titles  which  Curculio 
pours  forth  as  he  comes  on  to  the  stage — nee  <Chomo'^ 
quisquamst  tarn  opulentus,  qui  mi  obsistat  in  via,  nee  sir  ate - 
gus  nee  tyrannus  quisquam  nee  agoranomus  nee  de- 
mar  ehus  nee  eomarehus^ — suggests  a  similar  inference, 

^  Long  speeches  might  without  too  much  improbability  be  attributed 
to  actors  who  walk  slowly  or  who  may  be  assimied  to  stop  every  now  and 
then  in  order  to  talk  and  quarrel. 

*  Capt.,  790  et  seq. ;  Cure,  280  at  seq. ;  Asin.,  267  et  seq. ;  Merc, 
111  et  seq. ;  Phorm.,  179  et  seq. ;  Ad.,  299  et  seq. ;  Stichus,  274  et  seq. ; 
Trin.,  1008  et  seq. 

»  Capt.,  823-824.  *  Cure,  284-286. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  343 

as  far  as  the  scene  into  whieh  it  is  inserted  is  eoncerned. 
In  line  36  of  the  prologue  to  the  Eiinuchus  Terenee  men- 
tions the  servus  currcns  side  by  side  with  characters  and 
elements  which  were  certainly  borrowed  from  the  vea, 
and  calls  him  one  of  the  common  types  of  comedy.  This 
character  had  as  ancestors  on  the  Attic  stage  several  of 
Aristophanes'  personages — Amphitheus  running  away  from 
the  Acharnians,  Cleisthenes  running  towards  the  thesmo- 
phoriazusae.  And,  what  is  more,  we  are  able  to  get  a 
glimpse  of  him  in  a  few  fragments  of  the  new  period.  "  I 
ran  for  you  as  no  one  ever  ran  before,"  says  some  one  in 
Menander;  ^  much  the  same  as  Acanthio  says  in  one  of 
the  early  scenes  of  the  Mercator.  One  of  Philemon's  actors 
asks,  "  Do  you  think  the  king  made  the  street  for  you 
only?  "  ^  and  this  remark  reminds  one  of  the  angry  utter- 
ances of  Ergasilus  and  Curculio.  The  writers  of  Latin 
comedy  use  various  devices  to  make  a  limited  space  seem 
large  enough  to  contain  such  agitated  scenes.  Sometimes 
they  represent  the  supposed  runner  as  completely  exhausted 
and  on  the  point  of  collapsing  as  he  reaches  his  goal,  and 
being  obliged  to  stop  for  breath ;  sometimes  it  is  drunkenness 
that  slackens  his  pace,  or  else  he  comes  to  a  standstill 
and  asks  himself  in  what  direction  he  is  to  continue ;  or, 
on  meeting  the  person  to  whom  he  brings  news,  he  hesi- 
tates, half  wishing  to  give  the  information,  half  fearing 
to  distress  him ;  or  else,  well  aware  of  his  own  importance, 
he  wishes  to  lead  up  to  his  entry  and  make  people  await 
him  eagerly.  If  the  actors  played  their  parts  in  the 
orchestra,  which  was  a  great  deal  larger  than  the  pulpitum,^ 
it  was  possible  to  attain  a  sufficient  degree  of  realism 
without  any  great  effort. 

Occasionally,  together  with  the  running  on  of  an  actor, 
there  is  often  combined  another  stage  device  which, 
broadly  speaking,  appears  to  have  been  quite  common  in 
the  via — two  actors  or  two  groups  of  actors,  speak  and 
act  without  seeing  or  hearing  one  another.  This  happens, 
naturally  enough,  when  one  actor  tries  to  escape  the  notice 

1  Men.,  fr.  741.  *  Philem.,  fr.  58.  »  jhe  stage.(— Tr.). 


344     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

of  the  other.  A  detail  of  ancient  stage-setting,  whieh  the 
Romans  called  angiportits  or  angiportum,  and  whieh,  as  far 
as  we  can  make  out,  consisted  of  a  perpendicular  recess 
in  the  front  of  the  scene  and  represented  a  narrow  lane 
between  two  houses,  afforded  a  convenient  retreat  for  those 
who  desired  to  hide  themselves.^  The  embrasure  of  a  door 
also  served  as  cover  for  actors  who  were  not  supposed  to 
be  seen  by  their  fellows.  The  miniatures  in  the  Terence 
manuscripts  illustrate  this  arrangement  in  several  of  his 
comedies ;  ^  a  wall-painting  at  Pompeii  shows  a  similar 
arrangement  in  an  episode  of  a  tragi-comedy.^  Indeed, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  it  was  very  commonly  employed. 
Once  we  admit  the  existence  of  this  hiding-place,  we  can 
understand  how  it  came  about  that  Thraso  and  his  com- 
panions, who  are  seen  by  Thais  and  Chremes  as  early  as 
line  754  of  the  Eunuchus,  do  not  discover  them  until  thirty- 
four  lines  further  on.  During  this  interval  Chremes  and 
Thais  have  withdrawn  a  few  steps  behind  the  threshold 
of  the  house,  and  while  they  continue  to  be  visible  to  the 
audience,  who  are  facing  or  almost  facing  the  door,  they 
cannot  be  seen  by  a  person  who  comes  towards  them  from 
the  side.  A  similar  stage-setting  may  be  surmised  for  the 
passage  of  the  Casina  in  which  Lysidamus  comes  upon 
the  stage  soliloquising  and  without  seeing  Cleostrata;  for 
the  scene  in  the  Aulularia  where  Euclio  listens  to  Mega- 
dorus'  harangue  without  being  seen ;  for  the  scene  in  the " 
Menaechmi  in  which  the  matron  overhears  her  husband's " 
confessions ;  and  for  many  other  cases.  Hitherto  we  have ' 
met  with  nothing  which  shocks  our  sense  of  probability, 
or  for  which  an  equivalent  cannot  be  found  in  the  tragic 
writers  or  in  Aristophanes.  I  need  only  mention  Orestes 
and  his  pedagogue  spying  on  the  proceedings  of  the 
choephori;  the  lamentations  of  Electra  and  her  con- 
versation with  the  women  of  the  chorus ;    the  Acharnians 

^  So  in  Phorm.,  891.  For  the  existence  of  similar  lanes  at  Delos,  cf. 
Bull,  de  corr.  hellen.,  XXX.  (1906),  pp.  587-588. 

*  See  the  pubhcation  by  Bethe,  Terenti  codex  ambrosianus,  H.  75  inf., 
Leyden,  1903. 

^  Dieterich,  Pulcinella,  pi.  II. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  345 

hiding  while  Dicaeopohs  celebrates  the  rural  Dionysia ;  the 
conduct  of  Trygaeus  while  Polcmos  prepares  to  pulverise 
the  Greek  cities ;  Dionysius  and  Xanthias  concealing  them- 
selves while  the  initiated  carry  on  their  procession ;  Mnesi- 
lochus  hiding  while  the  slave  Agatho  prepares  for  a  sacri- 
fice. But  New  Comedy  did  not  stop  there.  Sometimes 
(and  for  this  the  extant  remains  of  earlier  drama  afford 
no  analogy)  it  allowed  an  actor  in  perfect  good  faith  to  fail 
to  see  or  hear  another,^  even  when  the  latter  made  no 
effort  to  elude  his  attention.  This  is  what  takes  place 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Mcrcator,  and  in  lines  768  ct  scq. 
of  the  Captivi,  where  Acanthio  and  Ergasilus  have  no  idea 
of  the  presence  of  Charinus  and  Hcgio  until  the  latter 
addresses  them;  in  another  scene  of  the  Mercaior,  where 
Charinus  does  not  see  Demipho ;  ^  in  two  scenes  of  the 
Fhorinio,  where  Geta  hastens  to  go  to  his  master  without 
noticing  that  Antipho  is  close  by,  chatting  with  Phaedria 
or  with  Phormio ;  ^  in  a  scene  of  the  Adelphi,  where  Geta 
neither  sees  nor  hears  Sostrata  and  Canthara,  although 
they  are  on  their  way  to  meet  him ;  ^  etc.  The  actors  of 
whom  I  have  spoken  are  all  either  under  the  influence  of 
a  very  strong  emotion,  or  else  they  are  very  deep  in 
thought,  and  this  circumstance  may  possibly  account  for 
their  being  deaf  and  blind.  There  are  other  cases  in  which 
this  excuse  can  hardly  be  advanced.  In  lines  566  et  seq. 
and  682  et  seq.  of  the  Mostellaria  Theopropides  is  per- 
fectly calm  and  ought  to  know  what  is  going  on  about 
him,  and  yet  he  does  not  hear  a  word  of  what  Tranio  and 
his  neighbour  Simo  are  talking  about,  although  they  are 
not  speaking  in  a  low  tone.  Nay,  more,  he  only  hears  a 
part  of  what  the  usurer  says,  although  the  latter  is  shout- 
ing at  the  top  of  his  voice.  Whatever  precautions  Plautus 
may  have  taken  to  disarm  criticism,^  on  the  Roman  stage 
the  performance  of    such  a  passage    as    this  must  have 

^  Of  course,  I  do  not  refer  to  the  scenes  in  wliich  an  actor  pretends  not 
to  see  or  not  to  hear  what  he  actually  sees  or  hoars  perfectly  well. 

*  Merc,  335  et  seq.  '  Phorm.,  179  et  scq.,  841  ot  seq. 

*  Ad.,  301  et  seq.  '  Moat.,  575-576,  609a. 


316     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

appeared  somewhat  forced;    in  Greece,  in  the  orchestra, 
it  may  have  seemed  more  admissible. 

We  now  come  to  other  instances  of  improbability  which 
are  much  more  disconcerting.  Several  scenes  in  Plautus' 
comedies  ought  really  to  take  place  indoors. ^  Possibly  it 
is  consistent  with  the  habits  of  a  southern  country  that 
slaves  should  choose  a  spot  in  front  of  their  master's  house 
in  which  to  carouse,  but  Greek  ladies  surely  did  not  sit 
in  the  street  to  chat  and  work.  Nor  did  they  make  their 
toilet  there,  or  rest  there  on  a  sofa  after  their  confine- 
ments. And  a  married  man  in  comfortable  circumstances 
who  had  taken  the  precaution  of  going  to  his  mistress' 
house  by  a  devious  route  would  not  come  out  of  her 
house  to  sup  with  her  in  full  view  of  all  who  passed  by. 
And  yet  there  is  no  doubt  that  Plautus  placed  some  of  the 
scenes  to  which  I  refer  out  of  doors.  When,  in  the  Mostel- 
laria,  the  father  of  the  family  is  about  to  arrive,  Tranio 
hurriedly  has  the  paraphernalia  of  a  banquet  and  the 
besotted  guests  removed  from  the  very  spot  where  a  few 
moments  ago  Philematium  was  engaged  in  making  her 
toilet. 2  Apparently,  then,  all  this  took  place  in  front  of 
the  house,  for  otherwise  it  would  only  have  been  necessary 
to  shut  the  door  on  all  these  proceedings  in  order  to 
prevent  a  new-comer  from  seeing  them.  Moreover,  the 
remarks  of  Tranio  and  of  Philolaches  are  very  significant — 

AM  til  hinc  intro  atque  ornamenta  haec  aufer.^ 

Abripite  hunc  intro  actutum  inter  manus.^ 

.  .  .  non   modo   ne  intro    eat,    verum    etiam   ut  fugiat 

longe  ah  acdihus.^ 
Omnium    primum,     Philematium,     intro     abi,     et     tu, 

Delphium.^ 

Evidently  the  opposite  of  intro  is  out  of  doors.     Nor  is 

^  This  is  also  true  of  the  scenes  to  which  certain  original  fragments 
belong,  banqueting  scenes  or  scenes  of  some  other  kind  :  Diph.,  fr.  20, 
50,  58;   Men.,  fr.  71,  151,  273-274,  292,  311,  377,  437,  451;  etc. 

2  Most.,  371  etseq.  ^  Ibid.,  294.  *  Ibid.,  385. 

6  Ibid.,  390.  «  Ibid.,  397. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  347 

the  situation  less  clear  in  the  Truculentus.  After  having 
received  Stratophanes,  Phroncsium,  who  pretends  to  have 
been  confined,  declares  that  the  air  is  giving  her  a  head- 
ache. She  goes  indoors  {me  intra  acturum  ducite)  and 
shuts  in  the  soldier's  face  a  door — which  is  no  other  than 
the  door  of  her  house. ^  The  episodes  in  the  Asinaria  and 
the  Stichus  seem,  at  first  sight,  to  call  for  a  different  stage- 
setting.  In  the  latter  play  the  aged  Antipho,  who  is  on 
his  way  to  the  house  of  his  daughter  Panegyris,  notices, 
as  he  approaches  it,  that  the  door  is  wide  open.^  Where- 
upon the  two  young  women,  who  have  heard  him  coming, 
go  out  to  meet  him  and  ask  him  to  be  seated.^  In  the 
Asinaria  Artemona  spies  on  her  husband  for  quite  a 
long  time,  without  being  seen  by  him,  before  she  attacks 
him.*  In  the  Stichus,  therefore,  we  must,  perhaps,  assume 
that  a  wall  with  a  door  in  it  stood  between  Antipho  and 
his  two  daughters  while  he  was  on  his  way  to  the  house 
in  which  they  were.^  In  the  Asinaria  the  banquet  must 
have  been  held  indoors  and  the  matron  must  have  looked 
on  through  a  partially  opened  door,  just  as  Nicobulus  does 
in  the  Bacchides.  I  find  it  difficult  to  conceive  how  such 
an  arrangement  could  have  been  carried  out  on  a  Greek 
stage.  Nowadays  we  should  erect  a  perpendicular  parti- 
tion at  the  back  of  the  stage  in  a  way  that  would  allow  the 
audience  to  see  the  street  on  one  side  of  it  and  the  interior 
of  the  house  on  the  other.  It  is  very  improbable  that  the 
ancients  ever  made  use  of  such  an  arrangement.^     Can 

1  True,  634  et  seq.  Cf.  480  and  583.       «  Stick.,  87. 

^  Ibid.,  88  et  seq.  *  As.,  880  et  seq. 

*  The  fact  that  this  door  was  open  would  explain  how  the  two  young 
women  could  hear  their  father  coming. 

*  The  only  documents  which  might  lead  us  to  think  that  they  did  so 
are  certain  illustrations  in  manuscripts  of  Terence  in  which  a  door  is 
shown  between  two  groups  of  actors.  But  these  illustrations  contain 
elements  which  in  themselves  make  their  testimony  untrustworthy.  In 
one  of  them — the  one  which  in  the  Parisinus  illustrates  scene  1,  Act  III.  of 
the  Andria  (Bethe,  pi.  XII.  1),  we  see  Simo  and  Davus,  Lesbia  and  Mysis 
to  the  right  of  the  door,  that  is  to  say,  out  of  doors  ;  to  the  left  of  the  door, 
that  is  to  say,  within  the  house,  we  see  Glycerium  and  a  woman  who  is 
helping  her.  Now,  it  is  clearly  established  that  the  audience  was  not 
allowed  to  see  the  scene  in  which  the  confinement  took  place.     This  detail. 


348     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

wc  assume  that  a  part  of  the  background  could  be  opened 
at  ^vill,  to  display  the  interior  of  a  house  ?  As  a  matter  of 
fact  it  seems  not  unlikely  that  the  ngooxijviov — in  front  of 
which  Dorpfeld  thinks  the  actors  performed  in  the  time 
of  the  via — consisted  of  movable  nivaxeg,  which  were  set  up 
for  each  play,  between  columns  or  pillars,^  one  or  several 
of  which  might,  on  occasion,  be  left  out.  On  the  other 
hand,  on  the  Naples  bas-relief,  representing  a  scene  from 
comedy,  we  see  a  curtain  which  adjoins  the  fa9ade  of  a 
house  in  a  curious  fashion. ^  In  itself,  therefore,  the  sug- 
gestion made  above  would  not  be  inadmissible,  but  in 
each  of  the  passages  in  question  a  detail  occurs  which  puts 
it  out  of  question.  In  the  Stichus  Panegyris  says  to  her 
sister,  after  Antipho  has  left  them  :  nunc,  soror,  abeamus 
intro.^  At  the  very  end  of  the  Asinaria  Philaenium 
ironically  invites  Demaenetus  to  follow  her,  and  she  does 
so  with  these  words  :  Immo  intro  potius.^  Just  as  Philo- 
laches  and  his  guests,  and  Phronesium  and  her  maid- 
servants, were  really  out  of  doors,  so  were  Antipho' s 
daughters  during  the  time  they  were  chatting  together 
and  receiving  their  father,  and  Philaenium  and  her  two 
lovers  while  they  were  carousing. 

Of  late,  attempts  have  been  made  to  minimise  the  rigour 
of  this  conclusion,  not  only  in  so  far  as  it  affects  the  scenes 
in  the  Stichus  and  in  the  Asinaria,  but  in  all  analogous 
scenes  as  well.  It  is  claimed  that  the  scenes  which  ought 
to  take  place  indoors  but  which  are  performed  out  of  doors, 
did  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  take  place  in  the  street,  but 
were  acted    in    the  tiqoOvqov  or  vestibulum,^   a    structure 

among  others,  proves  that  the  illustrations  in  the  manuscripts  of  Terence 
do  not  give  an  exact  picture  of  the  actual  stage-setting  used  in  the 
performances. 

1  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Das  griech.  Theater,  p.  380  (cf.  pp.  103,  148,  160, 
etc.);  Bull,  de  corr.  hellen.,  XX.  (1896),  pp.  566-567;  Wiegand  and 
Schrader,  Priene,  p.  247 ;   Hiller  von  Gartringen,  Thera,  vol.  iii.  p.  254. 

*  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Op.  cit.,  p.  328  and  fig.  81.  This  bas-relief  possibly 
dates  from  the  third  century. 

'  Stichus,  147.  *  As.,  941  (Fleckeisen's  text). 

^  Vitruvius  (VI.  7,  5)  vouches  for  the  fact  that  these  two  words  are 
synonymous. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  349 

attached  to  the  house.  To  have  placed  these  scenes  in 
such  a  spot,  which  is  neither  pubHc  nor  private,  would, 
of  course,  also  have  been  a  mere  stage  device,  but  it  is 
a  sort  of  compromise  which  would  decrease  the  inherent 
improbability  and  make  it  more  admissible.  This  theory 
is  certainly  alluring,  but  on  what  is  it  based,  and  what 
should  we  gain  by  accepting  it? 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  well  to  remember  tliat  the  nQoOvgov 
or  vestibulum  is  rarely  mentioned  in  extant  Greek  come- 
dies, either  in  their  original  form  or  in  imitations.  Some 
scholars  think  there  is  a  very  decided  difference  in  Plautus 
and  Terence  between  the  meaning  of  the  words  in  via  and 
ante  aedes,  ante  ianuam,  ante  ostium,  and  that  only  the  first 
of  these  expressions  means  "  in  the  street,"  while  the  others 
refer  to  things  that  take  place  in  the  vestibulum,  or  tiqoOvqov. 
This  seems  to  me  an  arbitrary  distinction.  In  lines  894- 
895  of  the  Eunuchus  Thais  asks  Chaerea,  who  is  still 
dressed  in  his  motley  clothes  :  Vin  interea,  dum  venit, 
domi  opperiamur  potius  quam  hie  ante  ostium?  Before 
going  indoors  they  exchange  a  few  more  words.  Where- 
upon Chremes'  coming  is  announced,  and  Chaerea  says 
to  Thais  :  Obsecro,  abeamiis  intro,  Thais ;  nolo  me  in  via 
cum  hac  veste  videat.^  There  is  no  indication  that  the 
actors  moved  from  the  spot  between  line  895  and  line  905. 
Hence  in  via  and  aiite  ostium  are  synonymous.  This  pas- 
sage in  itself  would  suffice  to  overthrow  the  hypothesis 
to  which  I  referred  above,  and  several  other  passages  appear 
to  be  decidedly  against  it.  For  example,  when,  in  the 
Menaechmi,  Menaechmus  Sosiclcs,  who  has  not  the  slightest 
acquaintance  with  Erotium,  walks  up  and  down  before  her 
house — ante  ostium  ^ — how  can  this  be  taken  to  mean  that 
he  is  in  the  jcqoOvqov?  When,  at  line  727  of  the  jiulularia, 
Lyconides  hears  Euclio's  lamentations  and  comes  out  of 
Megadorus'  house,  asking:  Quisnam  homo  hie  ante  aedes 
nostras  conqueritur  moerens  ?  are  we  to  imagine  that 
Euclio  pours  forth  his  lamentations  in  Megadorus'  tiqoOvqov  ? 
Certainly  not.     But  if  we  do  not  attribute  a  more  or  less 

1  Eun.,  905-907.  «  Menaech.,  276.     Cf.  357  :  ante  acdis. 


350     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

technical  meaning  to  the  words  a7ite  aedes,  ante  ostium  in 
these  and  similar  passages,  why  should  we  do  so  elsewhere  ? 
This  remark  also  applies  to  the  Greek  expressions  nqoode 
xcov  OvqCov,  tcqoq  ralg  Ovgaig,  enl  ralg  Ovgaig.  In  half  a  dozen 
passages  in  Menander  ^  and  in  fragment  3  of  Ephippus, 
they  may  simply  mean  before  the  door,  at  the  door,  on 
the  door-step.^  The  only  passages  in  comedy  in  which  we 
are  obliged  to  assume  that  an  episode  takes  place  in  a 
TiQodvQov  or  vestihulmn  are  those  in  which  these  terms 
actually  appear,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  following : 

—  Aristophanes,  Wasps,  800-804.  A  comparison  of  this 
passage  with  lines  871  and  875  seems  to  show  that  Labes' 
burlesque  lawsuit  is  tried  in  Philocleon's  ngoOvQav. 

—  Theopompus,  fr.  63  :  "  This  tiqoQvqov  seems  to  me  like 
a  chamber  of  torture,  and  this  house  like  a  dungeon." 

—  Plautus,  Most.,  817.  Tranio  asks  Theopropides  to 
admire  the  vestibulum  of  Simo's  house:  Viden  vestibulum 
ante  aedes  hoc  et  ambulacrum  cuius  modi  ? 

—  Plautus,  fr.  inc.  fab.  XXVII.  :  'Exi  tu,  Dave,  age, 
sparge;  mundum  esse  hoc  vestibulum  volo.  Venus  Ven- 
tura   est  nostra,  nolo  hoc  pulveret. 

To  the  above  I  may  add  a  note  of  Varro's  {De  lingua 
latina,  VII.  81)  commenting  on  line  955  of  the  Pseudolus 
{ut  tranversus,  non  proversus,  cedit,  quasi  cancer  solet)  : 
Dicitur  de  eo  qui  in  id  quo  it  est  versus  et  ideo  qui  exit  in 
vestibulum,  quod  est  ante  domum,  prodire  et  procedere. 
Quod  cum  leno  non  faceret,  sed  secundum  parietem  trans- 
versus  iret,  dixit 

As  we  see,  the  list  is  not  long. 

But  even  if  we  concede  that  all  the  indoor  scenes  were 
placed  in  the  tzqoOvqov,  how  would  this  affect  their  per- 
formance on  the  stage  ?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  tiqoOvqov 
or  vestibulum  may  simply  have  been  an  uncovered  area 
in  front  of  the  house  enclosed  by  nothing  more  than  a 
palisade,   and    containing  various   accessories — household 

1  ntpiK.,  34  and  109;    Sa^m,  142  and  190,  420  and  830. 

*  Similarly  in  Aristophanes,  Ach.,  989  j   Eccles.,  865;    Wasps,  273;  etc. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  351 

altars,  hermae,  etc. — in  short,  a  sort  of  front  yard,  or  small 
entrance-way. 1  It  is  certainly  not  in  this  sort  of  a  uqoOvqov 
that  a  banquet  or  a  toilet  scene  could  be  placed — they 
might  as  well  be  in  the  street  itself.  The  tzqoOvqov  that 
we  are  asked  to  picture  to  ourselves  is  a  sort  of  portico  or 
antechamber  forming  a  structural  adjunct  of  the  house 
itself.  That  such  structures  did  exist  in  Greece  during  the 
period  in  which  the  vm  flourished  I  am  not  proposing  to 
deny.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  ngoOvga  which  extended  beyond 
the  alignment  of  the  fa9ade  of  a  house  must  have  been  the 
exception,  if,  indeed,  any  such  ever  existed.  As  far  as  I 
know,  the  ruins  of  houses  of  the  classical  period  and  of  the 
centuries  which  immediately  followed  it  do  not  afford  an 
example  of  such  a  structure,  and  no  writer  makes  any  clear 
allusion  to  such  a  thing.  But  at  Priene — and  the  same  thing 
also  occurs  elsewhere — it  is  common  to  find  the  OvQa  avXeioq 
set  very  much  back  in  comparison  with  the  wall  of  the 
fa9ade,  and  preceded  by  a  vestibule  which  is  wide  open 
to  the  street. 2  In  a  building  at  the  Piraeus,  dating  from 
the  third  century,  probably  a  luxurious  dwelling-place, 
the  opening  of  this  vestibule,  which  is  much  wider  than 
it  is  deep,  is  adorned  by  a  colonnade.^  Hence  contem- 
porary architecture  did  provide  stage  decorators  with 
actual  models  for  ngoOvga  forming  part  of  a  building ;  but 
it  remains  to  be  seen  whether  they  copied  these  models; 
and  on  this  point  I  am  extremely  doubtful. 

Neither  the  passage  from  Aristophanes,  nor  the  frag- 
ment of  Theopompus,  nor  the  two  passages  from  Plautus, 
nor  Varro's  note  suggest  anything  else  than  an  open  space 
lying  in  front  of  the  fa9ade  and  the  main  entrance.^     And 

1  Cf.  Aulus  Gellius,  XVI.  53. 

*  Wiegand  and  Schrader,  Priene,  p.  285. 

3  Cf.  Aihen.  Mitteilungen,  IX.  (1884),  Plate  XIII. 

*  The  pastes  mentioned  in  the  Moatellaria,  immcchatcly  after  the  veati- 
bulum-ambulacrum  (818  et  soq.),  are  the  door-posts  of  the  entrance  door- 
way. The  painting  which  Tranio  describes  (832  et  seq.),  if  it  was  tliero 
at  all,  may  have  adorned  a  part  of  the  front  wall  of  the  house  (cf.  Ussing, 
ad  loc.)  Theopropides'  answer  to  Tranio's  question — Luculentum  edepol 
profecto  (818)  —  does  not  prove  that  there  was  anything  structural.  A 
vestibulum  luculentum  might  simply  be  a  very  spacious  vestihulum. 


352     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

what  do  we  learn  from  works  of  art  containing  figures  ? 
We  have  a  few  marble  or  terra-cotta  bas-reliefs  represent- 
ing scenes  from  comedies  ^  in  which  the  arrangement  is 
probably  that  of  the  Hellenistic  stage.  To  these  may  be 
added  some  other  bas-reliefs  which  contain  no  figures, ^ 
as  well  as  a  few  vase-paintings  depicting  scenes  from  the 
(pXvaxEQ  (farces).'  In  several  of  these  works  of  art  we 
see  either  colonnades  or  doors  between  columns,  but  the 
actors  move  about  in  front  of  the  columns;  and  where 
the  back  wall  is  shown  the  columns  are  apparently  engaged 
columns.  On  the  other  hand,  on  certain  vases  dating  from 
the  end  of  the  fourth  century  which  are  ornamented  with 
tragic  episodes,  the  actors  are  seen  in  little  buildings  that 
have  the  shape  of  porticoes  and  show  on  their  fa9ade  two 
or  three  columns  surmounted  by  a  pediment.*  Some  of 
the  scenes  represented  under  these  porticoes  are,  no  doubt, 
indoor  scenes.  It  should  be  added,  however,  that  some 
of  these  were  in  all  probability  never  performed  on  the 
stage;  like  the  slaughter  of  the  children  of  Heracles 
painted  by  Assteas,  they  were,  it  is  true,  episodes  of  tragedy, 
but  episodes  which  took  place,  or  were  supposed  to  take 
place,  behind  the  scenes.  The  little  building  is,  therefore, 
not  a  nqodvQov,  but  a  miniature  of  the  palace  in  which  the 
chief  actors  dwelt.  The  works  of  art  in  which  the  hypo- 
thesis of  the  walled  tzqoOvqov  seems  to  find  its  strongest 
support  are  the  wall-paintings  at  Pompeii.^  In  many  of 
the  architectural  decorations  we  find  here,  details — such 
as  masks,  curtains  and  small  stairways — recall  the  stage. 

^  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  Das  griechische  Theater,  pp.  327-323 ;  Rizzo,  Wiener 
Jahreshefte,  1905,  p.  214  et  seq.  and  Plate  V. 

^  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  op.  cit.,  pp.  332-334.  (the  Sant-Angelo  terra-cotta  is 
published  in  the  Jahrb.  des  arch.  Inst.,  XV.  (1900),  p.  61). 

'  D6rpfeld-Reisch,  op.  cit.,  pp.  311  et  seq.;  Rizzo,  Rom.  Mitteilungen, 
1 900,  Plate  VI. 

*  Dorpfeld-Reisch,  op.  cit.,  pp.  307  et  seq. 

^  As  the  miniatures  in  the  manuscripts  of  Terence  have  no  precise 
documentary  worth  as  far  as  the  stage-setting  is  concerned,  it  would  be 
a  mistake  to  look  to  them  for  proof  of  the  existence  of  the  Trp6dupov,  as 
Bethe  has  done.  Moreover,  such  doors  as  appear  in  these  miniatures 
seem  always  to  be  the  doors  of  hoxoses. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  353 

Moreover,  Vitruvius  tells  us  that,  from  the  beginning  of 
the  first  century  B.C.  onwards,  the  paintings  which  orna- 
mented the  walls  of  houses  were  frequently  inspired  by 
scenae  tragicae,  comicac  or  satyricae.^  Now,  at  Pompeii, 
doors  are  frequently  represented  as  having  a  colonnade  in 
front  of  them,  and  figures  of  men  and  women  are  painted 
inside  the  porticoes,  galleries  and  various  small  buildings. ^ 
Do,  then,  these  wall-paintings  supply  us  with  a  picture, 
or  at  least  with  reminiscences,  of  Hellenistic  stage-setting  ? 
It  is  a  curious  fact  that,  in  the  very  paintings  which  are 
claimed  to  resemble  a  stage-setting  most  closely,  the  figures 
which  lend  life  to  the  composition  are  not  theatrical 
figures,  but  a  herald  blowing  a  trumpet,  a  victor  escorted 
by  a  Nike,  an  "  apoxyomenus," — obviously  athletic  figures 
in  statuesque  poses.  Moreover,  even  granting  that  the 
architecture  in  these  paintings  reproduces  stage  decora- 
tions, it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  the  disposition  of 
the  human  figures  gives  us  a  sure  clue  about  the  mise-en- 
scene.  The  actors  may  have  behaved  quite  differently 
from  these  purely  decorative  figures. 

Furthermore,  it  is  not  always  easy  to  imagine  to  what 
use  the  interpreters  of  what  I  have  called  "  indoor  scenes  " 
put  Pompeian  architecture.  Let  us  return  to  the  scene 
in  the  Stichus.  Assuming  that  the  women  are  seated  in 
a  TiQoOvQov,  the  door  of  which  is  open,  this  tiqoQvqov  is  neces- 
sarily something  different  from  a  portico;  it  must  be  an 
enclosed  space,  and  so  enclosed  that  it  afforded  shelter 
from  the  eyes  of  outsiders,  for  otherwise  Antipho  would  at 
once  see  his  daughters.  But  the  paintings  do  not  in  any 
way  suggest  an  arrangement  of  this  sort ;  and  it  is,  more- 
over, hard  to  understand  how,  under  these  circumstances, 
the  two  women  could  at  one  and  the  same  time  be  visible 
to  the  audience  and  invisible  to  Antipho,  unless,  indeed, 
Panegyris  and  her  sister  are  seated  in  the  embrasure  of 

1  Vitr.,  VII.  5. 

*  Puchstoin,    Archaeol.    Anzeiger,    XI.    (1890),   pp.    29   ot  seq. ;    Bethe, 
Prolegomena  zur   Oeschichte   des   Theaters   im  Altertum,  pp.    201   et  seq.; 
Jahrh.  des  arch.  Inatituts,  XV.  (1900),  p.  77,  XVIII.  (190;<),  p.  107. 
A  A 


354     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  door  itself;  and  of  this  the  text  gives  no  indication.^ 
\Vliat  difference  is  there,  as  far  as  the  stage-setting  is 
concerned,  between  a  tiqoOvqov  into  which  one  cannot 
look  from  out-of-doors  and  a  room  in  the  house  itself? 

In  a  word,  it  remains  very  doubtful  whether  comic 
scenes  were  acted  in  nqoOvqa  of  any  kind.  Moreover,  I 
fail  to  see  what  would  have  been  gained  thereby.  It  is 
urged  that  such  a  compromise  lessened  the  improbability 
of  the  situation.  In  my  opinion  it  would  rather  have 
emphasised  it.  We  must  not  forget  that  the  composition 
of  the  Naples  bas-relief,  of  the  Campana  plaques  and  of 
other  similar  works  of  art  is  to  a  great  extent  fanciful. 
In  the  age  of  New  Comedy  the  fa9ades  of  houses  very 
rarely  carried  columns.  Played  before  such  a  background 
the  performance  of  "  indoor  scenes  "  took  place,  in  fact, 
nowhere;  and  so  their  representation  disturbed  nobody. 
But  had  they  been  set  in  an  actual  architectural  frame  that 
was  familiar  to  every  one,  but  unsuitable  to  them,  the  con- 
trast between  their  character  and  the  frame  in  which  they 
were  set  would  immediately  have  struck  the  spectators. 
Possibly,  curtains  or  movable  screens  shut  in  some  of 
the  scenes  on  the  sides,  and  made  it  possible  for  one  actor 
to  escape  the  notice  of  another — for  example,  affording 
Philolaches  a  coign  of  vantage,  or  Artemona  a  cover  for 
her  ambush;  but  this  arrangement  had  nothing  in  com- 
mon with  the  TtQoOvQa  of  real  life.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
Stichus  I  imagine  the  women  are  installed  in  front  of 
Panegyris'  house,  on  the  side  of  the  entrance  doorway 
furthest  from  Antipho's  house,  from  which  they  are  hidden 
by  a  screen.  Hence  Antipho  does  not  see  them  as  he  comes 
from  his  house.  He  comes  to  the  open  door,  makes  the 
remark  I  have  quoted,  and  at  that  moment  his  daughters 
come  out  to  meet  him.  In  the  Asinaria,  a  scene  which 
has  been  lost  and  of  which  lines  828-829  are  a  part,  may 
have  showed  the  audience  (at  the  very  beginning,  I  think, 
of  the  last  act)  Demaenetus,  Argyrippus  and  Philaenium 

^  When  Antipho  speaks  of  the  door  being  open  (line  87)  he  does  not 
see  his  daughters. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  355 

preparing  to  sit  down  to  a  banquet  in  front  of  the  baek- 
ground.  Diabolus  and  his  parasite  approaeh,  and  are 
supposed  not  to  sec  the  diners;  they  enter  Philaenium's 
house,  where  they  arc  represented  as  being  shocked  at  sight 
of  the  feast,  and  come  out  again  immediately.  Thereupon 
the  parasite  goes  to  fetch  Artemona,  who,  without  going 
inside,  spies  upon  her  husband  in  the  manner  previously 
explained.  Here  we  have  stage  convention  pure  and 
unadulterated,  and  it  is  quite  as  good  as  an  unsuccessful 
attempt  at  realism. 

Moreover,  the  liberties  which  the  writers  of  the  vea  took 
were  not  without  precedent.  In  Aristophanes,  Dicaeopolis 
cooks  and  lounges  about  out  of  doors ;  Strepsiades  drags 
the  truckle-bed  on  which  he  means  to  lie  and  indulge  in 
meditation,  in  front  of  Socrates'  house ;  Philocleon  makes 
his  toilet  in  the  street,  in  full  view  of  the  passers-by,  just 
as  Philematium  does.  In  Euripides,  too,  there  is  more 
than  one  "  indoor  scene  "  that  takes  place  sub  diva.  It 
must  be  admitted  that,  as  a  rule,  this  poet  finds  a  pretext 
for  placing  out  of  doors  actions  that  ought  really  to  be 
performed  indoors.  If  Alcestis  is  represented  as  coming 
out  of  her  palace  to  die,  it  is,  says  the  poet,  because  she 
wishes  for  the  last  time  to  look  upon  the  light  of  the  sun. 
Phaedra  has  her  sick-bed  brought  outside  the  palace 
because  she  longs  for  fresh  air.  But  sometimes  there  is 
no  pretext  :  thus  no  explanation  is  given  why  Orestes — 
Orestes  who  is  in  need  of  rest  and  quiet,  Orestes  who 
shuns  the  eye  of  man — sleeps,  groans,  and  falls  into  a 
frenzy  outside  the  door,  instead  of  remaining  in  the 
innermost  chamber  of  his  palace. 

Since  scenes  that  have  all  the  characteristics  of  indoor 
scenes  are  nevertheless  placed  out  of  doors  by  the  comic 
poets,  we  need  not  be  surprised  at  sometimes  hearing 
actors  discuss  confidential  matters  out  of  doors,  or  even 
at  seeing  them  come  out  of  their  houses  in  order  to 
converse  in  the  street.  Doubtless  there  are  cases  in 
which  such  behaviour  may  find  its  justification  either 
in  the  customs  of  the  period,  in  social  usage,  or  in  the 


856     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

whim  of  a  particular  actor.  The  disinclination  of  the 
Greeks  to  receive  strangers  in  their  houses  is  sufficient 
explanation  for  the  curious  fact  that,  in  the  Ejndiciis, 
Periphanes  prefers  to  send  for  the  sham  Acropolistis  and 
to  introduce  the  soldier  to  her  in  the  street,  rather  than  to 
take  him  to  her  house. ^  But  is  it  conceivable  that  he 
should  proceed  in  the  same  fashion  when  it  is  a  question 
of  bringing  together  Philippa,^  whom  he  means  to  marry, 
and  the  young  woman  whom  he  believes  to  be  his  daughter  ? 
Similarly,  one  can  understand  that  Laches,  in  the  Hecyra, 
does  not  care  to  enter  the  house  of  Baechis — a  courtesan  ! 
— nor  to  let  her  come  into  his  house ;  ^  and  that  Erotium 
and  the  Athenian  Baechis  come  down  to  the  threshold 
of  their  house  to  chat  with  the  men  whom  they  wish  to 
entice.*  It  is  less  easy  to  understand  that  Glycera,  in 
the  neQixeiQOfiEvr},  should  send  Doris  to  fetch  the  box 
containing  the  yvcoQiOjuara  in  order  to  show  it  to  Pataecus 
out  of  doors,^  or  that,  towards  the  end  of  the  play,  Pataecus 
should  betroth  his  daughter  to  Polemo  in  the  street.^ 
^  That  a  tyrannical  and  hypochondriacal  old  man  like  Euclio 
*  should  not  bother  to  go  into  his  house,  but  have  his  house- 
keeper come  out  of  doors  where  he  happens  to  be  and 
give  her  his  orders  there,'  is  conceivable.  But  when 
Erotium,  who  is  about  to  go  indoors,  makes  her  cook 
Cylindrus  come  out  in  order  to  send  him  to  market,  we 
have  reason  to  be  surprised.^  Nor  is  it  probable  that 
Ballio  would  hold  a  review  of  his  retinue  on  the  public 
highway,^  nor  that  Cleostrata  and  Lysidamus,  in  the 
Casina,  would  betake  themselves  thither  for  the  drawing 
of  lots.i"  In  the  Aulularia  Eunomia  drags  Megadorus  out^^ 
of  his  house  in  order  to  speak  to  him  of  marriage ;  ^^  in  the 
Cistellaria  Selenium,  who  has  just  had  Gymnasium  and 
her  mother  to  lunch,  waits  until  she  has  left  the  table, 
the  dining-room — nay,  the  house — before  pouring  out  her 

1  Epid.,  472  et  seq.     *  Ibid.,  507  et  seq.    ^  h^,..,  719-720. 
*  Bacch.,  35  et  seq. ;  Menaech.,  179  et  seq.     ^  U^piK.,  301  et  seq. 
«  Ibid.,  361  et  seq.     '  Aul,  268  et  seq.    ^  Menaech.,  218. 
»  Pseud.,  133  et  seq.   i"  Cas.,  295-296,  350  et  seq. 
"  Aul.,   133-134. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  857 

heart  to  these  two  women  and  asking  for  their  help ;  ^ 
in  the  Truculentus  Phronesium  goes  out  of  doors  with 
Diniarchus  and  carefully  gets  out  of  earshot  of  the  servants 
in  order  to  tell  him  of  the  fraud  she  is  practising  on  Strato- 
phanes.2  However  small  the  Greek  house  may  frequently 
have  been,  surely  it  would  have  been  just  as  easy  to  find  a 
quiet  corner  in  it  as  to  seek  seclusion  in  the  street?  In 
the  Bacchides  Chrysalus,  who  might  quite  easily  have  gone 
into  the  Athenian  Bacchis'  house  and  written  his  lying 
letter  there  in  peace,  has  all  the  writing  utensils  brought 
out  of  doors,  a  stone's  throw  from  Nieobulus'  door,^  thus 
foolishly  exposing  himself  to  discovery.  In  the  Miles 
Palaestrio  and  his  friends,  who  might  so  easily  have  held 
their  council  within  the  shelter  of  Peripleeomenes'  four 
walls,  hold  their  consultation  out  of  doors,  and  run  the 
risk  of  being  seen  by  Pyrgopoliniees  or  some  of  his  people,* 
And  so  on.  These  are  all  improbabilities  whose  only 
justification  lies  in  the  poet's  desire  not  to  allow  the 
audience  to  miss  anything  they  ought  to  hear. 

Broadly  speaking,  it  may  be  said  that  in  the  vea  the 
actors  use  the  public  highway  as  a  sitting-room ;  they 
appear  to  be  unaware  that  it  is  public  property  and  that 
they  run  the  risk  of  meeting  inconvenient  people  there. 
It  is  true  that  occasionally  one  of  the  actors  ^  suggests 
going  indoors  in  order  to  converse  at  leisure.  Others  take 
precautions ;  before  they  begin  to  speak  they  make  sure 
that  no  indiscreet  person  is  near  to  overhear  what  they 
are  about  to  say.^  But  by  far  the  greater  number  have 
no  such  scruples  and  speak  freely  on  all  subjects  out  of 
doors. 

Is  it  necessary  once  more  to  remind  the  reader  that 
such  practices  were  known  on  the  stage  long  before  the 
time  of  the  vea  ?     Sophocles'  Antigone,  and  Agamemnon 

1  Cist.,  1  et  seq.  «  True,  352  et  seq.,  386. 

*  Bacch.,  714  et  soq.  *  Miles,  596  et  seq.,  1137  et  seq. 

*  "ETriTp.,  397-398;  Merc,  1005-1006;  Trin.,  710-711,  1101-1102; 
Phorm.,  818. 

«  Trin.,  69,  146-147,  151;  Most.,  472;  Miles,  596  et  .soq.,  915,  9-14 
et  seq.,  1137  ;  etc. 


358     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

in  the  Iphigcnia  in  Aulis,  prefer  to  hold  their  confidential 
conversations  out  of  doors  rather  than  indoors,  just  as 
Phronesium  and  Eunomia  do.^  Oedipus  in  the  Oedipus 
Tyrannus,  Creon  and  Euridyce  in  the  Antigone,  locasta 
in  the  Phoenician  Women,  and  Medea  in  the  tragedy  that 
bears  her  name,  come  out  to  meet  visitors  or  messengers 
instead  of  receiving  them  in  their  palace,  just  as  the  false 
Telestis  does.^  Like  Palaestrio  and  his  accomplices, 
Orestes  and  Electra  in  Sophocles,  Helen  and  Menelaus 
in  Euripides,  and  the  ecclesiazusae  in  Aristophanes  con- 
spire out  of  doors,  in  the  vicinity  of  the  very  persons 
whom  they  mean  to  deceive,  and  in  a  place  where  any 
one  may  surprise  them  at  any  moment.^  Possibly  the 
older  writers  were  more  careful  than  were  their  successors 
to  invent  pretexts  for  such  imprudent  and  inconsequen- 
tial conduct.  In  the  long  run,  the  reiteration  of  pre- 
texts that  were  often  weak  must  have  been  regarded  as 
useless  and  tedious,  and  by  a  tacit  understanding  between 
the  poets  and  the  public  they  were  taken  for  granted 
without  being  expressed. 

Finally,  let  me  draw  this  discussion  to  a  close  by  calling 
attention  to  various  devices  which  appear  to  have  been 
very  generally  employed  by  the  comic  writers  of  the 
new  period  in  order  to  make  more  direct  communication 
between  indoors  and  out  of  doors. 

The  first  of  these  devices  consists  in  letting  the  actors 
who  come  out  of  the  house  stand  at  the  door  and  give 
injunctions  or  address  threats  or  words  of  advice  to  those 
who  are  supposed  to  remain  within.  This  method,  of 
which  there  is  barely  any  trace  in  the  drama  of  the  fifth 
century,  is  often  entirely,  or  very  nearly,  free  from  con- 
vention. When,  for  example,  Sosius,  in  the  IleQixeiQoiuevr], 
after  having  at  a  glance  discovered  Glycera's  escape, 
hastily    comes    out    of    Polemo's    house    and    curses    the 

1  Antig.,  1  et  seq. ;  Iphig.  in  AuL,   1  et  seq. 

*  Oed.  Tyr.,  945  et  seq. ;  Anlig.,  387  et  seq.,  1183  et  seq. ;  Phoen.,  1072 
et  seq. ;  Med.,  214  et  seq. 

3  EL,   1288  et  seq. ;  Hel,   1032  et  seq. ;  Eccles.,  30  et  seq. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  359 

servants  who  have  allowed  the  young  woman  to  get  away,^ 
or  when  Hegio,  in  the  Adelphi,  who  has  been  accompanied 
to  his  door  by  Sostrata,  takes  leave  of  her  and  comforts 
her,-  the  stage  action  is  in  perfect  conformity  with  what 
one  may  see  any  day.  But  it  also  happens  that  speeches 
addressed  to  actors  off  the  stage  do  sometimes,  for  one 
reason  or  another,  overstep  the  limits  of  dramatic  proba- 
bility. Witness  the  passage  in  the  Andria,  where  Simo 
by  chance  overhears  the  injunctions  of  the  midwife  Lesbia. 
She  is  already  outside  Glycerium's  house,  but  continues  to 
address  the  serving  maids.  "  What  curious  behaviour," 
says  Simo.  "  While  she  was  with  the  patient  this  woman 
ordered  none  of  the  things  a  woman  requires  for  a  con- 
finement. But  as  soon  as  she  gets  out  of  the  house  she 
calls  out  aloud  to  those  who  are  within  !  "  It  must  be 
admitted  that  Simo's  distrust  is  not  entirely  unreason- 
able ;  Lesbia  waits  too  long  before  she  speaks.  Now  let 
us  look  at  lines  243  et  seq.  of  the  Hecyra.  Phidippus 
comes  out  of  his  house  and  chides  his  daughter.  Now, 
Philumena  is  ill,  and  about  to  be  confined  in  a  few  minutes. 
Can  we  imagine  that  when  Phidippus  addresses  her  she 
would  be  near  enough  to  the  door  to  hear  his  harangue  ? 
Even  if  we  assume  that  Phidippus'  house  is  extremely 
small,  this  would  be  difficult. 

The  same  sort  of  improbability  as  I  have  just  pointed 
out  in  the  Hecyra  occurs  frequently;  occasionally  it  is 
even  more  serious — as,  for  instance,  when  an  actor  who 
is  outside  a  house  is  nevertheless  supposed  to  hear  what  is 
being  said  indoors,  or  else  to  be  himself  heard  by  those 
within.  That  Euclio's  prolonged  and  vehement  lamenta- 
tions should  penetrate  Megadorus'  house  and  reach  the 
ears  of  Lyconides,  who  was  probably  on  the  point  of 
coming  out,  or  that  Periplecomenes'  little  servant  should, 
while  out  of  doors,  hear  the  shouts  of  Pyrgopoliniees,' 
who  must  have  been  arrested  as  soon  as  he  entered  his 
neighbour's  house,  is  natural  enough.     But  is  it  not  strange 

1  UfpiK.,  176  et  soq.  *  Ad.,  511  etseq.,  ftlso  635-636, 

9  Miles,  1393, 


360     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

that  Nausistrata,  in  the  Phormio,  should,  while  at  home, 
hear  the  parasite  calling,^  or  that  Philocomasium  should 
hear  Periplecomenes'  advice  while  she  is  in  the  soldier's 
house,  2  or  that  the  groans  of  women  in  confinement  and 
the  comforting  words  of  those  who  are  helping  them 
should  be  heard  in  the  street  ?  ^  True,  Plutarch  tells  us 
that  a  visitor  might  find  the  owners  of  a  house  and  their 
slaves  engaged  in  all  kind  of  domestic  occupations  immedi- 
ately behind  the  doors  of  the  avXeiog  Ovga.'^  But  that  was 
not  the  usual  place  for  a  dignified  and  self-respecting 
matron  to  take  up  her  position,  nor  for  the  most  intimate 
occurrences  in  a  woman's  life  to  occur,  especially  when 
everybody  about  her  was  trying  to  keep  them  secret. 
Such  passages  as  have  just  occupied  our  attention  occasion- 
ally force  us  to  surmise  that  the  actors  communicated  with 
one  another  through  a  window.  But  in  most  of  these 
cases  the  wisest  course  will  be  frankly  to  recognise  the 
existence  of  a  stage  convention. 

I  may  at  once  add  that  this  same  convention  already 
existed  in  tragedy.  In  Euripides'  Orestes  the  groans  of 
Helen  are  heard  from  without,  as  she  is  being  murdered ; 
the  same  is  true  of  the  heroine's  lamentations  in  the 
Medea;  of  Hippolytus'  quarrel  with  the  aged  nurse  in 
the  Hippolytus;  and  so  on.  Conversely,  quite  a  number 
of  personages,  instead  of  being  fetched  from  inside  their 
palaces,  answer  calls  made  to  them  from  without.  For 
instance,  in  the  Phoenissae  alone,  locasta  does  so  twice, 
and  subsequently  Antigone  and  Oedipus  do  the  like.^  In 
the  case  of  princes,  towards  whom  one  would  expect  to 
see  a  certain  degree  of  decorum  observed,  and  who,  pre- 
sumably, dwelt  in  spacious  houses,  both  the  informality 
and  the  success  of  these  summonses  are  improbable. 
When  transferred  to  the  commonplace  surroundings  of 
comedy,  there  is  less  improbability  in  such  situations. 

1  Phorm.,  985  et  seq.  -  Miles,  522  et  seq. 

3  AuL,  691-692;   Andr.,  473;   Ad.,  486-487;   Hec,  315  et  seq.;  etc. 

*  Plut.,  De  curios.,  3. 

6  Phoen.,  296  et  seq.,  1069  et  seq.,  1264  et  seq.,  1530  et  seq. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  361 

After  studying  the  stage  setting  it  will  be  interesting 
to  examine  the  movements  of  the  aetors.  The  meeting 
of  actors  behind  the  seencs,  out  of  sight  of  the  audience, 
does  not  always  strictly  follow  the  rules  of  probability. 
Sometimes  an  actor  leaves  the  stage  in  search  of  another, 
as  when  Plesidippus  goes  in  search  of  the  shipwrecked 
Labrax,!  and,  contrary  to  all  probability,  misses  him ; 
sometimes  one  of  two  actors  who,  it  would  seem,  ought 
to  go  away  together  —  for  instance,  Lysimachus  and 
Demipho,  in  the  Mercator,  after  they  have  done  their 
marketing  for  an  entertainment — stops  longer  than  the 
other  without  having  any  good  reason  for  doing  so ;  and 
sometimes  an  actor — for  example,  Messenio  in  the  Men- 
aechmi  ^ — disappears  from  the  scene  for  a  while,  though  no 
explanation  of  his  long  absence  is  vouchsafed  us.  But 
here  we  may  invert  Horace's  remark — 

Segnius  irritant  animos  demissa  per  aures 
quam  quae  sunt  oculis  subiecta  fidelibus  .  .  . 

As  these  faults  in  construction  were  not  displayed  on  the 
stage,  they  may  very  well  have  passed  unobserved.  We 
may,  therefore,  disregard  them,  and  limit  ourselves  to  an 
examination  of  those  movements  which  were  seen. 

Our  poets  were  obliged  to  observe  the  unity  of  place, 
just  as  all  the  writers  of  classical  drama  were,  and  conse- 
quently they  had  to  bring  the  actors  of  their  plays  together 
at  the  same  spot  in  turn,  and  to  make  them  meet  one 
another,  and  depart  in  order  to  avoid  meeting  one  another, 
as  the  case  demanded.  However  ingeniously  they  may 
have  arranged  the  setting,  the  fact  that  they  had  to  do 
this  complicated  their  task  vastly.  As  long  as  they  were 
content  to  introduce  natural  combinations  in  which  each 
actor  had  a  good  reason  for  being  where  he  was,  and  for 
coming  whence  he  came,  no  objections  can  be  raised. 
Megadorus  goes  to  Euclio's  house  to  ask  for  his  daughter's 
hand,   and  meets  that  worthy  as  he  is  returning  home 

1  Rud.,  157-158. 

*  He  disappears  at  line  445,  and  docs  not  reappear  before  line  966. 


362     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

from  a  distribution  of  public  money. ^  In  the  Andria, 
Chrcmes  reaches  Simo's  door  at  the  very  moment  when 
the  latter  is  preparing  to  go  to  see  him ;  ^  and  so  on.  Such 
coincidences  as  these,  which  the  actors  hail  with  delight 
as  being  favours  bestowed  by  fortune,  are,  of  course,  rarer 
in  real  life  than  on  the  stage.  They  may,  however,  occur 
in  real  life,  and  that  is  quite  sufficient  defence  as  far  as 
the  author  is  concerned.  But  it  is  reprehensible  for  the 
actors  to  appear  upon  the  scene,  stay  there  or  leave  it, 
for  no  other  discoverable  reason  than  the  exigency  of  the 
dramatic  situation. 

I  have  already  mentioned  cases  in  which  actors,  as  soon 
as  their  presence  becomes  necessary,  come  out  somewhat 
too  opportunely  from  one  of  the  houses  on  the  stage. 
It  would  be  easy  to  cite  additional  instances.^  Some- 
times actors  emerge  from  the  parodoi  suddenly  and  for 
no  particular  reason.^  Sometimes  they  go  into  their 
houses,  or  more  usually  disappear  under  some  futile 
pretext,  for  the  sole  purpose  of  leaving  the  field  free  for 
their  partners  or  for  actors  who  have  just  come  upon  the 
stage,  ^  so  that  some  interesting  scene  may  take  place  before 
the  audience.^  And  frequently  actors  remain  on  the 
stage  an  unjustifiably  long  time  before  entering  the  house 
in  which  they  have  something  to  do,  or  before  setting  out 
for  some  given  point.' 

Such  imperfections  as  these  are  the  almost  unavoidable 
consequence  of  observing  the  rule  of  the  unity  of  place. 
They  were  not  unknown  to  the  stage  before  the  vea,^ 
and  they  could  only  be  made  a  special  ground  of  reproach 

1  Aul.,  177.  *  Andr.,  532. 

'  'Eirirp.,  166;    Asin.,  504;    Bacch.,  178;    Cas.,  531;    Cist.,  639;  etc. 

*  Cure,  533;  Merc,  335;   Menaech.,  1050;   etc. 

*  Bacch.,  924;   Capt.,  192;   Menaech.,  213;  etc. 

«  Miles,  1280;   Poen.,  197;   Andr.,  171;   Eun.,  225,  etc. 

'  Ad.,  540  et  seq. ;  Eun.,  615  et  seq. ;  Phorm.,  231  et  seq.,  784  et  seq. ; 
Hec,  281  et  seq.;  Amph.,  551  et  seq.;  Aul.,  475  et  seq.;  Bacch.,  109 
et  seq.,  385  et  seq.,  405  et  seq. ;  etc. 

®  As  far  as  tragedy  is  concerned,  see  W.  Felsch's  dissertation,  Quihus 
artificiis  adhibitis  poetae  tragici  Graeci  unitates  illas  et  temporis  et  loci  observa- 
verint,  in  the  Breslauer  philologische  Abhandlungen,  Vol.  IX.  fasc.  4  (1907). 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  363 

to  our  poets  if  they  permitted  these  imperfections  to  occur 
too  often.  Consequently,  it  is  not  out  of  place  to  put 
readers  on  their  guard  against  being  too  severe.  Every 
movement  of  an  actor  for  which  he  himself  gives  no 
explanation  is  not  necessarily  unjustifiable.  In  many 
instances  it  was  plainly  the  privilege  and  the  duty  of  the 
audience  to  supply  an  explanation  which  the  text  failed 
to  give.  Stage-play  helped  them  in  doing  so,  or  else 
other  more  explicit  passages  showed  them  by  analogy 
what  was  to  be  understood,  though  it  was  not  expressed. 
I  shall  cite  a  few  examples.  It  may  seem  strange  that, 
at  line  198  of  the  Hecyra,  Sostrata  and  Laches  should 
come  out  into  the  street  in  order  to  quarrel.  But  if  we 
think  of  other  scenes,  such  as  scene  ii.  Act  I  of  the  Menae- 
chmi,  or  scene  ii,  Act  III  of  the  Mostellaria,  in  which  a 
husband  leaves  his  house  in  order  to  escape  the  society 
of  a  disagreeable  wife,  all  is  plain.  Laches  is  worn  out 
by  his  wife's  protestations ;  he  leaves  the  house  in  order 
to  escape  them,  and  his  wife  follows  him  in  order  to 
win  him  over.  In  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos,  line  614, 
Sostrata  rushes  out  of  doors  after  discovering  the  identity 
of  Antiphila ;  is  that  a  mistake  ?  No.  Sostrata  is  im- 
patiently awaiting  some  one — her  husband,  to  whom  she 
is  anxious  to  tell  the  news.  She  goes  out  into  the  street 
in  order  to  watch  for  him  and  see  him  the  sooner.^  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  she  runs  against  Chremes  and  loses  no 
time  in  telling  him  what  she  has  just  found  out,  which  is 
quite  natural.  Thereupon  husband  and  wife  go  into  their 
house  in  order  to  see  Antiphila.  Syrus  remains  on  the 
stage  and  is  promptly  joined  by  Clinia.  Here  again  there 
is  no  room  for  criticism,  Syrus  does  not  share  Sostrata's 
happiness  nor  the  soberer  satisfaction  of  Chremes,  for  the 
discovery  of  Antiphila's  identity  upsets  his  plans.  He 
has  no  desire  whatever  to  be  a  witness  to  it,  and  prefers 
to  think  over  the  situation   in   solitude.     As  for  Clinia, 

^  Cf.  Slichus,  641  et  seq.  :  More  hoc  fit,  atquc  stulte  mea  sententia  ;  si 
quern  hominem  cxspectant,  cum  solent  provisere,  qui  heroic  ilia  causa  ociua 
nihilo  venit. 


364     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

he  is  so  extremely  happy  that  he  cannot  stay  quiet  in  one 
spot.  Towards  the  close  of  the  Phormio  Sophrona  comes 
out  of  Demipho's  house  just  in  time  to  meet  Chremes. 
Is  her  remark  in  line  738  to  be  taken  literally,  and  are  we 
to  believe  that  she  is  hoping  to  find  Phanium's  father? 
Certainly  not.  Sophrona  is  beside  herself  and  does  not 
know  which  way  to  turn;  she  bustles  about  in  order  to 
dispel  her  anxiety.  At  line  288  of  the  Adelphi  Sostrata 
leaves  her  daughter  just  as  the  latter  is  about  to  be  con- 
fined. Though  it  seems  absurd  that  she  should  do  so, 
it  is,  nevertheless,  not  unjustifiable.  The  poor  woman 
dreads  being  alone  with  her  suffering  daughter;  she 
cannot  make  up  her  mind  to  let  Canthara,  whose  kind 
words  comfort  her,  depart.  Further  on  in  the  same  play 
Demea  rushes  out  of  doors  to  express  his  grief  over  the 
discovery  of  Clitipho's  dissoluteness.  He  has  been  terri- 
fied by  an  unexpected  spectacle,  and  the  horror  he  feels 
is  stronger  than  his  anger.  When  taken  to  task  by  Micio, 
he  resigns  himself  willy  nilly,  and  makes  up  his  mind  to 
spend  a  day  in  merry-making  himself.  But  he  does  not 
go  back  into  the  house  with  his  brother,  for  he  wishes  to 
examine  his  conscience,  far  aw^ay  from  everybody.  In 
the  Eiinuchus  Thais  comes  out  of  her  house  to  question 
Pythias  about  the  things  that  have  taken  place  during 
her  absence,^  for  Pythias  was  trying  to  get  out  of  the 
way  because  she  felt  that  the  time  for  unpleasant  explana- 
tions was  at  hand.  Thais  stays  close  by  her  and  follows 
her  out  of  doors.  Cleareta  appears  at  line  158  of  the 
Asinaria  because  she  is  attracted  by  the  noise  in  front  of 
her  house.  At  line  701  of  the  Aulularia  Strobilus,  with 
the  stolen  pot  in  his  hands,  walks  across  the  stage,  that  is 
to  say,  past  Euclio's  house.  Can  this  be  called  imprudent  ? 
No.  Because  Strobilus  knows  better  than  any  one  that 
Euclio  has  not  yet  returned  and,  as  his  master  has  made 
an  appointment  with  him,  he  must  be  anxious  to  know 
what  has  become  of  Lyconides.  Moreover,  when  he  leaves 
the  stage  at  line  681  he  is  about  to  leave  town ;   when  he 

1  Eun.,  817. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  365 

returns  at  line  808  he  comes  from  town.  Now  it  seems 
that,  in  order  to  leave  town,  the  actors  went  out  through 
one  of  the  parodoi,  and  that  they  came  in  througli  the 
other  when  they  returned  from  town.^  If,  then,  Strobilus 
leaves  the  stage,  through  the  right  parodos,  at  line  681, 
and  is  to  reappear,  through  the  left  parodos,  at  line  808, 
it  is  well  that  the  audience  should  see  him  crossing  the 
stage  from  right  to  left  during  the  interval.  Indeed,  it 
was  an  almost  universal  rule  in  the  days  of  New  Comedy 
that  an  actor  should,  in  each  case,  come  back  upon  the 
stage  through  the  same  door,  or  the  same  parodos,  through 
which  he  had  made  his  last  exit.  The  fact  that  there  was 
an  entr'acte  between  his  exit  and  return,  just  as  there 
probably  was  between  line  C81  and  line  808  of  the 
Aulularia,  does  not  alter  the  case. 

If  the  reader  will  examine  the  entrances  and  the  exits 
of  comic  actors  with  even  the  slightest  degree  of  good- 
will and  impartiality,  he  will  find  sufficient  motive  for 
many  of  them.  Moreover,  it  must  be  admitted  that  on 
the  stage,  as  in  real  life,  people  may  occasionally  come 
and  go  with  no  precise  aim,  with  no  definite  intention, 
and  simply  because  they  have  nothing  else  to  do  and 
because  they  are  fond  of  walking.  "To  go  for  a  walk 
round  the  square "  is  a  commonplace  pretext  that  re- 
peatedly serves  to  account  for  the  exit  of  an  actor.  I 
admit  that  occasionally  this  pretext  is  not  very  plausible. 
Menaechmus  and  Lysidamus,  who  are  intent  on  a  "  good 
time,"  and  Apoecides,  who  has  to  accompany  Epidicus  to 
the  slave-dealer's  house,  choose  their  time  so  badly  that 
they  run  the  risk  of  an  embarrassing  encounter.^  As  a 
rule,  however,  such  a  pretext  must  have  seemed  entirely 
natural  to  a  Greek  audience.  For  at  Athens  and  else- 
where honest  citizens  were  in  the  habit  of  strolling  about 
continually  in  the  agora  and  gossiping  all  day  in  the  shops 
or  at  the  banker's  offices.     As  for  the  slaves,  it  is  hardly 

*  Cf.  Alb.  Miiller,  Griech.  Buhnenalt.  (188(3),  pp.    158    159   and   notes; 
Kretschmar,  De  Menandri  reliquiis  nuper  repcrtis,  pp.  21-22. 
«  Menaech.,  213-214;    Cos.,  526;    Epid.,  303-304. 


366     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

necessary  to  say  that  to  stroll  about  far  from  the  eye  of 
their  master,  nose  in  air  and  swinging  their  arms,  was  a 
great  delight.  And,  finally,  we  must  not  forget,  particu- 
larly as  regards  the  length  of  time  spent  by  actors  at  the 
door  of  this  or  that  house,  that  very  often  their  stopping 
there  is  perhaps  only  apparent.  I  have  already  shown 
that,  in  virtue  of  a  stage  convention,  the  area  in  which  the 
actors  move  about  is  an  epitome,  so  to  speak,  of  a  much 
larger  space.  Consequently  the  spectator  is  free  to 
imagine  that  the  actors  who  appear  to  be  walking  about 
aimlessly  or  to  tarry  in  one  spot,  are  on  their  way  to  the 
scene  of  action  or  to  some  distant  place. 

This  last  remark  must  be  borne  in  mind  in  order  to  get 
a  just  appreciation  of  certain  details  of  construction  w'hich, 
at  first  sight,  offend  us,  and  which  may  as  well  be  pointed 
out  here.  Regarded  from  a  dramatic  point  of  view,  it 
does  not  always  suffice  to  bring  the  actor  whom  one  needs 
upon  the  stage  at  the  right  moment.  It  often  happens 
in  New  Comedy — incomparably  more  often  than  in  fifth- 
century  tragedy  and  in  Aristophanes — that  two  actors 
come  upon  the  stage  at  the  same  moment,  and  are  engaged 
in  conversation  as  they  appear.  In  such  cases  we  have  a 
right  to  expect  that  their  conversation  should  not  begin 
too  obviously  at  the  very  moment  of  their  appearance 
upon  the  scene.  Above  all,  the  actors  ought  not  to 
appear  to  have  kept  things  for  the  ears  of  the  audience 
that  they  should  have  told  one  another  before  they  came 
upon  the  stage.  There  are  many  passages  both  Greek 
and  Latin  whose  composition  is,  in  this  regard,  above  all 
criticism.^  Elsewhere,  the  holding  back  of  certain  ex- 
planations, of  certain  questions  and  certain  answers,  is 
more  or  less  justified.  In  the  Rudens  Plesidippus  never 
tires  of  hearing  the  joyful  news  that  Trachalio  gives  him;  ^ 
in  the  Hecyra  Pamphilus    dares  not   believe    Parmeno's 

1  'Eirirp.,  1,  464;  Ffcopy.,  22;  UepiK.,  77;  Sa^u.,  68;  Aul,  682;  Epid., 
166,  320;  Andr.,  820;  Ad.,  447,  592;  etc.  Note  abrupt  beginnings  as 
inline  957  of  the  Mercator,  line  242  of  the  Heauton  Timor oumenos, line  415 
of  the  Hecyra;  etc. 

*  Rud.,  1265. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  367 

story,  and  makes  him  repeat  it  in  order  to  persuade  him- 
self of  its  correctness.^  Similarly,  although  for  another 
reason,  Amphitryon  cannot  make  up  his  mind  to  trust 
Sosia's  statements. 2  In  the  Phormio  Phaedria  can  never 
make  up  his  mind  to  regard  the  pander's  refusal  as  final, 
and  constantly  repeats  his  request.^  But,  in  the  Asinaria, 
it  is  hardly  likely  that  Diabolus  should  put  off  having  the 
draft  of  the  contract  -which  the  parasite  has  made  read 
to  him  until  the  very  moment  in  which  he  is  about  to  enter 
Cleareta's  house. ^  Nor  is  it  more  probable  that  Palaestrio 
should  wait,  not  until  after  he  is  in  his  house — which  we 
could  understand — but  until  he  reaches  the  door,  before 
speaking  to  Pyrgopolinices  about  the  advances  the  lady 
next  door  is  supposed  to  have  made.^  When,  in  the 
Phormio,  Chremes  appears  with  his  brother,  we  learn 
from  their  conversation  that  he  has  not  yet  given  an 
account  of  his  journey  to  Lemnos,  and  that  he  has  not 
yet  spoken  about  Antipho's  marriage ;  ^  what,  then,  was 
the  subject  of  the  conversation  of  the  two  brothers  up  to 
that  point  ?  In  such  passages  as  these  we  may  perhaps 
put  forward  the  stage  fiction  of  which  I  spoke  above  as 
an  excuse  or  an  extenuating  circumstance.  If  we  assume 
that  Demipho  and  Chremes,  Palaestrio  and  Pyrgopoli- 
nices, begin  to  be  heard,  not  when  they  reach  their  door, 
but  somewhat  earlier,  while  they  are  on  their  way  home, 
the  tenor  of  their  conversation  becomes  less  open  to 
criticism. 

*     * 

The  adventures  which  New  Comedy  had  to  depict 
were  at  once  more  realistic  and  more  complex  than  those 
which  constituted  the  plot  of  tragedy  and  of  earlier 
comedy.  But  it  succeeded  in  doing  so  without  resorting 
to  devices  that  were  unknown  to  the  stage  in  earlier  times. 
It  was  not  New  Comedy  that  first  employed  more  than 
three  actors  upon  the  stage  simultaneously.  Soliloquies, 
stage    asides,    entr'actes,    discrepancy    between    the    time 

1  Hec,  845.  *  Amph.,  576,  619.        »  Phorm.,  485  et  seq. 

*  A8.,  746  et  seq.         *  Miles,  951  et  seq.       *  Fhorin.,  567  et  seq. 


368     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

required  for  what  the  audience  saw  and  for  what  they 
did  not  see,  the  juxtaposition  of  buildings  and  of  places 
that  ought  really  to  be  far  apart,  animated  scenes  crowded 
into  a  contracted  space,  indoor  scenes  that  are  placed 
out  of  doors,  the  exchange  of  confidences  on  the  public 
highway,  too  easy  communication  between  indoors  and 
out  of  doors,  the  arbitrary  moving  about  of  actors — these 
are  all  so  many  conventions,  so  many  improbabilities,  of 
which  examples,  or  at  least  the  germs,  are  already  found 
in  Euripides  and  Aristophanes.  If  the  task  of  the  authors 
of  the  via  was,  in  certain  respects,  easier  than  that  of 
their  predecessors,  this  was  not  due  to  the  fact  that  they 
invented  new  devices,  but  to  the  fact  that  they  omitted 
a  troublesome  element — the  chorus.  In  a  realistic  drama 
the  chorus,  as  it  existed  in  earlier  times,  would  have  been 
an  anomaly.  In  most  cases  it  would  have  been  difficult 
to  know  of  whom  it  should  consist  or  on  what  pretext  to 
keep  it  on  the  stage  from  almost  the  beginning  to  the  end 
of  the  play.  Above  all,  the  continuous  presence  of  such 
an  onlooker  would  have  put  a  restraint  on  the  intimate 
conversations,  the  confidences,  the  plotting,  and  the 
effusions  and  meditations  in  which  these  plays  abound. 
Unencumbered  by  the  chorus  during  the  entire  course 
of  the  play,  the  stage  remained,  in  fact,  a  street,  an  open 
place  where  any  one  might  be  expected  to  appear  at  any 
moment.  For  the  most  part  one  may  suppose  that  this 
street  or  open  place  was  deserted,  and  the  comic  poets 
were  entirely  free  to  depict  their  actors  coming  and 
going,  hiding  themselves  or  springing  on  each  other, 
conversing  or  thinking  aloud.  This  detail  of  dramatic 
technique  which  differentiates  the  vea  from  tragedy  and 
from  earlier  comedy — as  well  as  the  much  freer  use  of 
soliloquy  ^ — is  a  natural  outcome  of  the  virtual  disappear- 
ance of  the  chorus.  I  do  not  think  it  is  far  wide  of  the 
mark  to  regard  this  practical  disappearance  as  the  most 
determining  factor  in  giving  New  Comedy  its  special  char- 
acter.    The  chorus  must  have  disappeared  in  the  time 

»  Cf.  Chap.  IV,  §  2  and  3. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  369 

of  Philemon,  Menandcr  and  Diphilus,  as  there  is  no  cer- 
tainty, nor  even  probability,  that  a  single  fragment  of 
these  authors'  writings  belongs  to  a  choral  passage.  It 
did  not  disappear  earlier,  because  various  fragments  by 
such  authors  of  the  /<eo>y  as  Antiphanes,  Anaxilas  and 
others  were,  in  all  probability,  either  spoken  by  members 
of  the  chorus  ^  or  represent  the  latter  as  interested  in  the 
plot.2  But  it  is  not  likely  that  so  far-reaching  a  change 
should  have  been  made  all  at  once.  The  comic  writers 
of  the  middle  period,  no  doubt,  accustomed  themselves 
to  it  gradually,  and  got  their  audiences  used  to  seeing  the 
chorus  eliminated  from  the  plot ;  and  I  presume  that  these 
authors  already  began  to  gather  the  fruits  of  this  decisive 
reform. 

But  the  phrase  "  disappearance  of  the  chorus  "  does  not 
necessarily  imply  the  total  elimination  of  lyrical  passages 
and  songs.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  palliata,  in  which  there 
is  no  chorus,  contains  cantica,  or  monodies,  that  were 
recited  to  musical  accompaniment.  This  is  not  the  place 
to  study  the  origin  of  the  cantica,  nor  to  discuss  whether 
they  were  suggested  to  the  Roman  poets  by  Aristophanic 
comedy,  by  tragedy,  or  by  Alexandrian  mimes.  What 
we  are  concerned  in  establishing  is  the  fact  that  Naevius 
and  his  successors  did  not  find  an  equivalent  for  them  in 
the  works  of  the  via.  According  to  the  statement  of  the 
ancient  grammarians,^  the  via  employed  only  two  kinds 
of  metre — iambic  trimetre  and  trochaic  tetrametre,  and, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  these  two  are  the  only  metres  met 
with  in  the  lengthy  fragments  of  the  original  plays  that 
liave  been  published  in  recent  years,  and  notably  in  the 
Kom  Ishkaou  fragments.  True,  some  other  fragments 
which  have  been  known  for  a  long  time  afford  examples 
of  more  varied  metres  that  are  better  adapted  for  singing,* 

^  Meineke,  Historia  Comicorum,  pp.  301-302;    Loo,  Der  Monolog   im 
Drama,  p.  41. 

*  Antiphanes,  fr.  91;  Alexis,  fr.  237;  Honiochus,  fr.  5;  Timocles,  fr.  25. 
'  Hephaist.,  Tlepl  iroi-nfi.,  p.  64,  12  Consbr. ;    Mar.  Victor.,  p.  67,  14. 

*  Cf.   Meineke,  Hist.   Comic,  pp.   441   et  seq. ;    Loo,   Rhein.   Mus.,   X. 
(1885),  p.  163. 

B  B 


370     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

but  their  number  is  very  small.  As  a  general  rule,  the 
choral  interludes  appear  to  have  been  the  only  part  of  a 
comedy  that  was  sung  in  the  time  of  the  vea.  In  adopt- 
ing ordinary  spoken  language  as  its  usual  and  practically 
constant  medium,  New  Comedy  remained  true  to  its 
principles.  Occasionally,  indeed,  it  could,  without  over- 
stepping the  bounds  of  realism,  introduce  actors  who  sang 
a  love  song  or  a  drinking  song,  or  chanted  a  prayer  or  an 
invocation,  and  the  fragments  written  in  lyric  measure 
are  probably  parts  of  passages  of  this  kind.  But  in  real 
life  men  do  not  converse,  or  argue,  or  inveigh  against  one 
another,  or  lament  their  fate,  in  music.  If  comic  actors 
were  not  to  sing  more  than  their  living  prototypes  do, 
song  would  have  had  to  be  practically  excluded  from 
comedy.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  together  with  the 
elimination  of  the  chorus  the  exclusion  of  song  was  the 
feature  which  most  markedly  differentiated  New  Comedy 
from  the  earlier  styles  of  drama,  when  regarded  from  the 
point  of  view  of  form ;  and  it  is  this  more  than  anything 
else  which  establishes  a  close  kinship  between  the  via 
and  modern  drama,  though  they  are  separated  by  so 
many  centuries.  An  Attic  tragedy  or  comedy  of  the 
earlier  period,  if  revived  before  a  modern  audience,  would 
appear  a  strange,  naive  and  artificial  production.  A 
comedy  by  Menander — if  we  took  from  it  the  masks,  the 
costumes,  and  certain  peculiarities  of  stage-setting  ^ — 
would  not  surprise  a  modern  audience  more  than  a  great 
many  of  Moliere's  plays  do. 

^  The  chief  pecuHarity  is,  of  course,  the  unchanging  out-of-door  scene. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  stage-setting,  the  greatest  difference  between 
modern  and  ancient  plays  consists  in  the  practice  in  the  former  of  showing 
the  audience  the  interior  of  a  house.  This  detail  of  stage-setting  is,  in 
many  regards,  a  determining  factor  in  the  construction  of  plays,  and  even 
in  the  choice  of  their  subjects. 


CHAPTER   IV 

EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE    OF    THE    COMEDIES 
PECULIARITIES   OF   DRAMATIC   TECHNIQUE 

THE  composition  of  a  literary  work  is  not  always 
governed  solely  by  the  laws  of  logic  and  art.  On 
these  necessary  and  salutary  laws  caprice  and  routine 
sometimes  impose  other  rules,  that  are  not  calculated  to 
increase  the  beauty  or  the  clearness  of  the  work,  while 
they  complicate  the  author's  labour  to  no  purpose;  and 
without  being  confined  by  such  a  rigid  setting  as  some 
modern  scholars  have  maintained,  Attic  comedy  of  the 
fifth  century  was  not,  apparently,  entirely  free  from  such 
trammels.  We  may,  therefore,  properly  ask  ourselves — 
and  this  is  what  I  mean  to  do  now — whether  the  comic 
writers  of  the  new  period  as  well  had  to  submit  to  some 
such  tyranny. 

§1 

Division  into  Five  Acts 

In  modern  editions  of  Latin  comedies  the  plays  are 
uniformly  divided  into  five  acts.  True,  for  Plautus'  plays 
this  division  only  dates  from  the  sixteenth  century,  but 
for  Terence's  plays  it  appears  to  be  of  much  earlier  date — 
as  early  as  the  time  of  Varro.^  Varro,  whose  example 
scholars  in  the  Renaissance  rightly  or  wrongly  followed, 
was  in  a  position  to  know  many  a  thing  about  the  vea 
that  we  no  longer  know.  He  read  Menander  and  Philemon, 
Diphilus  and  Apollodorus,  in  the  original.  He  had 
access  to  the  treatises  JIeqI  HcojUMdiaQ  which  formulated 
rules  for  this  style  of  composition.  We  may  assume 
a  jyriori  that  when  he  applied  the  division  into  five  acts 
to  Latin  imitations,  he  intended  to  record  their  resemblance 
to  the  models  imitated,  and  that  he  remained  true  to  the 
original  intention  of  the  Greek  poets.     We  are,  therefore, 

1  Donatus,  praof.  Hec,  III.  6  (Vol.  II.  p.  192  Wcssner) ;  cf.  praef.  Andr., 
III.  6  (Vol.  I.  p.  40);   praef.  Ad.,  I.  4  (Vol.  II.  p.  4). 

371 


372     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

led  to  ask  :  Did  the  rule  of  five  acts,  that  famous  law 
promulgated  by  Horace  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Pisos  — 

Neve  minor  neu  sit  quinto  productior  actu 
fabula 1 

govern  the  works  of  New  Comedy  from,  the  beginning? 

We  have  but  meagre  information  about  the  origin  of 
this  law  which  was  destined  to  survive  so  long.^  At  the 
same  time  it  is  curious  that  the  only  drama  of  Hellenistic 
times  of  whose  structure  we  now  have  reliable  informa- 
tion— a  play  for  marionettes,  the  Nauplios,  which  was 
performed  during  the  lifetime  of  Philo  of  Byzantium — 
had  exactly  five  /ligr].^  This  fact  gives  some  reason  for 
assuming  that  the  rule  of  five  acts  was  already  in  effect  at 
the  time  of  Philo.  Hence  it  would  have  become  estab- 
lished between  the  time  of  Aristotle,  who  makes  no  mention 
of  it  whatsoever,  and  the  second  half  of  the  third  century. 
If  it  originated  nearer  the  earlier  date,  it  may  very  well 
have  been  observed  during  the  time  at  which  the  via  was 
at  its  height.  Strictly  speaking,  the  subject  matter  of 
the  Nauplios  belongs  to  tragedy,  and  it  is  in  a  passage 
concerning  tragedy  that  we  find  Horace's  well-known 
lines.  But  we  know  that  New  Comedy  copied  the  technique 
of  tragedy  in  more  than  one  respect,  and  probably  the 
new  parts  of  that  technique  were  not  the  last  to  be  adopted. 

1  Hor.,  Ep.  ad  Pis.,  189-190. 

^  There  is  nothing  to  be  got  out  of  Chapter  XVI  of  the  Florida,  in 
which  Apuleius,  in  the  course  of  his  account  of  Philemon's  death,  says 
that  the  comic  writers  of  that  period  were  in  the  habit  of  calling  forth 
the  most  agreeable  emotions  (iucundiores  affectus)  in  the  course  of  the 
third  act ;  for  this  may  refer  either  to  the  last  act  or  to  the  middle  act. 
Moreover,  it  is  not  impossible  that  Apuleius  was  guilty  of  an  anachronism. 
Nor  is  anything  to  be  got  out  of  Cicero,  Ad  Quintuin  fratrem,  I.  1,  or  out 
of  Varro,  De  re  rustica.  III.  16.  It  is  not  the  word  fabulae,  nor  anything 
similar,  that  must  be  supplied  after  tertius  actus,  in  the  former  of  these  two 
passages,  but  imperii.  And  though,  according  to  the  second  passage, 
Morula's  account  must  be  complete  in  three  parts  or  acts,  it  does  not 
follow  that  this  was  true  of  contemporary  drama. 

^  The  plot  of  the  Nauplios  and  its  division  into  acts  are  described  by 
Hero  of  Alexandria,  based  on  Philo  of  Byzantium,  in  Book  II  of  the 
AuTofxaTo-noirjTiKa..  Philo  of  Byzantium  lived  and  wrote  in  the  second 
half  of  the  third  century  B.C. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  373 

We  have  other  evidence  that  bears  directly  upon  the 
via.  For  instance,  Donatus'  statement :  Hoc  etiam  ut 
cactera  eiusmodi  poemata  quinqiie  actus  habeat  necesse 
est  choris  divisos  a  graecis  poetis  ;  ^  and  this  amphfica- 
tion  by  Evanthius  :  Comoedia  veins  ah  initio  chorus  fait 
paulatimque  personarum  numero  in  quinque  actus  pro- 
cessit.  .  .  .  Nam  postquam  otioso  tempore  fastidiosior 
spectator  ejfectus  est  .  .  .,  res  admonuit  poetas  ut  primo 
quidem  choros  tollerent  locum  eis  relinquentes,  ut  Menander 
fecit  .  .  .  ;  postremo  ne  locum  quidem  reliquerunt,  quod 
latini  fecerunt  comici,  unde  apud  illos  dirimere  actus  quinque- 
partitos  difficile  est.^  Up  to  quite  recent  times  passages  of 
this  sort  were  not  very  convincing.  Even  the  existence 
of  a  chorus  in  Menander's  comedies  seemed  to  be  very 
doubtful;  indeed,  there  was  some  cause  to  fear  that  the 
grammarians  had  invented  an  entire  system  in  order  to 
vindicate  Varro's  scheme.  But  we  now  know  that  plays 
of  the  new  period  were  really  divided  into  parts  by  choral 
interludes  {choris  divisos),  and  that  their  authors  set  aside 
spaces  for  these  interludes  {locum  eis  relinquentes)  in  various 
parts  of  the  plot.  The  grammarians  told  the  truth  when 
they  declared  that  entr'actes  existed,  and  this  leads  us  to 
believe  that  they  also  told  the  truth  when  they  claimed 
that  there  was  a  definite  number  of  acts,  and  that  this 
number  was  five. 

So  we  have  serious  theoretical  reasons  for  assuming 
that  New  Comedy  was  subject  to  the  rule  of  five  acts. 
Nevertheless,  a  verification  of  this  assumption  by  experi- 
ment would  be  welcome.  But  the  original  fragments, 
even  the  lengthiest  of  them,  do  not  supply  us  with  matter 
for  such  a  verification ;  for  though  we  find  the  term  Xoqov 
in  them,  we  can  never  know  how  often  the  same  term 
recurred  in  the  course  of  the  same  play.  We  are  no 
better  off  now  than  we  were  before  the  recent  discoveries, 
and  our  only  means  of  investigation  is  to  study  the  Latin 
imitations. 

1  Praef.  Ad.,  I.  4  (Vol.  II.  p.  4  Wessncr). 

2  JDe  com..  III.  1  (pp.  64-65  Kaibel). 


374     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

The  very  least  that  the  rule  with  which  we  are  concerned 
can  apparently  signify,  is  that  the  plot  of  every  drama  in 
which  it  is  followed  should  be  interrupted  four  times. ^ 
We  must,  therefore,  first  of  all,  see  whether  Plautus'  and 
Terence's  plays  uniformly  admitted  of  four  pauses — a 
much  mooted  question,  which  has  given  rise  to  a  number 
of  conflicting  treatises  from  the  time  of  the  Renaissance 
onwards.  Without  stopping  to  criticise  the  combinations 
proposed  by  others,  I  shall  indicate,  play  by  play,  the 
subdivisions  which  seem  to  me  to  be  most  plausible  ^ — 

Adelphi:  Act  I.  1-154  (154  lines);  Act  11.155-354 
(200  lines);  Act  III.  355-516  (162  lines);  Act  IV.  517- 
712  (196  lines);   Act  V.  713-997  (285  lines). 

Amphitryon  :  Act  I.  1-550  (550  lines) ;  Act  II. 
551-860  (310  lines);  Act  III.  861-1034  and  beyond 
(there  are  about  180  more  lines  of  this  act) ;  Act  IV. 
began  before  line  1035  and  ended  at  1052  (it  is  almost 
entirely  lost);    Act  V.  1053-1146  (94  lines). 

AsiNARiA  :  Act  I.  1-126  (126  lines) ;  Act  II.  127-248 
(122  lines);  Act  III.  249-503  (255  lines);  Act  IV.  504- 
745  (242  lines);    Act  V.  746-941  (196  lines). 

Aulularia:  Act  I.  1-119  (119  lines);  Act  11.120- 
279  (160  lines);  Act  III.  280-586(307  lines);  Act  IV. 
587-681  (95  lines);  Act  V.  682-833  and  beyond  (more 
than  150  lines). 

Bacchides  :  Act  I.  up  to  line  108  (at  least  104  lines) ; 
Act  II.  109-384  (276  lines) ;  Act  III.  385-525  (141  lines) ; 
Act  IV.  526-1075  (550  lines);  Act  V.  1076-1206  (131 
lines). 

Captivi  :  Act  I.  1-194  (194  lines) ;  Act  II.  195-460 
(266  lines) ;  Act  III.  461-767  (307  lines) ;  Act  IV.  768- 
908  (141  lines);    Act  V.  909-1028  (120  lines). 

^  Whatever  Donatus  may  say  in  his  commentary  on  the  Andria  (Vol.  I. 
p.  38  Wessner),  there  was  certainly  not  an  entr^acte  each  time  the  stage 
was  empty,  if  it  was  only  empty  for  a  few  moments. 

*  For  the  justification  of  the  subdivision  here  proposed,  cf.  Daos  (French 
Edition),  pp.  468  et  seq.  Briefly,  but  convincingly,  the  author  there 
analyses  each  plot  with  a  view  to  discovering  the  points  at  which  an  act 
would  most  naturally  end.( — Tr.). 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  375 

Casina:  Act  I.  1-143  (143  lines);  Act  II.  144-530 
(387  lines) ;  Act  III.  531-758  (228  lines) ;  Act  IV.  759- 
854  (96  lines);    Act  V.  855-1011  (157  lines). 

CuRCULio:  Act  I.  1-215(215  lines);  Act  II.  216-370 
(155  lines) ;  Act  III.  371-532  (162  lines) ;  Act  IV.  533- 
590  (58  lines);    Act  V.  591-729  (139  lines). 

Epidicus:  Act  I.  1-165  (165  lines);  Act  II.  166-319 
(154  lines) ;  Act  III.  320-381  (62  lines) ;  Act  IV.  382- 
606  (225  lines);   Act  V.  607-731  (125  lines). 

EuNUCiius  :  Act  I.  1-206  (206  lines) ;  Act  II.  207-390 
(184  lines) ;  Act  III.  391-538  (148  lines) ;  Act  IV.  539- 
816  (278  lines);    Act  V.  817-1094  (278  lines). 

Heauton  Timoroumenos  :  Act  I.  1-229  (229  lines) ; 
Act  II.  230-409  (180  lines);  Act  III.  410-748  (339  lines); 
Act  IV.  749-873  (125  lines);  Act  V.  874-1067  (194 
lines). 

Hecyra:  Act  I.  1-197  (197  lines);  Act  II.  198-280 
(83  lines) ;  Act  III.  281-576  (296  lines) ;  Act  IV.  577- 
798  (222  lines) ;    Act  V.  799-880  (82  lines). 

Menaechmi:  Act  I.  1-225  (225  lines);  Act  II.  226- 
445  (220  lines);  Act  III.  446-700  (255  lines);  Act  IV. 
701-881  (181  lines);    Act  V.  882-1162  (281  lines). 

Mercator:  Act  I.  1-224  (224  lines);  Act  II.  225- 
498  (274  lines);  Act  III.  299-666  (168  lines);  Act  IV. 
667-802  (136  lines) ;   Act  V.  803-1026  (224  lines). 

Phormio:  Act  I.  1-152  (152  lines);  Act  II.  153-314 
(162  lines);  Act  III.  315-566  (252  lines);  Act  IV.  567- 
765  (199  lines) ;    Act  V.  766-1055  (290  lines). 

PsEUDOLUs  :  Act  I.  l-573a  (574  lines) ;  Act  II.  574- 
766(193  lines);  Act  III.  767-1051  (285  lines);  Act  IV. 
1052-1245  (194  lines);   Act  V.  1246-1335  (90  lines). 

Trinummus:  Act  I.  1-222  (222  lines);  Act  II.  223- 
601  (379  lines);  Act  III.  602-819  (218  lines);  Act  IV. 
820-1114  (295  lines);    Act  V.  1115-1189  (75  lines). 

Here  we  have  more  than  fifteen  plays  which  allow — if, 
indeed,  they  do  not  demand — the  division  into  five  acts. 
To  tell  the  trutli,  we  know  that  in  some  of  them  the  Latin 


376     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

imitator  modified  his  model.  But  what  we  know  of  the 
modifications  introduced  by  him  does  not  by  any  means 
lead  to  the  assumption  that  the  Greek  original  contained 
either  more  or  fewer  pauses.  Let  us  consider  these  plays 
in  their  order ; 

—  We  know  that  Terence  inserted  a  passage  that  is  an 
imitation  of  Diphilus  at  the  beginning  of  Act  II.  of  the 
Adelphi.  But  if  we  omit  this  passage,  that  is  to  say  the 
first  forty  lines,  the  pause  which  precedes,  far  from  being 
less  acceptable,  would  be  rather  more  so;  for  Sannio 
would  no  longer  have  to  defend  himself  against  the  violence 
of  Aeschinus,  as  the  time  for  that  is  past.  Having  got 
on  the  track  of  the  young  man,  he  could  still  recriminate 
and  claim  his  due — a  thing  which  it  is  never  too  late  to  do. 

—  It  is  possible,  and  even  probable,  that,  in  the  'Ovayog, 
Argyrippus  appeared  on  the  scene  sooner  than  in  the 
Asinaria — that  is,  before  he  leaves  Philaenium  (line  591) — 
for  I  believe  that  the  scenes  of  Act  II.  are  played  by 
Diabolus.  But  this  hypothesis  does  not  necessarily  call 
for  an  additional  pause.  The  Greek  lover  may  very  well 
have  appeared  immediately  after  the  conversation  between 
Libanus  and  Demaenetus  in  a  scene  which  the  Latin 
imitator  omitted.  On  the  other  hand,  in  Act  IV.  I  imagine 
that  he  came  out  of  his  father's  house  after  the  courtesan 
and  the  old  woman  had  gone  home  (line  544),  gave  vent  to 
his  grief  in  a  soliloquy,  and  betook  himself  to  the  neighbour- 
ing house,  out  of  which  he  was  driven  a  few  moments 
later. 

—  The  Aulularia  is  incomplete,  but  the  contents  of  the 
part  that  is  lost  have  been  reconstructed  in  a  very  probable 
manner.  Euclio  came  out  of  his  house;  Lyconides  told 
him  that  he  had  found  the  pot  again  and  declared  that  he 
proposed  to  keep  it  as  Phaedrium's  dowry;  Euclio  pro- 
tested, and  they  made  Megadorus  arbiter;  finally,  Euclio 
was  defeated  and  resigned  himself  to  bear  his  loss  manfully. 
There  was  no  need  of  a  pause.  Moreover,  an  additional 
pause  in  the  last  part  would  not  prevent  our  dividing  the 
Aulularia  into  five  acts;    we  need  only  omit  the  entr'acte 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  377 

between  line   586  and  line   587 — a   course  that  is   quite 
admissible. 

—  The  Casina  is  a  mutilated  play.  In  the  KXr]Qovjuevoi 
the  recognition  of  the  young  girl  takes  place  before  the 
eyes  of  the  audience.  Elsewhere,  I  have  shown  that  this 
episode  may  have  been  inserted  into  the  last  scene  of  the 
Latin  comedy ;  ^  but,  in  order  to  make  room  for  it,  it  is 
not  at  all  necessary  to  assume  that  there  was  an  additional 
entractc. 

—  Apparently  the  Curculio  is  not  a  complete  reproduction 
of  the  Greek  play  from  which  it  is  copied.  Nevertheless, 
it  does  not  seem  likely  that  the  acts  in  the  latter  play  were 
divided  in  a  different  manner  from  those  of  Plautus' 
comedy.  If,  between  the  line  that  corresponds  to  454  and 
the  line  that  corresponds  to  455,  the  banker  took  the  sham 
soldier  home  with  him  in  order  to  receive  the  thirty  minae, 
the  pander,  who  had  returned  from  the  temple  of  Asclepios, 
may  have  occupied  the  stage  with  a  soliloquy  up  to  the 
time  of  his  return.  At  least,  others  besides  myself,  who 
were  not  looking  for  traces  of  a  division  into  five  acts,  have 
been  led  to  this  hypothesis  by  an  examination  of  the 
context. 2 

—  The  Eunuchus  contains  scenes  borrowed  from  the 
KoXa^.  But,  of  the  four  pauses  which  I  have  recognised  in 
it,  three  seem  to  me  to  be  necessary  for  reasons  especially 
connected  with  Chaerea's  adventure.  They  must,  there- 
fore, have  existed  in  Menander's  Evvovxog.  As  for  the 
fourth  pause — the  one  which  comes  first  in  the  play — it  is 
followed  by  a  scene,  the  entire  burden  of  which  is,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  borne  by  the  parasite,  a  character  taken 
from  the  KoXa^ ;  so  that,  at  all  events,  it  was  not  in  order 
to  give  Gnatho  time  to  appear  that  we  accepted  it. 

—  A  note  by  Donatus  on  line  825  of  the  Hecyra,  which 
ought,  in  all  probability,  to  refer  to  line  830  et  seq.,  makes 
it  appear  probal)le  that,  in  the  Greek  'Ey.vQo.,  the  recog- 
nition between  Myrrhina  and    Bacchis  was  witnessed  by 

»  In  the  Rev.  Et.  Gr.,  XV.  (1902),  pp.  376  et  seq. 

*  Cf.  Bosscher,  De  Plauti  Curculione  dispntatio  (Diss.  Loyden,  1903),  p.  65. 


878     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  audience.  I  imagine  that  Myrrhina  had  been  informed 
by  her  husband  of  Bacchis'  coming,  and  that  she  went  to 
meet  her,  possibly  intending  to  forbid  her  entering  the 
house,  that  she  saw  the  ring  and  made  her  explain  whence 
it  came.  Thus,  the  last  of  the  entractes  which  I  have 
adopted  was  less  indispensable  in  Apollodorus  than  in  his 
Latin  imitator;  and  yet  it  may  have  been  convenient 
if,  after  learning  what  she  desired  to  know,  the  matron 
took  the  courtesan  into  her  house  in  order  to  question  her 
at  greater  leisure,^  and  make  her  repeat,  in  the  actual 
presence  of  the  woman  who  had  been  confined,  the  story 
that  filled  her  with  delight. 

—  The  Pseudolus  is  very  probably  a  "  contaminated  " 
play  or  an  incomplete  one.  Supposing  we  admit,  with 
Leo,  that  it  is  contaminated  ?  The  structure  of  the  chief 
original  appears  to  be  reproduced  exactly,  and  if  the 
triumph  of  Pseudolus,  with  which  Act  V.  deals,  is  drawn 
from  a  secondary  original,  the  chief  original  must  have 
contained  something  equivalent.  Supposing,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  assume  that  the  Pseudolus  is  a  mutilated  repro- 
duction of  a  single  original,  and  that,  in  this  model, 
Pseudolus'  first  victory  was  followed  by  a  second  triumph 
over  Simo,  the  latter  did  not  necessarily  fill  more  than  one 
act,  and  Act  V.  might  very  well  have  sufficed  for  its 
portrayal. 

—  As  for  the  Amphitryon,  the  question  is  more  embarrass- 
ing. There  can  be  no  doubt  the  play  would  be  more 
agreeable  if  no  allusion  were  made  to  the  advanced  state  of 
Alcmena's  pregnancy  or  to  her  confinement,  and  if,  after  the 
thunderclap  which  alarms  Amphitryon,  Jupiter  were  to  re- 
veal his  presence  to  him  and  cheer  him  up  with  a  few  kind 
words — in  other  words,  if  Act  V.  were  left  out.  Neverthe- 
less, one  must  not  look  for  more  improbabilities  in  the 
Latin  play  than  it  really  contains.  It  is  not  true  that  in 
this  play  Heracles  is  supposed  to  be  born  a  few  hours 
after  he  is  conceived;  line  482  expressly  declares  that 
Jupiter's    relations    with    Alcmena    began    seven    months 

1  Cf.  "E-Kirp.,  397-398;  Phorm.,765. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  379 

before.  It  is  arbitrary  to  interpret  the  words  in  tempore, 
in  line  877,  as  implying  a  distant  future,  and  it  is  equally 
arbitrary  to  infer  from  Alemena's  silence  about  her 
pregnaney  that  she  does  not  know  that  her  eonfincment 
is  so  near  at  hand.  Until  I  get  further  light  on  the  subject 
I  shall  continue  to  doubt  that  the  Amj)hitryon  is  a  con- 
taminated play,  and  that  Act  V.  constitutes  an  addition 
to  the  main  original  play.  My  doubts  are  the  greater 
because  it  would  be  impossible  to  understand  why  such 
an  addition  should  have  been  made,  as  Act  V.  is  far  from 
comic. 

In  a  word,  what  has  been  said  about  the  number  and 
distribution  of  the  pauses  in  the  Latin  comedies  hitherto 
examined  must  hold  good  for  the  lost  Greek  works  on 
which  they  were  modelled. 

Let  us  examine  the  remaining  plays  ^ — 

Andria  :  The  only  passage  in  this  comedy  where  the 
link  between  two  succeeding  scenes  is  not  indicated  is 
between  line  819  and  line  820. 

Miles  Gloriosus  :  There  must  be  a  pause  after  line 
946;  and  a  pause  between  line  595  and  line  596  would 
be  acceptable.     That  is  all. 

MosTELLARiA  :  Thcrc  must  be  a  pause  between  line  529 
and  line  530,^  and  another  would  fit  in  between  line  857 
and  line  858 ;  a  third  pause  would  be  equally  appropriate 
between  line  1040  and  line  1041.  Apart  from  these  three 
passages,  the  close  succession  of  one  scene  upon  another 
is  nowhere  broken. 

PoENULUS  :  '  A  pause  between  line  488  and  line  489 ; 
one  between  line  929  and  line  504 ;    and  a  third  pause 

1  Cf.  noto  2,  p.  374,  and  Daos  (French  Edition),  pp.  482  ct  soq. 

*  The  fact  that  Tranio  remains  on  the  stage  is  of  no  consequence.  It 
occasionally  happens  in  tragedy  (for  example,  in  the  Medea  and  in  the 
Trojan  Women)  that  an  actor  remains  on  the  stage,  during  an  entire  act, 
without  moving  or  speaking.  This  inay  also  have  been  the  case  in  New 
Comedy. 

'  I  think  the  various  parts  of  the  Poenulua  ought  to  follow  one  another 
in  this  order  :    1-603,  817-929,  504-816,  930  to  the  end. 


380      THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

between  line  816  and  line  930.  Everywhere  else  the 
scenes  follow  closely  upon  one  another. 

RuDENS  :  A  pause  between  line  289  and  line  290  would 
be  welcome ;  a  second  appears  necessary  between  line  891 
and  line  892;  and  a  third  is  convenient  between  line  1190 
and  line  1191.     That  is  all. 

Stichus  :  There  must  be  a  pause  between  line  401  and 
line  402 ;  a  second  between  line  504  and  line  505,  and  a 
third  is  probable  between  line  640  and  line  641.  Although 
the  stage  is  empty  after  line  672  and  after  line  682,  the 
play  must  go  on  without  interruption  to  the  end. 

Truculentus  :  There  must  be  a  pause  between  line 
447  and  line  448 ;  between  line  644  and  line  645,  one  would 
be  acceptable ;  and  a  third  may  seem  convenient  between 
line  698  and  line  699.  Everywhere  else  there  are  actors 
on  the  stage. 

We  need  not  consider  the  Cistellaria,  which  is  so  muti- 
lated that  we  cannot  reach  any  trustworthy  conclusion 
as  to  the  point  under  consideration;  but  there  remain 
at  least  seven  plays  for  which  I  do  not  think  a  division 
into  five  acts  is  practicable.  This  division  was,  therefore, 
not  especially  dear  to  the  hearts  of  writers  of  Latin  comedy, 
for  there  is  no  indication  that  traces  of  such  a  division 
were  obliterated  by  later  modifications  in  the  case  of 
these  seven  plays.  Hence  we  may,  with  all  the  more 
confidence,  assert  our  belief  that,  as  far  as  the  comedies 
are  concerned  in  which  we  have  established  its  existence, 
its  origin  was  really  Greek. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  seven  comedies  that  do  not 
conform  to  rule. 

—  Two  of  them,  the  Stichus  and  the  Truculentus,  are 
the  products  of  contamination  or  of  abbreviation;  and 
we  need  not,  I  think,  concern  ourselves  with  them. 

—  Two  others,  the  Miles  and  the  Poenulus,  are  likewise 
regarded  by  very  many  critics  as  contaminated  plays. 
As  far  as  the  Poenulus  is  concerned,  I  think  this  is  a 
mistake ;   and  even  for  the  Miles  I  am  not  quite  sure  that 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  381 

it  is  right.  I  must  add  that  in  Ijotli  plays  it  is  not  im- 
possible to  discern  traces  of  an  original  division  into  five 
acts  which  has  been  obliterated  by  the  Latin  imitator. 
At  line  259  et  seq.  Palacstrio  declares  that  he  is  going 
into  Pyrgopoliniees'  house ;  he  does  no  such  thing  in 
Plautus,  and  the  scene  which  begins  at  line  272  follows 
directly  on  the  one  that  precedes  it.  But  in  the  original 
play  it  is  possible  that  the  case  was  different,  and  that 
there  was  a  pause  here,  in  addition  to  the  two  pauses 
indicated  above.  Similarly,  at  line  1278,  Pyrgopoliniees 
announces  his  intention  of  rejoining  Acrotcleutium ;  he 
does  not  accompany  her  at  once.  In  Plautus'  play  this 
delay,  which  is  unjustifiable,  serves  to  allow  of  Pyrgo- 
poliniees meeting  Pleusicles;  in  the  Greek  play  it  may 
have  prepared  the  way  for  another  pause — the  fourth  in 
the  play.i  In  the  Poenulus  lines  1162  and  1173,  which 
belong  to  a  version  which  is  perhaps  closer  to  the  original 
text  than  other  parts  of  the  play,  appear  to  indicate  a  halt, 
a  breathing  spell.  Subsequently,  we  see  that  Hanno  is  in 
no  hurry  to  be  recognised,  and  we  must  concede  that  as 
Adelphasium  and  Anterastilis  had  gone  to  the  temple  in 
order  to  see  and  be  seen,  they  would  prolong  their  stay 
there.  It  is,  therefore,  possible  that  in  the  Kaqxyi^ovioz 
there  may  have  been  a  pause — the  fourth — between  the 
recognition  of  Agorastocles  and  that  of  the  two  young 
girls. ^ 

In  the  Andria,  we  know  that  certain  parts — the  roles 
of  Charinus  and  of  Byrria — were  added  to  Menander's 
'AvdQia  by  Terence.  The  addition  of  these  few  passages 
cannot  have  seriously  altered  the  economy  of  the  play. 
As  in  the  Poenulus  and  the  Miles,  but  more  distinctly,  I 
seem  to  see  room  for  four  pauses  in  the  Andria.  A  pause 
would  certainly  be  suitable  between  scene  ii.  of  Act  I. 

^  Proposed  division  (with  all  reservations)  :  Act  I.  l-[259]  (259  lines); 
Act  II.  [260]-595  (33G  lines);  Act  III.  59G-94G  (351  linos);  Act  IV.  947- 
[1280]  (334  linos);    Act  V.  [1281]-1437  (157  linos). 

*  Proposed  division:  Act  I.  1-448  (448  lines);  Act  II.  449-503  (and 
817-929)  (168  lines);  Act  III.  504-81(5  (313  lines);  Act  IV.  930-[1173] 
(244  linos);   Act  V.  [1I74]-1422  (249  lines). 


382  THE    NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

and  scene  v.  of  Act  I.,  in  order  that  in  the  interval  Simo 
may  be  able  to  join  Pamphilus  at  the  market-place  and 
inform  him  of  his  wishes ;  similarly,  between  scene  iii. 
of  Act  I.  and  scene  ii.  of  Act  II.,  in  order  that  Davus  may 
have  time  to  devote  himself  to  the  little  investigation 
whose  outcome  he  explains  in  lines  355-365;  and  this 
pause  would  most  naturally  occur  between  scenes  iii.  and 
iv.  of  Act  I.  In  Terence's  version  the  two  scenes  follow 
upon  one  another  without  any  interruption;  but  is  it 
not  singular  that  Davus  should  go  off  without  giving  a 
reason  for  doing  so,  after  he  has  seen  Mysis  come  out  of 
the  Andrian  woman's  house?  Farther  on,  at  line  598, 
it  is  rather  surprising  that  Simo  should  ask  where  his  son 
is,  as,  at  line  424,  he  had  himself  enjoined  upon  him  to 
stay  at  home.  It  would  be  much  easier  to  understand 
his  question  if,  after  line  424,  there  had  been  an  entracte 
during  which  Pamphilus  might  have  gone  out;  and  we 
are  in  a  position  to  indicate  the  point  in  the  plot  at  which 
such  a  pause  would  be  most  appropriate.  It  is  after  the 
conversation  between  Simo  and  Davus,  which,  in  Terence, 
ends  at  line  523.  And  finally,  a  pause  would  be  welcome 
between  scene  iv.  of  Act  III.  and  scene  iv.  of  Act  IV., 
as  it  would  give  Chremes  a  chance  to  make  his  arrange- 
ments for  the  impending  marriage  of  his  daughter.  I 
should  like  to  place  this  pause  at  that  point  in  the  plot 
to  which  scene  v.  of  Act  III.  in  Terence's  play  brings  us. 
In  the  Latin  poet  the  first  scene  of  Act  IV.  follows  this 
scene  without  interruption,  but  the  former  is  one  of  the 
scenes  in  which  Charinus  appears,  and  it  may  well  be  that 
Terence,  at  this  point,  altered  the  context  of  his  model. 
Thus,  in  Menander's  'Avdgia,  three  pauses  would  have 
preceded  the  only  one  that  I  have  indicated  for  the  Andria.'^ 
The  two  remaining  plays,  the  Mostellaria  and  the 
Rudens,  are  neither  of  them  seriously  suspected  of  being 
contaminated.     In    the    Mostellaria,    in    addition    to    the 

1  Proposed  division:  Act  I.  l-[227]  (227  lines);  Act  II.  [228H523] 
(296  lines);  Act  III.  [524H624]  (101  lines);  Act  IV.  [625]-819  (195  lines); 
Act  V.  820-981  (162  lines). 


EXTERNAL  ST^RUCTU RE      38S 

three  pauses  which  I  have  already  pointed  out,  a  fourth 
would   be   very   appropriate   between   Tranio's   departure 
for  the  harbour  (line  75)  and  his  reappearance  (line  348). 
Possibly,  on  the  Athenian  stage  the  banqueting  scene  was 
embellished  with  songs  and  dances  and  so  i)rolonged  as 
to  serve  as  an  entr'acte,  in  which  case  the  original  play 
from   which   the   Mostcllaria   was   copied   would   likewise 
have  been  divided  into  five  iJieQr]}      In  the  Rudens  there 
is    a   contradiction  between   lines    162   et   seq.,    in   which 
Sceparnio  describes  the  shipwreck  of  the  two  women  which 
he  is  supposed  to  have  seen  from  a  distance,  and  lines 
559  et  seq.,  according  to  which  he  has  just  heard  from  them 
of  their  misadventure  of  the  night  before.     An  attempt 
has  been  made  to  explain  this  inconsistency  by  assuming 
that   the   two   first  scenes   of  the  comedy  (lines   83-184) 
were  added  to  the  beginning  of  Diphilus'  play.     I  am  more 
inclined  to  think  that  only  the  latter  part  of  the  second 
scene,    beginning    at    line    162,    was    added    by    Plautus. 
Apart  from  this,  a  pause  might  occur  between   the  exit  of 
Daemones  and  his  slave  and  the  appearance  of  Palaestra.^ 
The    conclusion   to   be    drawn   from   all   the   foregoing 
analyses  is  that  the  rule  of  five  acts  was  generally,  though 
not  always,   observed  by  the  comic  writers  of  the  new 
period.     If  one  recalls  the  conditions  that  existed  on  the 
Greek   stage  in  Menander's  day,  this  conclusion  will  not 
seem  surprising.     I  have  said  that,  after  the  exclusion  of 
the  comic  chorus  from  the  plot  itself,  the  part  that  fell  to  it 
was  to  fill  up  the  entracte.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  according 
to  Agathon's  tradition,  the  tragic  chorus  served  no  other 
purpose  than  this.     The  songs  which  took  the  place  of 
the  stasima  of  earlier  times  had  been  relegated  to  a  purely 
secondary   place.     As   Weil   says,   they   were   merely   "  a 
luxury,  a  digression  that  was  retained  out  of  regard  for 

1  Proposed  division:  Act  I.  l-[347]  (347  lines);  Act  II.  [348]-529 
(182  lines);  Act  III.  530-857  (328  linos);  Act  IV.  858-1040  (183  lines); 
Act  V.  1041-1181  (141  lines). 

»  Proposed  division:  Act  I.  1-[184]  (184  lines);  Act  II.  [185]-289 
(105  lines);  Act  III.  290-891  (602  lines);  Act  IV.  892-1190  (299  lines); 
Act  V.  1191-1423  (233  lines). 


884     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  old  masters."  Such  being  the  case,  the  idea  of  re- 
stricting their  number  may  well  have  arisen.  If  we  only 
take  into  consideration  the  fortuitous  causes  that  led  to 
its  coming  into  being,  the  rule  of  five  acts  might,  I  believe, 
quite  properly  be  called  the  "  rule  of  four  entractes." 
By  this  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  the  exigencies  of  stage 
management  alone  suffice  to  explain  this  rule.  It  was  the 
number  of  entractes  that  had  to  be  decided  upon,  and  this 
at  once  determined  the  number  of  acts ;  but  if  the  number 
of  entractes  was  fixed  at  four — and  consequently  that  of 
the  acts  at  five — this  was,  as  I  believe,  dictated  by  literary 
experience.  As  will  readily  be  seen,  the  acts  or  fjLeQrj 
indicated  in  my  analyses,  besides  in  each  case  consisting 
of  a  series  of  connected  incidents,  represent  so  many 
chapters  of  the  plot.  The  pauses  are  not  placed  haphazard ; 
the  first  pause  most  often  follows  the  exposition  of  the 
initial  situation,  and  the  others  mark  the  principal  stages 
by  which  the  story  moves  on  to  its  conclusion,  whether 
in  a  straight  line  or  in  a  devious  course.  Now,  a  dramatic 
plot  which  rises  to  a  culminating  point,  and  then  descends, 
resolves  itself  quite  naturally  into  an  uneven  number 
of  parts.  Exposition,  plot,  solution — TiQoxaoiq,  imraoig, 
HaxaoTQocpiq— to  use  the  terms  of  an  ancient  classifica- 
tion ^ —  these  are  its  primordial  elements.  If  we  take 
this  division  as  a  basis,  a  symmetrical  subdivision  of  its 
constituent  parts  would  result  in  a  separation  into  five, 
seven  or  more  parts.  But  it  would  be  irksome  to  go  to 
extremes  in  dividing  up  a  drama.  Hence  the  division 
into  five  parts  is,  a  priori,  likely  to  be  put  into  practice. 
Let  us  consider  the  tragedies  of  Euripides.  If,  in  dividing 
these  plays,  we  allow  ourselves  to  be  guided  blindly  and 
exclusively  by  the  distribution  of  the  long  choral  passages — 
parodoi  sung  by  the  entire  chorus,  stasima  sung  in  dialogue 
form  by  the  members  of  the  chorus — we  shall  often  find 
either  more  or  fewer  than  five  juegrj.  But  occasionally  a 
passage  of  one  or  the  other  of  these  categories  occurs  at  a 

^  Evanthius,  De  com.,  IV.  5,  p.  22  Wessner;    Donatvis,  Exc.  de  com., 
VII.  1,  4,  pp.  27-28. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  885 

place  where  there  is  no  break  in  the  continuity  of  the 
plot;  and  sometimes,  but  only  exceptionally,  there  is  a 
break  in  the  continuity  without  the  interposition  of  a 
choral  song.  If  we  investigate  how  often  the  sequence 
of  events  is  interrupted,  we  shall  find  that  it  is  frequently 
four  times. ^  This  is  the  case  in  the  Rhesus,^  and  also  in 
the  Persa.^  Consequently,  when  the  rule  of  five  acts 
came  into  existence,  it  was  very  probably  merely  a 
sanctioning  of  an  established  practice. 

Even  if  such  was  its  origin,  this  rule,  which  made 
obligatory  what  had  been  optional,  must,  in  certain  cases, 
have  been  embarrassing.  However,  it  does  not  appear  to 
have  bound  the  poets  to  anything  beyond  a  fixed  number 
of  pauses  and  of  dramatic  divisions.  It  certainly  did  not 
prescribe  an  equal  or  an  approximately  equal  length  for 
the  acts ;  like  the  jnegr]  in  Euripides'  plays,  the  five  acts 
in  Plautus  and  in  Terence  vary  greatly  in  length.  As  I 
have  pointed  out,  the  dramatists  of  the  new  period  rarely 
took  the  trouble  to  give  a  reason  for  the  appearance  of 
the  chorus  during  each  entracte;  and  when  they  did  so  it 
was  very  often  in  a  trivial  and  conventional  way.  An 
effort  has  been  made  to  find  in  the  Latin  plays  a  more  or 
less  strict  correlation  between  the  acts  or  phases  of  the 
plot,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  lyric  parts  or  cantica,  on 
the  other.  Spcngel,  whose  method,  by  the  way,  frequently 
leads  him  to  subdivide  the  comedies  of  Plautus  in  a  manner 
different  from  that  which  I  have  adopted,  thought  that 

1  In  the  Hecuba,  after  lines  443,  628,  904,  1022.  In  the  Medea,  after 
linos  409,  026,  823,  975.  In  the  Hippolytus,  after  lines  120,  524,  731, 
1101.  In  the  Alcestis,  after  lines  212,  434,  567,  961.  In  the  Andromache, 
after  lines  116,  463,  765,  1008.  In  the  Suppliants,  after  lines  364,  597, 
777,  954.  In  the  Iphigeneia  in  Aulis,  after  linos  163,  750,  1035,  1510. 
In  the  Iphigeneia  in  Tauris,  after  linos  122,  391,  1088,  1233.  In  the 
Bacchae,  after  linos  369,  861,  976,  1152.  In  the  Children  of  Ilcraden, 
after  linos  352,  607,  747,  891.  In  the  Helena,  between  line  163  and  line 
179,  after  lines  1106,  1300,  1450.  In  the  Ion,  after  linos  451,  675,  1047, 
1228.     In  the  Mad  Heracles,  after  line  347,  636,  874,  1015. 

*  After  lines  223,  341,  526,  between  line  664  and  lino  674. 

'  In  the  Persa,  a  pause  (its  well  before  lino  53,  another  after  line  328; 
between  line  448  and  line  449,  and  between  lino  752  and  line  753.     Cf. 
Daos  (French  edition),  p.  488,  note  5. 
C  C 


386     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

a  well-constructed  act  must,  at  its  beginning  and  at  its 
end,  have  two  passages  in  six-foot  iambics,  a  passage  in 
lyric  metre  in  the  middle,  and  two  passages  in  seven-foot 
trochaics  in  the  intervals.^  Much  more  recently  Leo  has 
called  attention  to  the  fact  that  quite  a  number  of  cantica 
are  placed  immediately  after  the  end  of  an  act,  and  that 
others  either  accompany  the  appearance  of  an  actor  who 
is  essential  to  the  denouement  of  the  plot,  or  announce  the 
approach  of  the  catastrophe. ^  Whatever  one  may  think 
of  these  observations  and  of  these  combinations  in  their 
relation  to  Latin  comedy,  they  cannot  hold  good  for  the 
works  of  the  vea,  because,  in  the  latter,  there  was  practi- 
cally no  equivalent  for  the  cantica.  The  lyrical  elements 
in  Greek  comedies  of  the  new  period  were  never  so  plentiful 
that  rules  for  their  distribution  became  a  burden  on  the 
poets. 

Nor  had  the  comic  poets  to  put  any  strain  upon 
themselves  in  order  to  place  —  as  they  often  did  —  a 
monologue  at  the  beginning  and  at  the  end  of  their 
plays.  There  is  hardly  an  instance  in  comedy  of  an  act 
beginning  with  the  presentation  of  several  actors  on  the 
stage  engaged  in  a  conversation.  At  the  beginning  of  an 
act,  as  throughout  the  play,  the  actors  had  to  come  upon 
the  stage.  Occasionally  several  of  them  come  on  the  scene 
together  while  conversing;  but  more  often  they  come  on 
the  stage  one  by  one.  Now  it  is  the  usual  thing  in  the  vea — 
and  I  shall  prove  this  at  greater  length  further  on — for 
an  actor  to  introduce  himself  by  a  soliloquy  in  which  he 
explains  why  and  whence  he  comes,  and  what  he  has  done 
since  his  last  appearance  on  the  scene.  Consequently, 
the  soliloquies  which  very  frequently  constitute  the 
beginning  of  an  act  have  nothing  peculiar  about  them. 
Nor  is  it  more  difficult  to  account  for  those  which  con- 
stitute the  close  of  an  act.  Just  as  the  actors  come  upon 
the  stage  one  by  one,  so,  in  most  cases,  they  leave  it  one 

^  Spengel,  Die  Akteinteilung  der  Komodien  des  Plautus  (Munich,  1877). 
*  Leo,  Die  plautinischen  Cantica  und  die  hellenistische  Lyrik  {GSttingen 
Abhandlungen,  N.F.,  I.  1896-1897),  pp.  113-114. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  387 

by  one.  Unless,  therefore,  he  is  to  make  his  exit  in  silence, 
the  last  actor  to  leave  the  stage  has  no  choice  but  to  take 
leave  of  the  audience  in  a  soliloquy. 

§2 

Prologue  and  Exposition 

When  limited  to  the  part  which  it  played  in  the  v^a — 
if,  indeed,  it  was  ever  recognised  by  the  via — the  necessity 
of  having  five  acts  in  each  play  did  not  greatly  complicate 
the  task  of  the  comic  poets.  Their  chief  struggle  must 
have  been  with  the  difficulties  inherent  in  their  art  itself, 
and  it  is  face  to  face  with  these  that  we  must  now  place 
them,  and  ourselves  as  well.  As  far  as  composition  is 
concerned,  the  special  task  of  the  dramatist  may  be 
defined  as  follows :  to  enable  the  spectators  to  under- 
stand, step  by  step,  what  is  taking  place,  without  how- 
ever, thrusting  his  own  personality  into  the  exposition 
of  the  plot,  and  without  too  evidently  disregarding  the 
naturalness  of  the  roles  and  situations.  I  shall  endeavour 
to  show  how  far  the  writers  of  the  new  period  took  their 
share  in  this  task  and  with  what  success  they  fulfilled  it. 

It  was  the  opening  up  of  the  theme  that  called  for  the 
greatest  skill.  The  author  had  to  introduce  actors  whose 
outward  appearance — mask  and  dress — revealed  nothing 
but  their  sex,  their  age,  and  occasionally  their  social 
rank,  and  whose  name — pronounced,  wherever  possible 
in  the  very  first  lines  of  the  play — did  not  suffice,  as  it 
does  in  the  case  of  tragic  heroes,  to  explain  their  story. 
He  had  to  say  where  the  action  was  about  to  take  place, 
to  map  out  a  situation  for  the  beginning  of  the  play,  to 
acquaint  the  audience  with  what  had  gone  before,  with 
facts  which,  notwithstanding  the  repetition  of  similar 
themes  in  comic  literature,  could  not  be  guessed  at.  Anti- 
phanes,  a  poet  of  the  middle  period,  tells  us,  in  humorous 
accents  of  despair,  how  ticklish  the  undertaking  appeared 
to  him.^  Long  after  Antiphanes'  day  the  same  difficulties 
must  still  have  existed. 

^  Antiphanes,  fr.  191. 


388     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

In  Plautus'  plays,  as  we  know  them,  it  would,  at  first 
sight,  appear  that  these  difficulties  are  frequently  shirked. 
At  the  beginning  of  fully  half  of  his  plays  the  preliminary 
exposition  is  found  in  a  passage  ad  hoc,  frankly  addressed 
to  the  spectators — a  sort  of  announcement,  or  preface, 
which  Donatus  calls  prologus  argumentativus.^ 

Occasionally  this  prologue  is  spoken  by  an  actor  in  the 
play  who,  for  the  time  being,  forgets  more  or  less  com- 
pletely what  befits  his  part  {Mercator,  Amphitryon,  Miles 
Gloriosus,  Cistellaria).  Elsewhere,  a  god,  or  at  least  an 
allegorical  being,  who  has  no  part  in  the  play  itself,  pro- 
nounces the  prologue  :  the  Lar  familiaris  of  Euclio's 
house  {Aulularia),  Arcturus  (Rudens),  Fides  {Casino), 
Auxilium  {Cistellaria).  The  first  two  are  supposed  to  be 
interested  in  one  of  the  dramatis  personae.  Fides  and 
Auxilium  have  not  even  this  warrant  for  appearing;  as 
their  names  show,  it  is  only  out  of  consideration  for  the 
audience  that  they  intervene,  to  help  them  to  understand 
and  to  give  them  information  that  is  absolutely  trust- 
worthy. And  finally,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Captivi, 
of  the  Menaechmi,  of  the  Poenulus  and  of  the  Truculentus, 
an  impersonal  speaker  is  entrusted  with  the  task  of 
"  posting  up  "  the  audience — Prologus,  the  prologue  in 
human  form.  Convenient  expedients  indeed  !  and  they 
will  claim  our  attention  for  the  present. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  these  expedients  were  used 
by  the  authors  of  the  new  period,  and  fragments  of  Greek 
plays  supply  us  with  exact  analogies  of  several  of  the 
varieties  of  prologue  that  I  have  pointed  out. 

The  extant  part  of  the  neQixeiQajuevr]  begins  with  the 
latter  part  of  a  soliloquy,  spoken  by  Ignorance,  in  the 
shape  of  the  goddess  Agnoia.  From  her  the  audience 
not  only  learn  who  Glycera,  the  heroine  of  the  play,  is, 
but  they  also  hear  the  story  of  her  life  up  to  the  time  when 
the  play  begins,  and  how  Polemo  had  quarrelled  with  her. 
In  another  fragment  of  a  prologue  which  was  deciphered 
in  a  Strassburg  papyrus,  and  which  appears  to  date  back 

^  Donatus  {Excerpta  de  comoedia,  VII.  2,  p.  27  Wessner). 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  389 

to  the  via,  wo  find  a  god  —  possibly  Dionysus,  Hermes, 
or  Apollo,  giving  the  audience  an  account  of  the  previous 
history  of  the  characters  that  were  about  to  appear  before 
them.^  At  any  rate,  we  learn  from  the  first  lines  that  have 
survived  that,  at  this  period,  it  was  quite  commonly  a 
"garrulous  god"  {jjiaxQoXoyoQ  Oeog)  who  was  entrusted 
with  the  task  of  introducing  comic  plots.  From  line  14 
we  gather  that  this  god  was  often  an  imaginary  god  of 
the  type  of  Auxilium.  It  is,  no  doubt,  at  the  beginning 
of  one  of  Philemon's  plays  that  Acr,  the  personification 
of  air,  spoke  fragment  91 — 

"  I  am  he  from  whom  no  one,  man  or  god,  can  hide 
any  of  his  acts,  present,  future  or  past.  Being  a  god,  I 
am  everywhere,  here  at  Athens,  at  Patras,  in  Sicily.  And 
he  who  is  everywhere  must  necessarily  know  everything." 

At  the  beginning  of  Menander's  AvoxoXog  the  god  Pan 
gave  the  audience  some  needful  information.^  In  the 
second  scene  of  the  "Hqcoq  "the  Hero,  a  divinity"  {"Hgcog, 
Oeog) — probably  the  eponymous  hero  of  some  Athenian 
deme,  or  else  the  heroic  ancestor  of  some  family — appeared 
upon  the  scene  to  enlighten  the  audience.^  Lucian  tells 
us  that  in  another  play  by  Menander,  Elenchos,  the  god 
of  proof,  appeared  and  told  the  audience  ovjujiavra  xov 
dgafxarog  xov  loyov — that  is  to  say,  as  Lucian  explains  a 
little  further  on,  everything  that  went  before  and  pre- 
pared the  way  for  the  plot.  But  let  us  return  to  the 
prologues  of  the  Casina  and  the  Cistellaria.     Practically 

1  Lines  12-15— 

'ffxas  5    ^1  a.vayKr]S  ^ovKojxai 
[irav  KaTav\ori<Tai,  koX  dfov  ti,  vij  Ala, 
\_6.^tov  ivf^yKtiv  aiirSs,  aW'  vvtws  Bfov- 
[TTpeirei   Aio]vv(TCf)  yap  ti  iricrTfveiy  f/xoi. 

These  lines  have  been  variously  interpreted  by  the  first  editor  {Gdtt. 
Nachrichten,  1899,  p.  549),  by  Roitzenstein  {Hermes,  1900,  p.  6239)  and 
by  Weil  (Rev.  Et.  Or.,  1900,  p.  429). 

*  Men.,  fr.  127. 

'  His  name  appears  third  in  the  list  of  actors  (to  toD  dpafiaros  -rrpSffuira), 
after  those  of  Geta  and  Daos.  He  must,  tlierefore,  have  appeared  immedi- 
ately after  the  dialogue  of  the  two  slaves  with  whicli  tlio  play  opens. 


390     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

no  explanation  is  given  for  the  intervention  of  Fides  and 
Auxilium,  and  this  must  be  taken  as  evidence  that  it  was 
not  conceived  by  Plautus.  In  all  probability  the  Latin 
poet  substituted  these  two  characters  for  their  Hellenic 
equivalents,  Pistis  and  Boetheia,  who  were  introduced 
more  skilfully.  Arcturus,  the  father  of  the  Attic  Erigone, 
was,  no  doubt,  more  familiar  to  the  Athenians  of  the 
fourth  and  third  centuries  than  to  Plautus'  Roman  con- 
temporaries. As  for  the  Lar  familiaris,  he  may  have 
been  substituted  for  some  domestic  hero,  or  for  a  Beoq 
naxQMOQ,  or  for  Hermes,  the  god  of  lucky  finds.  In  a  word, 
we  have  a  superabundance  of  evidence  to  warrant  us  in 
making  the  vea  responsible  for  the  speeches  of  obliging 
gods.^ 

The  fragments  of  the  original  plays  do  not  afford  such 
clear  instances  of  an  actor  who  sets  himself  unblushingly 
to  instruct  the  audience.  But  in  Aristophanes,  in  the  work 
of  his  contemporaries  of  the  fifth  century  and  of  his 
successors  in  the  fourth,  actors  repeatedly  behave  in 
just  the  same  way  as  Palaestrio,  Charinus  or  the  aged 
courtesan.  In  one  of  the  first  scenes  of  the  Knights, 
Demosthenes  suddenly  asks  Nicias  :  "  Do  you  wish  me 
to  explain  matters  to  the  audience? — That's  not  a  bad 
idea ;  and  we  shall  ask  them  one  favour  :  to  show  us  by 
their  faces  whether  our  acting  and  gestures  suit  their 
taste. — Well,  I'll  begin.  W^e  have  a  very  brutal  master,^ 
etc."  We  find  the  same  sort  of  thing  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Wasps,  of  the  Peace  and  of  the  Birds ;  ^  also  in  a 
fragment  of  the  'Yneg^ohg  by  Plato,  the  comic  writer, 
and  in  another  fragment  of  his  Zvjufiaxia;  *  in  fragment 
613  of  uncertain  date ;  and  in  the  time  of  the  fieor],  in 
fragment  12  of  Theophilus  and  fragment  108  of  Alexis. 
There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  comic  writers  of 

^  Cf.  Evanthius  {De  com.,  III.  2,  p.  65  Kaibel)  :  Deinde  deovs  anh  fj.-nxa'^vs, 
id  est  deos  argumentis  narrandis  machinatos,  ceteri  Latini  instar  Graecorum 
habent,  Terentius  non  habet. 

*  Aristoph.,  Knights,  36  et  seq. 

*  Aristoph.,  Wasps,  54  et  seq. ;   Peace,  50  et  seq. ;   Birds,  30  et  seq. 

*  Plato,  fr.  167,  152. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  891 

the  new  period  imitated  their  predecessors  in  this  matter. 
They  found  a  convenient  tradition  ready  at  hand,  and 
they  cannot  have  failed  to  take  advantage  of  it. 

As  regards  the  explanations  given  by  Prologus  and  the 
person  of  Prologus  himself,  their  origin,  in  spite  of  the 
most  recent  investigations  into  these  matters,  remains 
extremely  uncertain.  A  sentence  of  Evanthius  has  been 
adduced  as  proof  of  their  being  Latin  inventions  :  Turn 
etiam  Graeci  prologos  non  habent  more  nostrorum,  quos 
Laiini  habent.^  In  two  other  parallel  phrases  the  author 
speaks  of  Oeoi  ojio  jurjxavfji;  and  of  nqoaoma  nQoxaxixd, 
and  this  might  make  one  think  that,  like  deoi  and  like 
nQoaojTia,  prologos  signifies  a  class  of  persons.  But  if  it 
were  a  question  of  a  personified  Prologue,  should  we  not 
have  the  singular  Prologumt  I  must  add  that  the  end 
of  the  sentence — more  nostrorum,  quos  Latini  habent — 
has  evidently  been  altered ;  he  may  have  referred  to  the 
Terentian  prologue  devoted  to  literary  polemics.  Against 
Evanthius  a  passage  from  Demetrius  has  been  cited.  In 
paragraph  123  of  the  treatise  Jlegl  'EQfirjveiag,  he  contrasts 
a  character  in  Sophron's  mimes  with  one  whom  he  calls 
o  nqoloyoQ  tiig  Meoarjviag  (the  Meoorjvia  is  a  play  by 
Menander).  From  this  it  has  been  inferred  that  this 
nQoXoyoQ  must  have  been  a  personified  Prologue  like  the 
Prologus  of  the  Romans.  But  this  is  by  no  means 
certain.  Some  statements  of  Lucian's^  do,  indeed,  show 
that  the  word  may  very  well  designate  any  person  to 
whom  the  task  of  making  the  exposition  is  entrusted. 
Yet,  in  the  end,  there  is  no  evidence  either  to  prove  or 
to  confute,  in  a  decisive  and  direct  manner,  the  Hellenic 
origin  of  "  Prologus."  On  the  other  hand,  I  regard  it  as 
highly  probable  that  the  prologue  of  Greek  plays  was 
sometimes  spoken  by  an  anonymous  actor,  in  the  name 
of  the  author.  A  fragment  of  the  prologue  of  the  Ooiq, 
handed  down  by  Plutarch,  seems  to  me  to  be  of  the 
greatest  importance  in  this  connection — 

*  Evanthius,  De  comoedia,  III.  2,  p.  G5  Kaibel. 

*  Lucian,  Pseudolog.,  §  4. 


392     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

^E/iot  jitev  ovv  aeide  roiavry]v,  Bed, 
OqaoElav,  (hgaiav  de  xal  7tidavr}v  djua,   xrX. 

Who  else  could  have  pronounced  this  invocation  to  the 
Muse  but  one  who  spoke  for  the  poet?  It  is  certainly 
but  a  short  step  from  an  interpreter  of  this  sort  to  the 
"  Prologus  "  of  the  Romans,  and  it  is  not  at  all  impossible 
that  at  one  time  or  another  this  step  was  taken. 

But,  after  all,  this  is  of  little  consequence.  Even  though 
we  are  told  that  he  is  friendly  to  one  of  the  actors  in  the 
play,  a  Oedg  ngoXoyiCojv,  like  Arcturus  or  Lar,  is  not  less 
foreign  to  the  plot  than  the  impersonal  Prologus;  and  a 
Oedg  nqoloyiCoiv  such  as  Fides  or  Auxilium  is  evidently 
quite  as  foreign  to  it.  The  prologue  of  the  Poenulus 
might  be  allotted  to  Eros,  that  of  the  Captivi  to  Elenchos, 
that  of  the  Menaechmi  to  Aer,  without  there  being  between 
these  deities  and  the  comedies  they  introduce  any  closer 
or  more  real  relation,  and  without  giving  the  author  a 
claim  to  greater  praise  for  his  composition.  The  essential 
point  that  must  be  established — and  I  am  in  a  position 
'to  do  this — is  that,  whether  or  not  they  introduced  a 
Prologus,  the  greatest  writers  of  the  via,  in  order  to 
explain  the  subject  of  their  comedies,  occasionally  intro- 
duced passages  that  were  independent  of  the  play  and 
were  spoken  by  special  actors.  When  regarded  from 
our  modern  point  of  view,  accustomed  as  we  are  to  a 
more  stringent  technique,  this  method  of  procedure  con- 
stitutes a  serious  weakness.  Before,  therefore,  proceeding 
any  further,  let  me  point  out  the  considerations  which 
excuse  or  even  justify  it. 

In  the  first  place,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that,  in 
taking  this  easy  way  out  of  the  difficulty,  our  poets 
followed  a  course  that  was  sanctioned  by  custom.  I  have 
already  pointed  this  out  in  regard  to  actors  who  step 
out  of  their  regular  roles  in  order  to  enlighten  the 
audience.  Nor  were  the  OeoI  ngoXoyLCovreg  an  inven- 
tion of  New  Comedy.  They  appear  in  the  works  of  the 
earlier  comic  writers  at  the  end  of  the  fifth  and  during 
the  fourth  century.     Thus,  in  the  second  OeajuocpoQidCovoai, 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  393 

Calligeneia,  a  personification  of  one  of  the  days  of  the 
Thcsmophoria,  explains  the  sul)ject  of  the  play ;  ^  in  the 
'HqaxlfiQ  by  Philylliiis,  Dorpia,  the  first  day  of  the  Apaturia, 
does  so ;  ^  in  a  play — or  several  plays — of  uncertain  date, 
possibly  in  Plato's  Nv^  jLiaxgd,  it  is  Night  that  does  so.^ 
It  was  especially  in  the  exposition  of  tragedies  that  the 
Oeol  nQoloyLL,ovxeq  had  their  allotted  place  ever  since  the 
time  of  Euripides.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Alccstis,  of 
the  Ion,  of  the  Hippolijtus  and  of  the  Trojan  Women, 
divinities  such  as  Apollo,  Hermes,  Aphrodite  and  Poseidon 
explain  what  has  preceded  the  play,  as  well  as  the  situa- 
tion at  the  beginning  of  the  plot.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  Hecuba  this  part  is  performed,  if  not  by  a  god,  at 
least  by  a  supernatural  being — the  shade  of  Polydorus. 
It  is  true  that  all  these  personages  avoid  speaking  directly 
to  the  audience,  as  Agnoia,  Aer  and  Arcturus  do.  But 
the  difference  is  slight;  even  though  they  pretend  to  be 
ignorant  of  the  fact  that  the  spectators  can  hear  them, 
it  is  evidently  none  the  less  in  order  to  be  heard  by  these 
spectators  that  the  gods  of  Euripides  speak. 

Such  being  their  antecedents,  we  must  in  all  fairness 
allow  the  dramatists  of  the  vea  the  benefit  of  extenuating 
circumstances.  A  careful  examination  of  the  prologi 
argumentativi,  of  their  subdivisions,  of  their  contents, 
and  of  their  relation  to  the  plays  themselves,  will  show 
that  we  must  go  even  further  in  making  just  allowances. 

If  we  look  at  the  comedies  of  Plautus,  at  the  beginning 
of  which  either  a  god  or  a  Prologus  communicates  the 
contents  of  the  plot,  we  shall  see  that  nearly  all  of  them 
contain  a  scene  of  recognition ;  this  is  true  of  the  Captivi, 
of  the  Casina,  of  the  Cisiellaria,  of  the  Menaechmi,  of  the 
Poenulus,  the  Rudens  and  the  Truculentus ;  the  Aulularia 
alone  is  an  exception.  Similarly  there  is  a  scene  of  recog- 
nition in  the  JleQixeiQa/uevr],  and  there  was  also  one  in  the 
"Hqajq.  In  none  of  these  cases  could  the  true  qualities  of 
the  persons  who,  towards  the  end  of  the  play,  are  the 

»  Schol.,  Thesmoph.,  298  (Aristoph.,  fr.  335). 
«  Phylillius,  fr.  8.  »  Fr.  uduap.  819. 


39 1  THE    NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

objects  of  the  dvayvcoQioig,  be  pointed  out  by  an  aetor  in 
the  play.  In  a  few  simple  and  straightforward  sentences 
Auxiliiim,  Arcturus  and  Prologus  set  forth  the  social 
position  of  Selenium,  Palaestra,  Adelphasium  and  Antera- 
stilis,  of  the  two  brothers  Menaechmi,  and  of  Tyndarus.^ 
There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  Agnoia  did  as  much  for 
Glycera  and  for  Moschio  in  the  first  part  of  her  speech, 
and  Hero  for  Plangon  and  Gorgias,  nor  that  the  prologue 
of  the  Truculentus,  of  which  the  complete  text  no  longer 
exists,  performed  a  similar  service  for  Phronesium's 
supposed  child. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  discern  a  raison  d'etre,  an 
excuse,  for  the  prologus  argumentativus  :  it  served  to  in- 
form the  audience,  even  before  the  play  began,  of  things 
that  the  actors  were  not  to  know  before  the  end.  This 
precaution  may  appear  superfluous  to  our  modern  eyes; 
though  no  doubt  to-day,  as  in  earlier  times,  the  finest 
scenes  of  the  Captivi  would  not  have  their  full  effect  did 
we  not  know  in  advance  that  the  slave  who  is  left  in 
Hegio's  keeping  as  a  hostage,  and  is  ill-treated  by  Hegio, 
is,  in  reality,  Hegio's  son;  Palaestra's  despair,  and  the 
sad  memories  which  recur  to  Daemones  when  he  sees  her, 
would  seem  less  touching  did  we  not  know  that,  at  the 
very  moment  when  they  think  they  are  separated  for 
ever,  the  father  and  daughter  are  close  to  one  another, 
were  we  not  afraid  that  they  might  pass  one  another 
without  meeting,  that  they  might  see  one  another  without 
recognising  each  other.  But  what  should  we  lose  if  we 
remained  ignorant  of  the  origin  of  Glycera  and  Pataecus, 
Selenium  and  Phanostrata,  Adelphasium  and  Agorastocles, 
until  the  close  of  the  IleQiKeiQojLievr],  the  Cistellaria  and 
the  Poenulus  respectively?  Nothing  at  all,  one  would 
say.  This  was  also  Terence's  opinion,  who  consistently 
disdained  to  use  the  prologus  argumentativus.     But  the 

^  In  the  prologue  to  the  Casina,  Fides  simply  says  that  Casina  is  a  yoving 
Athenian  girl  born  in  freedom  (line  82) ;  she  does  not  say  whose  daughter 
she  is.  I  think  that  Pistis,  in  Diphilus'  play,  was  more  explicit.  As 
Plautus  omitted  the  final  recognition  (cf.  1012-1014)  he  shortened  that 
part  of  the  prologue  which  announced  it. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  395 

ancient  Greeks  thought  otherwise.  Long  before  the  time 
of  the  vea,  some  of  Euripides'  prologues,  in  which  a 
summary  of  the  plot  is  given  in  advance  of  the  play, 
prove  that  they  did  not  care  for  the  pleasure  of  being 
surprised.  The  prologues  of  the  Ion  and  of  the  Bacchae, 
in  particular,  give  the  audience  the  fullest  particulars 
about  the  identity  of  the  dramatis  personae.  The  people 
who  went  to  see  the  plays  of  Menander,  of  Philemon  and 
of  Diphilus  were  apparently  in  the  same  frame  of  mind 
as  those  who  had  gone  to  see  Euripides'  plays.  Owing 
to  a  taste  which  this  is  not  the  place  to  criticise,  they 
wished,  at  the  very  start,  to  know  things  which  audiences 
in  our  day  would  be  content  to  learn  little  by  little. 

The  remarks  which  I  have  just  made  regarding  certain 
extant  comedies  would,  I  think,  apply  to  a  great  many 
others.  Aer  and  Elenehos  in  Philemon's  and  Menander's 
plays  were  omniscient  beings,  and  they,  no  doubt,  came 
upon  the  scene,  just  as  Pistis  and  Boetheia  did,  in  order 
to  give  explanations  which  none  of  the  actors  in  the 
plays  would  have  been  in  a  position  to  proffer.  Broadly 
speaking,  the  prologue  spoken  by  a  god  or  by  the  Greek 
prototype  of  Prologus,  was  probably  introduced  almost 
exclusively  in  works  of  a  special  character,  in  which  the 
poet  could  not,  by  means  of  the  usual  methods  of  ex- 
position, give  the  audience  as  much  enlightenment  as  they 
desired  to  have.  Hence  the  use  of  the  prologue  should 
not  be  regarded  as  evidence  of  an  author's  incapacity  or 
indolence ;  in  the  majority  of  cases  it  was  a  necessity  of 
his  profession.  As  for  the  prologue  of  the  Aulularia, 
which  is  the  only  one  of  its  kind  that  cannot  be  explained 
on  the  grounds  indicated,  the  poet  was,  no  doubt,  led 
to  introduce  it  by  the  fact  that  he  had  a  quite  special 
object  in  view.  Megadorus  is  at  first  opposed  to  the 
marriage,  and  then  suddenly  becomes  resigned  to  it;  but 
the  poet  had  to  make  this  change  of  attitude  appear 
natural  by  making  it  depend  upon  the  influence  of  a  god. 

The  above  remarks  do  not  afford  a  complete  excuse  for 
the  prologi  argumeniativi.     On  the  one  hand,  they  do  not 


396     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

apply  to  tlic  prologues  spoken  by  one  of  the  actors  in  the 
play  who  steps  out  of  his  role  for  that  purpose.  On  the 
other  hand,  neither  the  deol  TiQoXoyiCovzeg  nor  Prologus 
limit  themselves  as  a  rule  to  making  the  revelation  for 
which  their  appearance  is  indispensable.  Much  of  the 
information  that  they  give  might,  at  the  proper  moment, 
be  supplied  by  actors  of  the  play.  Can  the  writers  of 
comedy,  then,  be  accused  of  making  undue  use  of  the 
convenient  prologue  ?  In  this  connection  two  remarks 
may  be  made. 

In  the  first  place,  it  should  be  noted  that  certain  things 
in  the  passages  which  I  am  criticising  are  expressed  with 
a  precision  and  an  emphasis  which  are  contrary  to  the 
laws  governing  dramatic  composition.  In  the  prologue 
of  the  Aulularia  the  god  Lar  formally  points  out  what 
things  are  known  or  unknown  to  the  various  actors  : 
"  She  (Phaedrium)  was  ravished  by  a  young  man  of  very 
good  family;  he  knows  her,  but  she  does  not  know  him; 
and  the  father  knows  nothing  of  her  misfortune."  ^  Be- 
fore the  opening  of  the  Menaechmi  Prologus  warns  the 
audience  of  the  fact  that  both  twins  have  the  same  name  : 
"  So  that  you  may  make  no  mistake,  I  tell  you  about  it 
now  :  both  brothers  have  the  same  name."  ^  Similar 
warnings,  meant  to  forestall  misapprehension,  are  found 
in  the  speeches  of  Mercury  and  of  Palaestrio.^  An  author 
who  had  regard  for  dramatic  propriety  would  certainly 
not  have  been  so  explicit.  Those  who  considered  it 
proper  to  explain  matters  so  circumstantially  would 
necessarily — either  by  means  of  a  god,  or  Prologus,  or 
personage  of  some  kind — have  addressed  the  spectators 
themselves. 

Let  us  now  glance  at  the  scenes  in  the  works  of  Plautus 
which  follow — or  precede — the  prologus  argumentativus. 
We  shall  soon  discover  that  many  of  the  details  supplied 
by  the  prologue  have  either  already  been  made  known 
in  advance,  in  the  course  of  the  play,  or  else  are  repeated 

1  Aul.,  27,  30;   cf.  Cist.,  145-146;   Capt.,  21,  29,  50. 

*  Menaech.,  47-48.  ^  Miles,  150-152;    Amph.,  140-147. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  397 

in  it.  Tlie  love  affair  of  Alcesimarchus  and  Selenium, 
the  plans  of  Alcesimarchus'  father,  the  hostility  of  Sele- 
nium's mother,  the  quarrel  of  the  two  lovers — all  of  which 
the  god  Auxilium  mentions  in  lines  190-196  of  the  Cistel- 
laria — had  already  been  confided  to  her  companions  by 
Selenium  in  the  first  scene  of  the  play.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  Captivi  the  parasite  Ergasilus  deplores  his  wretched 
state,  and  repeats  what  Prologus  had  said  about  the  capture 
of  Philopolemus  by  the  Eleans,  and  about  Hegio's  attempt 
to  free  him  by  purchasing  prisoners  from  Elis.^  Further 
on  in  the  play,  Philocrates  and  Tyndarus  converse  together 
at  a  distance  from  their  guards,  speak  quite  frankly  of  the 
comedy  they  are  playing,  and  tell  the  audience  how  each 
of  them  has  assumed  the  role  of  the  other,  in  order  to  get 
the  better  of  Hegio.^  Through  lines  61  et  seq.,  67  et  seq., 
and  113  et  seq.  of  the  Aulularia,  it  is  at  once  made  clear  that 
a  short  time  previously  Euclio  had  become  the  owner  of 
a  treasure,  and  that  he  is  full  of  anxiety  about  its  preserva- 
tion. From  lines  74  et  seq.  it  appears  that  his  daughter 
has  had  an  adventure,  that  she  is  pregnant  and  is  about 
to  be  confined.  Strobilus'  soliloquy  (lines  603  et  seq.) 
reveals  the  fact  that  Megadorus  has  a  rival  of  whose 
existence  he  knows  nothing.  Lines  682  et  seq.  show  that 
this  rival  is  his  own  nephew,  young  Lyconides,  the  very 
youth  who  has  ravished  the  young  girl.  Thus  one  can 
understand  the  Aulularia  from  beginning  to  end  without 
having  recourse  to  the  prologue.  A  perusal  of  the  Rudens 
and  of  the  Poenulus  suffices  to  show  that  this  is  true 
of  these  plays  as  well.  In  the  Menaechmi  a  few  words 
added  to  the  first  reply  made  by  Menaechmus  of  Syracuse 
would  suffice  to  make  the  play  perfectly  clear  and  enable 
us  to  dispense  with  the  prologue.  The  Epidicus  and  the 
Curculio,  both  of  which  plays  contained  a  scene  of  recog- 
nition, probably  had  a  prologus  argumeniaiiviis  which  has 
not  been  preserved.  The  disappearance  of  this  prologue 
has  not  resulted  in  any  obscurity,  as  far  as  the  Curculio 
is  concerned.     In  the  Epidicus,  on  the  other  hand,  the 

»  Capt.,  29-101.  *  Ibid.,  224-241. 


398     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

absence  of  the  prologue  does  make  it  hard  to  understand 
why  Periphanes,  on  the  mere  word  of  a  slave,  was  so  ready 
to  accept  Acropoliscis  as  his  daughter;  but  a  sentence 
added  to  Epidicus'  first  soliloquy  would  have  sufficed  to 
give  us  light  on  this  point.  As  for  the  very  long  prologue 
of  the  Mercator,  fully  three-quarters  of  it  contributes  abso- 
lutely nothing  to  our  understanding  of  the  plot,  and  the 
rest  might  just  as  well  have  been  allotted,  as  it  stands, 
to  Charinus,  in  his  role  of  an  anxious  lover,  as  to  the  same 
Charinus  in  his  capacity  as  prologue.  The  only  comedies 
in  which,  as  far  as  I  know,  the  prologue  appreciably 
helps  in  the  exposition  of  the  plot,  are  the  Amphitryon, 
the  Miles,  the  Casina,  the  Cistellaria,  and,  I  think,  the 
Truculentus.  But  it  must  be  remarked  that  one  of  the 
last  three  plays  is  incomplete,  and  that  the  tw^o  others 
are,  in  all  likelihood,  imperfect  reproductions  of  the 
original  Greek  comedies.  Possibly  the  actors  in  the 
Greek  works  did  more  than  they  do  in  Plautus  to  explain 
the  situations  as  they  followed  one  upon  another.  In  a 
word,  the  prologus  argumentativus  frequently  merely  per- 
forms the  work  of  the  exposition  twice  over.  It  supplies 
more  details  and  gives  more  past  history;  but  these 
added  details  and  these  references  to  the  past  have  only 
a  secondary  interest. 

Let  me  recapitulate.  The  prologue  may  be  super- 
fluous; it  delights  in  details;  it  takes  special  care  to 
point  out  whatever  is  complicated  in  the  plot.  These 
qualities  go  well  together  and  they  suggest  one  and  the 
same  conclusion  :  an  author  w^as  often  led  to  write  a 
prologue  by  his  desire  to  make  things  perfectly  clear, 
and  owing  to  a  certain  lack  of  confidence  in  the  audience, 
or  at  least  in  some  of  the  audience,  rather  than  by  his 
wish  to  avoid  a  difficult  task.  Attention  and  acumen  are 
needed,  especially  in  animated  scenes,  in  order  promptly 
to  grasp  those  occasional  elements  which  enable  us  to 
know  what  has  happened  before  the  opening  of  the  plot, 
and  to  understand  what  is  but  half  expressed.  The 
writers  of  comedy  well  knew  that  the  members  of  the 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  399 

mixed  public  which  hstened  to  their  plays  did  not  all 
possess  these  qualities  in  equal  measure.  There  were 
dull  and  inattentive  people  among  the  spectators,  and 
possibly  they  were  in  the  majority.  If  the  author  de- 
sired to  keep  such  people  well  informed  he  must  not 
hesitate  to  insist  and  to  repeat;  even  when  the  actors 
were  in  a  position  to  explain  everything,  and  even  when 
they  did  explain  everything,  a  preface  that  was  at  once 
didactic,  very  clear  and  full  of  detail,  and  that  com- 
manded attention  by  its  very  bulk,  if  I  may  so  express 
myself,  was  useful,  if  not  even  imperative. 

Let  no  one  object  that  in  arguing  thus  I  confound  the 

Greeks  and  the  Romans,   nor  that  I  wrong  the  former. 

No  doubt,  many  of  Menander's  Athenian  contemporaries 

were  more  cultured  and  more  refined  than  any  of  Plautus' 

Roman  contemporaries.     But  side  by  side  wdth  them  at 

the    dramatic    performances,    which    were    at    that    time 

popular  festivals,   there  were  seated  dullards    like  those 

dygoixoi  wdth  whom  the  comic  writers  themselves  make 

us    acquainted.     Rustics    from   Attica   and    rustics    from 

Latium  were,    no  doubt,   equally  dull,   and  they  obliged 

the  poet  to  take  the  same  precautions.     Indeed,   I  can 

quote  explanatory  phrases  from  Greek  texts  w^iich  are 

entirely    similar    to    those    I    have    cited    above.     "  The 

priestess,"  says  Hermes,  in  the  prologue  of  the  Ion,  "  took 

the  child  and  brought  it  up.     She  does  not  know  that  Apollo 

is  its  father  nor  what  mother  gave  it  birth  ;    the  child  itself 

does  not  know  who  its  parents  are.''  ^     One  might  think 

that  the  god  Lar  was  speaking.     "  I  was  the  stake  in 

the   fight   against   the    Phrygians,"    says   Helen,    also   in 

Euripides,^  and   she  at   once   prudently  adds,    "  not   my 

person,  but  only  my  name  "  (that  is,  the  phantom  which 

Hera  had  formed  in  her  image  and  of  which  she   had 

spoken   before).     This   is   quite   on   a   par  with   some   of 

Palaestrio's  statements.     Such  analogies  are  instructive. 

They  warrant  the  belief  that,  in  his  prologi  argumentativi, 

the  Roman  writer  hardly  outdid  the  meticulous  precision 

»  Ion,  49-51.  *  Hd.,  42-43. 


400     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

of  the  original  works — in  other  words,  that  the  comic 
writers  of  the  new  period  had  quite  as  httle  confidence 
in  the  intelhgence  of  their  audiences  as  Plautus  had. 
Unless  I  am  mistaken,  we  have  a  very  good  instance  of 
this  lack  of  confidence  in  a  fragment  in  which  Philemon 
complains  of  the  "  unintelligent  listeners  whose  stupidity 
keeps  them  from  laying  blame  on  themselves  "  (xcJ^enov 
y'  dxQoarrjg  dovverog  7iaQrj[ievo<;  '  vno  ydg  dvoiag  ovx  eavzov 
f.i€jH(peTai)  ^  :  I  imagine  it  was  in  the  theatre  itself  that 
Philemon  used  to  see  these  dovveroi  dxQoarai. 

Hence  we  can,  with  a  perfectly  good  conscience,  make 
the  observations  suggested  by  a  perusal  of  Plautus  apply 
to  the  dramatic  works  of  the  vea.  Should  we  desire  to 
prove  the  correctness  of  these  observations,  we  have  the 
means  of  doing  so  at  hand.  If  the  desire  to  inform  the 
audience  promptly  of  the  real  nature  of  all  the  actors 
in  a  play,  and  the  fear  of  not  being  understood  while 
developing  a  complicated  plot — if  these  considerations 
account  for  the  use  of  the  prologue,  we  might  expect 
that  comedies  whose  plot  is  simple,  and  in  which  there 
are  no  scenes  of  recognition,  would  not  be  preceded  by 
such  an  introduction.  Leaving  aside  the  Mercator,  whose 
prologue  gives  but  very  slight  indications  of  the  plot,  and 
the  Aulularia,  about  which  I  have  already  expressed  my 
views — this  is  just  what  we  find  to  be  the  case.  Plautus 
refrains  from  explaining  the  plot  of  the  Asinaria  before 
the  play  itself  begins. ^  Before  the  beginning  of  the 
Trinummus  he  merely  tells  us  that  a  youth  who  has 
been  ruined  by  his  foolish  extravagance  lives  in  one  of 
the  houses  shown  on  the  stage  :  "as  for  the  subject- 
matter  of  the  play,"  he  adds,  "  do  not  expect  to  hear 
about  it  for  the  present  :  the  old  men  who  are  about  to 
come  on  the  stage  will  tell  you  the  story."  ^  We  know, 
however,  that  Plautus  was  not,  like  Terence,  a  confirmed 
enemy  of  the  prologi  argumentativi.  The  fact  that  the 
Trinummus  and  the  Asinaria  are  not  preceded  by  pro- 

1  Philemon,  fr.  143.     Weil's  text  is  here  adopted.  ( — Tr.). 
»  Asin.,  8.  s  rprin.,  12-13. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  401 

logues  must  be  due  to  the  circumstance  that  there  were 
no  prologues  to  the  originals  of  these  plays,  the  Orjoavgog 
and  the  'Ovayog.  Similarly,  the  originals  of  the  Persa, 
of  the  Stichus  and  of  the  Mostcllaria  very  probably  re- 
sembled the  Latin  plays  in  that  they  had  no  prologues; 
possibly  this  was  also  true  of  one  or  the  other  of  the 
plays  imitated  by  Terence — for  instance  of  the  ' AdeXcpol  /S', 
for  which  the  ancients  would  have  considered  a  preface 
unnecessary. 

In  a  word,  the  comic  writers  were  relatively  discreet  in 
their  use  of  the  prologus  argumentativus ;  and  in  many 
cases  its  use  does  not  affect  the  problem  of  the  exposition 
of  the  plot  to  any  extent. 

Before  proceeding  to  examine  the  various  solutions  that 
have  been  suggested  for  this  problem,  I  think  I  ought  to 
make  a  digression ;  for  a  number  of  interesting  questions 
present  themselves  regarding  the  prologues  of  New  Comedy, 
their  contents,  and  the  spirit  in  which  they  are  conceived. 
To  defer  a  study  of  these  questions  would  render  frag- 
mentary the  description  of  these  curious  introductions; 
so  that  it  would  be  better  to  give  an  exhaustive  description 
of  them  at  once. 

The  Latin  prologues  do  not,  by  any  means,  exclusively 
serve  to  announce  and  prepare  the  way  for  the  plot. 
Indeed,  in  Terence's  prologues,  and  in  some  of  Plautus', 
there  is  no  argumentum.  Other  methods  of  making  the 
exposition  either  take  its  place  or  are  adopted  side  by 
side  with  it,  and  we  must  now  seek  to  trace  their  origin. 

We  may  begin  by  excluding  information  such  as  is  ordin- 
arily given  in  the  didascaliae.  They  sometimes  contain  the 
name  of  the  poet  and  the  title  of  the  play,  the  name  of 
the  Greek  author  who  supplied  the  model,  and  the  title 
of  this  model.  Of  these  data  the  two  latter  certainly 
had  no  parallel  among  the  Greeks,  because  the  works  of  a 
Menander,  of  a  Philemon,  or  of  a  Diphilus  were  original 
plays.  As  for  the  former — the  name  of  the  poet  and  the 
title  of  the  play — we  do  not  find  them  in  any  fragment  of 

D  D 


402     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  middle  period  or  of  the  new  period,  nor  I  may  say, 
broadly  speaking,  in  any  Greek  prologue.  The  Athenian 
aiidienee  got  this  information  before  the  performance, 
either  through  an  announcement  made  during  the  ngodyajv  ^ 
or  in  some  other  way. 

In  addition  to  such  information,  the  prologue  of  the 
Trinummus  contains  an  episode  of  a  special  kind,  which 
is  unique  as  far  as  prologues  to  comedy  are  concerned. 
It  consists  in  a  dialogue  between  two  allegorical  persons — 
Prodigality  {Luxuria)  and  her  daughter.  Poverty  (Inopia). 
The  former  brings  the  latter  to  the  house  of  Lesbonicus ; 
then  she  tells  the  audience  who  she  is  and,  briefly,  why 
they  have  come.  And  yet  it  is  clearly  not  the  object  of 
the  prologue  to  make  known  the  subject-matter  of  the 
play.  It  is  a  "  curtain-raiser  "  and  is  meant  to  arouse 
curiosity,  to  heighten  expectation,  and  must  have  been 
an  idea  of  Philemon's,  as  Luxuria  and  Inopia  are  Latin 
translations  of  TQvcprj  and  ' Anoqia.  The  author  of  the 
OrjoavQOQ  may  have  got  his  inspiration  from  some  of  Euri- 
pides' plays,  from  the  dialogues  between  divinities  which 
we  find  at  the  beginning  of  the  Alcestis  and  of  the  Trojan 
Women,  or  rather  from  the  scene  which  serves  as  an  intro- 
duction to  the  second  part  of  the  Alad  Heracles — that 
scene  in  which  we  see  Iris  leading  Lyssa  into  the  interior 
of  the  hero's  palace.  Plautus  has  spoiled  his  model  by 
rather  clumsily  adding  didascalic  matters.  He  may  have 
shortened  it,  but  he  did  not  alter  its  general  character. 

But  there  are  very  frequently  to  be  found  in  Latin 
prologues  elements  which,  by  borrowing  from  the  termin- 
ology of  rhetoric,  we  may  put  together  under  the  head- 
ing captatio  benevolentiae ;  that  is,  greetings  and  wishes 
addressed  to  the  spectators,  appeals  to  their  friendly 
attention,  requests  for  silence,  praise  of  the  play  which 
is  about  to  be  performed,  bits  of  literary  criticism,  vin- 
dication of  the  poet  by  the  poet  himself,  and  attacks  on 
his  enemies.  Doubtless  all  these  elements  are  not  taken 
over  from  the  Greek  prologues.  Some  of  them,  like  those 
1  The  rehearsal.  (—Tr.). 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  403 

in  which  Terence's  prologues  abound,  have  a  very  im- 
mediate interest,  and  sound  a  frankly  personal  note.  But 
it  is  an  open  question  whether  Greek  works  did  not  afford 
precedents  for  all  of  them,  even  though  they  may  not 
have  furnished  their  actual  models. 

In  a  passage  of  his  prologue  to  the  Uoitpig  Antiphanes 
pokes  fun  at  the  writers  of  tragedy.^  So  does  Diphilus 
in  fragment  30,  which  must  also  be  part  of  a  prologue, 
as  it  speaks  of  the  place  in  which  the  play  is  acted.  The 
Strassburg  prologue  finds  fault  with  the  unsatisfactory 
and  interminable  explanations  which  certain  Oeol  nooXoyi- 
Covreg  delight  in  giving.  In  point  of  literary  criticism  ^ 
these  are  the  formal  documents.  To  them  must  be  added 
several  passages  from  Plautus,  about  the  Greek  origin  of 
which  I  think  there  can  be  no  question ;  for  instance,  the 
first  lines  of  the  Mercator,  which  find  fault  with  the  stage 
lovers  who  proclaim  their  troubles  to  the  day  and  to  the 
night,  to  the  sun  and  to  the  moon;  lines  53  et  seq.  of 
the  Captivi,  in  which  the  novelty  of  the  subject  and  the 
worthiness  of  the  play  are  extolled.  The  remarks  about 
tragi-comedy  in  the  prologue  of  the  Amphitryon,  and  the 
protest  against  the  mania  for  placing  all  comic  plots  at 
Athens,  may  also  date  from  the  third  century.  The 
former  passage  calls  to  mind  the  peripatetic  definitions 
handed  down  by  Diomedes  and  by  Evanthius,  in  which 
tragedy  is  restricted  to  noble  characters  and  comedy  to 
vulgar  ones.  The  latter  passage  may  be  compared  with 
some  original  fragments  which  make  fun  of  the  claim 
that  Athens  is  "  Greece  par  excellence,"  for  example, 
with  fragment  28  of  Poseidippus.  I  admit  that  none  of 
these  passages  contains  a  polemic,  strictly  speaking,  nor 
a  plea  pro  domo  on  the  part  of  the  poet,  such  as  are  found 
in  Terence's  prologues.  But  possibly  such  things  were 
to    be    found    elsewhere.     When    Lucian    bids    Elenchos 


1  Antiph.,  fr.  191. 

-  Aro  not  fragment  268  of  Antiphanes  (an  apology  for  the  long  ex- 
planations), fragment  97  of  Philemon  (same  subject)  and  fragment  130 
(professed  enthusiasm  for  Euripides)  parts  of  prologues  ? 


404     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

explain  to  his  readers  the  origin  of  his  quarrel  with  the 
"  pseudologist,"  he  adds  this  advice  :  "  Do  not,  my 
dearest  Elcnchos,  sing  my  praises  to  them,  and  do  not 
inconsiderately  in  advance  display  before  their  eyes  all 
this  person's  disgraceful  qualities.  For  it  would  be  un- 
worthy of  you,  who  are  a  god,  to  discuss  such  abomin- 
able subjects  with  your  lips."  ^  From  this  passage  it 
would  appear  that,  had  Elenchos  sung  the  praises  of  the 
author  and  railed  at  his  enemy,  he  would  have  kept  quite 
within  the  customary  role  of  prologues.  Several  fifth- 
century  parabases — those  of  the  Acharnians,  the  Knights, 
the  Wasps,  the  Clouds  and  the  Peace — contain  passages 
of  this  kind,  and  it  is  not  at  all  impossible  that,  in  the 
period  that  followed,  the  prologue  took  over  the  functions 
of  the  lost  parabasis.^ 

The  original  fragments  contain  but  few  compliments, 
reproaches  or  recommendations,  addressed  to  the  public. 
The  only  instances  that  I  can  cite  are  the  last  words 
of  Agnoia's  speech :  ''EQQcood\  ev/xevelg  re  yevofxevoi  ri[uv, 
Oeaxcd,  xal  xa  Xouca  odj^exe,  and  the  remarks  of  Philemon 
about  unintelligent  listeners  which  I  have  already  quoted. 
But  besides  this  direct  evidence  we  have  some  indirect 
testimony.  In  the  first  place,  let  me  call  attention  to 
the  fact  that  requests  for  silence,  for  attention,  as  well 
as  more  or  less  clever  allusions  to  the  alleged  good  taste 
of  the  audience  are  found  in  various  passages  in  Aristo- 
phanes— in  the  parabases  or  in  the  preliminary  blandish- 
ments which  have  a  resemblance  to  our  prologues.^  In 
the  beginning  of  the  prologue  to  the  Amphitryon  Mercury 
promises  the  audience  that  he  will  help  them  in  their 
business  and  in  their  undertakings  if  they  receive  the 
play  well.     The  same  idea  is  conveyed  in  a  passage  in 

^  Lucian,  Pseudolog.,  §  4. 

*  As  the  Greek  word  shows,  the  parabasis  was  a  digression  from  the 
plot.  In  the  parabasis  of  old  comedy  the  chorus  addressed  the  audience 
in  the  poet's  name.  The  parabasis  was  in  no  way  connected  with  the 
plot  itself.  (—Tr.). 

3  Knights,  503  et  seq. ;  Clouds,  521  et  seq.,  561-562,  575 ;  Wasps,  64-65, 
86,  1015. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  405 

the  Birds.^  Note  that  Mercury  mentions  good  news 
among  the  favours  whieh  he  can  grant ;  but  in  Plautus' 
time  the  Roman  Mercury  was  not  generally  regarded — 
as  he  came  to  be  later  by  analogy  with  Hermes — as  the 
typical  messenger  of  his  gods.  In  the  Casina  Fides, 
the  goddess  of  credit,  bids  the  audience  forget  their  busi- 
ness and  their  financial  worries  in  order  that  they  may 
be  all  attention  :  "  We  are  having  a  holiday,"  she  says, 
"  and  it  is  also  a  holiday  for  the  bankers ;  everything  is 
calm;  halcyon  days  hover  over  the  forum  {Alcedonia 
sunt  circa  forum)."  What  is  said  here  about  the  forum 
may  have  been  said  by  Diphilus  about  the  agora  of  Athens, 
where  the  xQcmeClTai  had  their  shops;  the  mention  of 
halcyon  days,  during  which  the  sea  is  perfectly  calm,  was 
of  a  kind  that  would  have  greater  interest  for  Attic  sailors 
than  for  the  farmers  of  Latium.  These  days  coincided 
with  the  time  of  the  rural  Dionysia,  and  I  can  easily 
imagine  Diphilus  writing,  for  a  performance  at  the  Piraeus, 
the  passage  which  we  find  in  the  Latin  comedy. 

Several  passages  in  Plautus'  prologues  which  describe 
and  find  fault  with  the  confusion  prevailing  in  the  audience 
have  been  regarded  as  interpolations;  and  they  certainly 
contain  traces  of  Roman  customs.  However,  some  of 
these  passages  may,  as  far  as  their  essential  points  are 
concerned,  possibly  date  back  to  the  age  of  New  Comedy. 
Turn,  for  example,  to  lines  16-45  of  the  Poenulus.  The 
audience  are  supposed  to  be  seated,  but  this  does  not 
prove,  as  Ritsehl  claims,  that  the  passage  was  written 
after  Plautus'  time.^  Courtesans  are  forbidden  to  sit 
in  proscaenio;  and  the  designator  is  not  allowed  to  con- 
duet  late  comers  to  their  seats  while  the  actors  are  on 
the  stage.  These  are,  of  course,  Roman  expressions,  but 
would  not  proscaenium  be  the  Latin  word  for  nQoedgia  ?  ' 
And  is  it  not  well  to  recall  that  in  Greece  certain  persons 
were,    as    a   special    privilege,    solemnly   escorted   to   the 

1  Birds,  1101  et  seq. 

*  Cf.  Fabia,  Revue  de  Philologie,  XXI.  (1897),  pp.  11  et  eeq. 

»  Front  8eat.(— Tr.). 


406     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

theatre  ?  ^  The  matronae  are  requested  not  to  make  too 
much  noise,  and  as  there  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  women 
went  to  see  comedies  in  Greece,^  this  request  may  have 
appeared  in  the  original  play.  I  think  this  also  applies 
to  what  is  said  about  nurses  and  slaves,^  and  to  the  re- 
marks addressed  to  those  who  presided  over  the  games. ^ 
As  for  the  general  form  of  the  passage — that  of  an  edictum 
— it  conforms  with  the  taste  of  Greek  comedy,  which  loved 
to  parody  official  texts,  decrees  and  laws,  proclamations 
and  oaths.  It  is,  therefore,  not  improbable  that,  but  for 
a  few  details,  lines  16-45  of  the  Poenulus  were  imitations 
of  a  similar  passage  in  the  KaQxr]d6viog.  I  think  this  is 
even  more  probable  in  the  case  of  line  6  et  seq.  Here 
fault  is  found  with  people  who  are  so  imprudent  as  to 
come  to  the  theatre  with  empty  stomachs.  In  the  last 
couplet  of  the  parabasis  of  the  Birds,  Aristophanes  alludes 
to  spectators  who  are  tormented  either  by  hunger  or 
some  other  physical  distress  during  the  performance.^ 
Evidently  the  two  passages  are  related  to  one  another. 

It  is  the  form  of  the  prologues  to  Plautus'  comedies 
that  has  chiefly  stood  in  the  way  of  their  being  regarded 
as  imitations  of  Greek  works,  or  even  as  authentic  pro- 
ductions of  the  Latin  poet.  Even  if  we  cut  out  the  repe- 
titions and  the  parts  that  are  probably  interpolations, 
the  prologues  are  still  verbose.  They  also  abound  in 
jokes — "  Dull  jests  and  useless  loquacity,"  as  Ussing  puts 
it.  Can  we  make  Menander's  compatriots  responsible 
for  these  failings?  It  would  seem  so.  We  have  already 
seen  that  "  loquacity  "  is  not  always  "  useless,"  and 
that  it  may  be  occasioned  by  a  desire  to  be  clear. 
The  Strassburg  prologue  speaks  of  it  as  being  quite 
customary,  and  certain  peculiarities  of  style  which  help 
to  increase  the  length  of  Plautus'  prologues  can  certainly 

^  Cf.  Dittenberger,  Sylloge  2,  430,  lines  22  et  seq. 

*  Cf.  Navarre,   Utrum  mulieres  Athenienses  scaenicos  ludos  spectaverint 
necne  (Thesis,  Paris,  1900). 

'  Cf.  Plato,  Oorgias,  p.  502  D;   Theophrastus,  Char.,  II.  11. 

*  Cf.  Aristoph.,  Peace,  734-735. 
»  Birds,  787,  799. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  407 

be  traced  back  to  Greek  comedy ;  for  instance,  the  wealth 
of  moral  reflections  which  interrupt  the  statement  of  facts. ^ 
When  the  rhetorician  Tiieon  seeks  for  an  instance  of  this 
sort  of  epiphoncma  he  quotes  the  beginning  of  one  of 
Menandcr's  plays,  either  the  Adgdavog  or  the  Sevo^oyog.^ 
Sometimes  Plautus  invites  the  audience  to  express  their 
views,  ^  or  else  he  pretends  to  forestall  criticism.*  Here 
again  we  have  Attic  devices.  Witness  lines  37  ct  seq. 
of  the  Knights,  53  et  seq.  of  the  Peace,  fragments  307  of 
Cratinus,  154  of  Pherecrates,  5  of  Heniochus,  the  last 
lines  of  the  Strassburg  fragments,  lines  18-19  of  the 
0dojna,  etc.  At  the  beginning  of  the  prologue  to  the 
Captivi  the  author  assumes  that  a  stupid  spectator  re- 
fuses to  understand,  and  advises  him  to  go  away ;  towards 
the  end  of  the  prologue  to  the  Casina  he  offers  to  make  a 
bet  with  the  audience.  These  passages  are  similar  in 
tone  to  lines  71  et  seq.  of  the  Wasps,  in  which  the  audience 
is  asked  to  guess  what  ails  Philoeleon.  It  would  certainly 
seem  as  if  the  poets  of  the  vea  had,  in  their  prologues, 
preserved  something  of  the  burlesque  style  in  which 
ancient  comedy  delighted.  Demetrius  asserts  that  the 
prologue  of  Menander's  Meoorjvia  contained  samples  of  a 
somewhat  unrefined  humour — humour  consisting  of  in- 
coherence.^ The  play  on  words  contained  in  lines  37-38 
of  the  prologue  to  the  Casina  [est  ei  quidam  servos  qui  in 
morbo  cubat — invmo  hercle  vero  in  lecto,  ne  quid  mentiar) 
is  forced  in  Latin,  but  it  appears  to  be  a  translation  of 
Diphilus'  text  in  which  it  would  have  been  more  natural 
{ev  voooj  HElxai).^  Line  59  of  the  prologue  to  the  Menae- 
chmi — ei  liberorum,  nisi  divitiae,  nil  erat — is  probably  a 
translation  of  a  Greek  phrase  in  which  the  writer  played 
on  the  various  meanings  of  the  word  xoxoq.'' 

1  Captivi,  22,  44-45,  51;    Amph.,  493;    Cist.,  191;    Miles,  100;    True, 

15;  etc. 

*  Theon,  Soph,  progymn.,  IV.  p.  91,  11  Spengel. 

»  Cos.,  3-4.  *  Ibid.,  67  et  seq. 

^  Dometr.,  Uepl  fp^i■■^|v.,  §  153. 

«  Cf.  Deutsch.  lihein.  Mus.  LV  (1900),  p.  272  ff. 

'  Birth,  child,  interest  (on  money),  produce  of  lund.( — Tr.). 


408     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

In  a  word,   in  substance  as  well  as  in  form,  Plautus' 
prologues  must  be  fairly  accurate  copies  of  Greek  models, 
and  when  read  in  connection  with  the  original  fragments 
they  give  us  a  fairly  good  idea  of  the  prologues  of  New 
Comedy.     Still  we  are  left  in  the  dark  regarding  a  very 
important   question  :    did  the  vea  contain  any  prologues 
that   were  entirely  given   over  to   captatio  benevolentiae, 
such  as  we  find  in  Terence  ?     Neither  the  prologue  of  the 
Trinummus  nor  that  of  the  Asinaria  need  be  considered 
here.     The  former  is  of  Attic  origin  and,  as  I  have  already 
pointed  out,  is  a  curtain-raiser  rather  than  a  prologue ; 
the  latter  is  probably  of  Latin  origin,  and  contains  only 
the  usual  information  given  in  didascaliae.    In  view  of  the 
character  of  the  play  I  do  not  think  that  the  prologue 
to  the  Pseudolus  was  a  prologus  argumentativus  ;   but  very 
little  of  it  has  survived — only  two  lines,  and  possibly  they 
were  not  written  by  Plautus.     As  for  the  prologue  to  the 
Vidularia,  one  can  see  that  it  consisted  entirely  of  polemics 
and  literary  criticism.     Unfortunately,  it  is  too  mutilated 
to  allow  of  our  forming  a  trustworthy  judgment  about  its 
age  and  origin.     As  we  do  not  possess  the  text  of  the 
Greek  prologues,  two  passages  claim  our  attention.     In 
the  first  place,  there  is  the  statement  of  Evanthius,  which 
I  have  already  quoted,  and  for  which  the  following  reading 
has  been  suggested  :   turn  etiam  Graeci  prologos  non  habent 
more  nosirorum  {scil.  Terentianorum),  quos  <C.  etiam  alW^ 
Latini    habent.     Secondly,    there    is    the    classification    of 
prologues,   in  which  prologues  that  explain  the  subject- 
matter  of  the  play  (prologi  argumentativi)  are  contrasted 
with    prologues    called    ovoxaxixoL    in    Greek   (in    Latin : 
commendaticius,    quo   poeta    vel  fabula    commendatur),    or 
i7iaijj,rjTLxoi    (in     Latin  :     relativus,     quo     aut     adversario 
maledictum    aut  populo   gratiae   referuntur).^     These    two 
passages    contradict   one   another,    as   the   one   tends   to 
exclude  prologues  without  argumentum  from  the  vea,  and 
the  other  to  admit  them.     Neither  passage  is  very  trust- 
worthy.    The  sentence  from  Evanthius  may  have  read  as 

^  Donatus,  Exc.  de  comoedia,  VII.  2,  p.  27  Wessner  {—  Kaibel,  p.  69). 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  409 

I  have  suggested,  but  of  this  we  have  no  certainty ;  more- 
over, Evanthius'  authority  is  not  unimpeachable.  As 
for  Donatus'  classification,  I  seriously  doubt  whether  it 
is  of  Greek  origin.  If  it  were,  the  prologiis  argumentativus 
would  not  also  be  called  dQajuaxixog,  for  this  epithet, 
when  used  by  the  theoretical  writers  of  antiquity,  has  by 
no  means  the  signification  which  Donatus  gives  it;  it 
applies  to  everything  that  is  spoken  by  one  of  the  dramatis 
pcrsonae,  as  distinguished  from  the  statements  made  by 
the  author  in  his  own  name.  If  anything  can  lead  one 
to  suppose  that  the  Greek  had  prologues  that  were  purely 
ovaxaxixoL  or  eTiirijurjrixol,  such  as  we  find  in  Terence,  it 
would,  in  my  opinion,  rather  be  the  analogy  offered  by 
the  parabasis  to  which  I  have  already  adverted.  In 
ancient  comedy  the  parabasis  afforded  the  poet  an  oppor- 
tunity to  address  the  audience  without  the  pretext  or  even 
the  desire  of  explaining  the  subject-matter  of  the  play. 
One  can  readily  understand  that,  when  later  comedy  lost 
the  parabasis,  it  was  not  willing  to  lose  this  privilege  also. 
But  enough  of  conjecture  !  If  I  am  to  limit  my  obser- 
vations to  what  is  certain  or  very  probable,  I  may  say 
that  there  was  a  great  diversity  in  prologues.  They 
differed  in  content,  in  style  and  in  the  person  who  spoke 
them.  The  majority  of  them  were  placed  at  the  very 
beginning  of  a  comedy;  but  some  of  them  came  after  a 
scene  in  dialogue,  just  as  Aristophanes'  addresses  to  the 
public  do.  The  latter  was  the  case  in  the  "Hgcog,  in  the 
IleQixEiQo/udvr],  in  the  Cistellaria  and  in  the  Miles  (^ Alaf^wv). 
Occasionally  the  prologue  constituted  an  entirely  in- 
dependent part,  that  had  no  connection  with  the  scene 
which  preceded  and  followed  it.  In  other  cases  the  actor 
who  spoke  it  made  some  allusion  to  the  persons  who  had 
been  on  the  stage  before  him,  or  else  announced  the 
coming  of  those  who  were  to  follow  him.  One  may  ask 
whether  this  diversity  was  governed  by  laws,  whether  these 
various  types  of  prologue  existed  at  one  and  the  same 
time  or  whether  they  succeeded  one  another,  and  whether 
one  poet  preferred  one  type  and  another  poet  some  other 


410     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

type.  In  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge  of  the  subject 
it  is  not  easy  to  answer  these  questions.  We  possess  too 
few  texts,  especially  too  few  texts  that  can  be  assigned 
to  a  given  author  or  fixed  at  a  definite  date.  The  Strass- 
burg  prologue  condemns  the  speeches  of  the  /uaxgoXoyoi 
Oeoi;  are  we  to  infer  from  this  that  the  prologues  were 
not  spoken  by  gods  subsequently,  or  that  they  no  longer 
sinned  in  the  matter  of  verbosity?  Certainly  not.  Nor, 
indeed,  are  we  warranted  in  thinking  that,  after  this 
manifesto,  more  space  was  given  to  literary  criticism  in  the 
prologues.  Several  prologues  written  by  the  three  great 
authors  of  the  via — Menander,  Philemon  and  Diphilus — 
are  known  to  us  through  fragments,  through  allusions 
or  through  imitations.  Those  written  by  Diphilus — in 
other  words,  the  prologues  to  the  Casina  and  to  the 
Rudens — have  certain  similarities  :  both  of  them  are 
spoken  by  supernatural  beings,  and  both  of  them  are 
slow  and  monotonous.  But  how  great  is  the  difference 
between  the  prologue  to  the  Trinummus  and  the  prologue 
to  the  Mercator,  both  plays  by  Philemon  !  And  how 
very  different  from  these  must  have  been  the  prologue  to 
which  fragment  91,  spoken  by  Aer,  belongs  !  And  finally, 
in  Menander,  we  see  the  prologue  assigned  to  gods  (Hero, 
the  god  Pan),  to  allegorical  beings  (Agnoia,  Boetheia, 
Elenchos),  to  actors  in  the  play  (the  aged  courtesan  in  the 
Cistellaria,  possibly  the  youth  in  the  'YdQia),^  or  to  a  spokes- 
man of  the  poet's  (in  the  Oatg).  I  imagine  that,  far  from 
limiting  himself  to  the  same  style  of  prologue  throughout 
his  career,  or  even  a  part  of  it,  each  author  must  have 
passed  from  one  style  to  another,  thus  varying  the  effect 
produced.  For  there  was  one  fault  above  all  that  had  to 
be  feared  in  exposition  by  narrative — dullness.  Some  of 
Euripides'  prologues  are  distinctly  tiresome,  while,  if  we  are 
to  believe  a  malicious  remark  of  Gnathaena's,  Diphilus' 
prologues  were  chilling.^  In  order  to  avoid  boring  his 
audience  and  with  the  object  of  "  warming  them  up,"  the 
comic  writer,  as  we  have  seen,  did  not  disdain  occasionally 

^  Quintilian,  XI.  3,  91.  ^  Machon  in  Athenaeus,  p.  580  A. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  411 

to  resort  occasionally  to  somewhat  gross  jests.  This  was  an 
extreme  measure,  and  by  diversifying  the  substance,  the 
form  and  the  treatment  of  the  prologue,  it  was  possible  to 
devise  others  that  were  in  better  taste.  For  instance,  the 
appearance  of  the  person  who  was  to  enlighten  the  audience 
might  in  itself  be  interesting  and  claim  attention.  Without 
being  as  fantastic  as  the  costumes  of  the  chorus  in  the 
fifth  century,  the  "  get-up  "  of  one  of  these  superhuman 
beings  might  give  rise  to  curious  combinations.  How,  we 
may  ask,  were  Arcturus  and  Aer  dressed  ?  What  were  the 
characteristic  attributes  of  Agnoia,  of  Elenchos,  of  Boetheia 
and  of  Pistis?  Even  in  the  choice  of  the  speakers  of 
the  prologue,  in  the  way  in  which  their  appearance  was 
accounted  for,  and  in  the  invention  of  the  allegorical 
beings,  there  was  room  for  more  or  less  ingenuity.  Were 
not  the  spectators  perplexed  at  seeing  the  star-god  Arcturus 
come  upon  the  stage  in  order  to  explain  a  comedy,  and  at 
hearing  him  open  with  a  couplet  about  divine  justice? 
Did  they  not  think  it  paradoxical  and  curious  that  Ignor- 
ance personified  should  appear  to  give  them  information? 
But,  above  all,  the  character  of  the  incidents  that  were 
contained  in  the  setting  forth  of  the  subject,  the  arrange- 
ment of  its  various  parts,  the  relative  importance  attri- 
buted to  each  of  them,  the  note  sounded  by  the  poet, 
according  as  it  was  humorous  or  grave,  personal  or  im- 
personal, might  vary  from  prologue  to  prologue.  Herein 
lay  the  poets'  opportunity  to  display  their  originality, 
their  imagination  and  their  humour,  and  they  did  not 
let  the  opportunity  slip. 

Let  us  now  close  this  digression  and  proceed  to  the 
study  of  the  dramatic  exposition.  After  what  has  been 
said  in  the  section  devoted  to  the  prologue,  it  will  not 
surprise  the  reader  if,  for  the  purpose  of  this  study,  I 
rely,  not  only  upon  fragments  of  the  original  plays  and 
uj)on  the  opening  scenes  of  Plautus'  comedies,  but  also 
upon  those  of  Terence's  plays.  It  is  quite  possible  that 
the   majority   of  the   plays   imitated   by   Terence   had   a 


412     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

prologus  argumeniativus,  but  the  analyses  which  I  have 
made  above  have  taught  us  that  a  regular  exposition  may 
be  found  side  by  side  with  such  a  preface.  Therefore  I 
do  not  think  that  we  need  imagine  that  the  opening  scenes 
of  Terence's  plays  differed  materially  from  the  opening 
scenes  of  the  plays  which  served  as  his  models,  save  where 
trustworthy  evidence  affords  special  reasons  for  recognising 
such  differences. 

The  best  form  of  exposition  consists  in  a  dialogue 
between  two  actors,  neither  of  whom  is  too  expressly  or 
too  noticeably  bent  on  putting  the  other  in  touch  with 
the  situation.  This  finer  style  of  exposition  was  already 
known  in  the  fifth  century,  and  New  Comedy  was  not 
unacquainted  with  it.  In  the  Mostellaria  the  alterca- 
tion between  the  two  slaves,  the  toilet  scene,  and  the 
scene  of  the  interrupted  banquet,  all  of  them  full  of  life, 
grace  and  truth,  quite  suffice  to  acquaint  us  with  every- 
thing we  need  know  in  order  to  understand  what  follows. 
Elsewhere,  animated  dialogues  have  a  large  share  in 
setting  forth  the  story,  though  they  do  not  in  themselves 
constitute  a  complete  exposition ;  for  instance,  the  threats 
which  Euclio  addresses  to  Staphyla  in  the  Auliilaria; 
the  dispute  between  Chalinus  and  Olympic  in  the  Casina ; 
the  questioning  of  Thesprio  in  the  Epidicus;  the  story 
of  Aeschinus'  misdeeds  which  Demea  serves  up  hot  to  his 
brother  in  the  Adelphi ;  and  so  on. 

The  last  scenes  mentioned  are  in  a  way  a  transition 
to  another  kind  of  exposition,  by  means  of  dialogue,  that 
is  less  perfect  than  the  above.  In  it  one  of  the  actors 
tells  the  other — as  though  in  confidence — the  things 
which  the  audience  are  to  know.  There  are  different 
ways  of  doing  this.  In  the  first  place,  there  are  unsolicited 
confidences  which  support  and  pave  the  way  to  a  request 
for  help.  In  the  Eunuchus,  for  example,  Thais,  in  order 
to  persuade  her  lover  to  give  her  up  for  a  few  days,  tells 
him  the  complete  story  of  her  young  companion's  life. 
The  expositions  in  the  Asinaria,  the  Poenulus  and  the 
Andria  {JlegLvBia)  are  of  the  same  kind,  as  well  as  that  in 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  413 

the  Persa,  the  only  known  comedy  of  the  middle  period. 
Of  the  dramatic  works  of  the  fifth  century,  the  Antigone, 
the  Philoctctes,  the  Lysistrata  and  the  Frogs  begin  in  a 
similar    manner.     Elsewhere,    these    confidences    are    in- 
vited instead  of  being  spontaneous,  and  in  most  cases  it 
is  a  friend  or  a  devoted  servant  who  calls  them  forth, 
when  he  sees  his  master  or  his   friend  in  distress  and  is 
anxious  to  afford  assistance.     In  the  Cistellaria,  for  in- 
stance, Gymnasium  is  anxious  to  know  what  makes  her 
friend    Selenium    weep ;    in    the    Heauton    Timoroumenos 
Chremes  is  touched  by  the  great  distress  of  Menedemus, 
and  rather  hesitatingly  decides  to  ask  him  what  occasions 
it.     Ancient,  as  well  as  modern  comedy,  and  also  tragedy, 
afforded  precedents  for  this  method  of  introducing  the 
exposition.     It  will  suffice  to  mention  the  beginning  of 
the  Iphigeneia  in  Aulis,  which  was  probably  written  by 
the  younger  Euripides ;    lines  71  et  seq.  of  Aristophanes' 
Thesmophoriazusae ;    fragment  235  of  Antiphanes,  among 
the    fragments    of   the    juearj.      Elsewhere   again — as,    for 
instance,  in  the  Trinummus  or  in  the  Curculio — confidences 
are  called  forth,  not  by  a  manifestation  of  sympathy,  but 
by   a  charge   which  the   incriminated   person   refutes   by 
explaining  his  behaviour.     This  device,  like  the  foregoing 
ones,  is  of  ancient  origin,  and  we  find  instances  of  it  in 
Aristophanes — at    the    beginning    of   the    Plutus,    of   the 
Peace,  and  in  the  very  first  lines  of  the  Thesmophoriazusae. 
Finally,     confidences    are    sometimes    elicited    by    pure 
curiosity.     This  is  the  case  at  the  beginning  of  the  "Hqcoq, 
of  the  Phormio,  and  of  the  Hecyra,  and  I  think  it  was  the 
case  in  the  opening  scenes  of  the  ' EjiirQETiovreg,  to  which 
fragments  600,  849  and  850  of  Menander  must  belong. 

When  the  exposition  is  made  in  any  of  the  above  ways 
there  are  two  serious  faults  to  be  feared.  The  first  con- 
sists in  allowing  confidences  to  be  addressed  to  a  person 
whom  we  believe  to  be  already  acquainted  with  the 
facts,  thus  making  them  manifestly  superfluous.  Phaedria 
may,  of  course,  know  nothing  of  the  past  life,  nor  of  the 
family  affairs,  of  Thais,  the  foreign  courtesan,  nor  need 


414     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

Chremes  know  anything  of  the  misfortunes  of  Menedemus, 
who  has  recently  become  his  neighbour.  But  let  us  go 
back  to  the  Curculio.  Phaedromus  has  already  for  a  long 
time  been  paying  court  to  the  girl  who  boards  at  the  house 
of  the  pander  Cappadox,  and  the  conversation  he  has  with 
her  at  the  beginning  of  the  play  is  certainly  not  the  first 
he  has  had.  How,  then,  can  it  be  that  Palinurus,  who  is 
that  youth's  regular,  accredited  attendant,  knows  nothing 
of  this  love  affair?  In  Menander's  IleQivOia  it  was  to 
his  wife  that  the  father  gave  a  long  account  of  the  begin- 
nings of  Pamphilus'  love  affair  and  of  its  consequences. 
But,  whatever  one  may  think  of  an  Athenian  family,  the 
young  man's  mother  must  have  known  all  this,  and  it 
was  a  good  idea  of  Terence's  to  let  Sosia  receive  the  con- 
fidences instead  of  the  mother.  Thus  it  appears  that 
even  the  greatest  of  the  comic  writers  of  the  new  period 
sometimes  ran  upon  the  rocks.  More  than  one  of  the 
actors  who,  in  their  plays,  is  the  recipient  of  confidences, 
might  with  perfect  propriety  declare  with  Milphio  in  the 
Poenulus  :  lam  pridem  quidem  istuc  ex  te  audivi.^  But 
I  may  remind  the  reader  that  similar  imperfections  were 
already  to  be  met  with  in  earlier  dramatic  works.  In 
Sophocles'  Electra,  the  account  which  Orestes  gives  his 
pedagogue — his  guide  and  mentor — of  his  visits  to  the 
oracle  at  Delphi  is  out  of  place,  and  it  is  perfectly  clear 
that  it  is  given  for  the  benefit  of  the  audience.  Nor  is 
it  conceivable  that,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Plutus, 
Chremylus'  slave  should  not  know  a  good  deal  of  what 
Chremylus  tells  him. 

The  desire  to  keep  these  confidences  from  being  regarded 
as  superfluous  led  to  an  increase  in  the  number  of  protatic 
persons.  This  term  was  applied  to  the  actors  who  appeared 
in  the  very  first  scenes  of  a  play  but  did  not  come  upon 
the  stage  again,  nor  play  any  further  part.^  We  already 
find  them  in  fifth-century  plays — in  Aristophanes,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Knights,  of  the  Frogs  and  of  the  Peace; 
but  the  use  made  of  them  there  is  not  the  same  as  was  to 

^  Poen.,  156.  *  Donatus,  praef.  Andria,  I.  8. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  415 

prevail  in  later  times.  Having  no  relation  to  the  plot  and 
not  belonging  to  the  ordinary  entourage  of  the  chief  aetors, 
the  protatic  aetors  of  New  Comedy  may,  without  violating 
the  laws  of  probability,  know  nothing  of  the  situation 
at  the  beginning  of  the  play  or  of  the  events  that  led 
up  to  it.  Henee  there  is  less  risk  that  the  detailed  ex- 
planation whieh  is  vouchsafed  them  will  appear  super- 
fluous. Here,  however,  we  come  to  another  danger.  In 
order  that  these  confidences  may  be  above  criticism  they 
must  not  only  avoid  the  charge  of  superfluity,  but  they 
must  also  be  prudent  and  justifiable.  But  as  soon  as  they 
are  addressed  to  a  protatic  actor — that  is,  to  a  person  who 
is  either  indifferent  or  a  casual  passer-by — there  is  little 
probability  of  their  being  so.  The  cook  in  the ' EnixQenovxeQ,^ 
Geta  in  the  "Hgcog,  Philotis  in  the  Hecyra,  and  Davus  in 
the  Phormio — what  claim  have  they  to  the  confidences 
of  Onesimus,  of  Daos,  of  Parmeno  and  of  Geta?  And 
why  should  they  be  given  them  ?  The  writers  of  comedy 
tried,  by  hook  or  crook,  to  get  over  this  danger.  One 
way  of  doing  this  was  to  let  the  person  who  asks  for  the 
information  appear  to  be  exceedingly  inquisitive,  while 
the  person  who  gives  it  is  longing  to  speak.  This  fre- 
quently led  to  using  slaves,  or  persons  of  inferior  rank, 
who  are  by  nature  indiscreet  and  garrulous,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  the  exposition.  "  You  are  inquisitive,"  says 
Onesimus  to  the  cook  at  the  beginning  of  the  ' EjiiTQEJiovteg,^ 
and  the  cook  replies,  "  Yes,  because  nothing  is  more 
agreeable  than  to  know  all  about  everything."  ^  The 
reader  will  recall  the  beginning  of  the  Hecyra,  whieh  is  a 
model  of  its  kind.  Here,  Parmeno  does  not  start  blabbing 
before  he  has  taken  certain  precautions,  nor  before  he 
has  secured  a  promise  of  secrecy.  Geta  acts  similarly 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Phormio,  and  it  is  probably  to 
some  opening  scene  of  the  same  kind  that  fragment  1  of 
Phoenieides   belongs:     "Can   you    keep   quiet?"  —  "So 

•  I  think  Leo  has  proved  that  it  was  a  hired  cook  to  whom  Onesimus 
spoke  in  the  opening  scene  of  the  'EirirpiTrouTfs. 

*  Men.,  fr.  8-49.  »  Ibid.,  fr.  850. 


416     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

quiet,  that,  compared  with  me,  the  men  who  are  making 
the  treaty  would  appear  to  be  shouting."  ^ 

Like  many  of  the  methods  of  exposition  to  which  I 
have  hitherto  referred,  these  appeals  to  the  love  of  gossip, 
this  amusing  mixture  of  indiscretion  and  prudence,  had 
their  prototypes  in  earlier  days.  "  I  shall  not  be  able  to 
keep  silent,"  declares  one  of  Trygaeus'  slaves,  "  unless 
you  tell  me  whither  you  intend  to  fly."  ^  And  in  almost 
the  same  words  Cario  says  to  Chremylus,  "  I  shall  not 
be  able  to  keep  silent,  my  master,  unless  you  explain  to 
me  why  we  are  following  that  man."  ^  "  What  is  the 
matter,  aged  sir?"  Medea's  nurse  asks  the  children's 
pedagogue;  "  Do  not  refuse  to  tell  me.  I  shall  be  able  to 
keep  silence,  if  need  be."  ^  W^ith  the  help  of  these  devices 
the  comic  writers  succeeded  in  making  acceptable,  exposi- 
tions that  were,  at  best,  rather  artificial.  In  the  first 
scene  of  the  Hecyra,  for  instance,  there  is  hardly  anything 
to  which  one  can  raise  objection.  The  indiscretions  of 
the  slave  are  cleverly  called  forth,  and  there  is  the  less 
fault  to  be  found  with  them  as  they  are  in  accord  with 
Parmeno's  behaviour  during  the  rest  of  the  play.  The 
beginning  of  the  Phormio,  on  the  contrary,  although  it 
is  constructed  in  the  same  way,  is  too  short  and  has  no 
connection  with  what  follows ;  its  artificiality  is  apparent, 
and  there  is  something  conventional  about  it. 

In  whatever  way  it  is  managed,  exposition  by  means  of 
dialogue  is  a  difficult  thing  to  handle.  So  we  need  not 
be  surprised  to  find  that  the  comic  writers  of  the  new 
period  frequently  preferred  to  adopt  another  form  of 
exposition,  in  which  they  had  to  deal  with  less  complex 
dramatic  conventions — namely,  soliloquy.  The  proto- 
types of  this  form  are  w^ll  known ;  Euripides,  above  all, 
made  it  popular.  Aristophanes,  who  had  used  it  in  two 
of  his  earliest  comedies — the  Acharnians  and  the  Clouds — 

^  The  reference  is  to  a  treaty  mysteriously  concluded  between  Pyrrhus 
and  Demetrius  Poliorcetes,  or  else  between  Pyrrhus  and  Antigonus 
Gonatas. 

2  Peace,  102  et  seq.  3  piutus,  18-19.  *  Medea,  63-66. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  417 

parodies  the  method  of  the  tragic  writers  in  the  opening 
scene  of  the  Ecclesiazusae.  Still,  this  method  appears  to 
have  been  in  favour  with  his  successors  of  the  jueorj,  for 
fragment  168  of  Antiphanes  is,  no  doubt,  part  of  an 
explanatory  soliloquy;  in  all  probability  this  is  also  true 
of  fragment  88  of  Eubulus,  of  fragments  89  and  148  of 
Alexis,  both  of  which  were  spoken  by  night,  and  of 
fragment  12  of  Theophilus.  The  via  followed  suit.  In 
several  of  the  plays  with  which  I  have  dealt,  soliloquy, 
coupled  with  dialogue,  helped  to  explain  the  plot ;  in 
the  Aulularia  we  have  Euclio's  soliloquy ;  in  the  Casina 
Lysidamus'  soliloquy;  in  the  Epidicus  that  of  the  slave; 
and  above  all,  in  the  Adelphi  that  of  Micio.  Elsewhere 
soliloquy  plays  an  even  more  important  part  in  the  ex- 
position. In  the  Captivi  the  soliloquy  of  the  parasite 
Ergasilus  makes  us  acquainted  with  Hegio's  troubles — 
his  son's  captivity,  the  traffic  in  prisoners  which  his 
fatherly  affection  leads  him  to  undertake.  We  know  that 
it  was  a  soliloquy  by  the  father  that  explained  the  plot 
at  the  beginning  of  the  'Avdgia.  And  particularly  fre- 
quent— if  we  can  believe  Charinus  (in  the  Mercator) — are 
explanatory  soliloquies  spoken  by  lovers. 

I  have  already  said  that  a  false  and  conventional  note 
is  struck  in  most  soliloquies  when  they  are  supposed  to 
be  audible.  But,  at  present,  we  are  only  concerned  with 
them  as  a  means  of  expression.  Regarded  from  this 
point  of  view,  a  soliloquy  must  be  considered  justifiable 
if  it  conveys  what  an  actor  might  have  uttered  or  said  to 
himself  at  a  given  moment — in  other  words,  if  it  gives 
us  a  correct  idea  of  interests,  thoughts  and  sentiments 
that  are  appropriate  to  the  occasion.  Particularly  in  the 
case  of  explanatory  soliloquies  the  author  was  confronted 
with  this  problem — to  let  it  appear  that  the  speaker  is 
in  a  state  of  mind  that  makes  his  reviewing  past  events 
appear  as  a  natural  thing  for  him  to  do.  This  problem  is 
happily  solved  at  the  beginning  of  the  Adelphi :  Micio 
is  worried  because  his  adopted  son  Aeschinus  does  not  come 
home,  and  there  is  nothing  improbable  about  his  reference 

E  E 


418     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

to  the  method  by  which  he  is  educating  him,  and  to  the 
heated  discussions  which  he  is  obhged  to  have  with 
the  strict  Demea  on  this  subject.  In  the  first  scene  of 
the  Fecogyog  the  lover  recapitulates  the  various  phases  of 
the  situation  in  order  to  see  how  he  is  to  manage  matters ; 
so  does  Epidicus  after  Thesprio's  departure.  In  the 
Captivi  Ergasilus  bewails  the  captivity  of  Philopolemus 
which  obliges  him  to  go  hungry.  In  the  Truculentus 
Diniarchus  criticises  his  faithless  mistress  in  a  melancholy 
vein.  Each  of  these  persons  instructs  the  audience 
without  abandoning  his  true  role.  Elsewhere — as,  for 
example,  in  Menander's  'EmxXrjQog,  in  his  Mioov/nevog, 
and  in  the  anonymous  play  of  which  fragment  739  is  a 
part — it  was  in  order  to  while  away  the  long  hours  of 
a  sleepless  night  that  anxious  or  discontented  persons 
mentally  rehearsed  their  troubles.  This  was  not  a  new 
idea.  The  reader  will  remember  the  nocturnal  soliloquies 
of  Strepsiades,  of  Euripides'  Electra,  and  of  the  watcher 
in  the  Agamemnon.  In  itself  it  is  not  a  bad  idea,  but 
the  comic  writers  apparently  made  singularly  bad  use  of 
it.  What  such  texts  as  we  possess  allow  us  really  to  see 
is  not  any  feverish  and  irresistible  anxiety,  but,  at  best, 
a  vague  desire  to  unburden  one's  self,  with  which  custom 
has  a  good  deal  to  do ;  to  tell  one's  troubles  to  the  night, 
or  to  the  moon,  seems  simply  to  be  a  variant  of  the 
yfj  K  ovgavcp  Myeiv  of  tragedy — a  worthless  pretext.  Simi- 
larly, in  the  second  scene  of  the  Cistellaria,  the  soliloquy 
of  the  old  courtesan  is  weak  :  "  Because  I  have  duly 
lined  my  paunch,  and  filled  myself  with  the  flower  of 
Bacchus,  I  am  overcome  with  the  desire  to  let  my  tongue 
wag,  and  I  haven't  got  the  strength  to  keep  quiet  about 
what  ought  to  be  kept  quiet."  ^  It  is  perfectly  clear  that 
such  reasons  as  these  are  nothing  more  than  pretexts. 
Moreover,  the  poets  themselves  did  not  take  them  seriously, 
and  this  is  proved  by  the  fact  that,  side  by  side  w4tli  them, 
we  occasionally  find  a  formal  abandonment  of  dramatic 
probability.     After  having  attempted  to  find  an  excuse 

1  Cist.,  120  et  seq. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  419 

for  her  garrulousness,  the  old  courtesan  quite  frankly 
addresses  her  remarks  to  the  audience,  and  inversely, 
Charinus,  in  the  Mercaior,  who  at  the  outset  addresses  the 
audience,  says,  later  on,  that  his  love  is  responsible  for 
the  length  and  incoherency  of  his  explanations. 

Thus,  at  the  close  of  my  discussion,  I  come  back  to  a 
kind  of  exposition  which  claimed  my  attention  at  its 
beginning — namely,  the  soliloquising  prologues.  The 
difference  between  them  and  dramatic  soliloquies  is  not 
always  very  clear.  We  have  just  seen  that,  although 
Charinus  and  the  aged  courtesan  speak  to  the  audience, 
they  make  a  point  of  remaining  true  to  their  roles  and  to 
their  character;  and  in  what  they  say  features  of  both 
kinds  of  soliloquy  are  to  be  found.  But  do  we  meet  with 
soliloquies  that  lack  the  characteristics  of  either  variety, 
in  which  the  actor  pretends  to  ignore  the  presence  of  the 
audience  and  makes  no  effort  whatsoever  to  show  that 
his  speeches  are  opportune?  Such  soliloquies,  addressed 
to  no  one  in  particular,  are  not  rare  at  the  beginning  of 
tragedies,  while  the  extant  remains  of  comedy  do  not 
afford  any  examples  of  them.  But  occasionally  a  sentence 
that  savours  of  being  didactic  does  find  its  way,  as  it 
were  parenthetically,  into  an  animated  soliloquy.  The 
young  hero  of  the  recogyog  is  engaged  in  picturing  to 
himself  the  moment  of  his  home-coming ;  he  says  that  he 
has  found  his  father's  house  full  of  preparations  for  his 
wedding,  and  that  his  father  wishes  him  to  marry  a 
daughter  of  his.  Then  he  adds  dryly  :  "  For  I  have  a 
half-sister  of  marriageable  age  whom  the  present  wife 
of  my  father  is  bringing  up  at  home."  ^  In  like  manner 
Mieio,  in  the  Adelphi,  allows  some  historical  details,  as 
it  were,  to  find  their  way  into  remarks  which  are  quite 
consistent  with  his  state  of  mind.  Ergasilus,  in  the 
Captivi,  in  the  midst  of  his  complaints  about  the  hardness 
of  the  times,  does  the  like.^  Although  the  poet  does  not 
address  the  audience  directly,  the  remarks  made  by  his 
actors  in  such  cases  as  these  are  certainly  meant  for  them. 

1  rewpy.,  10-11.  *  Ad.,  40  et  seq. ;  Capt.,  94  ct  seq. 


420     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

It  is  quite  probable  that  the  tone  and  style  of  some  of  the 
numerous  soliloquies  which  explained  the  subject-matter 
of  comedies  made  them  nothing  more  than  a  means  of 
communication  between  author  and  audience. 

No  study  of  the  methods  of  exposition  can  be  complete 
that  ends  with  a  description  of  the  various  forms  it  took 
in  the  vea.  Attention  must  be  called  to  another  point — 
the  very  considerable  length  to  which  it  sometimes 
attained.  It  is  at  the  very  beginning  of  their  comedies, 
before  the  plot  gets  under  way,  that  our  poets  prefer  to 
introduce  convenient  character  sketches  and  character 
scenes,  of  whose  popularity  we  have  found  evidence ; 
they  made  a  point,  it  seems,  of  seeing  that  the  audience 
was  well  acquainted  with  the  actors  before  presenting 
them  in  the  grip  of  the  plot.  Moreover,  the  writers  of 
comedy  loved  to  emphasise  the  initial  situation — not 
only  to  outline  it,  but  to  draw  a  detailed  picture  and  as 
lively  a  one  as  possible.  In  the  Mostellaria  the  dialogue 
of  the  two  slaves  gives  us  quite  enough  information  about 
how  matters  stand.  But  this  dialogue  is  followed  by  a 
long  soliloquy  by  Philolaches  which  gives  us  a  picture 
of  his  unsettled  frame  of  mind.  An  even  lengthier  scene 
depicts  his  passion  for  Philematium,  and  another  the 
dissolute  life  he  leads  with  her  and  some  merry  com- 
panions. It  is  only  at  line  348  that  the  exposition  really 
ends.  In  the  Curculio  the  plot  does  not  get  under  way 
until  after  the  return  of  the  parasite — that  is  to  say,  after 
more  than  two  hundred  lines.  There  is  the  same  slowness 
about  getting  started  in  the  first  part  of  the  Pseudolus, 
of  the  Asinaria,  of  the  Poenulus,  and  of  the  Bacchides. 
In  the  Menaechmi  the  first  mistaking  of  one  twin  for  the 
other  does  not  occur  until  after  line  275.  In  the  Adelphi 
the  moral  issue  of  the  play  is  formulated  early,  but  the 
real  dramatic  problem  is  not  indicated  until  much  later — 
until  after  Geta  has  denounced  Aeschinus  (299  et  seq.) 
and  Demea  has  grown  suspicious  about  Ctesipho's  be- 
haviour (355  et  seq.).      In  the  Trinummus  all  that  precedes 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  421 

Philto's  proposal  to  Lesbonicus  is  of  interest,  merely 
because  it  paves  the  way  for  what  is  to  follow,  and  it 
takes  up  fully  one  third  of  the  play.  The  comedies  whose 
plot  begins  almost  at  the  outset,  like  the  Andria,  the 
Ueauton  Timoroiimenos,  the  Mcrcator,  the  Epidicus,  the 
Phormio  and  the  recogyog,  are,  as  far  as  our  knowledge 
goes,  in  the  minority — and  they  probably  were  so  in  the 
sum  total  of  comic  plays. 

It  is  worth  noting  that,  in  this  slowness  in  coming  to 
the  point,  the  authors  of  the  via  merely  followed  the 
example  of  the  tragedians.  It  was  usual  in  Sophocles, 
and  the  rule  in  Euripides,  and  doubtless,  too,  in  the  works 
of  his  imitators  in  the  fourth  century,  for  the  scenes  which 
preceded  the  appearance  of  the  chorus  to  serve  merely 
as  expositions.  Aristotle  confirms  this  in  his  definition  of 
the  TiQoXoyoQ  '  juegog  olov  XQaywdiag  x6  nqo  xoqov  nagodov.^ 
Now,  the  scenes  in  question,  to  say  nothing  of  the  prologue 
itself,  might  be  rather  lengthy.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
Phoenician  Women  the  reLXooxoma  ^  covers  200  lines ; 
in  the  Helena  the  interview  between  Helen  and  Teucer 
occupies  177  lines,  and  in  the  Electra  the  conversation 
between  Electra  and  the  labourer,  Orestes'  soliloquy  and 
the  lamentations  of  Electra  extend  over  166  lines.  More- 
over, it  is  not  uncommon  in  tragedy  to  find  that  the 
exposition  includes  the  parodos  itself  and  one  or  several 
of  the  scenes  that  follow  it,  in  addition  to  the  scenes  that 
precede  it.  This  is  the  ease,  for  example,  in  Sophocles' 
Electra  and  in  the  Trachinians,  the  Ion,  the  Orestes,  the 
Helen,  the  Medea,  the  Bacchantes  and  the  Hippolytus. 

§3 

Some  Methods  used  to  make  the  Plot  Intelligible 

Once  the  audience  has  learned  from  the  opening  scenes 
what  the  starting-point  of  the  plot  is,  it  is  a  much  less 
delicate  task  to  make  them  understand  its  development 

1  Arist.,  Poet.,  XII.  2. 

*  Review  from  the  wall ;  a  part  of  the  third  book  of  the  J  Had  was  known 
by  this  naiiie.( — Tr.). 


422     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

as  it  proceeds.  Nevertheless,  there  arc  cases  where  the 
difficulties  which  beset  the  proper  opening  of  the  play 
recur  to  a  certain  degree.  This  happens,  in  the  first  place, 
when  new  characters  appear  upon  the  stage  for  the  first 
time ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  when  the  audience  is  to  be 
promptly  informed  of  what  is  supposed  to  have  taken 
place  behind  the  scenes.  Let  us  see  how  the  comic 
writers  get  over  these  difficulties. 

In  the  whole  of  Latin  comedy  ^  we  hardly  find  a  case 
in  which  the  appearance  upon  the  scene  of  an  actor  can 
have  disconcerted  the  audience  or  confused  it  to  any 
extent.  This  does  not,  of  course,  mean  that  it  was  always 
apparent  from  the  first  words  spoken  by  the  new-comers 
how  their  parts  and  their  concerns  were  connected  with 
those  of  the  actors  who  had  appeared  before  them.  Any 
one  who  does  not  know  the  prologue  of  the  Aulularia 
would  not  at  once  see  what  Megadorus  and  Eunomia 
have  to  do  with  Euelio,  and  would  have  to  wait  until 
nearly  the  conclusion  of  the  scene  before  grasping  it.  In 
the  Adelphi  the  relations  of  Sostrata  and  Canthara  to 
Aesehinus  do  not  become  apparent  until  several  sentences 
have  been  spoken.  But  as  soon  as  the  conversation 
begins  one  does  at  least  understand  in  what  relations  the 
persons  concerned  stand,  and  how  they  are  disposed  to- 
wards one  another ;  and  that  is  the  essential  thing.  Only 
in  two  or  three  scenes  of  such  parts  of  Latin  comedy  as 
have  survived  is  there  danger — or,  rather,  but  for  the 
prologus  argumentativus  there  would  be  danger — that 
uncertainty  or  misapprehension  about  the  identity  of 
new-comers  on  the  stage  may  last  too  long.  This  occurs 
in  the  Cistellaria,  when  Lampadio  gives  Phanostrata  an 
account  of  his  interview  with  the  aged  courtesan ;  in  the 
scene  of  the  Asinaria  in  which  the  impecunious  lover, 
whom  one  naturally  takes  for  Argyrippus,  whereas  he 
must    really    be    Diabolus,    is    driven    out   of    Cleareta's 

^  The  extant  fragments  of  the  original  Greek  plays  are  not  trustworthy 
material  in  this  connection. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  423 

house ;  in  the  scene  of  the  Aulularia  in  which  Strobikis, 
when  taking  up  his  post  of  observation  in  front  of  Mcga- 
dorus'  house,  does  not  tell  us  who  he  is  until  he  reaches 
the  end  of  a  rather  long  soliloquy.  But,  as  we  know,  the 
text  of  the  Cistellaria  is  very  much  mutilated.  In  the 
'Ovayog,  the  Greek  original  of  the  Asinaria,  the  driving 
out  of  Diabolus  was  perhaps  preceded  by  some  complaints 
uttered  by  Argyrippus,  who  made  himself  known  to  the 
audience  and  told  them  about  his  rival.  Possibly,  also, 
Lyeonides  came  upon  the  stage  in  the  first  part  of  the 
Greek  original  of  the  Aulularia,  and  even  if  Strobilus  did 
not  then  accompany  him,  his  words  sufficed  to  allow  one 
subsequently  to  guess  who  the  young  lover  was  who  had 
sent  Strobylus  as  his  emissary. 

Frequently  the  natural  development  of  the  plot,  unaided 
by  any  device,  and  without  any  special  precaution  being 
taken,  made  it  possible  to  identify  new  arrivals.  Many 
of  these  persons  when  they  came  upon  the  scene  were 
expected  both  by  the  other  actors  and  by  the  audience; 
as  for  example,  Theopropides  in  the  Mostellaria,  Demipho 
in  the  Mercator,  and  Cappadox  in  the  Curculio;  and  so 
on.  When  the  coming  of  a  certain  number  of  other  actors 
was  not  expected,  the  way  was  so  clearly  paved  for  it  in 
the  earlier  scenes  that  the  audience  knew  who  they  were 
as  soon  as  they  began  to  speak;  witness  Laches  and 
Sostrata  in  the  Ilecyra,  Philippa  in  the  Epidicus,  Sostrata 
in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos,  Lyco  and  Therapontigonus  ^ 
in  the  Curculio ;  and  so  on.  But  in  addition  to  this  paving 
of  the  way,  and  sometimes  concurrently  with  it,  the  comic 
writers  had  special  methods  for  introducing  new  characters 
which  I  ought  to  point  out. 

The  following,  a  heritage  of  fifth-century  drama,  was 
one  of  the  commonest  and  simplest.  As  a  new  actor 
came   upon   the    scene,  the   actors  who  were  already  on 

'  The  identification  of  certain  characters  was  made  easier  by  their 
costume  (soldiers,  panders,  slaves),  that  of  others  through  their  relation 
to  the  stage-sotting.  (Thus  when,  in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos,  Sostrata 
comes  out  of  Chromes'  house,  sho  can  hardly  bo  any  ono  but  his  wife.) 


424     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  stage  mentioned  his  name  and  introduced  him  to  the 
audience.  This  is  the  case,  for  example,  in  a  fragment 
of  the  recogyog.  Just  as  Daos,  the  trusted  slave  of  the 
young  hero's  parents,  is  about  to  appear,  Myrrhina  points 
him  out  to  Philinna  in  these  words  :  "A  truce  to  talk  ! 
Here  comes  Daos,  their  body-servant,  from  the  country  !  " 
There  is  hardly  a  play  by  Plautus  or  by  Terence  in  which 
this  device  is  not  used  repeatedly ;  in  some  of  their  plays, 
as  in  the  Andria  (excepting  in  the  parts  of  Charinus  and 
of  Byrria)  or  in  the  Mostellaria,  we  meet  with  it  almost 
constantly.  Elsewhere,  when  specific  introductions  are 
lacking,  announcements  of  some  ingenuity  are  made. 
It  appears  that  writers  of  New  Comedy  made  a  special 
point  of  making  some  reference  to  a  new-comer  as  shortly 
as  possible  before  he  came  upon  the  stage.  "  O,  how  much 
cause  have  I  to  wish  for  my  son's  return  !  "  says  Sostrata, 
somewhere  in  the  Hecyra ;  thereupon  she  goes  off  the  stage 
and  the  next  actor  to  come  on  is  none  other  than  this  son 
whose  presence  is  so  much  desired.  "What's  this?" 
asks  Daemones,  in  the  Rudens;  "  what  has  become  of  our 
slave,  Gripus,  who  went  fishing  before  daybreak?  .  .  ." 
He  devotes  a  few  sentences  to  finding  fault  with  such 
untimely  zeal,  and  then  goes  back  into  his  housie — where- 
upon Gripus  appears. 

Coincidences  of  this  sort  certainly  savour  of  conven- 
tionality ;  and  broadly  speaking,  one  may  say  that  actors 
in  the  via  display  an  excess  of  zeal  about  introducing 
themselves  and  about  announcing  one  another's  coming. 
Nevertheless,  this  does  not,  as  a  rule,  diminish  the  natural- 
ness of  the  dramatic  situations.  There  is  more  danger  of 
this  happening  in  some  of  the  passages  in  which  the  actors 
who  have  just  come  upon  the  scene  make  an  effort  them- 
selves to  acquaint  the  audience  with  their  identity.  These 
passages  are  frequently  soliloquies,  and  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  for  many  of  them  there  seems  to  be  a  justification, 
if  we  judge  them  by  the  rule  which  I  have  set  up  else- 
where. ^     For  example,  Chrysalus,  in  the  Bacchides,  tells 

1  Cf.  p.  417. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  425 

us  who  he  is  while  he  thanks  the  gods  for  having  brought 
him  back  to  Athens  safe  and  sound,  and  asks  them  to  let 
him  meet  Pistoclerus,  his  young  master's  friend,  as  soon 
as  possible;  Nicobulus  proclaims  his  identity  by  saying 
that  he  is  going  down  to  the  Piraeus  to  see  whether  Mnesi- 
lochus  has  arrived  there;  Mnesilochus  tells  us  who  he  is 
while  congratulating  himself  on  having  so  devoted  a  friend 
as  Pistoclerus,  and  while  he  is  bracing  himself  for  the 
impending  recognition ;  Cleomachus  does  as  much  while 
uttering  threats  against  his  rival.  In  all  these  and  other 
similar  cases,  the  persons  who  make  their  first  appearance 
upon  the  stage  introduce  themselves  to  the  audience 
merely  by  pursuing  the  course  of  their  own  thoughts. 
But  when  the  parasite  Cleomachus  declares  point  blank  : 
"  I  am  the  parasite  of  a  coxcomb,  of  a  good-for-nothing, 
of  this  soldier  who  has  brought  his  mistress  here  from 
Samos,"  1  we  have  to  deal  with  a  soliloquy  which  is  as 
undramatic  as  the  worst  explanatory  soliloquies.  How- 
ever, such  passages  are  very  infrequent  in  extant  comedies. 
It  is  by  means,  too,  of  soliloquies  that  comic  writers 
frequently  acquaint  the  audience  with  everything  that 
takes  place  behind  the  scenes.  Again  and  again  an  actor 
in  Plautus'  or  Terence's  plays  tells  us  where  he  is  going 
and  what  he  means  to  do,  as  he  is  about  to  go  off  the 
stage ;  on  returning,  he  tells  us  whence  he  comes  and  what 
he  has  seen  and  done.  As  long  as  he  does  this  while  under 
the  influence  of  a  strong  emotion  or  of  some  natural  pre- 
occupation, and  as  long  as  he  expresses  himself  in  pathetic 
words  that  fit  his  state  of  mind,  there  is  no  fault  to  jfind. 
Soliloquies  such  as  those  of  Onesimus,  in  lines  202  et  seq., 
399  et  seq.  of  the  'Ejiltqetiovxeq',  of  Charisius,  in  lines 
429  et  seq. ;  of  Lydus,  in  lines  308  et  seq.  of  the  Bacchides ; 
of  Aeschinus,  in  lines  610  et  seq.  of  the  Adelphi ;  of  Pam- 
philus,  in  lines  252  et  seq.  of  the  Andria,  are  as  natural 
as  any  soliloquies  can  be.  The  actors  do  not  review 
the  past  nor  anticipate  the  future  beyond  a  point  that 
is   warranted   by   their   momentary    emotions,    by    their 

1  Bacch.,  573-574. 


426     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

perplexity,  their  remorse,  their  indignation,  their  anxiety, 
or  their  spite.  If  they  give  a  detailed  account  of  certain 
occurrences  they  have  just  witnessed,  and  even  if  they 
repeat  certain  words  they  have  just  heard,  it  is  because 
the  circumstances  connected  with  those  occurrences  have 
made  a  deep  impression  on  them,  and  because  the  echo 
of  those  words  still  sounds,  as  it  were,  in  their  ears.  The 
general  character  of  their  speeches  is  not  narrative ;  it  is 
deliberative  or  impassioned. 

Unfortunately,  besides  such  soliloquies  as  these,  there 
are  others  which,  in  a  more  or  less  serious  way,  overstep 
the  limits  of  dramatic  probability.  In  the  Zajuia  Demeas 
explains  in  a  lengthy  soliloquy  how  he  was  led  to  suspect 
that  his  concubine's  child  is  the  offspring  of  his  son.  Of 
course,  one  can  understand  that  before  regarding  this  as 
a  certainty  he  should  wish  to  rehearse  the  incidents  that 
had  aroused  his  suspicion,  in  order  to  see  whether  his 
interpretation  of  them  was  correct.  But  what  need  is 
there  of  his  going  back  so  far,  and  giving  so  many  details  ? 
Some  of  his  remarks — the  parenthesis  in  lines  19-21, 
which  describes  the  respective  positions  of  cellar  and  stair- 
case, and  lines  21-23,  which  serve  to  introduce  Moschio's 
nurse — are  certainly  addressed  to  the  audience.  They 
are  characteristic  of  the  passage,  and  when  compared  with 
the  soliloquies  of  which  I  approved  above,  the  first  part 
of  Demeas'  soliloquy  affects  the  narrative  style  too  much. 
The  same  defect  is  noticeable  in  more  than  one  passage 
in  Latin  comedy  and  in  the  fragments.  After  Pamphilus, 
in  the  Hecyra,  has  by  chance  learned  of  Philumena's 
suspected  confinement,  he  gives  a  well-connected  and 
detailed  account  of  his  discovery — a  performance  requiring 
considerable  sang-froid  on  the  part  of  the  one  who  says 
that  he  is  so  distressed.  A  similar  misuse  of  the  narrative 
form  is  found  in  Dorias'  account  of  the  beginning  of  the 
quarrel  between  Thais  and  Thraso,^  and  when  Hegio  tells 
how  he  had  spent  his  time  from  the  moment  when  he  left 
the  stage  up  to  his  return  with  Aristophontes,^  or  when 

^  Eun.,  615  et  seq.  *  Capt.,  498  et  seq. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  427 

Euclio   comes    back    from    market,^   and    in    many   other 
instances. 

But  even  if  the  soliloquies  of  these  various  persons  have 
rather  too  much  of  the  narrative  form  about  them,  it  is 
not  at  all  improbable  that  the  occurrences  to  which  they 
refer  do,  for  the  moment,  occupy  the  thoughts  of  the 
soliloquisers.  Occasionally,  however,  even  this  sort  of 
verisimilitude  is  lacking,  in  substance  as  well  as  in  form, 
and  the  soliloquy  which  enlightens  us  about  the  progress 
of  the  plot  has  no  dramatic  fitness.  This  is  the  case  in 
lines  1041  et  seq.  of  the  Mostellaria,  when  Tranio  relates 
how  he  effected  the  escape  of  Philolaches  and  his  crew 
from  Thcopropides'  house ;  in  the  Eunuchus,  in  lines  840 
et  seq.,  when  Chaerea  explains  why  he  had  not  been  able 
to  change  his  clothes  at  his  friend's  house ;  in  the  Mercator, 
in  lines  499-500,  when  Lysimachus  declares  that  he  has 
just  bought  Pasicompsa  for  Demipho.  The  fragments  of 
Greek  originals  supply  several  examples  of  equally  im- 
probable soliloquies — for  instance,  the  remarks  which 
Polemo's  body-servant  Sosias  makes  in  two  passages  of 
the  JleQiKeiQOjuevr].  In  the  first  passage,  it  is  for  the 
audience's  sake  that  he  says  his  master  has  consump- 
tion and  has  sent  him  to  get  news.^  In  the  second  passage, 
he  says  that  he  has  been  sent  again,  on  some  pretext,  in 
order  to  watch  Glycera.^  It  must  be  admitted  that  many 
of  the  statements  which  I  am  criticising  are  very  short. 
Moreover,  a  speech  conceived  in  a  more  natural  spirit  is 
often  closely  and  immediately  connected  with  them. 
"  My  master  has  sent  me  back  with  his  cloak  and  sword, 
in  order  that  I  may  see  what  Glycera  is  doing,  and  go  and 
tell  him  about  it,"  explains  Sosias  in  lines  164-166.  The 
only  reason  for  making  this  remark  is  a  desire  to  enlighten 
the  audience ;  but  Sosias  goes  on,  "  I  would  gladly  tell 
him  that  I  caught  her  lover  in  her  house,  so  as  to  make  him 
jump  up  and  run,  were  it  not  that  I  am  heartily  sorry 
for  him,  poor  chap  !  "  That  is  entirely  in  keeping  with 
liis  role.    "  I  have  done  my  friend  and  neighbour  a  good 

1  AuL,  311  etaeq.  *  n<=piK.,  52  et  seq.  '  Ibid.,  164  et  seq. 


428     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

turn ;  I  have  purchased  these  goods  for  him,  as  he  asked 
me  to,"  says  Lysimachus,  rather  inopportunely,  and 
thereupon  immediately  addresses  these  words  to  Pasi- 
compsa  :  "As  you  belong  to  me,  follow  me ;  do  not  weep ; 
it  is  foolish  to  spoil  such  pretty  eyes,  etc."  These  animated 
words  efface  and  conceal  whatever  clumsiness  there  was 
in  his  earlier  statement.  Owing  to  their  brevity  and 
their  close  proximity  to  elements  of  better  alloy,  many  of 
these  "  notices  to  the  public  "  are  not  very  conspicuous, 
and  consequently  do  not  give  offence.  Nevertheless, 
considered  by  themselves,  they  are  stamped  with  the  mark 
of  convention. 

In  a  word,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  authors  of  the 
vea  made  excessive  use  of  narrative  soliloquy  in  the  plays 
themselves,  as  well  as  in  the  introductions.  Furthermore, 
it  is  not  only  in  the  scenes  which  serve  as  expositions  that 
they  violate  dramatic  fiction  and  frankly  address  the 
audience.  Evanthius  praises  Terence  because  his  actors 
"  never  speak  for  the  benefit  of  the  audience,  as  though 
they  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  plot."  ^  Plautus'  actors, 
on  the  contrary,  take  this  liberty  often,  and  at  any  point 
in  the  play.  We  now  know  which  of  the  two  poets  carried 
on  the  Attic  tradition,  for  here  and  there,  in  the  newly 
discovered  fragments  of  Menander,  we  find  the  vocative 
avSgeg,  which  no  doubt  indicates  an  apostrophe  to  the 
audience.^  This  vocative  does  not,  of  course,  prove  that 
the  author  had  no  regard  for  psychological  truth,  as  one 
can  see  by  reading  the  context;  but  it  does  prove 
that,  at  the  height  of  the  new  period,  the  greatest  poets 
never  completely  gave  up  the  unconventionality  and 
easy  freedom  of  manner  that  were  found  in  early 
comedy. 

Nevertheless,  it  was  not  in  the  school  of  ancient  comedy 
nor,  speaking  more  broadly,  in  the  school  of  the  authors 
of  the  fifth  century,  that  they  learned  to  use  narrative 
soliloquy  in  the  way  in  which  we  have  seen  them  use  it. 

1  Evanthius,  De  com.,  III.  8  (p.  66  Kaibel). 

2  'E-TTiTp.,  392;   2a^.,  114,  338.     Cf.  Men.,  fr.  24,  461,  636;  fr.  adesp.  104. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  429 

True,  in  Aristophanes,  hardly  any  part  of  the  plot  is 
supposed  to  take  place  behind  the  scenes.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  the  tragic  writers,  the  combats,  the  murders, 
and  the  suicides,  which  so  frequently  form  a  part  of  the 
story,  regularly  take  place  behind  the  scenes ;  but  they 
are  all  described  by  one  actor  to  another  on  the  stage. 
Are,  then,  the  dramatists  of  the  vea  from  this  point  of 
view  inferior  to  the  tragedians  ?  Is  it  fair  to  reproach  them 
with  lack  of  skill  and  with  carelessness  when  we  compare 
them  with  their  predecessors  ?  We  must  remember  that, 
in  tragedy,  the  account  of  the  occurrences  which  the 
audience  does  not  see  is  generally  given  by  characters 
introduced  ad  hoc,  by  messengers  (dyyeXoi),  who  do  not 
always  have  very  valid  reasons  for  coming  to  tell  their 
story.  Furthermore,  w^e  must  remember  that  this  story 
is  not  always  told  to  persons  who  are  entitled  to  hear  it — 
especially  when  it  is  told  to  the  chorus — and  that,  after 
having  done  away  with  the  chorus,  who,  in  many  cases, 
would  have  been  embarrassing  both  as  listeners  and 
witnesses.  New  Comedy  found  that,  in  other  cases,  it  had 
deprived  its  actors  of  a  kindly  disposed  listener.  These 
considerations  ought  to  make  us  somewhat  indulgent  in 
dealing  with  narrative  soliloquies.  Taken  all  in  all,  the 
story  of  more  than  one  ayyeXog  oversteps  the  bounds  of 
probability  quite  as  much  as  these  soliloquies  do. 

Moreover,  it  would  be  unfair  to  attribute  more  import- 
ance to  these  soliloquies  than  they  actually  possessed  in 
the  economy  of  the  works  of  the  vea.  But  less  objection- 
able methods  are  employed  in  comedy  as  well.  In  the 
first  place,  it  goes  without  saying  that  occasionally  one 
person  tells  another  what  he  has  just  seen  or  heard,  and 
there  is  no  denying  that,  as  a  rule,  there  is  good  reason  for 
his  doing  so.  Or  else,  a  parting  exhortation  made  by  an 
actor,  as  he  comes  upon  the  stage,  to  persons  whom  the 
audience  do  not  see,  or  a  few  sentences  of  conversation 
of  which  they  hear  only  the  conclusion,  suffice  to  inform 
them  about  what  has  happened  behind  the  scenes.  I 
have  discussed  these  devices,  which  are  quite  as  old  as 


430     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

narrative  soliloquy  itself,   in  the  course  of  Chapter  III. 
I  merely  refer  to  them  here. 

Just  as  it  is  necessary  to  acquaint  the  audience  with 
things  that  take  place,  unseen  by  them,  in  the  course  of 
the  play,  so  it  seems  to  me  desirable  to  spare  them  a  too 
lengthy  description  of  incidents  that  have  taken  place 
before  their  eyes,  and  also  a  too  detailed  announcement  of 
the  incidents  they  are  about  to  witness. 

As  regards  the  first  point,  the  practice  of  the  via  seems 
in  conformity  with  our  tastes.  I  find  only  one  or  two 
scenes  in  Plautus  and  in  Terence  in  which  one  actor  tells 
another  about  things  of  which  the  audience  is  sufficiently 
informed  :  a  scene  in  the  Eunuchus  in  which  Chaerea 
explains  to  Antipho  how  he  got  the  idea  of  disguising 
himself,^  and  a  scene  in  the  Trinummus  in  which  Callicles 
explains  to  Charmides  the  trick  of  the  false  messenger.^ 
The  first  of  these  repetitions  cannot  have  occurred  in  the 
Greek  play,^  and  it  was  so  easy  to  avoid  the  second 
that  the  poet  must  have  had  some  special  reason  for 
introducing  it.  Further  on,  I  shall  try  to  show  what  that 
reason  was.  Other  scenes,  like  that  between  Trachalio 
and  Plesidippus,  in  lines  1265  et  seq.  of  the  Riidens,  and 
that  between  Amphitryon  and  Sosia,  in  lines  551  et  seq. 
of  the  Amphitryon,  where  an  actor,  in  the  course  of  a 
dialogue,  reviews  things  that  have  taken  place  before  the 
play  begins,  are  not  entirely  unimpeachable,  but  at  least 
their  faults  do  not  consist  in  slowness  or  dullness.  The 
retrospective  explanations  for  which  one  actor  asks,  or 
might  reasonably  ask,  another,  but  which  might  risk 
appearing  tedious,  are  occasionally  left  out  of  a  scene 
owing  to  stage  conventions,  the  street  not  being  a  place 
in  which  those  concerned  could  undisturbedly  give  them 
or  hear  them.*  Or  else  they  are  systematically  avoided  : 
for  instance,  in  the  Phormio,  line  861   {omitto  proloqui  ; 

1  ^wn.,  562-576.  «  Trin.,  1137  et  seq. 

^  Because  in  it  the  sham  eunuch  was  not  speaking  to  any  one. 

*  'E7r<Tp.,  397-398;  Merc,  1005-1006;  Phorm.,  765;   Trin.,  1101-1102. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  481 

nam  nil  ad  hanc  rcrnst,  Antipho) ;  in  the  Mercator,  line  904 
{ut  inique  rogas) ;  in  the  Heauton  Timor oumenos,  hne  824 
[ipsa  re  experiherc) ;  in  the  Epidicus,  Hne  65G  {cetera  haec 
posterius  faxo  scibis,  uhi  erit  otium);  in  the  Pscudolus, 
lines  720-721  {horiim  causa  haec  agitur  spcctatorum  fahula  ; 
hi  sciunt,  qui  hie  adfucrunt ;  vohis  post  narravcro).  Pseu- 
dolus'  sally  humorously  expresses  the  real  purpose  of 
all  these  evasions.  We  must,  nevertheless,  admit  that, 
from  a  dramatic  point  of  view,  they  are  quite  permissible ; 
when  it  is  time  to  act,  words  are  out  of  season.  With 
equal  fitness  certain  actors  in  Latin  comedy  refuse  to 
divulge  their  plans.  "What  will  you  do?"  Pamphilus 
asks  Davus,  in  the  Andria.  Davus  replies,  "  I  am  afraid 
the  day  will  not  be  long  enough  for  my  plans  and,  believe 
me,  I  haven't  got  time  to  tell  you  of  them."  ^ 

The  opposite  course,  pursued  by  certain  persons  who 
announce  and  explain  in  advance  all  that  is  about  to 
happen,  deserves  our  attention  much  more.  In  lines  466 
et  seq.  of  the  Amphitryon,  Mercury,  after  having  got  rid 
of  Sosia,  gives  an  outline  in  advance  of  the  impending 
imbroglio.  Further  on,  in  lines  873  et  seq.,  even  Jupiter 
himself  deigns  to  resume  and  complete  this  information, 
and  when  he  bids  Sosia  go  to  invite  Blepharo,  he  adds, 
for  the  benefit  of  the  audience  :  "  Blepharo  will  have  to 
go  without  his  dinner,  and  will  be  in  a  ridiculous  fix  when 
I  take  Amphitryon  by  the  neck  and  drag  him  away  from 
here."  ^  Elsewhere,  tricks  that  are  to  be  played  before 
the  eyes  of  the  spectators  are  emphatically  and  minutely 
explained  in  advance.  In  the  first  part  of  the  Miles 
(Aidv/iiai)  Philocomasium  is  alternately  taken  for  her  twin 
sister  and  for  herself;  Palaestrio,  who  plays  the  part  of 
the  prologue,  informs  the  audience  of  this  double  role.^ 
Subsequently,  while  conversing  with  Periplecomenus, 
he  explains  the  fraud  they  are  planning,^  and  it  seems  as 
though  it  might  be  perpetrated  without  any  further 
notice  to  the  public;    and  yet,   before  the   sham  Dieea 

1  Andr.,  705-706;   Cf.  Heaut.,  335-336;   Phorm.,  566;   Pseud.,  387-388. 
*  Amph.,  952-953.        '  Miles,  prol.  150  et  seq.         *  Ibid.,  237  et  seq. 


432     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

appears,  Philocomasiuni  once  more  explains  point  by 
point  what  is  about  to  happen.^  Were  Sceledrus  not  so 
stupid,  this  extraordinary  coincidence  would  arouse  his 
suspicions.  In  the  second  part  of  the  same  play  CAXaCcov) 
Pyrgopolinices  is  to  be  made  to  believe  that  Acroteleutium 
is  his  neighbour's  wife,  and  that  she  is  enamoured  of  him. 
The  purpose  of  this  mystification  is  to  persuade  the 
soldier  to  dismiss  his  mistress,  who  is  to  make  room  for 
his  new  favourite.  Plcusicles,  disguised  as  a  sailor,  is  to 
appear  in  the  nick  of  time  to  reinstate  the  young  woman. 
This  plan,  which  can  be  stated  in  a  few  words,  is  not  at 
all  complicated,  but  the  author  develops  it  little  by  little, 
as  though  he  did  not  wish  to  subject  the  audience  to  too 
much  of  a  mental  strain.  It  is  at  the  eleventh  hour, 
when  the  time  for  action  has  almost  come,  that  Plcusicles 
receives  his  instructions,  hears  what  costume  he  is  to  wear, 
what  gestures  he  is  to  make,  and  what  he  is  to  say.^  It 
is  only  after  Pyrgopolinices  has  begun  to  nibble  at  the 
bait  that  the  first  reference  is  made  to  the  dismissal 
of  Philocomasium.^  In  short,  Palaestrio's  accomplices 
follow  him  without  apparently  knowing  where  they  are 
going;  and  this  is  certainly  surprising.  On  the  other 
hand,  before  the  first  move  is  made — that  is,  before  the 
amorous  advances,  which  Acroteleutium  is  to  feign,  take 
place,  and  in  order  to  ensure  their  success,  these  accom- 
plices are  given  most  detailed  instructions,  only  not  once, 
but  again  and  again,  without  any  apparent  fear  of  repeti- 
tion. To  begin  with,  Palaestrio  explains  his  plan  to 
Periplecomenus  when  he  asks  him  for  his  ring  and  comes 
to  him  in  search  of  helpmates.*  A  little  later  on,  Periple- 
comenus brings  in  the  two  women  whom  he  has  alread}^ 
instructed.  For  all  that,  Palaestrio  begins  to  coach 
Acroteleutium,^  and,  on  taking  leave  of  the  conspirators 
and  going  to  his  master,  he  repeats  the  essential  features 
of  the  plot,  though  there  is  little  need  of  his  doing  so.^ 
But  this  is  not  all;    just  before  he  sets  Milphidippa  at 

1  Miles,  380etseq.  *  Ibid.,  llTSetseq.  »  j^id.,  974  et  seq. 

*  Ibid.,  770  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  904  et  seq.  «  Ibid.,  930  et  seq. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  433 

loggerheads  with  PyrgopoHnices,  Palaestrio  repeats  in 
a  few  words  what  the  soldier  is  to  be  made  to  believe ;  ^ 
and  he  returns  to  the  subject  in  greater  detail  when 
Aeroteleutium  is  preparing  to  come  upon  the  scene. ^ 
Now,  Aeroteleutium  and  her  attendant  are  not  stupid 
women  who  need  to  have  the  same  thing  told  them  so  often. 
From  a  dramatic  point  of  view,  all  these  repetitions  are 
useless,  if  not  unnatural.  The  poet  felt  this — so  much  so, 
that  he  apologises  for  it  ^ — but  he  wished,  above  all,  to 
be  understood — understood  by  the  masses,  by  the  dovvexoi 
dxQoaTcu,  as  well  as  by  the  intelligent  part  of  the  audience, 
and  he  used  such  means  as  he  could.  A  similar  desire 
probably  inspired  a  passage  in  the  Trinummus,  of  which 
I  have  spoken  above — the  scene  in  which  Callicles  explains 
to  Charmides  Avho  the  sham  messenger  is,  and  why  he 
was  set  to  work.  Here  we  have  a  supplementary  retro- 
spective explanation  of  a  trick  that  has  already  been 
explained. 

This  same  desire  for  clearness,  which  in  certain  lengthy 
passages  appears  in  a  particularly  clumsy  form,  often 
leads  comic  writers  to  assign  explanatory  asides  to  their 
actors,  of  a  kind  that  serve  to  make  clear  the  meaning 
of  an  episode  and  to  forestall  embarrassing  mistakes. 
Palaestrionis  somniimi  7iarratur,  says  Palaestrio  in  line  386 
of  the  Miles,  while  Philocomasium,  who  has  been  coached 
by  him,  relates  the  dream  she  pretends  to  have  had. 
Several  times  this  shrewd  person  and  his  accomplice 
Milphidippa  declare,  ut  ludo,  ut  sublccto,  while  they  are 
maliciously  giving  Pyrgopolinices  extravagant  praise  and 
holding  out  alluring  promises  to  him.^  Similarly,  Parda- 
lisca  says,  in  lines  683  et  seq.  of  the  Casina,  in  the  scene 
where  she  tells  Lysidamus  that  the  young  girl  suffers 
from  acute  attacks  of  insanity :  Ludo  ego  hunc  facete  ; 
nam  quae  facta  dicci,  omnia  hide  falsa  dixi  ;  hera  atque 
kacc  dolum  ex  i^roxumo  hunc  protulcrunt,  ego  hunc  missa 

1  Miles,  1026  et  seq.  »  Ibid.,  1159etseq. 

3  Ibid.,  355,  881,  9U4,  914  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  1U6G,  1072. 

F  F 


484     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

sum  ludere.  In  lines  831-832  of  the  Menaechmi  Menaech- 
mus  Sosieles  informs  the  audience  that  he  is  about  to 
feign  insanity.  In  Hnes  662  et  seq.  of  the  Mostellaria 
Tranio  informs  them  that  he  is  preparing  to  tell  a  lie. 

Possibly,  other  details  ought  to  be  added  to  those  just 
mentioned.  In  Latin  comedy,  sentences  inserted  without 
any  special  intention  by  one  of  the  dramatis  personae 
occasionally  give  notice  of  what  is  about  to  occur.  Certain 
remarks  made  by  Hegio  in  the  Captivi,^  by  Daemones 
in  the  Rudens,^  by  Myrrhina  in  the  Hecyra,^  and  by  Davus 
in  the  Andria*  pave  the  way  for  the  avayvcoQtoEii;  which 
are  to  take  place  towards  the  close  of  those  plays.  In  such 
cases  as  these  the  forestalling  of  dramatic  incidents  does 
not  overstep  the  limits  of  naturalness,  and  deserves  nothing 
but  praise.  Elsewhere  it  is  not  free  from  conventionality. 
Some  of  the  comedies  of  the  new  period  contain  prophetic 
dreams.  As  we  know,  this  is  an  old  device ;  but  our  poets 
occasionally  made  rather  peculiar  use  of  it.  Contrary 
to  the  practice  of  tragedy,  the  account  of  Daemones' 
dream  (in  the  Rudens)  is  given  when  the  play  is  well 
advanced ;  ^  it  comes  as  a  surprise  after  what  has  been 
said  of  a  terrible  night,  during  which  the  dwellers  on  the 
shore  are  supposed  not  to  have  closed  an  eye.  Demipho's 
dream  is  related  in  great  detail  in  the  Mercator,  and  the 
allusions  found  in  it  are  so  forced  that  doubts  have  arisen 
as  to  whether  Philemon  can  have  been  the  author  of  the 
passage.®  In  my  opinion,  one  and  the  same  reason  accounts 
for  these  two  anomalies.  Both  Philemon  and  Diphilus 
wished  to  make  the  dream  serve  more  effectively  as  notice 
of  what  is  to  follow ;  and  that  is  why  the  former  placed 
the  dream  as  close  as  possible  to  the  occurrences  to  which 
it  refers,  and  the  latter  unduly  emphasised  the  similarity 
between  the  vision  and  reality. 

Thus  that  anxious  sort  of  condescension  which  implies 
considerable  contempt  for  the  audience,  and  which  led 
the  comic  poets  to  write  their  prologues,  manifests  itself 

1  Capt.,  759-761.        ^  ji^d.,  742-744.  '  Hec,  572-574. 

*  Andr.,  220-224.       ^  Rud.,  106,  593  et  seq.       «  Merc,  225  et  seq. 


EXTERNAL    STRUCTURE  435 

throughout  their  plots.  Even  at  the  close  of  their  plays 
we  find  traces  of  it ;  witness  lines  365  et  seq.  in  the  last 
scene  of  the  Ilecyra,  in  which  the  situation  at  the  end 
of  the  play  is  explained  as  clearly  and  as  explicitly  as 
was  the  situation  at  tlic  beginning  by  many  a  prologus 
argumeniativus. 

* 
*       * 

The  analysis  I  have  made  shows  that  the  technique 
used  by  writers  of  New  Comedy  was  not  very  strict  or 
always  satisfactory  from  the  point  of  view  of  modern 
taste.  In  more  than  one  respect  they  went  on  repeating 
the  defects  of  tragedy  and  of  earlier  comedy.  From  the 
latter  they  took  over  the  privilege  of  conversing  with  the 
audience,  and  from  the  former  the  introduction  of  pro- 
logues spoken  by  gods,  while  they  occasionally  substi- 
tuted narrative  soliloquies  for  the  stories  told  by  ayyeloi. 
Were  I  asked  to  point  out  what  more  particularly  dis- 
tinguished New  Comedy  from  the  earlier  dramatic  styles, 
as  far  as  details  of  composition  are  concerned,  I  should 
mention,  in  the  first  place,  the  speeches  that  are  addressed 
to  actors  who  are  off  the  stage,  the  conversations  that  are 
supposed  to  have  been  begun  behind  the  scenes  and  which 
get  into  full  swing  as  soon  as  the  actors  are  on  the  stage, 
and,  above  all,  the  frequent  asides,  and  the  very  great 
number  of  soliloquies.  Mention  of  the  great  frequency 
of  soliloquies  in  the  works  of  the  via  was  incidentally 
made  at  the  close  of  the  preceding  chapter,  and  it  was 
accounted  for  by  the  practical  disappearance  of  the  chorus  ; 
but  I  think  it  will  serve  a  good  purpose  to  call  special 
attention  to  it  once  more.  Whether  properly  or  im- 
properly introduced,  whether  emotional  or  narrative, 
soliloquies,  both  in  Plautus  and  Terence,  play  a  consider- 
able part.  Leo  has  made  a  list  of  them  in  his  interesting 
monograph,  Der  Monolog  im  Drama.  Reference  to  this 
work  will  show  that  a  single  comedy  ordinarily  contains 
more  than  ten  soliloquies,  and  sometimes  twenty,  or  even 
more.     In  such  a  play  as  the  Aidularia,   long  passages 


486     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

consist  almost  exclusively  of  successive  soliloquies.  A 
series  of  these  soliloquies  is  not  a  rare  thing,  and  two 
successive  soliloquies  frequently  come  before  a  dialogue, 
each  actor  talking  to  himself  before  discovering  the  presence 
of  the  other  actor,  or  before  making  up  his  mind  to  address 
him.  Like  the  disappearance  of  the  chorus  with  which 
it  is  connected,  this  frequent  use  of  soliloquy  must  date 
from  the  middle  period.  The  Persa  contains  no  less  than 
twelve  soliloquies,  and  in  two  passages  we  find  two 
soliloquies  following  immediately  upon  one  another. 


PART   III 

PURPOSE    OF    NEW    COMEDY 
AND    THE    CAUSES    OF    ITS     SUCCESS 


CHAPTER  I 

DIDACTIC  PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE  OF 
NEW  COMEDY 

I  HAVE  analysed  the  contents  of  the  works  of  the  vea, 
and  I  have  given  an  idea  of  their  dramatic  structure. 
My  work  would  be  incomplete  were  I  not,  in  the  third 
place,  to  inquire  into  the  aims  of  the  chief  representatives 
of  this  style,  and  to  find  out  what  led  them  to  write,  and 
to  what  they  owed  their  success ;  in  other  words,  did  I  not 
endeavour  to  make  the  reader  acquainted  with  the  spirit 
of  New  Comedy,  as  well  as  with  its  subject-matter  and 
its  form. 

§1 
Plays  with  a  Thesis  and  Moral  Precepts 

In  the  fifth  century  Aristophanes  did  not  think  that 
his  mission  was  fulfilled  the  moment  he  had  amused  his 
audience.  Each  of  his  plays  sought  to  influence  either 
their  conduct  or  their  opinions,  and  to  inspire  love  for 
one  thing  or  dislike  for  another;  in  a  word,  each  of  his 
plays  contained  a  political,  social,  or  literary  thesis.  Is 
this  also  the  case  at  the  time  of  the  vea?  Or  rather — for 
everybody  knows  in  advance  that  this  is  no  longer  the 
case — to  what  extent  does  the  early  spirit  survive  ?  To 
what  extent  does  New  Comedy  still  seek  to  instruct  ? 

It  takes  little  interest  in  political  questions.  As  I  have 
said  in  a  previous  chapter,  comic  writers  still  occasionally 
attack  statesmen,  princes  and  important  people,  but  they 
do  so  solely  for  the  pleasure  of  abusing  them  or,  at  most, 
in  a  passing  burst  of  anger  or  of  patriotism,  but  not  with 
the  intention  of  recommending  or  discouraging  a  certain 
line  of  conduct.  Fragments  that  go  beyond  personal 
satire  are  extremely  rare.  The  most  interesting  of  them 
are  fragment  71  of  Philemon's  JIvqqoq  and  fragment  5  of 

Apollodorus  of  Carystus.     In  the  former  a  peasant  lauds 

439 


440     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  benefits  of  peace,  which,  he  says  "  gives  us  weddings, 
feasts,  parents,  children,  friends,  wealth,  health,  bread, 
wine  and  pleasure."  The  second  fragment  deals  with  the 
same  theme,  but  treats  it  more  fancifully.  But  these 
statements,  in  which  a  rather  insipid  Utopia  is  suggested, 
are  only  faint  echoes  of  Aristophanes'  glowing  pleas  in 
favour  of  peace.  I  may  add  that  the  title  of  the  play 
to  which  they  belong,  rQa/j.juaTeidiajtoi6g,  or  The  Manu- 
facturer of  Writing  Tablets,  in  no  way  suggests  politics. 
More  suggestive  titles  are  occasionally  met  with  in  the 
comedies  of  the  jneor] ;  for  instance,  there  is  Antiphanes' 
0do6')]^aiog.  At  the  time  of  the  via  such  titles  had  almost 
entirely  disappeared.^ 

As  far  as  social  problems  are  concerned,  there  is  one  to 
which  Menander,  at  least,  appears  to  have  paid  attention — 
the  problem  of  education.  Two  of  the  plays  which  Terence 
imitated,  the  Adelphi  and  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos,  may 
be  regarded  as  "  Schools  for  Fathers,"  and  in  one  respect 
they  well  deserve  this  name,  on  account  of  the  abundance 
of  judicious  precepts  which  they  contain.  Nevertheless, 
considered  as  a  whole,  they  are  not  didactic  works,  for 
neither  of  them  clearly  and  unreservedly  proposes  a  fixed 
system  that  is  to  serve  as  a  model  to  the  audience.  In 
the  greater  part  of  these  two  plays  Micio  and  Chremes 
are  represented  as  wise  men.  But,  for  all  that,  the  former 
is  deceived  by  his  pupil,  no  less  than  Demea  is  deceived 
by  his.  As  for  the  latter,  although  he  is  a  learned  theoreti- 
cian and  a  glib  counsellor,  he  is,  in  point  of  fact,  no  cleverer 
than  Menedemus.  The  fact  that  his  son  Clitipho  does  not 
turn  his  back  upon  him,  as  Clinia  does  upon  his  father,  is 
not  due  to  a  better  use  of  parental  authority,  but  much 
more  to  the  circumstance  that  that  young  man  is  less 
determined  and  less  high  minded.  Indeed,  Micio  and 
Chremes  misjudge  the  situation,   and  end  by  appearing 

^  The  *i\o\o/cw>'  by  Stephanus — the  date  of  which  is,  by  the  way, 
uncertain  —  probably  ridiculed  the  Laconomania  of  certain  Athenians, 
which  had  no  more  poUtical  significance  than  the  Anglomania  of  many  a 
Frenchman. 


PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE    441 

ridiculous;  so  that,  did  we  seek  for  the  moral  of  a  play 
only  at  its  conclusion,  we  should  have  to  infer  that  it 
was  Menander's  intention  to  scoff  at  the  new  methods  of 
education.  Or  else,  if  we  include  all  the  episodes  of 
the  plot  in  our  survey,  without,  however,  looking  into 
the  matter  more  deeply,  we  should  have  to  say  that  the 
author  professes  complete  scepticism  regarding  pedagogy. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  is  not  the  case.  I  am  convinced 
that  the  ideas  which  Micio  and  Chremes  express  were 
approved  by  Menander.  But  by  attributing  them  to 
persons  who  are  not  able  to  make  good  practical  use  of 
them,  the  poet  made  his  own  views  less  manifest.  He 
played  the  part  of  a  comic  writer  and  not  that  of  a 
moralist.  The  moral  that  is  to  be  found  in  his  writing  has 
no  conspicuous  place  in  the  plot ;  he  hid  it  intentionally. 

As  regards  morality  in  the  individual,  comedy  would 
have  had  definitely  to  make  a  point  of  not  driving  home 
its  lessons  as  sharply  as  real  life  does,  if  it  was  to  avoid 
occasionally  showing  how  sin,  as  the  saying  is,  brings  its 
own  punishment,  and  makes  people  the  victims  of  their 
own  transgressions.  In  one  of  the  closing  scenes  of  the 
' EmrQenovTEg  Onesimus  informs  Smicrines  that  the  gods 
are  not  responsible  for  the  happiness  or  for  the  unhappi- 
ness  of  mankind.  "  To  each  of  us  they  have  given  a 
character  that  fits  him  to  be  master  of  his  fate.  One 
man  makes  bad  use  of  it  :  his  character  is  his  undoing. 
For  another  it  is  his  salvation;"  and  so  on.  The  truth 
of  this  remark,  which  is  repeated  several  times  in  the 
writings  of  the  comic  poets,  is  shown  again  and  again  in 
their  plays,  but,  as  a  rule,  they  leave  it  to  the  audience 
to  discover  it,  or,  if  they  point  it  out  themselves,  they 
do  so  in  a  cursory  and  general  way.  But  to  make  a 
didactic  purpose  evident  more  than  a  casual  word  is 
required.  For  example,  in  the  course  of  a  single  play  we 
ought  to  see  how  a  person  suffers  as  a  consequence  of 
some  sin,  and  then,  after  being  reformed,  is  made  happy 
by  a  corresponding  virtue ;  or  else  how  one  of  two  persons 
whose  conduct  is  directly  the  opposite  of  that  of  the  other 


442     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

is  punished,  while  the  other  person  is  rewarded.  Did  the 
v^a  exhibit  this  moral  process  at  work  ?  The  almost  com- 
plete disappearance  of  "  character  plays  "  precludes  our 
giving  a  decisive  answer.  At  any  rate,  what  remains  shows 
us  nothing  of  the  kind.  We  have  already  seen  that 
Dcmca's  dygoixia  and  Mieio's  urbanity  are  qualities  each 
counterbalanced  by  their  corresponding  defects.  Towards 
the  close  of  the  Adelphi  Demea  examines  his  conscience,  and 
seems  to  be  on  the  point  of  changing  his  attitude.^  But  I 
cannot  think  he  is  sincere  about  his  conversion  when  I 
see  how  he  makes  fun  of  Micio  and  pays  him  with  his 
own  coin,  2  and,  above  all,  when  I  hear  him  end  the 
comedy  with  the  following  words  :  "  But  if  you  choose 
rather,  in  points  where  your  youthful  eyes  cannot  see  far, 
where  your  desires  are  stronger  and  your  consideration 
inadequate,  to  have  one  to  reprove  and  correct  you  and 
to  indulge  you  when  it  is  right,  here  am  I  to  do  it  for  you."  ^ 
Demea,  swayed  by  a  lively  scene  of  discomfiture,  is  be- 
ginning to  be  assailed  by  doubt,  or  rather,  he  suffers  from  a 
momentary  weariness.  He  bitterly  points  out  what  seems 
to  him  to  be  an  injustice  and  a  folly,  but  this  does  not 
mean  that  he  condemns  his  past  conduct,  nor  that  he 
becomes  a  convert  to  other  principles,  nor,  above  all,  that 
his  supposed  conversion  is  set  up  as  an  example.  In  the 
last  part  of  the  Aulularia  Euclio  likewise  reviews  his  past 
troubles,  and  congratulates  himself  on  the  change  that 
has  taken  place.*  This  change,  however,  is  by  no  means 
a  permanent  reform.  In  the  first  place,  Euclio  does  not 
willingly  give  up  his  treasure ;  it  is  taken  from  him.  And 
then,  even  when  he  bears  his  misfortune  courageously 
and  congratulates  himself  on  being  rid  of  a  source  of 
worry,  he  does  not  necessarily  renounce  the  faults  of 
his  character;  he  may  continue  to  be  suspicious,  grumb- 
ling and  avaricious,  but  merely  has  one  reason  less  to 
be  stingy,  to  grumble  and  to  be  suspicious. 

Thus  we  see  there  were  very  few,  or  no  plays  with  a 

1  Ad.,  859  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  958. 

3  Ibid.,  992  et  seq.  *  AuL,  fr.  III.  and  IV. 


PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE    443 

thesis,  and  very  few,  or  no  plays  which,  as  a  whole, 
aimed  at  proving  anything.  But  though  such  an  aim 
did  not  pervade  entire  plays,  certain  details  may  have 
been  introduced  with  a  view  to  instruct  the  public,  and 
certain  episodes  may  have  been  invented  for  the  same 
purpose.  Thus,  besides  examining  the  plots,  we  must  con- 
sider the  dissertations,  the  moral,  social,  or  philosophical 
maxims  which  are  uttered  by  the  characters. 

A  glance  at  Kock's  collection  of  Fragmenta  will  promptly 
show  that  there  is  a  great  abundance  of  passages  of  this 
sort.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  a  special  reason  for 
this  :  many  of  these  passages  have  been  preserved  by 
Stobaeus  in  a  collection  of  excerpts  which  he  intended  to 
use  in  educating  his  son.  Stobaeus,  however,  did  not 
think  of  attributing  these  maxims  to  any  special  authors 
of  the  via,  and,  at  all  events,  it  is  only  as  regards  the 
proportion  of  moralising  contained  in  the  works  of  the 
comic  poets  that  he  can  mislead  us.  Latin  imitators  and 
the  long  passages  from  the  original  plays  that  have  been 
published  recently,  supply  fuller  evidence  and  give  us 
more  trustworthy  information. 

Here,  we  fairly  often  find  an  actor  giving  himself  or  v" 
others  advice  either  seriously  or  by  way  of  a  joke.  Let 
us  look  more  particularly  at  the  passages  in  which 
the  means  of  getting  into  a  certain  social  position,  or 
into  some  other  specified  situation,  are  stated  at  length. 
Scapha,  Astaphium,  Cleareta,  the  mother  of  Gymnasium —  . 
all  make  love  and  being  loved  their  special  business.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  Eunuchus,  Gnatho,  like  Struthias 
in  the  Kola^,  expounds  the  theory  of  the  flatterer's 
profession.  In  the  Aulularia,  the  Mostellaria,  and  the 
Menaechmi  slaves  explain  their  duties  and  how  to  arrange 
matters  in  order  to  live  in  bondage  without  suffering  too 
much.  These  various  passages  are  more  didactic  in  form 
than  in  purpose.  There  were  very  few  people  in  the 
audience  at  a  Greek  theatre  who  could  profit  by  the 
wisdom  of  a  Strobilus,  a  Phaniscus,  a  Mcssenio,  or  of  any 


444     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

other  teachers  of  how  slaves  should  behave.  As  for  the 
speeches  of  Gnatho  and  of  Scapha,  the  poets  certainly 
did  not  intend  that  they  should  call  into  life  a  new  crop 
of  clever  exploiters  or  of  wheedling  women.  If  these 
speeches  were  meant  to  point  any  moral,  it  was  to  urge 
the  eventual  victims  of  those  unscrupulous  persons  to  be 
more  wide-awake  and  distrustful. 

More  frequent  than  these  theories,  and  also  more  calcu- 
lated to  edify  the  public,  were  moral  maxims.  Some  of 
them  are  found  in  the  extant  parts  of  Greek  plays.  In 
the  Kola^,  lines  54  et  seq.,  Pheidias'  slave  warns  him 
against  the  pernicious  brood  of  flatterers.  Here  the 
speaker  is  a  pedagogue  and  his  remarks  are  addressed 
to  his  TQocpijjLOQ.^  Hence  his  didactic  tone  is  peculiarly 
appropriate.  But  when  Daos,  in  the  Fecogyog,  speaks  to 
the  matron  Myrrhina,  he  is  hardly  less  sententious  :  "  You 
will  give  up  struggling  against  poverty,  that  odious 
monster  who  is  deaf  to  your  words.  For  one  must  either 
be  rich  like  our  neighbour,  or  else  live  where  one  has 
not  so  many  witnesses  of  one's  wretchedness ;  for  this  the 
country  and  solitude  are  desirable."  ^  At  the  beginning 
of  the  ' EniTQeTiovTsg  Syriscus  preaches  human  solidarity 
to  Smicrines,  and  reminds  him  that,  whenever  they  get 
a  chance  to  do  so,  it  is  the  duty  of  all  good  people  to  see 
that  justice  triumphs.^  Towards  the  end  of  this  comedy 
Onesimus  gives  this  crabbed  person  a  lecture  on  the 
conduct  of  terrestrial  affairs,  on  the  indifference  of  the 
gods,  and  on  man's  responsibility.*  In  the  play  of  which 
Jouguet  has  edited  the  fragments,  the  young  man  who 
thinks  he  has  been  betrayed  also  takes  occasion  to  philo- 
sophise about  the  shamelessness  of  false  friends.  One  can 
easily  find  similar  tirades  and  remarks  in  Plautus  and  in 
Terence.  Such  of  Plautus'  plays  as  are  imitations  of 
Philemon's  comedies  contain  the  greatest  number.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  Mostellaria  Philolaches  gives  himself  up 
v/       to  a  lengthy  scrutiny  of  his  conscience,  in  the  course  of 

1  Pupil.(— Tr.).  "  r6a.p7.,  77et8eq. 

^  'EiriTp.,  15  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  486  et  seq. 


PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE    445 

which  he  depicts  the  demorahsing  influence  of  laziness  and 
of  pleasure.  In  the  Mercator,  Hues  18  ^^  seq.,  we  find  a 
dissertation  about  the  effects  of  love ;  in  lines  547  ct  scq. 
reflections  about  the  use  one  should  make  of  the  various 
periods  of  life ;  in  lines  649  et  seq.  an  excursus  on  the 
idea  that  it  is  useless  for  a  man  to  seek  escape  from  his 
sorrow  by  changing  his  abode,  for  "  his  sorrow  mounts 
the  crupper  and  gallops  along  with  him;  "  in  lines  817  et 
seq.  remarks  about  the  injustice  of  the  laws  to  women, 
and  a  programme  of  reform  such  as  is  frequently  found 
in  Euripides;  and  finally,  in  the  last  scene,  lines  969-970, 
984,  etc.,  Eutychus  deluges  the  unfortunate  Demipho  with 
a  flood  of  maxims.  What  shall  we  say  of  the  Trinummus, 
the  third  play  that  Plautus  borrowed  from  Philemon? 
Almost  from  beginning  to  end  it  is  a  veritable  collection 
of  homilies  and  meditations.  In  lines  23  et  seq.  the  aged 
Megaronides  holds  forth  on  reprehensible  weakness  towards 
one's  friends ;  in  lines  199  et  seq.  he  speaks  of  malicious 
gossips;  in  lines  223-275  young  Lysiteles  inveighs  against 
the  dangers  of  love,  which,  by  the  way,  that  precocious 
preacher  knows  only  by  hearsay ;  in  lines  280  et  seq.  the 
aged  Philto  speaks  of  the  corruption  of  the  age;  in  lines 
667  et  seq.  young  Lysiteles,  whom  I  have  already  men- 
tioned, still  virtuous  and  still  incompetent,  speaks  about 
love;  and  in  one  of  the  last  scenes  the  slave  Stasimus 
attacks  the  perverseness  of  modern  habits.  In  this  list  I 
have  included  only  soliloquies  and  uninterrupted  tirades. 
But  even  the  dialogues  are  not  secure  against  maxims. 
Witness  the  conversation  between  Philto  and  Lysiteles,  in 
lines  324  et  seq.  I  like  to  think  that  Philemon  rarely 
indulged  his  taste  for  philosophising  so  much  as  in  the 
Trinummus,  and  that  this  predilection  was  less  exaggerated 
in  the  other  poets  of  the  vea.  But  traces  of  it  are  found 
nearly  everywhere.  In  the  second  part  of  the  Miles 
Gloriosus,  lines  627  et  seq.,  Periplccomenus  praises,  at 
considerable  length,  the  life  he  has  chosen — the  life  of 
a  careless,  cheerful,  accommodating  and  companionable 
bachelor.     It    was    probably    in    Mcnander's    works    that 


446     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

Plautus  found  the  model  for  Megadorus'  speech  about 
women's  extravagance  and  the  disadvantages  of  a  dowry 
in  hues  478  et  seq.  of  the  Aulularia.  Menander  was  also 
the  model  for  Mnesilochus'  remarks  about  friendship  and 
gratitude,  in  lines  385  et  seq.  of  the  Bacchides;  for  the 
pedagogue  Lydus,  who,  after  a  lapse  of  a  hundred  years, 
takes  up  anew  a  theme  of  Aristophanes'  Clouds,  and 
replies  to  a  panegyric  on  the  old  style  of  education  with 
a  satire  on  modern  education ;  for  Pistoclerus  and  Mnesi- 
lochus, when  between  them  they  draw  a  picture  of  the 
false  friend  who  is  officious  in  his  protestations  but 
unable  to  render  any  service ;  and  so  forth.  In  Terence's 
adaptations  the  Greek  authors  appear  to  be  less  prone 
to  the  habit  of  philosophising;  but  this  may  be  due  to 
Terence  himself.  A  comparison  of  the  Latin  comedies 
with  the  fragments  of  the  original  plays  shows,  in  certain 
cases,  clear  traces  of  the  simplification  and  abridgment 
to  which  Terence  subjected  them.  For  instance,  among 
the  fragments  of  the  AdeX(poi  there  are  two  sententious 
bits,  Nos.  4  and  5,  to  which  nothing  in  the  Adelphi 
corresponds. 

Thus  w^e  see  that  New  Comedy  was,  in  a  general  way, 
quite  disposed  to  be  didactic  and  sententious,  and  herein 
we  again  find  a  confirmation  of  its  kinship  •with  the 
tragedies  of  Euripides. 

We  must  not,  however,  expect  that  the  lessons  conveyed 
in  it  should  be,  as  a  rule,  conspicuously  dignified  or  novel. 
We  do,  of  course,  find  some  characters  who  were  above 
the  ordinary  in  point  of  intellect  and  morals,  such  as  the 
philosophers,  the  disciples  of  philosophers,  the  pedagogues 
who  had  a  smattering  of  philosophy  and  were  eager  to 
display  their  knowledge ;  or  else  certain  eccentric  charac- 
ters, fault-finding  and  fantastic  spirits.  But  such  persons 
were  the  exception.  The  majority  of  the  characters  w^ere 
quite  simple  and  respectable  people,  good  citizens,  common 
men  of  the  people,  to  whom,  in  most  cases,  other  than 
commonplace  views  could  not  be  attributed  without 
violating  dramatic  probability.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 


PURPOSE    AND    MORA.L    VALUE        447 

fragments  and  the  Latin  imitations  generally  contain 
adages  that  are  as  old  as  Greek  thought,  and  precepts 
whose  wisdom  is  utterly  commonplace.  To  be  prepared 
for  all  the  pranks  of  fortune,  to  bear  them  with  courage 
and  resignation ;  not  to  take  things  too  much  to  heart ; 
to  avoid  tears,  which  have  never  cured  anything ;  not  to 
ask  more  of  life  than  it  can  offer;  to  be  satisfied  if  one's 
life  contains  more  good  than  evil ;  to  find  consolation  for 
distress  in  observing  the  distress  of  one's  neighbour;  to 
consider  a  true  friend  as  one  of  the  rarest  possessions ; 
to  be  prepared  for  m5,n's  ingratitude;  to  recognise  the 
supreme  power  of  money;  not  to  disparage  one's  self;  to 
be  temperate  in  all  things ;  not  to  act  under  the  influence 
of  anger ;  to  distrust  flatterers ;  to  avoid  bad  counsellors 
and  bad  company;  to  fear  calumny;  to  be  on  one's  guard 
against  flatterers  and  slanderers ;  not  to  be  deceived  by 
assumed  modesty ;  to  have  the  courage  to  reprimand  one's 
friends  when  occasion  offers ;  not  to  imagine  that  anything 
can  be  done  without  an  effort,  nor  that  a  thing  begun  is 
a  thing  done ;  to  help  fortune ;  never  to  put  off  things 
which  have  been  entrusted  to  one ;  to  foresee  the  probable 
consequences  of  one's  acts  and  to  prepare  for  them  in 
advance ;  not  to  condemn  one's  neighbour  before  examin- 
ing one's  self;  to  know  that  a  loan  to  a  friend  is  a  gift, 
and  that,  as  a  rule,  he  who  borrowed  yesterday  is  an 
enemy  to-morrow;  not  to  associate  with  people  of  higher 
station  than  one's  own ;  if  one  is  poor,  to  live  away  from 
the  wealthy,  and  preferably  in  the  country,  in  order  to 
avoid  suffering  by  comparing  one's  lot  with  theirs ;  to 
prefer  to  call  forth  envy  rather  than  pity;  not  to  become 
too  much  attached  to  earthly  goods,  and  to  remember 
that  they  are  transient;  to  prefer  a  tranquil  competence 
to  anxious  opulence ;  to  respect  one's  parents,  to  fear 
opposing  them  and,  in  case  of  need,  to  disarm  them  through 
gentleness  and  persuasion;  when  one  desires  to  marry,  to 
consider  the  beauty  and  the  character  of  the  girl  rather 
than  her  dowry;  not  to  become  engaged  or  married  to  a 
girl  against  one's  wish;  to  live  according  to  one's  age, 


448     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

not  to  play  the  young  man  when  one's  hair  is  white; 
for  tlic  father  of  a  family,  not  to  give  his  children  the 
whip-hand  by  telling  them  of  his  former  foibles,  nor  to 
let  them  discover  that,  in  order  to  forestall  a  rash  deed 
on  their  part,  he  will  put  up  with  all  their  whims ;  for  a 
woman  under  the  control  of  a  husband,  to  bear  with  the 
pranks  of  her  lord  and  master,  to  be  satisfied  if  she  receives 
enough  from  him  to  live  at  ease  in  her  household,  to 
remain  at  home,  not  to  give  occasion  for  gossip;  for  one 
who  has  many  servants,  to  hope  that  they  may  fall  out, 
so  that  it  will  be  all  the  easier  to  keep  them  under  control ; 
and  so  on.  Such  precepts  as  these  certainly  did  not  teach 
the  spectators  much ;  many  of  them  did  not  even  aim  at 
making  them  either  better  or  wiser.  They  were  merely 
statements  of  experience — every  one's  experience — rather 
than  precepts. 

But  occasionally  it  does  happen  that  comic  writers, 
influenced  by  the  great  thinkers  of  their  age,  or  as  a 
result  of  their  own  genius,  rise  to  conceptions  that  are 
less  commonplace.  We  know  how  many  schools  of  philo- 
sophy flourished  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  century  and 
the  beginning  of  the  third.  With  the  probable  exception 
of  Menander,  the  representatives  of  the  via  were  appar- 
ently not  men  of  very  great  culture,  nor  fully  acquainted 
with  the  various  systems,  nor  disciples  of  any  one  of 
them,  any  more  than  their  predecessors  of  the  early  and 
middle  period  had  been.  What  they  sought  for  in  the 
lives  of  philosophers  and  in  their  ideas  was,  above  all,  a 
chance  for  raising  a  laugh,  and  not  material  that  would 
serve  as  instruction ;  and  what  they  say  about  a  doctrine 
is  often  not  more  than  the  majority  of  their  contem- 
poraries must  have  known.  Every  now  and  then,  how- 
ever, they  do  seem  consciously  and  intentionally  to  have 
acted  the  part  of  popular  instructor.  This  is,  for  example, 
the  case  at  the  end  of  the  " EnixQEnovTEQ,  when  Onesimus 
says  to  Smicrines  that  the  gods  have  no  care  for  men. 
Here,  there  can  hardly  be  a  doubt  that  Menander  consti- 
tuted himself  the  interpreter  of  Epicurus.     Such  cases  are 


PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE    449 

rare.^  But,  even  when  it  did  not  so  evidently  reproduce 
the  doctrines  of  a  particular  school,  comedy  was  able  to 
do  its  share  in  making  current  a  new  frame  of  mind,  new 
theories  and  new  views ;  and  I  believe  that  it  did  so. 

One  of  these  frames  of  mind  is  somewhat  sombre.  It 
consists  in  a  form  of  melancholy,  born  of  the  feeling  that 
man  is  frail  and  the  morrow  uncertain.  The  life  of  man 
is  ephemeral ;  at  any  moment  something — a  chance  meet- 
ing, a  glance  at  the  tombs  that  line  the  road — gives  him 
a  foretaste,  as  it  were,  of  death. ^  And  then,  what  unavoid- 
able evils,  what  disasters  within  the  limits  of  this  brief 
existence  !  Man  must  submit  to  the  law  of  labour.^  If, 
at  least,  man's  efforts  and  good  qualities  were  sure  of  a 
reward  !  But  no,  fortune  is  capricious  and  unjust.  "  You 
are  a  man,"  says  Menander;  "  which  amounts  to  saying 
that  there  is  no  creature  that  can  by  more  rapid  changes 
of  fortune  be  exalted  in  order  to  be  subsequently  abased  "  ;  "* 
and  elsewhere  :  "  If  one  of  the  gods  came  to  look  for  me, 
and  said  :  '  Crito,  after  your  death,  you  will  begin  a  new 
life;  you  shall  be  whatever  you  choose — a  dog,  a  sheep, 
a  goat,  a  man  or  a  horse ;  for  you  must  live  twice,  that  is 
the  order  of  destiny ;  but  choose  as  you  like ' — I  think  I 
should  hasten  to  reply,  '  Rather  anything — make  anything 
of  me  rather  than  a  man.  For  he  is  the  only  creature 
who  is  unjustly  happy  or  unhappy.  A  good  horse  is  the 
object  of  more  care  than  the  inferior  one;  if  you  are  a 
good  dog  you  are  respected  much  more  highly  than  a  bad 
dog ;  a  lusty  cock  is  fed  quite  differently  from  a  weak  one, 
and  the  latter  fears  his  prowess.  But  with  man,  what- 
ever his  virtue,  his  nobility,  his  generosity  of  character, 
they  serve  him  naught  in  the  times  in  which  we  live.'  "  ^ 

^  Many  of  the  maxims  which  are  common  to  the  writers  of  comedy  and 
to  the  philosophers  were  already  found  in  other  writers  of  drama,  especially 
in  Euripides,  or  else  they  were  proverbial.  Comedies  more  frequently 
prove  that  certain  philosophical  ideas  had  already  permeated  the  masses, 
or  that,  in  formulating  them,  the  theorists  were  in  accord  with  popular 
opinion,  than  give  us  the  opportunity  of  witnessing  the  propagation  of 
such  ideas. 

*  Philem.,  fr.  116;  [Men.],  fr.  538.  »  Ibid.,  fr.  88;  cf.  fr.  89,  93. 

*  Men.,  fr.  531,  10-12.  '  Ibid.,  fr.  223. 

O  G 


450     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

These  are  very  discouraging  reflections.  Fortunately, 
the  comic  writers  did  not  cling  to  them.  In  many  other 
passages  they  have  shown  us  by  what  means  we  can 
fight  against  misfortune  and  lighten  its  burdens,  instead 
of  groaning  over  it.  Sometimes  they  advise  men  mutually 
to  help  one  another,  so  as  to  give  Fortune  less  chance  to 
thwart  them,^  or  counsel  honest  men  to  unite  in  stopping 
injustice.^  Sometimes  they  inveigh  against  social  pre- 
judice in  a  manner  that  recalls  some  of  Euripides'  diatribes. 
In  fragment  533  of  Menander  a  character  of  a  lost  comedy 
raises  his  voice  against  prejudice  of  birth.  In  fragment 
532  it  is  fashionable  marriages  that  are  hotly  criticised. 
Megadorus,  in  the  Aulularia,  is  not  content  merely  to  find 
fault  with  such  marriages ;  half  seriously,  half  playfully, 
he  suggests  a  reform,  the  effect  of  which  would,  according 
to  him,  be  most  fortunate  for  society  :  the  wealthy  are  to 
marry  the  daughters  of  poor  citizens  without  a  dowry, 
and  the  world  will  be  much  better  off.^  Elsewhere,  the 
position  of  women — those  cursed  women  whom  comedy 
is  so  quick  to  vilify — is  the  subject  of  judicious  remarks. 
Syra,  in  the  Mercator,  says  that  the  law  is  much  more 
severe  on  them  than  on  men,  and  is  indignant  at  such 
unfairness.^  It  is  true  Syra  is  a  woman,  and  it  may 
seem  that  her  objections  are  prompted  by  esprit  de  corps. 
But  in  the  ' ETtixQenovreg  it  is  Charisius,  a  man  without 
sin,  who  admits  that  before  the  moral  law  both  sexes  are 
equal.  Nay,  we  know  that  he  goes  still  further;  after 
some  reflection,  the  misadventure  of  Pamphila,  who  had 
been  ravished  before  her  marriage,  appears  to  him  in  its 
true  light — as  a  misfortune,  and  not  as  a  sin — and  renounc- 
ing traditional  Pharisaism,  he  is  perfectly  satisfied  to  keep 
her  as  his  wife.  Even  the  slave,  the  scum  of  ancient 
society,  comes  in  for  a  share  in  the  sympathy  of  the  poets, 
who  make  generous  appeals  in  his  favour.  They  urge 
men  to  treat  them  gently,^  and  above  all,  they  proclaim 

^  Men.,  fr.  679.  *  'Eirirp.,  15  et  seq. ;   Men.,  fr.  542. 

*  Aul.,  478  et  seq.  *  Merc,  817  et  seq. 

*  Men.,  fr.  370. 


PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE    451 

that  the  slave,  too,  is  a  man.^  In  a  word,  the  remains  of 
comedy  contain  a  large  number  of  precepts  that  display 
a  remarkable  disposition  towards  universal  goodwill,  and 
a  striking  tendency  to  treat  all  men  as  equals.  The  words 
charity  and  fraternity  are  not  yet  used ;  but,  in  matters 
of  this  kind,  the  substance  may  exist  without  the  words, 
just  as  words  often  exist  while  their  substance  is  lacking. 
The  reader  will  recall  the  famous  lines  in  which,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Ileauton  Timor ournenos,  Chremes  explains 
his  sympathy  for  his  neighbour  Menedemus,  who  is  as  yet 
a  stranger  to  him  :  Homo  sum  ;  humani  nil  a  me  alienum 
puto."  By  frequently  expressing  the  belief  that,  notwith- 
standing accidental  differences,  all  human  beings  have  the 
same  nature  and  a  common  destiny,  and  by  making  it 
familiar  to  every  one,  the  comic  authors  prepared  their 
audiences — to  the  great  benefit  of  mankind — to  think  and 
act  as  Chremes  does. 

Another  quality,  closely  related  to  the  moral  views  of 
Epicurus,  which  their  works  were  calculated  to  develop 
both  by  example  and  by  precept,  was  forbearance  towards 
the  sins  of  others.  Humanum  ignoscere  'st,  proclaims 
Demipho,  in  the  Mercator,  under  conditions  which — it  is 
true — deprive  this  maxim  of  much  of  its  value. ^  Pataecus 
congratulates  his  daughter  on  the  patience  she  shows 
Polemon,  and  says  that  it  is  the  act  of  a  truly  Greek  soul.* 
Forbearance  and  readiness  to  forgive  are  the  regular  thing 
in  Mcnander's  comedies,  and  they  constitute  the  chief 
charm  of  his  most  lovable  characters — Glycera  in  the 
nEQixeiQojLievr],  and  Pamphila  in  the  " Etzlxqetiovteq.  These 
qualities  win  our  sympathies  for  other  characters  in 
whom  they  are  found  side  by  side  with  certain  weak- 
nesses :  Micio  in  the  Adelphi,  and  Demeas  in  the  Za/nia. 
And  what  is  the  real  meaning  of  this  forbearance  ?  Another 
comic  writer,  Philemon,  supplies  the  answer  to  this  question 
in  the  words  of  Philto  in  the  Trinummus  :  "  He  who  is 
satisfied  with  himself  is  neither  an  honest  nor  a  virtuous 

1  Philem.,  fr.  95.     C£.  fr.  22,  31.  «  Heaut.,  77.     Cf.  Men.,  fr.  602.     v^ 

3  Merc,  320.  *  TltpiK,  355-357. 


/ 


/ 


x 


452     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

V  man.  He  who  judges  himself  with  severity  is  the  true 
man  of  worth."  ^  Forbearanee  is  the  natural  result  of 
humility.  How  can  one  be  exacting  towards  others  if 
one  has  recognised  how  little  one  is  worth  one's  self? 
Charisius  in  the  ' EnixQEJiovTeq,  brought  up,  as  we  must 
assume,  in  the  haughty  school  of  Stoicism,  thought  him- 
self infallible,  and,  standing  on  the  lofty  pedestal  of  his 
supposed  infallibility,  pitilessly  condemns  the  errors  of 
others.  But  one  fine  day  he  is  obliged  to  recognise  that 
he  himself  has  gravely  erred.  Then  his  eyes  are  opened, 
and  by  comparison  with  Pamphila,  who  had  at  once  for- 
given him  for  everything,  he  finds  out  how  small,  ridiculous 
and  odious  he  is.  He  now  understands  the  beauty,  the 
need,  of  forbearance,  and  is  converted.  Let  the  haughty 
apostles  of  virtue  meditate  upon  his  experience  !  Let 
them  also  meditate  upon  the  discomfiture  of  certain 
educators,  like  Demea  and  Menedemus  !  They  will  see 
how  severity  calls  forth  lies  and  how  self-sufRciency  begets 
disaffection.  Taken  as  a  whole,  neither  the  Heauton 
Timoroujnenos  nor  the  Adelphi  is,  as  I  have  already  pointed 
out,  a  didactic  comedy.  For  all  that,  there  is  a  great 
deal  in  what  Micio  and  Chremes  say  that  is  worth  remem- 
bering. Both  of  them,  when  they  express  the  wish  that 
sons,  instead  of  acting  clandestinely,  would  unbosom  them- 
selves to  their  fathers  without  fear  and  ask  their  advice, 
give  expression  to  aspirations  which,  though  easy  to  ridi- 
cule, are  yet  dignified.  If  the  father  of  a  family,  instead  of 
playing  the  part  of  a  stern  master,  would  only  show  him- 
self to  his  children  as  he  is — full  of  affection  for  them — 
if  he  would  only  win  their  friendship  and  their  gratitude, 
and  by  his  kind  treatment  kindle  in  their  souls  the  desire 
not  to  displease  him,  then  young  people  would  behave 
much  better  than  when  restrained  by  severe  measures. 

"  Respect  man's  dignity ;  show  more  gentleness  and 
more  tolerance  in  your  relations  to  your  fellow  men," 
these  are  two  pieces  of  advice  which  the  comic  writers, 
or  at  least  some  of  the  greatest  of  them,  wished,  I  believe, 

1  Trin.,  318  et  seq. 


PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE    453 

to  give  to  their  contemporaries.  Had  they  given  no  other 
it  would  suffice  to  keep  their  works  from  appearing  to 
lack  serious  purpose  and  moral  significance. 


§2 

Edifying  and  Offensive  Subjects 

When  dramatists  use  their  art  for  the  purpose  of  educa- 
ting the  public,  they  display  a  noble  ambition  for  which 
we  must  be  grateful.  But  while  they  have  an  eye  to 
virtue,  there  is  another,  more  modest,  task  which  should 
be  the  object  of  their  constant  care  :  namely,  to  avoid 
all  cause  of  offence  and  not  to  destroy  laudable  beliefs 
and  inclinations  in  the  souls  of  their  audience.  The  charge 
has  been  brought  against  New  Comedy  of  being  a  school 
of  perversity.  I  would  like  to  examine  whether  this  charge 
is  well  founded. 

As  regards  religion,  our  comic  writers  were  certainly 
not  always  orthodox.  A  fair  number  of  passages  in  their 
works  are  opposed  to  traditional  views  about  the  divinity, 
its  nature,  its  power,  and  its  relation  to  the  order  of  the 
universe.  But  such  passages  are  not  so  numerous,  nor 
are  they,  as  a  rule,  so  elaborate,  that  they  could  have 
contributed  in  any  appreciable  manner  to  the  overthrow 
of  the  ancient  faith,  which  had  long  since  been  shaken 
and  battered  down  on  all  sides.  Besides,  to  counter- 
balance these,  comic  literature  contains  more  than  one 
passage  that  is  capable  of  edifying  devout  souls.  I  need 
only  remind  the  reader  of  the  prologues  to  the  Rudcns  and 
the  Aulularia,  which  contradict  the  Epicurean  doctrine 
by  showing  us  gods  intervening  in  our  mundane  affairs, 
and  playing  the  part  of  Providence.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  what  about  passages  in  which  an  actor — like  Strobilus 
in  the  act  of  stealing  the  treasure-pot  ^ — asks  the  aid  of 
the  gods  in  a  dishonest  undertaking,  or  else  boasts  of 
having  had  them  as  his  accomplices,  or — like  Chaerea  in 

1  Aul.,  621-622. 


454     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  Emuichus  ^ — finds  a  justification  for  his  evil  deed  in 
the  example  set  by  the  gods  ?  It  is  only  too  probable 
that  such  ideas  seemed  perfectly  natural,  and  scandalised 
hardly  any  one,  in  the  days  of  the  via.  As  for  the  irre- 
verent tirades  of  a  Libanus  or  of  an  Ergasilus,  who  demand 
divine  honours  for  themselves,^  or  of  a  Leonidas,  who 
declares  that  he  would  not  listen  to  the  prayers  of  the 
king  of  the  gods  himself,^  or  of  Pistoclerus  when  he  makes 
a  god  of  a  sweet  kiss  (Suavisaviatio),'^  they  are  quite  harm- 
less and  quite  discreet  when  compared  with  the  out- 
rageous parodies  and  the  biting  ridicule  with  which  the 
stage  of  the  fifth  and  fourth  century  had  riddled  the 
dwellers  in  Olympus.  I  think  there  is  no  need  of  insisting 
any  further  on  this  point.  Taken  as  a  whole,  the  via  was 
not  irreligious ;  it  did  not  spread  ungodliness. 

Was  it  harmful  to  morals  ? 

It  is  soothing  for  the  public  conscience  for  vice  to  be 
punished  and  virtue  rewarded.  Now,  a  glance  at  the 
known  endings  of  the  via  will  show  that  this  occurs  often. 
In  some  of  these  endings,  as,  for  example,  in  the  'ETurgi- 
novreg,  the  Rudens  or  the  Captivi,  there  is  hardly  any 
fault  to  be  found  as  far  as  retributive  justice  is  con- 
cerned. Whole  classes  of  actors  may  be  said  to  get  their 
due.  If,  for  example,  we  consider  the  female  characters, 
who  are  more  or  less  completely  sympathetic — ^the  faithful 
wives  like  the  two  sisters  in  the  Stichus,  young  girls  who 
have  been  violated,  the  women  whose  love  is  sincere  and 
unselfish,  the  good  courtesan  like  Thais  in  the  Eunuchus 
and  Bacchis  in  the  Hecyra — we  shall  find  that,  as  a  rule, 
and  especially  in  Menander,  these  lovable  persons  have 
reason  to  rejoice  at  the  turn  things  take  in  the  end.  Two 
women  in  Philemon's  comedies,  Pasicompsa  in  the  M creator 
and  Philematium  in  the  Mostellaria,  are,  it  is  true,  treated 
much  less  fairly.  The  love  and  faithfulness  of  both  is 
touching.     Yet  Pasicompsa  remains   a   slave,    an  instru- 

1  Eun.,  584  et  seq.  ^  Asin.,  711  et  seq. ;  Gapt.,  863-865. 

3  Ibid.   414-415.  *  Baxch.,  116. 


PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE    455 

ment  of  pleasure,  while  Philematium,  who  has  already 
been  freed  before  the  opening  of  the  plot,  remains  a 
courtesan  whom  Philolaehes  will  perhaps  desert  when,  to 
use  Scapha's  words,  age  has  changed  the  colour  of  her 
hair.  What  occurs  at  the  end  of  these  two  of  Philemon's 
plays  may  have  occurred  at  the  end  of  others.  Indeed, 
we  know  that  gratitude  played  a  relatively  small  part  in 
the  works  of  this  poet.  Was  this  due  to  his  contempt  for 
women  and  their  qualities,  or  to  a  conscious  desire  to 
copy  real  life,  in  which  the  best  people  do  not  always 
enjoy  the  greatest  happiness  ?  We  have  no  way  of 
deciding. 

From  rewards  we  come  to  punishments.  Certain  classes 
of  people,  who  certainly  deserve  it  to  the  full,  are  not 
spared;  for  instance,  panders,  who  are  cheated,  robbed, 
thrashed  and  derided;  swaggering  soldiers,  who  are  regu- 
larly humiliated  and  exploited ;  dissolute  husbands,  who 
are  always  caught  in  delicto,  and  whose  shrewish  wives 
make  them  pay  dearly  for  their  escapades.  But  other 
classes  of  people  enjoy  a  curious  immunity. 

First  of  all,  the  slaves.  In  comedy  a  servus  callidus  may 
be  guilty  of  all  sorts  of  mischief,  of  every  imaginable 
rascality,  without  being  punished.  In  most  cases  some 
one  intercedes  for  him  and  secures  his  pardon;  or  else, 
when  it  comes  to  settling  accounts,  he  is  either  forgotten, 
or  unforeseen  events  make  it  impossible  for  his  master 
to  chastise  him.  Such  general  immunity  from  punishment 
is  contrary  to  justice.  Occasionally  a  scamp  of  a  slave, 
who  ought  to  be  whipped  and  put  in  chains,  not  only 
escapes  well-deserved  punishment,  but  even  has  benefits 
showered  upon  him,  and  is  finally  given  his  freedom.  Take 
the  case  of  Epidicus ;  twice  in  succession  he  has  impudently 
deceived  Periphanes ;  he  has  stolen  from  him  and  made 
fun  of  him.  Surely  such  misdeeds  call  for  punishment  ! 
But  at  the  last  moment  Epidicus  discovers  that  a  captive 
girl  who  has  been  brought  home  by  Stratippocles,  who 
wishes  her  to  be  his  mistress,  is  the  lost  daughter  of 
Periphanes.     Beside  himself  with  joy,  Periphanes  forgives 


456     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

Epidicus,  sets  him  free,  and  promises  to  support  him ;  and 
the  play  ends  with  this  moral  saw  :  Hie  is  homo  est  qui 
libertatem  malitia  invenit  sua!  Malitia  sua  —  these  are 
words  to  be  remembered.  What  stood  the  servi  callidi  in 
good  stead — if,  indeed,  they  were  regarded  as  responsible 
agents,  and  not  merely  as  part  of  the  machinery  of  the  plot 
— was  their  cleverness.  In  the  eyes  of  the  Greeks,  clever- 
ness always  placed  those  who  possessed  it  above  the  rules 
of  ordinary  morality.  In  the  days  of  the  Odyssey  a  man 
merely  required  to  be  skilful  at  deceiving  his  fellows  to 
become  a  favourite  of  Athena's ;  in  the  days  of  New 
Comedy  this  quality  gave  him  a  claim  to  the  favour  of 
the  queen  of  the  world — omnipotent  Tyche. 

Next  to  slaves,  in  point  of  getting  better  treatment 
than  they  deserve,  rank  the  sons  who  are  engaged  in  some 
amorous  adventure  without  the  knowledge  and  consent  of 
their  fathers.  In  the  end,  they  are  rarely  separated  from 
the  girl  they  love.  Whatever  the  wrongdoings  and  lies  of 
which  they  have  been  guilty,  fortune  generally  favours 
them,  and  their  wishes  either  coincide  with  their  father's 
in  some  unforeseen  manner,  or  else  the  father  stops  thwart- 
ing them.  But  what  entitles  all  these  youths  to  so  much 
happiness  ?  It  is  not  their  cleverness,  for  almost  all  of 
them  are  awkward  and  unable  to  get  out  of  a  scrape 
without  the  aid  of  a  slave.  Nor  is  it  the  generosity  of 
their  feelings,  for  some  of  them  have  been  led  to  their 
acts  by  caprice,  or  by  sensuous  impulses,  or  have  been 
caught  in  the  snare  of  an  intriguing  woman.  But  they 
are  all  in  love,  and  that  suffices  as  a  claim  to  forbearance. 
In  comedy  a  sort  of  religion  or  superstition  of  love  was 
apparently  developed,  which  flourished  later  on  in  Alex- 
andrian poetry,  and  pervades  Latin  poetry  to  the  point 
of  satiety.  The  comic  writers  had  not  as  yet  set  up  the 
principle  which  was  formulated  after  their  day,  that  love 
has  an  absolute  claim  to  be  requited,  but  they  had  already 
accepted  another  axiom  :  that  love  may  do  whatever  it 
likes,  and  that  the  end  of  love  justifies  the  means — in  the 
case  of  young  men,  at  all  events.     For  when  an  old  man, 


PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE    457 

even  though  he  be  a  bachelor,  ventures  to  fall  in  love,  he 
lays  claim  to  a  right  that  is  no  longer  his ;  and  comic 
writers  are  not  slow  to  point  this  out  to  him,  as,  for  in- 
stance, at  the  end  of  the  Mercator,  where  young  Eutychus 
passes  a  mock  edict  against  love-sick  greybeards.  One 
would  almost  think  that  the  young  men,  the  only  legitimate 
dwellers  in  the  realm  of  affection,  have  a  mission  to  drive 
off  intruders.  All  the  more  reason  why  they  should  have 
a  right  not  to  be  disturbed  in  that  realm  !  Even  regard 
for  a  father's  authority  cannot  always  prevail  against  this 
right. 

Glory  for  cleverness  !  Freedom  for  love  !  That  seems 
to  be  the  moral  of  many  a  comedy.  Doubtless  the  first 
of  these  commandments  shocked  only  a  small  part  of 
the  spectators — the  philosophers.  As  for  the  second,  it  is 
hard  for  me  to  believe  that  it  ever  conformed  to  the  views 
of  the  masses.  But,  to  judge  from  a  passage  in  the 
Symposium,  it  appears  that  as  early  as  the  time  of 
Plato  there  were  some  who  were  inclined  to  recognise  it, 
and  when  clothed  in  humorous  form,  two  or  three  centuries 
later,  it  cannot  have  scandalised  many. 

Hitherto  I  have  spoken  only  of  the  endings  of  plays. 
But,  notwithstanding  their  importance,  they  are  not  the 
only  thing  to  be  considered  in  the  via.  The  rewards  which 
they  bring  come  late,  and  they  do  not  always  remove  the 
impression  of  what  has  gone  before.  Even  when  wicked- 
ness is  formally  reproved  at  the  end  of  a  play,  if  it  has 
previously  been  depicted  in  alluring  colours,  and  if  virtue, 
on  the  other  hand,  has  been  ridiculed,  the  play  may  exert 
a  demoralising  influence.     Is  this  true  of  our  comedies  ? 

Many  of  the  people  whom  it  brings  upon  the  stage  are 
a  mixture  of  good  and  evil.  A  man  who  is  a  booby  has 
a  kind  heart  and  a  righteous  soul ;  another  who  is  despotic 
errs  by  excess  of  laudable  solicitude ;  and  so  on.  Where 
such  complexity  of  characters  exists,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  our  sympathies  should  go  out  to  persons  w'ho  are 
not    above    criticism,    or    that  they   should   be   withheld 


458     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

from  otliers  who  may  have  some  claim  on  them.  Of 
course  this  is  unfair,  but  do  we  not  daily  make  like  mis- 
takes in  our  judgment  of  men  in  real  life  ?  Fault  might 
justly  be  found  with  writers  of  comedy  if  they  had  set 
themselves  to  give  credit  to  new  ones  and  to  mislead  the 
judgment  of  their  contemporaries  on  some  fresh  points. 
But  it  does  not  appear  that  they  laid  themselves  open  to 
any  such  charge. 

They  made  light  of  marriage  and  caricatured  family  life  ; 
but  I  do  not  believe  that  their  sarcastic  remarks  ever 
spoiled  any  one's  taste  for  the  one  or  the  other.  Moreover, 
everybody  knew  that  in  depicting  married  life  as  almost 
always  unhappy,  and  parents  and  children  almost  invari- 
ably at  loggerheads,  the  poets  merely  followed  the  require- 
ments of  a  given  style  of  composition,  and  were  influ- 
enced by  a  recognised  preference  for  what  was  grotesque 
and  ugly.  People  were  not  so  simple  as  to  imagine  that 
these  portrayals  represented — or  even  pretended  to  repre- 
sent— things  as  they  actually  were  in  family  life  as  a 
rule. 

But  it  may  be  alleged  that  comedy  invited  the  audience 
to  sympathise  with  a  number  of  wicked  people — such  as 
Thais  in  the  Eunuchus,  or  Bacchis  in  the  Hecyra,  or 
Habrotonon  in  the  'EjZLTQsnovrsg.  There  is  no  denying 
this.  But  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  such 
characters  are  few  and  far  between  in  comedy.  It  would, 
I  think,  be  a  mistake  to  regard  them  as  the  creations 
of  a  perverse  taste  for  paradox.  Courtesans  may  be  good 
women,  and  if  the  comic  writers  occasionally  credited 
representatives  of  this  ill-reputed  class  with  some  virtue, 
there  was  nothing  more  paradoxical  in  their  doing  so 
than  in  depicting  certain  poor  devils,  or  even  slaves,  as 
being  moved  by  noble  sentiments.  Characters  like  Habro- 
tonon and  Thais  are  not  the  products  of  a  diseased  imagi- 
nation that  desires  at  all  costs  to  run  counter  to  accepted 
views,  but  of  a  sincere  observation  which  does  not  permit 
itself  to  be  influenced  by  social  conditions,  and  which  is 
able  to  see  people  as  they  are.     As  for  the  role  of  Bacchis, 


PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE    459 

it  was,  in  my  opinion,  lack  of  skill,  rather  than  intention, 
that  led  Apollodorus  to  go  to  such  extremes  in  creating 
it.  With  the  exception  of  the  courtesans,  no  class  of 
ill-reputed  persons  is  painted  in  bright  colours  in  the  v6a; 
panders,  male  and  female,  sycophants,  parasites  and 
bullies  always  repel  us.  Similarly,  in  the  family  circle, 
the  poet  never  encourages  the  audience  to  sympathise 
with  unfaithful  husbands  nor  excuses  their  misconduct. 
Disobedient  sons  certainly  fare  better,  and  very  often  we 
are  led  to  feel  kindly  disposed  towards  them.  But  this 
does  not  imply  that  the  comic  writers  have  a  word  to 
say  against  paternal  authority.  As  I  have  already  pointed 
out,  even  the  characters  who  oppose  it  admit  that  they 
are  in  the  wrong  and  blush  for  it.  It  must  also  be  pointed 
out  that  there  is  no  trace  of  the  Don  Juan  about  even  the 
most  dissipated  of  the  young  heroes.  Their  blood  is  hot, 
their  heads  are  weak,  but  their  hearts  are  not  corrupted. 
For  all  of  them  we  can  cherish  the  hope  that  after  a  few 
years  of  folly  they  will  become  respectable  men. 

In  short,  one  cannot  charge  the  via  with  having  sought 
to  make  vice  attractive,  nor  with  having  attacked  the 
morals  of  ordinary  society.  It  remains  to  be  considered 
whether,  without  malice  prepense,  it  was  not,  by  its  very 
choice  of  subjects,  capable  of  corrupting  the  audience. 

It  is  true  that  Athenian  men  and  women  who  had  just 
been  to  a  comedy  could  not,  as  a  rule,  have  had  their 
minds  filled  with  noble  images  or  chaste  thoughts.  Now 
and  again,  of  course,  they  had  occasion  to  watch  some 
edifying  character  or  some  scene  calculated  to  create  a  taste 
for  proper  conduct.  But  more  frequently  misconduct  and 
bad  morals  supplied  material  for  the  play.  A  work  like 
the  Captivi — ad  pudicos  mores  facta  fabula,  comoedia  uhi 
honi  rtieliores  fiatit — was  certainly  a  rare  thing.  New 
Comedy  may  accordingly  appear  to  have  disposed  people 
towards  vice  by  making  them  familiar  with  it.  But,  in 
order  to  get  a  just  appreciation  of  the  harm  it  may  have 
done,   we  must  consider  it  in  relation  to  the  times  and 


460     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

in  comparison  with  the  other  hterary  productions  that 
flourished  at  the  same  period.  As  the  contemporaries  of 
Philemon,  Menander  and  Posidippus  were,  broadly  speak- 
ing, very  indulgent  towards  sins  of  the  flesh,  they  ran  no 
risk  in  witnessing  the  performance  of  so  many  erotic 
episodes  on  the  stage.  In  their  place,  we  should  have 
found  no  cause  for  offence  in  the  fact  that  amorous  adven- 
tures form  the  framework  of  most  of  the  plays.  Rather 
than  take  umbrage  at  this,  or  reproach  the  vea  too  severely 
for  occasionally  introducing  dangerous  episodes,  we  ought, 
to  its  honour,  to  credit  it  with  a  certain  amount  of 
restraint. 

Thus,  the  bestial  tyranny  of  certain  characters  in 
Herondas  or  in  Alciphron,  who  impose  on  their  slaves, 
and  the  shamelessness  of  the  '  IdidCovoai,  are,  as  far  as 
we  know,  without  a  parallel  in  comedy.  Above  all,  un- 
natural love  does  not  seem  to  have  been  dealt  with,  and 
though  the  vea  makes  occasional  allusions  to  paederasty, 
we  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  it  brought  egaorai  or 
igcojuevoL  upon  the  stage.  At  most,  IlaidEQaorai,  the  title 
of  one  of  Diphilus'  works — a  new  version,  by  the  way, 
of  a  play  of  the  middle  period — and  a  fragment  of  Dam- 
oxenus  give  cause  for  anxiety  in  this  respect.  Plutarch 
declares  that  paederasty  was  excluded  from  all  the 
numerous  plays  that  Menander  wrote. ^  Now,  we  know 
from  other  documents  what  the  habits  of  the  period 
were ;  accordingly  New  Comedy  displayed  laudable  reserve 
in  regard  to  at  least  one  important  point.  But  this  is 
not  all.  Conjugal  infidelity,  which,  moreover,  it  depicts 
in  such  ugly  colours,  was  by  no  means  one  of  its  favourite 
themes.  There  are  but  few  adulterous  husbands  in  extant 
comic  literature ;  there  is  not  a  single  untrue  wife.  Young 
girls  who  had  been  seduced  must  also  have  been  a  type 
practically  unknown.  A  young  girl  of  good  family,  as 
portrayed  in  comedy,  does  not  listen  to  the  proposals  of 
a  gay  young  spark;  she  does  not  give  way  to  sensuous 
passion ;  if  she  succumbs  her  fall  is  always  due  to  violence. 

,1  Plut.,  Quaest.  conviv.,  VII.  8,  3,  8. 


PURPOSE  AND  MORAL  VALUE    461 

Thus,  one  of  the  most  shocking  features  found  in  comic 
plots  may  have  owed  its  vogue  to  a  curious  regard  for 
propriety;  by  aspersing  tlie  character  of  the  young  men 
of  their  day  and  representing  them  as  gross  fellows,  the 
poets  avoided  setting  their  women  readers  and  listeners  a 
pernicious  example.  Scruples  of  the  same  sort  were 
probably  responsible  for  more  than  one  romantic  episode. 
A  considerable  number  of  the  explanatory  narrations  in 
which  comedy  abounded  were,  I  imagine,  invented  in 
order  to  introduce  an  Antiphila  or  a  Selenium — that  is  to 
say,  a  girl  who  is  sincerely  in  love.  This  would  have  been 
a  roundabout  method  had  the  comic  writers  been  willing 
to  place  the  language  of  love  on  the  lips  of  young  women 
of  good  family.  But,  out  of  respect  for  the  women  of 
their  times,  they  refused  to  have  recourse  to  this.  In  their 
comedies  affectionate  wives  and  young  women  of  gentle 
birth  who  are  in  love  either  remain  invisible,  or  are  very 
reserved  in  their  language.  The  privilege  of  speaking  and 
acting  like  one  who  is  in  love  is  only  extended  to  women 
who  are  dSclassees,  or  placed  by  chance  in  an  unusual 
position.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  latter  are 
exceptional  beings,  and  a  w^oman  who  lives  peacefully 
under  her  father's  or  husband's  roof  must  regard  herself 
as  very  far  removed  from  them.  Hence  there  is  less  fear 
of  their  exerting  a  bad  influence,  and  one  may  cherish 
the  hope  that  their  transports,  their  effusions  and  their 
immorality  will  not  be  contagious. 

Here  again  we  find,  in  the  domain  of  morals,  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word,  that  same  fear  of  giving  offence, 
that  same  respectability  which,  in  the  case  of  a  lie  or  a 
piece  of  rascality,  places  the  shame  upon  a  slave.  In 
its  own  way  New  Comedy  was  prudish.  Vice  has  fewer 
forms,  it  is  less  refined  and,  if  I  may  so  express  myself, 
is  at  the  disposal  of  fewer  people  than  in  elegy  or  tragedy. 
In  the  latter  we  have  adultery,  incest,  wanton  virgins, 
and  men  and  women  who  indulge  in  unnatural  passions. 
In  the  former  we  have  almost  exclusively  young  men 
who  sow  their  wild  oats,   but  who,   foolish  as  they  are. 


462     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

follow  Palinurus'  wise  counsel  :  "  to  keep  away  from 
married  women,  widows,  girls,  boys,  and  children  of  free 
men  "  ;  ^  stories  of  liaisons  with  courtesans,  whose  business 
it  is  to  sell  themselves,  and  with  unfortunate  women  of 
low  birth  whose  disgrace  is  of  little  account — in  a  word, 
nothing  that  could  have  disturbed  the  average  conscience 
of  the  period.  If,  judging  by  the  works  of  our  poets,  the 
modern  student  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  society  was 
in  their  day  particularly  corrupt,  and  on  the  road  to 
decadence,  this  verdict,  although,  no  doubt,  somewhat 
exaggerated,  may  possibly  be  accepted  as  correct.  But 
it  is  one  thing  to  reflect  the  corruption  of  one's  environ- 
ment, and  quite  another  thing  to  encourage  it.  Taking 
everything  into  account,  the  vea  must  have  been  inoffensive 
as  far  as  morals  were  concerned. 

1  Cure,  37-38. 


CHAPTER    II 

COMIC     ELEMENTS 

POETS,  says  Horace  in  tlic  Epistle  to  the  Pisos,  desire 
either  to  be  useful  or  to  give  pleasure  :  aut  prodesse 
aut  delectare.  The  last  chapter  has  clearly  shown  that  the 
comic  writers  of  the  new  period  cared  little  about  being 
useful.  First  and  foremost,  they  wished  to  give  pleasure. 
Any  description  of  their  work  necessitates  an  account  of 
how  they  set  about  this.     • 

The  characteristically  comic  way  to  "  give  pleasure  " 
is  to  amuse  people,  to  make  them  laugh.  This  was  just 
as  true  in  the  days  of  the  via  as  it  had  been  in  earlier 
days.  But  from  one  period  to  another  the  quantity  and, 
to  a  certain  extent,  the  quality  of  subjects  for  laughter 
varied.  By  what  means,  then,  and  with  how  much  per- 
sistence did  New  Comedy  strive  to  provoke  laughter? 
These  are  two  problems  which  I  must  now  investigate. 

§1 

Gross  Fun  and  Refined  Fun 

The  comic  poets  of  the  fifth  century,  especially  Aristo- 
phanes, were  rather  unscrupulous  in  the  choice  of  their 
methods.  They  introduced  indiscriminately  the  grossest 
burlesques,  the  sharpest  satire  and  the  most  disgusting 
obscenity.  Even  the  fragments  of  the  middle  period 
contain  many  things  which  offend  a  delicate  taste.  More- 
over, in  the  Coislin  Treatise^  in  which  there  seems  to  be  a 
survival  of  classifications  taken  from  the  second  book  of  the 
Poetics,  the  ridr]  xcojuixd  are  divided  into  three  categories, 
one  of  which  especially  includes  buffoonery  (ret  ^cojuoXoxa) ; 
among  the  resources  of  the  yelolov  ek  roJv  nqayixaxiov 
devices  suited  to  farce  are  mentioned,  such  as  the  use  of 
ugly  masks  and  unseemly  gestures,  and  the  author  makes 
a  special  point  of  the  comic  vocabulary,  its  divisions  and 
subdivisions.     All  this  gives  us  a  rather  unfavourable  idea 

463 


464     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

of  comedy  in  Aristotle's  day.  In  short,  buffoonery  and 
triviality  were  traditional  in  Greek  comedy.  To  what 
extent  are  these  characteristics  found  in  the  vea  ? 

I  have  already  said  that  the  vea  almost  completely 
abandoned  personal  attacks,  and  that  it  no  longer  gave 
grotesque  travesties  of  mythological  tales  and  heroes. 
These  two  statements  are  encouraging.  But  travesty  and 
personal  abuse  are  only  two  resources  of  low  comedy.  I 
shall  therefore  approach  the  question  without  allowing 
myself  to  be  affected  by  any  preconceived  views. 

In  the  fragments  of  the  original  plays  we  find  both 
Qfjosig  and  passages  of  dialogue  to  which  the  epithet 
^cojuoloxiyM  seems  to  be  well  suited ;  for  in  them  the  actors 
indulge  in  absurd  exaggerations,  more  or  less  smart 
paradoxes  and  whimsical  conceits.  In  Diphilus'  naQaoirog 
the  person  after  whom  the  play  is  named  utters  the 
following  complaint — 

"  Euripides,  whose  words  are  golden,  has  rightly  said  : 
'  I  am  conquered  by  necessity  and  my  wretched  stomach.' 
Truly  nothing  is  more  wretched  than  the  stomach.  Every- 
thing can  be  crammed  into  it  at  once,  which  is  impossible 
in  the  case  of  any  other  receptacle.  For  instance,  in  a 
sack  you  can  carry  bread,  but  not  soup  without  danger  of 
losing  it;  in  a  basket  you  can  carry  cakes,  but  not  a 
puree;  in  a  bottle  you  can  carry  wine,  but  not  a  lobster. 
But  into  this  cursed  stomach  which  the  gods  hate,  it  is 
possible  to  stuff  things  which  are  entirely  different  from 
one  another.  .  .  ."  ^ 

Fragment  61,  which  is  spoken  by  the  same  actor,  is  a 
sort  of  profession  of  faith,  and  its  cynicism  is  amusing — 

"  When  I  am  invited  by  a  rich  man  who  gives  an  enter- 
tainment, I  pay  no  attention  to  the  triglyphs  nor  to  the 
ceilings,  I  do  not  examine  the  Corinthian  vases,  but  keep 
my  eyes  fixed  on  the  smoke  from  the  kitchen.  If  it  comes 
out  strong  and  mounts  straight  up,  then  I  am  happy  and 

1  Diph.,  fr.  60. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  465 

flap  my  wings.     But  if  it  goes  up  slanting  and  in  a  thin 
cloud,  I  know  at  once  that  it  is  a  case  of  a  bloodless  feast." 

In  another  passage,  fragment  62,  he  pretends  to  be  irri- 
tated by  one  of  his  companions,  who  was  apparently 
planning  to  celebrate  a  wedding  without  inserting  in  the 
programme  the  customary  mention  of  culinary  rejoicings. 
Fragment  73,  which  belongs  to  the  Zvvcoqiq,  also  brings  a 
facetious  parasite  upon  the  stage  who  plays  dice  with  a 
courtesan  and  makes  sham  quotations  from  Euripides. 
So  much  for  Diphilus'  comedies.  In  Apollodorus  of  Cary- 
stus,  who  imitated  Menander,  an  actor  delights  in  drawing 
the  picture  of  an  age  of  gold  which  shall,  above  all,  be  an 
age  of  feasting,^  In  Baton,  a  gay  young  dog  gives  lively 
expression  to  the  idea  that,  by  enjoying  himself,  he  does 
homage  to  the  gods  and  plays  the  part  of  a  good  citizen 
by  making  business  brisk.^  In  another  play  by  the  same 
poet,  a  pedagogue  is  seriously  accused  of  having  debauched 
his  pupil,  and  impudently  makes  Epicurus  responsible 
for  his  strange  educational  methods.^  But,  above  all, 
cooks  are  repeatedly  heard  holding  forth  with  burlesque 
solemnity,  and  telling  stories  that  send  people  to  sleep. 
In  Hegesippus  one  of  them  claims  that  if  he  were  to 
serve  a  meal  to  people  who  come  from  a  funeral,  he  would 
only  need  to  raise  the  corner  of  the  cover  from  his  dishes 
to  change  their  tears  into  smiles ;  more  than  that,  he  can 
repeat  the  seductive  arts  of  the  Sirens,  and  by  the  mere 
smoke  that  escapes  from  his  kitchen  hold  persons  spell- 
bound.'* In  Philemon  another  culinary  artist  ends  a 
tirade  of  self-glorification  by  saying  :  "  I  have  discovered 
the  secret  of  immortality.  To  those  who  are  already  dead 
I  give  back  life  when  they  smell  my  dishes.^  It  appears 
that  one  of  his  fellows  in  a  comedy  by  Baton  said  some- 
thing similar.^  One  of  Euphron's  cooks  gravely  enumer- 
ates the  seven  wise  men  of  the  kitchen.'  Another  relates 
how  Soterides,  whose  pupil  he  was,  made  king  Nicomedes 

1  Apoll.  Car.,  fr.  5.       *  Baton,  fr.  2.       »  Ibid.,  fr.  5.      «  Heges.,  fr.  1. 
'  Phil.,  fr.  79.  «  Baton,  fr.  4.  ''  Euphron,  fr.  1,  1-12. 

II  H 


466     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

take  a  piece  of  horse-radish  which  he  had  disguised, 
tricked  out  and  cleverly  seasoned,  for  a  sardine;  ^  "  for," 
he  adds,  "  there  is  no  difference  whatever  between  a  cook 
and  a  poet."  Other  cooks  go  still  further  and  say  that 
the  masters  of  their  art  possess  the  most  unexpected  attain- 
ments— knowledge  of  natural  science,  of  architecture,  of 
astronomy,  of  strategy.^  A  perusal  of  passages  such  as 
these  inclines  one  to  the  belief  that  many  of  the  scenes 
and  burlesque  tirades  which  abound  in  Plautus'  plays 
were  supplied  by  the  Greek  plays  which  he  imitated.  The 
cook  in  the  Pseudolus,  who  claims  that  he  can  prolong  the 
life  of  his  customers  to  two  hundred  years  and  nourish 
Jupiter  with  the  perfume  of  his  pots,^  is  probably  closely 
related  to  all  the  other  boasters  whom  I  have  just  men- 
tioned. As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  not  often  that  we  can 
verify  the  jests  of  the  Latin  poet  by  such  exact  analogies ; 
though  many  passages  contain  internal  evidence  of  their 
Hellenic  origin. 

The  absurd  and  exaggerated  rodomontades  of  certain 
boasters  do,  no  doubt,  exceed  anything  similar  found  in 
fragments  of  the  original  plays,  in  Terence's  Eunuchus, 
in  the  Epistles  of  Alciphron  or  in  the  Dialogues  of  Lucian. 
Does  it  follow  that  the  author  of  the  Miles  Gloriosus,  of 
the  Poenulus,  and  of  the  Curculio  was  alone  responsible 
for  this?  I  do  not  think  so.  The  countries  which  our 
mighty  warriors  are  supposed  to  have  subjugated,  the 
races  which  they  have  laid  low,  Persians,  Paphlagonians, 
people  of  Sinope,  Carians,  etc. — to  these  we  may  add  the 
Centaurs  and  the  Amazons — are  races  and  countries  whose 
names  must  have  occurred  more  readily  to  a  Greek  of  the 
fourth  or  third  century  than  to  a  Roman  contemporary 
of  Hannibal.  The  improbable  exploit  of  Pyrgopolinices, 
who  broke  the  thigh-bone  of  an  elephant  with  a  blow  of 
his  fist,  has  its  precedent  in  the  doughty  deeds  with  which 
famous  athletes  were  credited  in  Greece  (they  were  said 
to  have  felled  an  ox  in  the  same  way),  or  in  those  with 
which     Aristobulus,     Alexander's     flattering    biographer, 

1  Euphron,  fr.  11.  a  Sosipatros,  fr.  1.  »  Pseud.,  829-830,  844. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  467 

credited  his  king.^  TIic  battle  in  which  Pyrgopohniccs 
says  he  rescued  Mars  and  served  under  the  command  of 
Neptune's  son,  is  hkc  a  parody  of  the  Homeric  battles  in 
which  gods  and  the  sons  of  gods  mingled  with  ordinary 
mortals.  The  victory  of  Antamoenides  over  the  winged 
men  recalls  other  episodes  in  the  old  epic  poems — Heracles' 
combat  with  the  Stymphalian  birds,  the  fight  of  the  sons 
of  Boreas  with  the  Harpies ;  and  above  all,  the  battle  of 
Apollonius'  Argonauts  with  the  birds  of  Aretias.  If,  as 
I  believe,  the  word  used  of  this  victory  is  ptenanthropica,^ 
it  proves  the  nationality  of  the  writer  who  invented  it. 

The  stinginess  displayed  by  Euclio  in  the  Aulularia  is 
not  less  exaggerated  than  the  bragging  indulged  in  by 
soldiers.  But  we  have  positive  evidence  that  the  Greek 
Smicrines  was  likewise  something  of  a  caricature.  Pytho- 
dicus  says  that  Euclio  is  sorry  to  see  the  smoke  that  issues 
from  his  house  disappear ;  ^  Smicrines  is  afraid  that  it 
might  rob  him  of  something  as  it  passes  out.*  Another 
detail  in  the  Aulularia  has  its  parallel  in  Aristophanes. 
Euclio  suspects  Staphyla's  rooster  of  having  allowed  itself 
to  be  bought  by  the  cooks  in  order  to  show  them  where 
the  treasure  lay  hid ;  ^  Philocleon  suspected  his  rooster, 
who  crowed  late,  of  having  been  bribed  by  the  defendants 
so  that  he  should  not  wake  him  in  time.^ 

The  unnatural  gluttony  of  the  parasites  in  Latin  comedy 
was  certainly  equalled  by  that  of  the  parasites  of  the  /j,ear). 
Several  of  the  extant  fragments  prove  this.'  We  may 
assume  that  some  of  the  parasites  of  the  vea  were  quite 
the  equals  of  their  ancestors ;  one  of  the  lists  of  dishes  with 
which  Ergasilus  regales  us  consists  in  part  of  Greek  names. ^ 
As  for  the  amusing  soliloquies  found  in  various  parts  of 
the  Captivi,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Menaechmi,  and  in  the 

^  Lucian,  Quomodo  historia  conscribenda,  §  12. 
2  Poeti.,  471.  ^  Aul.,  300-301. 

*  This  is  quoted  by  Choriciiis  in  the  Apology  for  Actors  (Rev.  de  Philol. 
I.  p.  228). 

5  Aul.,  465  et  seq.  *  Aristoph.,  Waspa,  100-102. 

'  Alexis,  fr.  178,  231,  261;   Timocles,  fr.  29;   Epigones,  fr.  1;  etc. 

8  Capt.,  850-851. 


468     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

first  part  of  the  Stichus — if  we  exclude  a  few  repetitions,  a 
few  amplifications  and  a  few  Roman  elements  which  were 
no  doubt  added — they  may,  in  my  opinion,  come  from  the 
original  plays.  Nothing  was  more  common  at  Athens 
than  such  expressive  surnames  as  Peniculus  for  gourmets 
and  spungers.  Actual  parasites  were  called  Lagunion 
or  Pternokopis;  one  of  Philemon's  parasites  was  called 
Zomion.  The  beginning  of  Ergasilus'  first  soliloquy — 
Inventus  nomen  indidit  Scorto  mihi,  eo  quia  invocatus  soleo 
esse  in  conviviis — is  very  similar  in  form  to  one  of  Anti- 
phanes'  sentences  :  KaXovoi  ^'  oi  vecbrsgoi  did  ravza  ndvxa 
oxrjTirov.'^  A  play  on  words  similar  to  the  one  indulged 
in  by  the  Latin  actor  which  is  based  on  the  double 
meaning  of  vocare  (call,  invoke)  is  found  in  Apollodorus.^ 
Fragment  367  of  Menander  contains  a  fairly  close 
parallel  to  the  lamentations  of  a  poor  devil  over  the 
meagre  success  with  which  his  broad  hints  meet.^  The 
mocking  invitation  which  Gelasimus,  in  the  Stichus,  gives 
Epignomus  *  also  reminds  one  of  a  characteristic  which 
Menander  attributes  to  the  well-known  Chaerephon  in  one 
of  the  fragments  (fr.  320)  of  the  Midrj.  When  Ergasilus 
speaks  of  the  famished  parasites  of  the  Lacones,  when  he 
deplores  the  fact  that  gilded  youths  now  go  in  person  to 
drive  their  bargains  in  the  market  or  at  the  pander's,^  he 
talks  Greek  in  Latin  words. ^  This  is  probably  also  the 
case  when  he  compares  his  fellow  parasites  to  mice  who 
gnaw  at  other  people's  belongings,'  or  when  he  proposes 
to  give  up  being  a  parasite  and  become  a  porter.^  The 
plan  proposed  by  Peniculus — no  longer  to  keep  prisoners 
in  jail  by  means  of  chains  which  they  may  break,  but  by 
the  safer  bond  of  good  food  ^ — is  one  of  those  schemes  of 
reform  for  which  the  Greek  stage  always  had  a  taste.  The 
very  words  that  Plautus  uses  in  line  89  {apud  mensam 
plenam  homini  rostrum  deliges)  reminds  one  of  a  saying  of 

1  Antiph.,  fr.  195.  *  Apoll.  Car.,  fr.  26.  »  Capt.,  478  et  seq. 

*  Stichus,  471  et  seq.  *  Capt.,  471,  474  et  seq. 

«  Cf.  Theoph.,  Char.,  XI.  '  Capt.,  77.     Cf.  Diog.  Laert.,  VT.  40. 

8  Capt.,  90  et  seq.     Cf.  Alciphron,  III.  4. 

*  Menaech.,  79  et  seq. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  469 

one  of  Menander's  parasites  :  dvOgcoTiovg  (pdrvrjv  ex^iv.^  And 
finally,  as  for  the  idea  of  the  auction  sale  that  Gclasimus 
means  to  hold  of  his  person  ^  and  of  all  his  belongings, 
I  am  very  much  inclined  to  believe  that  it  goes  back  to  a 
Greek  original.  The  names  or  the  nature  of  some  of  the 
objects  which  are  put  up  for  sale — the  strigil  and  the 
ampulla,  the  logi  ridiculi  and  the  unctiones — have  an 
obviously  Hellenic  stamp ;  and  finally,  the  description 
Gelasimus  gives  of  himself — parasitum  inanem  quo  recondas 
reliquias — bears  some  resemblance  to  an  expression  used 
by  the  poet  Phoenicides  regarding  the  glutton  Chaerippus  : 
roiovx'  exEL  ra/LCL£iov  Aojceq  oixiag  (or  iv  rfj  xodtal).^ 

But  enough  of  parasites  and  their  tricks.  Chrysalus' 
triumphant  soliloquy,  in  lines  925  ct  seq.  of  the  Bacchides, 
affords  us  an  example  of  a  passage  replete  with  Attic 
fancies  of  another  kind.  No  comic  author  of  the  sixth 
century  after  the  foundation  of  Rome  would  of  his  own 
accord  have  conceived  the  idea  of  giving  a  detailed  com- 
parison between  the  Trojan  war  and  the  rascality  of  a 
slave ;  for  the  greater  part  of  his  audience  would  not  have 
been  able  to  see  the  point.  But  such  playfulness  is  natural 
on  the  part  of  a  poet  of  the  new  period ;  it  has  a  family 
resemblance  to  the  parallels — and  they  are  without  a 
doubt  Greek — drawn  between  a  wicked  scamp  and  some 
great  person,  like  Agathocles  or  Alexander.*  Broadly 
speaking,  it  may  be  said  that  the  irreverential  comparison 
of  people  famous  in  history  or  in  legend  with  people  or 
things  of  low  estate  is  a  favourite  device  of  the  via.  I 
have  already  mentioned  the  seven  sages  of  the  kitchen. 
In  one  of  Diphilus'  plays  an  actor  complains  about  having 
been  obliged  to  purchase  a  conger-eel  for  its  weight  in  gold, 
just  as  Priam  purchased  the  body  of  his  son.^  Another 
groans  over  the  poverty  of  the  market,  and  declares  that 
he  has  to  fight  for  a  sprig  of  parsley,  just  as  people  struggle 

^  Men.,  fr.  937.     •tari/rj  is  a  feeding-trough. ( — Tr.). 

*  Stichus,  171  et  seq. 

'  Phoenicides,  fr.  3.     Tafj.tuoi'  is  a  storehouse. ( — Tr.). 

*  Men.,  fr.  924;    Most.,  775  et  seq.;    Pseud.,  532. 

*  Diph.,  fr.  33. 


470     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

for  a  prize  at  the  Isthmian  Games. ^  In  Diodorus,  a  parasite 
claims  that  his  profession  is  an  invention  of  Zeus  Phihos, 
and  hkcns  himself  and  his  fellow-parasites  to  the  liturgical 
"  parasites  of  Heracles."  ^  In  the  Zajuia  the  adventure  of 
Plangon,  who  has  been  seduced  by  Moschio,  is  compared 
to  that  of  Danae ;  ^  and  so  on.'*  One  of  the  things  that 
contributes  to  the  fun  in  the  scene  of  the  Menaechmi  in 
which  Menaechmus  pretends  to  be  crazy,  is  the  fact  that  it 
reproduces  episodes  of  well-known  tragedies  in  a  travestied 
form.  Menaechmus  apostrophises  Bacchus  and  Apollo, 
and  pretends  to  be  obeying  their  commands,  just  as  Orestes 
or  a  Bacchante  would.  Greeks  would  have  been  able  to 
grasp  the  intended  parody,  but  the  majority  of  Plautus' 
audience  certainly  could  have  not  seen  it,  nor  would  the 
allusions  to  Cycnus  and  to  Tithonus  have  been  very  clear 
to  them. 

With  this  scene  of  madness  let  us  compare  another  scene 
which  is  supposed  to  be  one  of  the  most  burlesque  in 
Plautus  —  the  scene  in  the  Mercator  in  which  Charinus 
remains  on  the  stage  while  he  imagines  that  he  is  making 
a  long  journey.  It,  too,  abounds  in  features  that  prove 
its  origin;  for  instance,  the  description  of  the  travelling 
costumes  which  the  lover  takes  off  or  puts  on  piece  by 
piece,  according  as  he  is  hopeful  or  despondent — chlamys, 
machaera,  ampulla;  ^  the  enumeration  of  the  countries 
which  says  he  is  visiting  :  Cyprus  and  Chalcis — though 
it  is  a  curious  idea  to  go  to  Cyprus  in  a  carriage — ;  and 
Eutychus'  remark  :    Calchas  iste  quidem  Zacynthiust. 

Drunkenness,  which  supplied  Plautus  with  comic  effects 
of  a  somewhat  vulgar  nature,  was  not  unknown  in  New 
Comedy.  Several  passages  warrant  the  belief  that  the 
vea  occasionally  introduced  actors  whose  heads  and  feet 
were    a   bit    shaky.     Witness   fragments    67    and    229    of 

1  Diph.,  fr.  32. 

2  Diodorus,  fr.  2.  Cf.  Nicolaus,  fr.  1.  The  irapdaiToi  in  Greek  ritual 
assisted  the  priest  at  the  sacrifice  and  banquet. 

3  2a/i.,  244-246. 

*  Pseud.,  192-193,  199-200;   Bacch.,  HI,  155,  156,  242,  810. 

*  Cf.  2a/i.,  314  et  seq. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  471 

Menander,  fragment  84  of  Philemon,  and  the  reference  to 
Daos  in  a  hilarious  state  in  Dio  Chrysostom.^  The  scenes 
in  the  Mostellaria  in  which  Callidamatcs  is  under  the 
influence  of  wine  and  indulges  in  all  sorts  of  eccentricities, 
are  doubtless  entirely  the  invention  of  Philemon,  and  the 
most  trivial  detail  of  all — lam  hercle  ego  vos  pro  matula 
habebo,  nisi  mihi  matulam  datis — must  not  be  thought  too 
gross  for  Greek  ears.  In  Attic  comedy  the  utensil  referred 
to  was  always  to  be  found  at  a  drinking-bout. ^ 

It  has  been  surmised  that  the  scenes  in  the  Casina  which 
turn  upon  Chalinus'  disguises  were  added  by  the  Latin 
poet,  but  I  do  not  think  there  is  any  convincing  reason 
for  this  assumption.  The  scene  in  which  we  witness  the 
marriage  procession  and  see  Lysidamus  making  his  first 
familiar  advances  to  the  delicate  person — corpusculum 
malaculum — of  the  supposed  bride,  conforms  entirely  to 
the  taste  of  early  Attic  comedy.  The  two  other  scenes  in 
which  we  see  Olympio  and  his  master,  each  in  turn,  coming 
back  crestfallen,^  are,  to  a  certain  extent,  repetitions; 
and  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  first  and  more  obscene 
one  was  added  by  Plautus.  In  the  second  scene,  on  the 
other  hand,  several  details  enable  us  to  trace  the  hand  of 
the  translator  at  work  :  the  word  dismarite,  which  occurs 
nowhere  else  and  which  seems  to  me  to  be  an  adaptation 
of  dvodveg;  the  construction  of  moeehissat,  used,  like 
fJLOiXav  or  (jlolxevelv,  with  a  direct  object;  the  mention 
of  the  cane,  the  usual  complement  of  a  man's  attire  at 
Athens,  in  connection  with  the  pallium  which  Lysidamus 
has  lost ;  the  allusion  to  the  immorality  of  the  Massaliotes, 
which  was  proverbial  among  the  Greeks,  and  the  reference 
to  the  Bacchantes,  for  which  the  scandals  connected  with 
the  Roman  Bacchanalia  would  not  be  suff^icient  explanation. 
The  buffoonery  of  which  I  have  been  speaking  has  not 
always  much  relation  to  the   plot.     However,   this   docs 

1  Dio  Chrys.,  XXXII.  p.  699  R.  (fr.  adeep.  306). 

*  Cf.  Aristoph.,  Thesm.,  633;  Frogs,  544;  Eupolis,  fr.  341;  Epicratcs, 
fr.  5;  Diphilus,  fr.  43,  lines  34-35;  Berliner  Klassikcrtextc,  V.  2,  p.  114 
(line  32),  fr.  adesp.  375;  etc.    Also  Aeschylus,  fr.  180  Nauck  {'0(rToA(^7oi). 

^  See  the  end  of  Aristophanes'  Peace. 


472     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

not,  as  a  rule,  delay  the  progress  of  events  in  an  entirely 
improbable  way.  But  there  are  other  instances  where 
the  fun  is  not  only  vulgar  but  also  out  of  place.  This 
is  especially  the  case  when  a  character  who  has  to  com- 
municate, to  announce  or  to  request  something  important, 
stops  to  make  endless  preambles,  and  indulges  in  all  sorts 
of  circumlocutions.  In  real  life  it  would  certainly  not 
occur  to  a  slave  who  brings  good  news  (as  Pinacium  does  in 
lines  274  et  seq.  of  the  Stichus)  to  ask  the  questions  which 
Pinacium  asks  :  "  Shall  I  go  and  inform  my  mistress  ?  Or 
would  it  not  be  better  to  wait  for  her  to  send  me  an  em- 
bassy to  find  out  what  I  know  ?  "  And  so  on.  Nor  would 
a  messenger,  when  he  has  found  the  person  for  whom  he 
has  been  searching,  lose  time  in  quarrelling  with  a  third 
person,  as  Pinacium,  to  whom  I  have  already  referred, 
does,  and  as  Acanthio  does  in  one  of  the  early  scenes  of 
the  Mercator.  Nor  would  he  expect  the  person  whom  he 
is  addressing,  before  he  has  been  told  anything,  to  give 
expression  to  feelings  or  to  make  declarations  and  prepara- 
tions for  which  the  information  he  is  about  to  give  is  the 
only  justification.  But  Pinacium  (in  lines  347  et  seq.  of 
the  Stichus)  and  Ergasilus  (in  lines  838  et  seq.  of  the 
Captivi)  do  demand  this  with  unreasonable  persistence. 
It  is  also  absurd  that  when  Trachalio  implores  Daemones 
to  interfere  and  save  Palaestra,  he  should  introduce  the 
pleasantries  into  his  request  which  are  found  in  lines  629 
et  seq.  of  Plautus'  Rudens ;  or  that  Calidorus,  when  meditat- 
ing hanging  himself  in  despair,  should  begin  by  asking  his 
slave  to  lend  him  the  money  to  buy  a  rope.^  In  this  case 
and  elsewhere  Plautus'  characters  indulge  in  fun  at  the 
wrong  moment.  However,  it  seems  that  herein  they 
frequently  imitated  the  original  Greek  works.  Let  us  go 
back  to  the  examples  which  I  have  just  cited.  In  the 
passage  from  the  Pseudolus  the  word  drachuma,  in  that 
from  the  Rudens  the  word  exagoga  and  the  definite  allusion 
to  a  common  infirmity  of  the  Cyreneans  seem  to  me  to  be 
straws  worth  noting.     The  soliloquy  pronounced  by  the 

^  Pseud.,  85  et  seq. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  478 

waggish  Pinacium  begins  with  a  statement  which  better 
suits  the  Greek  Hermes  than  the  Roman  Mercury  {Mer- 
curius  lovis  qui  nuntius  perhibetur,  etc.).  This  soHloquy 
ends  in  hnes  that  were,  no  doubt,  translated  word  for  word 
{Conhindam  facta  Talthubi  conieninamque  omnis  nuntios  : 
simulque  cursuram  meditabor  ad  ludos  Olympios)  and  the 
honours  asked  for  in  the  most  important  passage — oratores, 
dona  ex  auro,  quadrigas — bear  a  strong  resemblance  to  those 
which  the  flattering  adulation  of  the  Athenians  invented 
for  some  of  Menander's  contemporaries.  The  passage  in 
the  Captivi  in  which  Ergasilus  orders  a  huge  banquet 
without  saying  why  or  in  honour  of  what  he  does  so,  is 
very  much  like  its  prototype  in  a  scene  from  Greek  comedy 
which  affords  a  good  basis  for  comparison,  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  it  does  not  belong  to  the  new  period — namely, 
the  scene  in  Aristophanes'  Plutus,  in  which  Carlo  approaches 
his  mistress  after  the  blind  man  has  been  cured. ^ 

The  foregoing  observations  all  relate  to  scenes  or  to 
parts  of  scenes  which  are  fairly  lengthy.  As  soon  as  we 
attempt  to  get  an  idea  of  the  comic  elements  found  in 
mere  details,  we  shall  discover  that  the  choice  of  words 
must  have  played  an  appreciable  part  in  them.  Certain 
passages  which  contain  a  conceit  often  owe  much  of  their 
humorous  effect  to  mere  combinations  of  words.  Take, 
for  example,  fragment  7  of  Apollodorus — 

"  We  fathers  are  at  a  great  disadvantage.  If  your 
father  does  not  do  everything  you  wish,  you  reproach  him 
by  saying,  '  Weren't  you  young  once  yourself?  '  {Ov 
yeyovag  avrog  veog;);  but  if  his  son  behaves  badly,  a  father 
cannot  say  to  him,  '  Weren't  you  old  once  yourself? 
{Ov  yeyovag  avrog  ysQcov;). 

Ov  yeyovag  avrog  yeQOJv;  this  curious  question,  which 
sounds  like  nonsense,  and  which  corresponds  word  for 
word  with  the  refrain  of  the  young  men,  is  as  amusing  in 
its  form  as  in  its  meaning.     This  is  true  also  of  Lysidamus' 

^  Plutus,  644  et  seq. 


474     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

sally  in  lines  263-264  of  the  Casina,  which  is  a  version 
of  Philocleon's  words  :  ^  At  quamquam  unicust,  nihilo 
magis  ille  unicust  mihi  filius  quam  ego  illi  pater.  When, 
in  the  FecoQ-yoQ,  Daos  ironically  sings  the  praises  of  his 
master's  property,  the  juxtaposition  of  the  two  first  words 
— aygov  evoe^eoregov — is  sure  to  puzzle  the  spectators; 
they  might  almost  be  a  riddle  set  to  the  audience,  of 
which  what  follows  gives  the  explanation — 

"  A  more  pious  property  no  one  cultivates,  I  do  believe. 
Ours  produces  myrtle,  ivy,  laurel,  every  flower ;  moreover, 
if  you  put  anything  into  it,  it  gives  it  back  honestly  and 
fairly,  not  a  whit  more,  but  exactly  the  same  quantity."  ^ 

The  same  artifice  is  found  in  a  passage  by  Philemon  : 
"  I  did  not  know  that  in  my  field  I  had  a  physician  " 
{'Eyd)  rov  dygov  iargov  ihXijdsiv  excov) ;  and  by  way  of 
justifying  this  curious  statement  he  goes  on — 

"  For  it  feeds  me  like  a  patient,  and  gives  me  a  few 
grains  of  corn,  a  mere  whiff  of  wine,  a  leaf  of  salad,  and, 
by  Zeus  !  those  wee  products  of  the  rocks,  capers,  thyme 
and  asparagus,  and  nothing  more.  I  am  really  afraid  that 
it  will  make  me  so  thin  that  I  shall  become  a  corpse."  ^ 

Though  the  fragments  of  the  vea  do  not  afford  equivalents 
for  some  of  Plautus'  sentences,  the  ending  of  which  is 
amusing  because  it  is  unexpected,  such  as  Lycus'  state- 
ment: Nunc  ibo,  amicos  consulam,  quo  me  modo  suspendere 
aequo  censeant  potissimum,^  Aristophanes'  plays  do.  Take, 
for  example,  this  sentence  in  the  Acharnians :  "Avdgeg 
ngo^ovXoL  ram  engaxrov  ra  noXei,  ojicog  xdxiora  xal  xdxiot' 
oTiohi/Lieda.^  We  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  such 
sentences  are  translated  from  the  Greek. 

However,  these  are  not,  strictly  speaking,  plays  on 
words.  But  we  have  proof  that  similar  devices — puns, 
alliterations,  etymological  pleasantries — did  not  dis- 
appear   entirely,    though    Menander  ^    disdained    to    use 

1   Wasps,  1369.  »  r^wpy.,  35-39.  »  Philemon,  fr.  98. 

*  Poen.,  794-795.     Cf.  Stichus,  603-504.  »  Acharn.,  755-756. 

*  Plut.,  Compar.  Aristoph.  and  Men.,  I.  2. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  475 

them,  and  they  occurred,  as  a  rule,  much  less  frequently 
in  the  vea  than  in  the  comic  writers  of  the  fifth  century. 
A  number  of  them  are  found  in  the  fragments.  When 
making  fun  of  Magas,  Philemon  plays  on  the  double  mean- 
ing of  the  word  yod^ifiara — letters  that  are  sent,  and 
written  characters,^  Elsewhere,  he  plays  on  the  name  of 
the  parasite  Carabus.^  Euphranor  plays  on  the  name  of 
the  cook  Lyeus,^  and  Arehedicus  on  that  of  the  courtesan 
Scotodine.^  In  two  consecutive  lines  by  Arehedicus  the 
word  TQdxrj^og  designates  a  highly  prized  part  of  certain 
shell-fish  as  well  as  the  neck  of  the  person  who  is  speaking.^ 
In  a  fragment  of  Posidippus  the  word  orojua  must  be  taken 
to  mean  both  the  mouth  of  the  gourmets  and  the  narrow 
entrance  to  a  harbour.^  In  a  fragment  of  Baton  ronog 
and  xE(pa).rj  have  both  their  usual  meaning  and  that  of 
rhetorical  terms.'  The  word  x^Q^''!  ^^  the  end  of  one  of 
Euphron's  tirades  signifies  both  blood-pudding,  chitter- 
lings, and  the  string  of  a  lyre.*^  In  another  fragment  of 
Euphron  a  slave  who  has  an  empty  stomach  is  given  the 
name  of  a  fish,  xeoxoevg,^  because  the  word  vfjorig,  which 
is  used  of  a  man  who  has  not  yet  broken  his  fast,  designates 
a  variety  of  that  species  of  fish.  The  same  joke  is  found 
in  Diphilus.^°  An  actor  in  one  of  Alexis'  comedies  implores 
a  cook  to  chop  the  meat  up  fine  {xotiteiv),  but  not  to  chop 
him  up — that  is  to  say,  not  to  kill  him  {/xt}  xonxs  fi ,  dXld  xd 
XQsa).'^^  This  joke,  which  must  have  been  a  traditional 
one,  is  also  found  in  lines  70  and  77  of  Menander's  Zajnia. 
In  Apollodorus  of  Carystus  a  wag  uses  the  word  xah.lv  in 
two  senses  in  quick  succession — to  invoke  and  to  invite  : 
"  I  invoke  Ares  and  Nike  for  the  success  of  my  expedition, 
and  I  also  invoke  Chaerephon ;  for  if  I  do  not  invoke  him 
{i.  e.  if  I  do  not  invite  him)  he'll  come  without  being  in- 
vited {xav  yoLQ  jurj  xaXco,  axkrjxog  ^l^et)-"  ^^  In  ^  fragment 
of  Phoenicides  a  courtesan  tells  of  her  misfortune.     She 

1  Philem.,  fr.  144.  *  Ibid.,  fr.  42.  '  Euphron,  fr.  1,  lines  30  31. 

*  Arehedicus,  fr.  1.  «  jn^^^  (j..  3.  «  Posid.,  fr.  26. 

'  Baton,  fr.  5.  «  Euphron,  fr.  1.  »  Ibid.,  fr.  2. 

"  Diph.,  fr.  54.  "  Alexis,  fr.  175.  '^  Apoil,  Car.,  fr.  26. 


476     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

has  been  the  victim  of  a  soldier  who,  aeeording  to  his 
own  account,  was  waiting  to  receive  a  gratuity  from 
the  king  (dcoQedv),  "  and,"  she  says,  "  while  waiting  for 
this  graUiity,  the  wretch  had  me  gratis  for  a  whole  year 
{dia  ravxrp  tjv  Xsyoi  tijv  dojQedv  inavrov  eo^e  fx  6  xaxodaifxoiv 
dcoQedv).^  In  Menander,  the  mother  of  another  courtesan 
boasts  of  her  daughter's  philanthropic  disposition  {ndvv  ydg 
eoxi  rfj  (pvoei  .  .  .  cpiXdvOQConov  to  naLddqiov  ocpodga).^  In 
an  anonymous  fragment  an  actor  declares  that  for  every 
twenty  bushels  (juedi/uvoi)  that  he  sows,  his  field  yields  him 
thirteen,  and  he  humorously  adds  :  ol  d'  enr  inl  Oiq^aq 
iorgdrevodv  juoi  doxM.  And,  not  content  with  this  joke,  he 
declares  that  his  field  gratifies  the  oft-expressed  wish  : 
ovrjOKpoga  yevoiro.  And  why?  "0  ydg  cpeqei  vvv  ovrog,  elg 
ovoq  (peqei.^  The  attentive  reader  will  discover  further 
examples  of  this  sort  in  Plautus,  besides  those  which  have 
come  down  to  us  in  the  original  Greek  fragments.  It  is 
perfectly  clear  that  many  of  the  plays  on  words  that 
abound  in  the  Latin  poet  are  entirely  his  own.  But 
underlying  some  of  them  we  can  see  the  signs  of  a 
similar  joke  on  the  part  of  the  Greek  author.  Further- 
more, if  we  translate  some  of  these  Latin  sentences,  in 
which  there  is  no  trace  of  a  play  on  words,  into  Greek, 
we  are  occasionally  led  to  suspect  that  there  was  one  in 
the  original  version.  I  have  already  shown  that  this  was 
so  in  a  sentence  in  the  prologue  to  the  Casina  and  in  a  line 
in  the  prologue  to  the  Menaechmi,*  and  it  can  be  shown 
that  it  was  also  the  case  in  passages  that  do  not  occur 
in  prologues.  For  instance,  in  lines  241,  703-704  of  the 
Bacchides,  630  of  the  Stichus,  187,  648,  775  of  the  Poenulus, 
229,  653-654,  712  and  736  of  the  Pseudolus,  437-438  of 
the  Miles,  517  of  the  Mercator,  331-332  of  the  Amphitryon, 
826-827  of  the  Rudens,  and  25  of  the  Epidicus,  the  jokes  or 
apparent  jokes  on  the  names  Chrysalus,  Gelasimus,  Lycus, 

1  Phoenicides,  fr.  4,  lines  9-10.  *  Men.,  fr.  428. 

*  Fr.   adesp.    109.     A  single   donkey  can   carry   what   this   field   now 
bears.  (—Tr.). 

*  See  p.  407. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  477 

Phoenicium,  Harpax  and  Charinus,  Dicca,  Pasicompsa, 
Sosia,  Palaestra,  and  Epidicus  arc  manifestly  of  Greek 
origin.  Line  721  of  the  Stichus  {Satin  ut  faceie,  <iaeque^ 
atque  ex  pictura,  adstitit),  is  in  all  probability  a  transla- 
tion of  a  line  that  contained  a  play  on  the  words  niva^ 
SLiid^ Ilivdxiov;  and  line  886  of  the  Poenulus  [Continuo 
is  me  ex  Syncerasto  Crurifragium  fecerit)  is  probably  a 
translation  of  a  line  in  which  ZvyxeQaorog  was  contrasted 
with  some  compound  of  xge^iaorog.  Line  585  of  the 
Pseudolus  [Ballionem  cxhallisiabo  lepide)  is  possibly  a 
Latin  rendering  of  a  phrase  in  which  the  name  Ballio 
was  brought  into  connection  with  a  compound  of  ^dlXeiv. 
In  the  following  passage  from  the  Casina  :  Quasi  venator 
tu  quidem  es  ;  dies  atque  noctes  cutu  cane  aetatem  exigis,^ 
a  scholar  has  discovered  an  etymological  joke,  suggested 
by  the  word  xvvrjyerrjg.  In  the  Aulularia  Pythodicus 
and  the  cooks  play  on  the  verbs  disperti  and  divider e,'^ 
and  I  suspect  that  their  Greek  prototypes  played  in  the 
same  way  on  diajuegiCsiv  and  diajurjOLCsiv.  The  jokes  sug- 
gested by  the  false  name  Summanus,  in  the  Curculio,^ 
could  be  made  in  Greek  about  the  name  Ovgiog.  Like 
Summanus,  Ovgiog  is  a  name  appropriate  for  the  most 
powerful  of  the  gods,  and  its  resemblance  to  the  verb 
ovQslv  strikes  one  immediately.  When,  in  line  375  of  the 
Mostellaria,  Philolaches  says  to  Callidamatcs  :  Valet  ille 
quidem  {so.  pater),  atque  <Cego^  disperii,  and  the  latter 
replies  :  Bis  periisti  ?  qui  potest  ?  the  quid  pro  quo  is  not 
apparent  in  the  Latin  text.  I  imagine  that  in  Philemon 
the  confusion  arose  from  the  two  prefixes  dvg-  and  diq-, 
which  must  have  been  pronounced  practically  in  the 
same  way.  Further  on,  in  line  892,  Pinacium  says  to 
Phaniscus,  whom  he  charges  with  being  his  master's 
favourite  :  Tace  sis,  faber  qui  cudere  soles  plumheos  num- 
mos.  In  order  to  understand  the  malice  of  these  words 
one  should,  I  think,  bear  in  mind  that  false  coins  are 
called  yJ^d7]Xa  in  Greek,  and  that  xv^da  denotes  a  stoop- 

1  Casina,  319-320.  *  AuL,  280  ot  seq. 

*  Cure,  414-416.     See  Ussing's  commentary. 


478     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

ing  attitude  with  which  Phaniscus  was  presumably 
familiar.^  In  hne  822  of  the  Truculentus  the  maid- 
servant of  CaUicles  addresses  Diniarchus  in  the  following 
terms  :  Video  ego  te,  propter  male  facia  qui  es  paironus 
parieti.  If  we  imagine  the  expression  translated  into 
the  Greek,  and  the  word  paironus  replaced  by  nqoordxriQ 
(literally  :  ihe  man  who  stands  in  front),  the  joke  will 
become  much  clearer.  After  Mercury  has  declared,  in 
lines  325-326  of  the  Amphitryon  :  Vox  mi  ad  aures  advo- 
lavit,  Sosia  sadly  replies  :  Ne  ego  homo  infelix  fui,  qui 
non  alas  intervelli  ;  volucrem  vocem  gesiito.  Further  on, 
in  line  333,  Mercury  says  that  a  voice  strikes  his  ears 
{aures  verherat),  and  Sosia  remarks  in  a  stage  aside  : 
Meiuo  vocis  ne  vicem  hodie  hie  vapulem,  quae  hunc  ver- 
herat. Both  of  these  jokes  could  be  made  in  Greek,  as 
TtQoojiereodai  and  cora  ^dXleiv  were  both  commonly  used 
in  connection  with  the  voice.  The  same  remark  applies 
to  the  joke  in  lines  367  et  seq.  :  Merc.  Advenisti  consutis 
dolis.  Sos.  Immo  quidem  tunicis  consutis  hue  advenio, 
non  dolis,  because  Qanxeiv  is  used  in  a  metaphorical  sense, 
just  as  consuere  is ;  and  to  the  play  on  words  in  line  1001  : 
Faciam  ui  sit  madidus  sobrius,  because  a  man  who  was 
drunk  was  called  a  moistened  or  damp  man  {^e^Qeyjuevog) 
in  Greece  as  well  as  in  Rome.  Patient  researches  made 
by  one  who  is  thoroughly  versed  in  Latin  and  Greek 
would,  I  am  sure,  make  it  possible  to  extend  this  list 
considerably. 

Here  is  a  list  chosen  at  random  from  among  the  comic 
metaphors  and  jokes  which  cannot  have  been  invented  by 
Plautus — 

—  Trin.,  1011  :  Cave  sis  tibi,  ne  bubuli  in  te  cottahi 
crebri  crepent ;  Epid.,  125  :  Sine  meo  sumptu  paratae 
iam  sunt  scapulis  symbolae ;  311  :  ne  ulmos  parasitos 
faciat,  quae  usque  aiiondeant :  625-626  :  Ex  tuis  verbis 
meum  futurum  corium  pulchrum  praedicas,  quern  Apella 
atque  Zeuxis  duo  pingent  pigmeniis  ulmeis.     The  use   of 

1  Cf.  Aristoph.,  Thesm.,  489;   Machon  ap.  Ath.,  p.  680  D. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  47d 

the  words  cottabi,  symbolae,  parasiti,  which  recall  local 
customs,  and  that  of  the  names  Apellcs  and  Zeuxis, 
sufficiently  indicate  the  origin  of  these  passages. 

—  Pseud.,  229  :  Cras  Phocnicium  poeniceo  corio  invises 
pergulam.  There  is  a  similar  passage  in  lines  111-112 
of  the  Acharnians  :  "Aye  dr)  ov  (pgdoov  i/uol  oacpojq  ngog 
xovrovi,  Iva  /lis  oe  ^dyjco  ^dju/na  Zaodiavixov,  and  in  lines 
319-320  :  'Eine  /iioi,  rl  cpeidoixeoQa  xcJbv  XiQcov,  co  drmorai,  jut] 
ov  xaxa^aiveiv  xov  drdga  xovxov  eg  (poLvixida. 

—  Epid.,  16-17  :  Th.  Pcrpetuen  valuisti  ?  Ep.  Varie. 
Th.  Qui  varie  valent,  caprcaginum  hominum  non  placet 
mihi  neque  panthcrinum  genus.  Compare  line  89  of 
Herondas'  third  mimiamb  :  'AXX'  iaxiv  vdgrjg  noixdmegov 
noXXcp. 

—  Poen.,  398  :  Itaque  iam  quasi  ostreatmn  terguni 
ulceribus  gestito.  This  reminds  one  of  Xanthias'  ex- 
clamation, in  lines  1292  et  seq.  of  Aristophanes'  Wasps  : 
'let)  xeXaJvai  juaxagiai  xov  degjuaxog  .  .  .  (bg  ev  xaxrjoexpaoOe 
xal  vov^voxixcbg  xegaficp  xd  vojxov  ojaxe  tag  TiXrjydg  oxeyeiv. 

—  Poen.,  700  :  TJbi  tu.  .  .  .  vetustaie  vino  edentulo 
aetatem  inriges.  The  same  expression  is  found  in  frag- 
ment 167  of  Alexis  :  ioxai  {olvog)  xal  judXa  r'jdvg  y',  odovxag 
ovx  exojv. 

—  Poen.,  759-760  :  Lye.  Calidum  prandisti  prandium 
hodie  ?  Die  mihi.  Agor.  Quid  iam  ?  Lye.  Quia  os 
nunc  frigefacias,  quom  rogas.  We  know  that  the  adjective 
ffvxQog  is  used  figuratively,  just  as  frigidus  is  in  Latin. 
The  following  passage  from  fragment  4  of  Theophilus  may 
be  compared  with  the  above  lines  of  the  Poenulus  :  "  Ilcdg 
^XEig  TiQog  xdga^ov;  "  "  WvxQog  ioxiv,  ojiaye,''^  cprjat'  "  qtjxoqcov 
ov  yevojLcai;'^  and  also  Gnathaena's  bon  mot  about  the 
prologues  of  Diphilus  which,  according  to  her,  are  capable 
of  chilling  water. 

■ —  Cas.,  356  (After  Chalinus  has  told  Cleostrata  that 
her  husband  would  be  glad  to  see  her  dead)  :  Lys.  Plus 
artificum  est  mihi  quam  rebar  ;  hariolum  hunc  habeo  domi. 
There  is  the  same  turn  in  the  nEoixeiQo/j£vr],  181-182  : 
MdvxLV  6  oxQaxid)xr]g  [eXaO'  excov]  xovxov '  ETiixvyxdvei  xi.     The 


480     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

jokes  made  on  this  subject  in  several  passages  of  Plautus 
are,  like  the  subject  itself,  probably  of  Greek  origin. 

—  Rud.,  586  et  seq.  :  Quasi  vinis  graecis  Neptunus 
nobis  suffudit  mare,  itaque  alvom  prodi  speravit  nobis  salsis 
poculis.  Plautus  himself  admits  that  he  is  following  his 
Greek  model  by  speaking  of  Greek  wines  ;  he  refers  to 
what  was  known  as  olvog  redaXaxTcojUEVog. 

It  would  be  easy  to  add  a  number  of  further  examples. 

Two  practices  in  which  the  authors  of  the  middle  period 
had  delighted  —  parodying  lofty  style  and  the  nvlyog 
(an  accumulation  of  words  that  had  to  be  pronounced 
in  one  breath) — do  not  seem  to  have  enjoyed  as  much 
popularity  in  the  days  of  the  vea.  In  the  original  frag- 
ments, as  well  as  in  Plautus'  plays,  we  do,  it  is  true,  find 
enumerations,  and  especially  enumerations  of  utensils 
or  of  eatables ;  but  hardly  one  of  them  is  long  enough  to 
provoke  laughter. ^  The  only  one  that  can  be  compared 
to  the  litanies  of  the  /neoj]  in  point  of  length  is  the  list  of 
purveyors  whom  Megadorus  enumerates  in  his  satirical 
comments  on  the  extravagance  of  women.  Considering 
the  names  of  many  of  these  purveyors  and  the  luxurious 
nature  of  their  trades,  I  think  it  extremely  likely  that 
this  passage  is  a  translation.  But  it  must  be  pointed  out 
that  this  enumeration  is  not  conceived  in  the  same  taste 
as  in  the  works  of  the  earlier  authors,  and  that  its  comic 
effect  is  based  on  other  motives.  When,  for  example, 
Anaxandrides,  in  fragment  41,  enumerates,  in  a  single 
breath,  nearly  a  hundred  dishes,  this  tirade  derives  its 
humour  from  the  mere  juxtaposition  of  words,  and  the 
laughter  it  finally  provokes  is  due  to  the  fact  that  it  tickles 
the  ears.  In  Megadorus'  catalogue  each  word  appeals 
directly  to  the  imagination;  the  listener  imagines  that 
he  sees  the  luckless  husband  bombarded  by  the  endless 
crowd  of  creditors  who  present  their  claims,  and  it  is  this 
picture  that  makes  him  laugh.  There  is  something  more 
frankly  burlesque  about  those  passages  in  which  an  actor 

^  AuL,  508  et  seq. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  481 

calls  to  witness  a  host  of  gods  in  order  to  lend  weight  to 
his  words ;  ^  in  these  passages,  however — and  there  are  not 
many  of  them — the  enumerations  are  short. 

Parodies  of  lofty  style  are  still  to  be  found  here  and 
there,  but  we  must  not  imagine  we  see  them  where  they 
do  not  exist.  In  many  cases  the  fact  that  the  words  of 
comic  characters  affect  a  certain  dignity,  which  reminds 
one  of  the  lofty  style  of  tragedy,  of  didactic  poetry  or  of 
an  epic,  is  due  to  the  situation  or  to  the  nature  of  the 
actor — or  else  it  is  due  to  lack  of  skill  on  the  part  of  the 
poet,  who  was  unable  to  give  his  lines  the  informality  of 
familiar  talk.  But  there  are  passages  in  which  the  dis- 
crepancy between  subject-matter  and  style  is  certainly 
intentional,  and  where  it  is  designed  to  provoke  laughter. 
This  is  the  case  in  fragment  79  of  Philemon,  a  cook's 
soliloquy,  the  first  two  lines  of  which  (cog  ijuEQog  fxvnrjXde 
yfj  xe  xovQavq>  Xe^ai  fioXovxi  rovipov  d>g  ioxevaoa)  are  a 
parody  on  lines  57-58  of  Euripides'  Medea  {ojod'  tfiEQog  fx 
vjifjXde  yfi  Tfi  xovQavM  Xs^ai  fiolovor]  devqo  MrjdEiag  xv%aig) ;  in 
fragment  348,  in  which  the  safe  arrival  of  a  captain  of 
a  merchant  vessel  is  announced  in  the  same  terms  which 
Poseidon  uses  to  introduce  himself  to  the  public  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Trojan  Women;  in  the  lamentations  of 
Demeas,  lines  110-111  of  the  Zafila  {d>  noXio/xa  KexQoniaQ 
ydovoQ,  (L  Tavaog  alO/jg) ;  in  fragment  126  of  Diphilus,  a 
burlesque  incantation  in  hexameters ;  in  fragment  8  of 
Euphron,  in  which  the  grandiloquent  circumlocution  Nijgela 
rexva  is  used  of  fish  that  are  being  cooked,  and  a  parasite 
is  called  NeiXov  ^la  ;  in  fragment  1  of  Strato,  in  which 
a  learned  cook,  "  a  male  Sphinx,"  insists  on  using  only 
Homeric  words  that  are  incomprehensible  for  any  one 
who  does  not  happen  to  have  at  hand  the  learned  com- 
mentary by  Philitas;  in  Chrysalus'  laughably  pathetic 
invocation,  line  932  of  the  Bacchides  (0  Troia,  O  patria, 
O  Pergamum,  O  Priame,  periisti,  senex) ;  in  Pseudolus' 
exclamations,  line  703  of  the  play  that  bears  his  name 
{lo  te  te,  turanne,  te  ie  ego,  qui  imperitas  Pseudolo,  etc.); 

1  2o^.,  94-95;  Bacch.,  892  et  seq. 
I  I 


482  NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

in  the  question  which  Ptolemocratia  asks  (Hnes  268-269  of 
the  Ritdens)  in  oracular  style  of  the  two  suppliant  women 
who  are  drenched  with  sea- water  [Nempe  equo  ligneo  per 
mas  caerulas  estis  vectae?) ;  and  so  on.  In  other  cases  some 
passage  of  a  tragedy  is  merely  cited,  indicated  or  adapted 
in  a  more  or  less  humorous  way  without  much  insistence, 
and  the  authority  of  a  tragic  writer — usually  Euripides — 
is  invoked  in  an  absurd  manner.  In  the  ' EnLXQenovreQ 
Sophrona  uses  a  sentence  from  the  Auge  to  excuse  her- 
self and  her  ward  :  rj  cpvoiQ  i^ovXed'  f)  vofxcov  ovdev  [xiXei. 
Fragment  263  of  Menander  is  very  much  like  fragments 
666  and  709  of  Euripides,  and  fragment  366  greatly 
resembles  fragment  1016  of  the  same  poet,  while  fragment 
(doubtful)  1112  is  much  like  line  930  of  the  Andromache. 
We  have  already  seen  that  some  of  Diphilus'  parasites 
quote  their  favourite  poets,  word  for  word.  Indeed,  the 
second  line  of  fragment  60  is  a  very  close  copy  of  a  sentence 
found  in  Nauck's  collection,  No.  907.  The  sham  quota- 
tion in  fragment  73  comprises,  as  its  first  element,  a  line 
from  Nauck's  fragment  187,  and  as  its  third  element 
line  535  of  the  Iphigeneia  in  Tauris,  both  transcribed  as 
they  stand  in  the  original. 

A  comic  style  of  expression  has  its  foundation  in  words 
that  are  themselves  droll.  Aristophanes  abounds  in 
them;  in  the  poets  of  the  new  period  they  were  much 
rarer.  In  the  first  place,  it  seems  that  the  later  poets 
did  not  coin  many  words.  The  only  words  of  this  kind, 
found  in  the  fragments,  are  ipofioxolacpoQ,  invented  by 
Diphilus  after  the  model  of  yjco/uoxoXa^,^  and  possibly 
?.Y}OTooa?.7iiyxr')jg,  which  is  used  by  Menander.^  As  for  the 
comical  proper  names  in  w^hich  early  comedy  delighted, 
there  is  only  one  instance  of  the  sort  in  the  fragments — 
the  title  of  a  play  by  Diphilus,  AlQrjoixeix'yjg.  Those 
which  occur  in  Plautus — Artotrogus  and  Miccotrogus, 
Thensaurochrysonicochrysides,  Pyrgopolinices  and  Poly- 
machaeroplagides,  Therapontigonus  Platagidorus  and 
Bumbomachides,  Clutomistaridysarchides — are  of    uncer- 

1  Diph.,  fr.  49.  »  Men.,  fr.  1030. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  483 

tain  origin.  I  ought,  however,  to  say  that,  as  far  as  the 
latter  are  concerned,  I  do  not  think  it  unreasonable  to 
suppose  that  they  come  from  the  vea.  Plautus  was  quite 
able  when  he  chose  to  make  up  comic  names  from  elements 
that  were  exclusively  Latin.  Take,  for  example,  the 
assumed  names  of  the  sham  Persian — Vaniloquidorus, 
Virginisvendonides,  Nugicpiloquidcs,  Argentumextere- 
bronides,  Quodsemelarripidcs  Nunquameripides ;  or  the 
names  of  countries,  like  Peredia  and  Perbibesia ;  or  of 
people,  like  the  Panicci,  the  Pistorienses  and  the  Ficedu- 
lenses.  If  he  also  introduces  names  which  are  entirely 
Greek  and  are  formed  in  the  regular  way,  surely  it  must 
have  been  because  he  found  them  in  the  plays  which  he 
imitated. 

As  I  have  already  said  in  my  remarks  about  foreigners 
and  rustics,  the  vea  did  not  entirely  eschew  the  comic  effects 
to  be  obtained  from  clumsy  or  peculiar  elocution.  When 
Hanno  jabbers  stage-Carthaginian  which  Milphio  inter- 
prets, God  knows  how,  and  then  suddenly  stops  to  use 
the  same  language  which  the  others  speak,  he  reminds 
one  of  Pseudartabas,  the  Persian  ambassador  in  the 
Acharnians.  When  the  truculentus  speaks  of  rabo  (instead 
of  arrabo)  and  of  conia  (instead  of  ciconia),  he  indulges 
in  one  of  the  forms  of  humour  that  are  enumerated  in  the 
Coislin  Treatise — the  corruption  of  words  xax'  dq^aiQeoiv. 
In  addition  to  the  instances  of  this  sort  found  in  Plautus' 
comedies,  a  few  passages  from  the  fragments  are  entitled 
to  special  mention.  Athenaeus  says  explicitly  that  Phile- 
mon delighted  in  the  exotic  appellations  ^axtdxia  and 
oavvdxia,  which  were  given  to  certain  kinds  of  drinking 
cups.^  An  actor  in  one  of  Euphron's  comedies  is  annoyed 
at  hearing  people  use  the  words  rpvyevg,  oevzXov  and  cpaxda 
to  designate  things  that  were  called  yjvxtrJQia,  revrXiov 
and  (paxrj  at  Athens. ^  Menander,  Diphilus,  Posidippus 
and  Philidippus  brought  purists  upon  the  scene  who  pre- 
sumed  to   correct   the   language   used   by   their   fellows.^ 

»  Ath.,  p.  497  F. ;   Philom.,  fr.  87.  *  Euphron,  fr.  3. 

3  Men.,  fr.  300;    Diph.,  fr.  47;    Posid.,  fr.  38;    Philipp.,  fr.  30. 


484     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

One  of  the  characters  in  the  Oatq,  by  Hipparchus,  takes  a 
Xa^Qcbnog  for  an  animal.^  In  Diphilus  an  actor  makes 
the  same  mistake  when  he  hears  of  Jioiorig  and  xoayilacpoQy 
Xa^Qconog  and  ^atia.Krj.'^  In  a  fragment  of  Epinicus 
some  one  takes,  or  pretends  to  take,  a  rhython  of  the 
eU(pa<;  type  for  an  elephant.  Subsequently,  when  the 
speaker  prides  himself  on  being  able  to  drain  this  huge 
vessel,  which,  as  he  declares,  an  elephant  could  not  drain, 
our  friend  pays  him  the  following  pretty  compliment  : 
Ovdev  iXecpavrog  yaQ  diacpegeig  ovde  ov ; '  eXecpag  was  a  term 
applied  to  imbeciles. 

Occasionally,  the  most  familiar  terms,  slang  and  crude 
expressions  are  used.  In  Menander  we  meet  with  ^evvdqia'^ 
and  in  Diphilus  with  fivadaqia  ^  by  way  of  comical  diminu- 
tives. Menander  does  not  hesitate  to  use  the  word 
oxaxocpdyog  of  a  skinflint  or  of  a  brutal  fellow.^  He  calls 
a  stupid  old  man  "  dung  of  a  rat  "  {[xvoxodog);  '  a  booby 
who  has  been  duped,  "poor  sniveller"  {adkog  Ujucpog);^ 
a  eunuch  with  a  wrinkled  skin,  "  old  lizard  "  {yahcorrjg 
yigcov).^  Such  amenities  as  Pseudolus  and  his  master 
lavish  on  the  pander  Ballio  have  well-known  equivalents 
in  Greek  :  in  line  368  {verberasti  jpatrem  atque  matrem)  it  is 
easy  to  discern  a  translation  of  narQa).oiag,  fxriTQaXoLag; 
and  possibly  bustirape,  in  line  361,  stands  for  rvju^coovxog. 
The  words  perfossor  parietum,  in  line  980,  are  an  exact 
translation  of  roixcogvxog.  In  line  41  of  the  Mostellaria 
the  word  xotiqcov,  which  is  a  counterpart  of  the  Latin 
insulting  term  caenum,  sterculinum,  appears  in  its  original 
form.  In  line  149  of  the  "EnixQenovxEg  Syriscus  calls  Daos 
ioyaor-^Qiov,  meaning  lupanar ;  ^°  and  so  on.  And  not 
only  were  isolated  opprobious  terms  taken  over  from  the 
original  Greek  plays,  but  they  must  have  constituted  an 
inexhaustible  fund   of  words   which  certain   people   used 


^  Hipparchus,  fr.  3.     Ka^pJivios  is  a  large  cup  with  handles. ( — Tr.)- 
*  Diph.,  fr.  80.  '  Epinicus,  fr.  2.  *  Men.,  fr.  462. 

«  Diph.,  fr.  21.  *  Men.,  fr.  825;    UepiK.,  204;   Sa/i-.  205. 

'  Ihid.,  fr.  430.  **  Ibid.,  fr.  493.     Cf.  'Eirirp.,  344. 

Ibid.,  fr.  188.  "  Brothel. (—Tr.). 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  485 

as  invectives  against  their  fellows.  Among  the  exclama- 
tions used  by  Ballio,  in  the  scene  of  the  Pseudolus,  which 
punctuate,  as  it  were,  the  litany  of  abuse,  we  find  several, 
like  hahai  and  bomhax,  that  could  not  claim  a  birthright  in 
Rome.  On  the  other  hand,  the  ironical  approbation  which 
the  sad  father  bestows  upon  those  who  insult  him  reminds 
one  of  the  approbation  bestowed  on  the  Xoyog  dUaiog  by 
the  ddixog  Xoyoq  in  the  Clouds.^ 

The  via  does  not  even  hesitate  to  introduce  indecent 
words.  There  is  no  doubt  that  in  this  respect  it  was  much 
less  audacious  than  earlier  comedy  had  been.  In  an 
account  that  Philemon  gives  of  a  visit  to  a  place  of  ill- 
fame  he  manages  to  avoid  saying  anything  too  gross. ^ 
In  another  passage  he  stops  short  just  as  he  is  about  to 
use  an  indecent  word.^  It  is  the  same  with  Menander  at 
the  end  of  the  ' EniTQEJiovxeq^  In  a  tirade  against  lewd 
people  Apollodorus  is  almost  equally  careful  to  observe 
the  proprieties.^  But  it  was  not  usual  to  practise  such 
reserve.  In  his  play  0r]oevg  Diphilus  lets  three  young 
girls  from  Samos  discuss  curious  subjects  and  call  a  spade 
a  spade.^  In  Poseidippus  two  cooks  exchange  insults  that 
are  worthy  of  Cleon  and  Agoracritus.'  In  Archedicus, 
Democharus  is  charged  with  the  same  debauched  prac- 
tices as  was  the  lewd  Ariphrades  in  earlier  days.^  Certain 
expressions  that  were  dear  to  the  writers  of  early  comedy — 
nQOoneodeiv,  /nivOovv,  onodelv,  ^lveZv — reappear  in  Sosipatrus, 
in  Damoxenus,  in  Apollodorus  of  Carystus,  and  in  an 
anonymous  fragment.  Even  Menander  occasionally  used 
indecent  expressions.  In  the  fragments  of  his  works  one 
finds  words  like  %afiaixvnr],  ^dxr]Xog,  noodoiv,  xajiQdv,  vno- 
^ivrjridv.  In  lines  220-221  of  the  IleQixeLQojuevrj  a  soldier, 
talking  to  a  courtesan,  indulges  in  indecent  plays  on 
the  words  aya^mveiv  and  jienixaOfjoOai.    In  a  scene  which 

1  Clouds,  910  otsoq.;    cf.  1328-1330. 

*  Philem.,  fr.  4.  »  Ibid.,  fr.  126. 

*  'Eirirp.,  520  et  seq.  ON.  .  .  .  ravrrn'  \a3wv  X"P^''  a,''to(nraa6u<Tav — AlaOdi'd 
ye  ;  2M.  No/. 

6  Apollod.,  fr.  13.  «  Ath.,  p.  451  B. 

'  Posid.,  fr.  1.  *  Archedicus,  fr.  4. 


486     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

appears  to  belong  to  the  UsQivdia  a  frightened  slave  is — 
by  implication,  it  is  true — said  to  meet  with  a  "  sudden 
call."  1 

Hitherto  I  have  only  spoken  of  the  fun  that  appeared 
in  the  texts.  In  order  to  get  a  correct  idea  of  the  vea 
one  must  draw  upon  one's  imagination  for  the  fun  conveyed 
by  the  costumes  or  by  the  acting  of  the  players. 

In  the  fifth  century,  as  well  as  in  the  first  half  of  the 
fourth,  comic  writers  relied  largely  on  the  strange  appear- 
ance of  the  masks  and  on  the  grotesqueness  of  the  costumes 
to  provoke  laughter.  Their  successors  in  the  new  period 
made  more  limited  use  of  these  minor  devices.  The  almost 
complete  disappearance  (excepting  in  the  prologues)  of 
supernatural  beings  greatly  restricted  the  range  of  the 
costumer's  fancy.  Furthermore,  the  absurd  accoutre- 
ments which,  as  we  learn  through  the  texts  and  from  a  few 
works  of  art,  were  worn  by  ordinary  human  folk — the 
exaggerated  phallus,  the  excessive  padding  of  the  stomach 
and  of  the  buttocks — fell  into  disuse.  Most  of  the  actors 
of  the  vea  wore  the  costume  of  the  common  people,  and 
their  masks  often  bore  normal  faces,  and  occasionally  made 
some  claim  to  beauty.  But  the  grotesque  still  held  its 
own.  In  Plautus  we  meet  with  portraits  of  certain  people 
that  are  certainly  not  flattering.  Leonidas,  in  the 
Asinaria,  has  a  thin  face,  his  hair  is  rather  red,  he  has  a 
paunch,  a  fierce  look  and  a  rough  appearance.^  Pseudolus 
is  a  red-haired  fellow  with  a  paunch  and  fat  legs;  his 
skin  is  brown,  his  head  big,  his  eye  vivacious,  his  com- 
plexion red,  and  his  feet  enormous.^  Labrax,  in  the 
Rudens,  displays  a  bald  head,  a  flat  nose,  a  big  paunch, 
slanting  eyebrows  and  a  wrinkled  forehead.*  Cappadox, 
in  the  Curculio,  has  an  enormous  paunch,  grass-coloured 
eyes  and  an  extraordinary  complexion.^  Lysimachus,  in 
the  Mercator,  is  crooked,  fat,  bloated  and  thickset,  lantern- 

*  Oxyrh.  Pap.,  Vol.  VI.  No.  855;   cf.  Hermes,  1909,  p.  311. 
"  Asin.,  400-401.  »  Pseud.,  1218-1220. 

*  Rud.,  317-318.  *  Cure,  230  et  seq. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  487 

jawed  and  a  little  bandy-legged.^  In  these  portraits  one 
immediately  recognises  certain  details  which,  ever  since 
the  fifth  century,  succeeded  in  amusing  the  Athenian 
public — paunch  bellies,  bald  heads  and  scrubby  red  hair. 
As  a  whole,  therefore,  these  descriptions  must  date  back 
to  the  original  Greek  plays.  Moreover,  other  documents 
corroborate  and  complete  these  descriptions.  In  the  first 
place,  we  have  the  chapter  in  Pollux  in  which  he  gives  a 
description  of  the  costumes  of  a  Hellenistic  theatrical 
troupe. 2  And  then  we  have  various  works  of  art.  In 
the  illustrated  manuscripts  of  Terence's  comedies  we  see 
masks  that  are  simply  hideous,  alongside  of  others  that  are 
normal  or  pretty.  The  same  differences  may  be  observed 
in  paintings,  whether  frescoes  or  vase  paintings,  mosaics 
or  pieces  of  sculpture  that  either  illustrate  scenes  from 
the  vea  or  give  a  symbolical  version  of  its  subject-matter.' 
Among  the  grotesque  figures  that  survived  in  the  vea  the 
first  and  foremost  place  was  held  by  the  slaves.  In  his 
descriptions  of  their  masks  Pollux  mentions  complete  or 
partial  baldness,  the  fiery  colour  of  the  hair  and  the  lack 
of  symmetry  in  the  face,  as  usual  characteristics.  Many 
of  the  grotesque  terra-cotta  figures  which  date  from  the 
fourth  and  subsequent  centuries  represent  slaves  whom 
one  can  recognise  by  their  dress.*  Although  there  is,  as  a 
rule,  no  indication  of  a  mask  on  their  faces,  these  grotesque 
figures  are  probably  reminiscences  of  the  various  types 
of  slaves  that  appeared  on  the  stage  in  those  days,  and 
especially  of  the  slaves  of  the  vea.  Many  of  them  would 
not  be  out  of  place  in  a  chamber  of  horrors.  Old  men  and 
old  women  must  often  have  been  caricatured,  just  as  slaves, 
parasites  and  panders  were.     In  the  tabulae  larvarum  of 

»  Merc,  639-640. 

*  Pollux,  Onom.,  IV.  143  et  seq.  Cf.  Lucian,  De  Saltat.,  §  29  ;  Plutouius, 
Tlepl  diatpopas  Kcoju^^Siuf,  p.  13. 

'  See,  for  example,  Schreiber,  Hellen.  Reliefbilder,  plates  82,  84,  88 ; 
Arch.  Zeit.,  1878,  plates  3-5;  Dieterich,  Pulcindla,  pi.  III.;  Alb.  Miiller, 
Oriech.  Biihnenalt.,  pp.  274-275. 

*  Cf .  Otto,  Die  Tcrracotten  von  Sicilien,  plates  LI.,  LII. ;  Winter,  Typen  der 
figurlichen  Terrakotlcn,  II.  pp.  402  et  seq.,  414  et  seq.,  432  et  seq.,  paitsiin. 


488     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  MS.  Vaiicanus  and  MS.  Parisimis,  Phormio,  the  accom- 
pHshed  parasite,  is  represented  by  a  grotesque  mask; 
so  are  Dorio,  Chremes,  Demipho  and  one  of  the  advocati. 
Pollux  says  of  the  noQvo^ooxoQ  (pander)  that  he  knits  his 
eyebrows  when  he  opens  his  mouth,  and  that  he  has  a 
bald  head ;  of  the  parasite,  that  he  has  a  hooked  nose, 
his  ears  in  shreds,  and  a  crafty  or  else  a  beaming  faee. 
Besides  being  ugly,  certain  old  men,  no  doubt,  provoked 
laughter  by  their  peevish  looks.  As  for  old  women, 
Pollux's  words  summon  up  a  picture  of  dirty,  fat, 
flat-nosed,  grimacing  creatures,  and  his  description  is 
corroborated  by  certain  terra-cotta  figurines.^ 

Grotesqueness  in  costumes  was  displayed  by  foreigners, 
rustics  and  soldiers.  Various  passages  in  the  Poenulus 
show  how  people  made  sport  of  outlandish  costumes.^ 
From  other  sources  we  know  that  the  aygoixoi  appeared 
on  the  stage  in  the  costume  of  their  class,  dressed  in  the 
skins  of  animals,  carrying  sacks,  sticks  and  shepherds' 
crooks.^  It  is  also  probable  that  they  wore  the  large 
shoes  of  which  Theophrastus  speaks,*  and  that  their  entire 
"  get-up "  fitted  their  faces  and  was  ridiculously  vulgar. 
Swaggering  soldiers  must  still  have  worn  some  of  the 
accoutrements  of  the  Aristophanic  Lamachus.  Even 
their  flowing  hair,  about  which  they  were  so  vain,^  and 
their  gorgeous  sweeping  cloaks  ^  sufficed  to  make  them  a 
laughing-stock.  In  order  to  look  formidable  they  donned 
plumed  helmets '  and  girded  themselves  with  scaly  breast- 
plates ^  and  wore  dragons  as  insignia.^  Cooks,  who  oc- 
casionally ventured  to  cross  swords  with  military  men, 
were  decked  out  with  a  whole  array  of  knives.^"  Philo- 
sophers probably  wore  exaggerated  beards  and  pretentious 

^  Cf.  Winter,  Typen  der  figilrlichen  Terrakotten,  II.  p.  456  et  seq. 
(especially  p.   468). 

*  Poen.,  975  et  seq.,  1298  et  seq. 

3  Varro,  De  re  rustica,  II.  11,  11;   Poll.,  IV.  119,  120;    'Enirp.,  12-13. 

*  Theoph.,  Char.,  IV.  4. 

"  Pollux,  IV.  147.     Cf.  Miles,  64,  768,  923. 

*  Donatus,  Exc.  de  com.,  VIII.  6;  Pollux,  VII.  46;  Plut.,  Mor.,  p. 
615  D. ;    Epid.,  436. 

">  UepiK.,  104.  «  Posid.,  fr.  26,  7-8.  »  Ibid.  i"  2a/^.,  69. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  489 

TQi'^coveg  (shabby  cloaks).^  Other  characters,  besides 
those  already  mentioned,  may  have  provoked  laughter 
by  the  way  in  which  they  chanced  to  be  dressed  :  take, 
for  example,  Menacchmus  when  he  appeared  enveloped 
in  his  wife's  cloak ;  or  Olympio  and  Chalinus  in  the  guise 
of  country  bride  and  bridegroom ;  or  the  sham  eunuch 
dressed  up  in  a  showy,  many-coloured  gown ;  or  the  soldier 
mentioned  in  fragment  55  of  Diphilus,  who  carried  about 
so  many  things  that  he  might  have  been  taken  for  a 
wandering  bazaar. 

What  is  to  be  said  about  the  actors'  gestures?  If  we 
are  to  judge  by  the  indications  found  in  the  texts  of  the 
comedies  themselves,  by  the  commentaries,  and  by  works 
of  art,  they  must,  as  a  rule,  have  been  very  lively — often 
too  lively  to  suit  modern  taste.  But  this  liveliness  of 
gesture  was  excusable.  As  Greek  actors  wore  masks, 
they  were,  of  course,  obliged  to  substitute  gestures  for 
facial  expression,  which  was  practically  precluded.  Be- 
sides, their  audiences  consisted  of  Southerners,  who  were 
accustomed  to  gesticulate  much  more  freely  than  we  do. 
We  know  how  important  Demosthenes  thought  gesticula- 
tion, and  how  many  of  Quintilian's  precepts  deal  with  it. 
Many  a  gesture  which  that  teacher  of  eloquence  describes 
and  recommends  to  his  pupils  has  a  great  resemblance  to 
those  shown  in  the  illustrated  manuscripts  of  Terence 
and  those  of  which  Donatus'  commentaries  convey  an 
idea.  Nevertheless,  Quintilian  makes  a  clear  distinction 
between  the  gesticulation  of  an  actor  and  that  which  befits 
an  orator,  2  and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  even  in  the 
days  of  the  v^a  the  gesticulation  of  comic  actors,  which 
was  anticipated  and  prescribed  by  the  poets,  was  frequently 
characterised  as  (poQXLxt]  (vulgar)  by  members  of  polite 
society.  In  one  of  the  recently  recovered  comedies,  the 
ZajLua,  the  chief  actors  fling  themselves  about  as  though 
they  were  possessed.  Demeas  precipitates  himself  head- 
long into  his  house  in  order  to  drive  out  Chrysis,   and 

^  Cf.  Phoenicides,  fr.  4,  line  17;    fr.  adesp.  796. 
»  Quint.,  XI.  3,  89  et  seq. ;    181  et  seq. 


490     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

terrifies  the  cowardly  cook;  Niceratus  rushes  in  and  out 
of  the  house  like  a  whirlwind  and  raises  his  stick  against 
his  companion.  In  the  IleQixeiQOjuev}]  a  violent  alter- 
cation takes  place  at  Myrrhina's  door.  I  have  already 
called  attention  to  fragment  741  of  Menander,  in  which 
we  get  a  glimpse  of  a  breathless  runner.  I  may  also  call 
attention  to  a  line  by  Philemon,  in  which  one  actor  reminds 
another  that  he  does  not  "  own  the  whole  street  "  ;  ^  to 
a  fragment  of  Menander  spoken  by  a  person  who  seeks  to 
separate  two  people  who  are  fighting ;  ^  to  other  frag- 
ments in  which  a  slave,  who  is  no  doubt  hard  pressed, 
hastily  finds  a  place  of  refuge,^  or  a  drunkard  threatens 
to  force  a  woman  to  drink,*  or  some  one  complains  that  he 
has  been  thrashed.^  In  a  passage  of  a  comedy  by  Diphilus 
a  cook  is  informed  that,  unless  he  keeps  still,  blows  will 
put  an  end  to  his  tiresome  talk ;  ^  in  a  play  by  Poseidippus 
another  cook  informs  us  that  members  of  his  profession 
are  sometimes  maltreated.' 

Latin  comedies  complete  our  information  on  this  subject. 
Even  in  Terence,  though  he  knows  what  constitutes  "  the 
gentleman,"  comic  effects  are  occasionally  accompanied 
by  exaggerated  gestures,  brawls,  grimaces  and  contortions. 
The  audience  must  have  laughed  when  they  saw  the  eunuch 
trembling  before  Phaedria's  bad  temper,  Thraso  and  his 
attendants  attacking  Thais'  house,  Sannio  counting  his 
wounds  and  ready  to  take  to  flight  at  the  smallest  move- 
ment on  the  part  of  Aeschinus,  Chremes  and  Demipho 
trying  to  drag  away  the  parasite,  who  gets  rid  of  them  by 
a  home  thrust.  But  it  is  the  plays  of  Plautus  that  are, 
above  all,  replete  with  burlesque  stage  business,  some  of 
which  was  not  of  Roman  origin.  In  line  458  et  seq.  of 
the  Pseudolus  the  actor  who  plays  the  part  of  the  hero 
is  supposed  to  affect  an  attitude  of  comic  solemnity.  Very 
likely  the  Greek  original  called  for  something  similar,  as 
is  shown  by  the  use  of  the  word  basilicum  in  the  very 
sentence  in  which  Simo  refers  to  this  attitude,  and  a  little 

1  Philem.,fr.  58.       =  Men.,  fr.  457.       ^  Ibid.Jr.liS.       *  Ibid., ir.  15. 
s  Ibid.,  fr.  33.  «  Diph..  fr.  43,  32  et  seq.  '  Posid.,  fr.  26,  14. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  491 

further  on  by  the  comparison  made  between  Pseudolus  and 
Socrates.  Similarly,  line  213  of  the  Miles,  which  consists 
entirely  of  foreign  words,  leads  one  to  think  that  the  fore- 
going description,  which  it  sums  up,  as  well  as  the  mute 
stage  business  to  which  that  description  refers,  are  taken 
over  from  the  via.  In  several  passages  whose  text  I  have 
examined,  the  humour  of  the  words  involves  the  humour 
of  the  gestures.  If  the  former  can  be  traced  back  to  the 
Greek  original,  the  latter  must  likewise  have  originated 
there.  Here  are  some  other  examples  which  I  intention- 
ally choose  from  among  the  most  burlesque  scenes.  The 
very  title  of  the  Klr}povf,ievoi,  of  which  the  Casina  is  an 
imitation,  proves  that  the  Greek  playwright  made  a  good 
deal  of  the  episode  of  the  drawing  of  lots ;  the  exchange 
of  blows  between  the  two  slaves  had,  I  believe,  some 
relation  to  this  episode.  Some  of  the  expressions  which 
accompany  it — line  406  :  Quia  Juppiter  jussit  mens  ; 
line  408  :  Quia  jussit  haec  Juno  mea — are,  indeed,  inspired 
by  the  same  spirit  as  lines  333  et  seq.  in  which  Diphilus 
probably  alludes  to  the  recent  death  of  Alexander.  In  the 
Rudens  the  two  lorarii,  Turbalio  and  Sparax,  have  expres- 
sive names  which  must  have  come  down  to  them  from  the 
original  play,  in  which  they  no  doubt  took  pains  to  earn 
these  names  by  thrashing  the  luckless  pander,  just  as 
they  do  in  Plautus.  The  mention  of  Zeuxis  and  Apelles, 
in  line  1271  of  the  Poenulus,  shows  who  was  the  originator 
of  the  picture  of  ridiculous  embraces  to 'which  that  line 
refers.  The  scene  in  the  Asinaria  in  which  Argyrippus 
is  obliged  to  carry  his  slave  Libanus  about  on  his  back  is 
a  masterpiece  of  burlesque  writing.  The  occurrence  of  a 
Greek  word  barely  latinised — badissas — in  line  699,  at  the 
crisis  of  this  scene,  proves  beyond  a  doubt  that  here, 
too,  Plautus  meekly  followed  the  play  that  served  as  his 
model. 

These  examples  suffice  to  show  that  New  Comedy  was 
not  always  "  refined  "  comedy.  It  was  not  always  averse 
to  farce  and  noisy  fun.     To  use  an  expression  of  Aeschylus, 


492     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

in  the  Frogs,  its  wine  was  not  always  perfumed.  Still, 
none  of  Plautus'  comedies  contains  such  an  accumulation 
of  horseplay  and  nonsense  as  is  found  in  any  one  of 
Aristophanes'  comedies.  The  Persa,  one  of  the  plays  in 
which  we  find  most  of  that  sort  of  thing,  is  based  on  a 
comedy  of  the  middle  period.  So  we  may  say  that  comedy 
went  through  a  process  of  refinement  between  the  fifth  and 
the  third  century — a  process,  by  the  way,  whose  effect  on 
the  various  authors  and  their  works  was  far  from  uniform. 
In  some  poets,  like  Diphilus,  Poseidippus,  Euphron  and 
others,  we  still  find  more  of  the  antique  spirit  of  primitive 
grossness.  In  Menander,  on  the  other  hand,  these  un- 
pleasant features  seem  hardly  to  have  survived.  The 
Zafxia,  which  must  be  one  of  his  early  plays,  contains  some ; 
a  few  apparently  occurred  in  the  UsQivdia,  the  plot  of 
which  he  again  took  up  and  treated  in  a  different  way  in 
the  'Avdgia;  in  the  ' EjiiTQeTzovreg  and  in  the  JfleQixeigo/Liivt}, 
products  of  his  mature  years,  there  is  hardly  any  trace  of 
them.  The  plays  that  Plautus  copied  from  Menander — 
especially  the  Aulularia  and  the  Bacchides — are  among 
those  in  which  there  is  the  least  buffoonery.  It  is  well 
known  that  Menander  was  the  favourite  model  for  the 
fastidious  Terence,  and  when  this  poet  chose  to  introduce 
a  relatively  brutal  episode  into  the  Adelphi,  in  order  to 
enliven  the  play,  he  did  not  borrow  it  from  that  writer, 
but  from  Diphilus,  the  originator  of  the  Casina  and  the 
Rudens.  Thus,  both  Roman  comic  authors  bear  witness 
to  the  same  fact  :  they  lead  us,  just  as  the  Fragmenta  and 
certain  scattered  indications  found  in  ancient  critics  do, 
to  regard  Menander  as  a  writer  who  was  neither  prudish 
nor  conventional,  but  whose  taste  was  more  austere  than 
that  of  the  majority  of  his  contemporaries  and  of  those 
who  came  after  him. 

Possibly  it  was  owing  to  this  austerity  that  the  greatest 
poet  of  the  via  had  but  little  success  in  the  competitions. 
At  any  rate,  I  cannot  believe  that  the  public  demanded 
that  raising  of  comedy  to  a  nobler  plane  of  which  he  set 
an  example.     In  the  fourth  and  third  century  the  majority 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  498 

of  the  audience  were  plebeians,  just  as  they  had  been  in 
the  fifth  eentury,  and  it  was  not  the  plebs  whom  lapse 
of  time  had  made  more  refined.  The  preecpts  of  Isocrates 
regarding  good  breeding  had  doubtless  not  reached  their 
ears.  They  took  a  sort  of  habitual,  untiring  and  endless 
pleasure  in  listening  to  a  repetition  of  the  same  nonsense 
and  of  the  same  jests.  Captains,  cooks,  gormandisers 
and  others  were  dear  to  them,  as  old  friends,  whose  ways 
one  knows  and  whose  witty  sayings  one  can  foresee  before 
they  are  uttered.  They  would  have  welcomed  a  revival 
of  the  burlesque;  a  restriction  of  it  was  not  at  all  to 
their  taste.  On  the  other  hand,  nothing  that  we  know 
about  Menander's  personality  precludes  our  giving  him 
the  credit  of  having  initiated  this  improvement  in  tone ; 
indeed,  we  have  every  reason  to  do  so.  In  Athens  many 
comic  authors  were  poor  devils  or  Bohemians  who  led 
ill-regulated  lives.  An  Athenian  by  birth  and  apparently 
reared  in  wealth,  Menander  was  a  man  of  good  breeding ; 
several  ^vritten  documents  and  portraits  give  evidence  of 
the  elegance  of  his  manners  and  of  the  care  he  took  of  his 
dress  and  of  his  person.^  He  indulged  freely  in  the  plea- 
sures of  life,  but  always  kept  within  the  bounds  of  decency. 
His  liaison  with  Glycera,  to  judge  from  the  accounts  we 
have  of  it,  gave  no  offence  to  the  prevailing  ideas  of  pro- 
priety, and  was  not  devoid  of  refinement.  In  a  word, 
both  in  point  of  birth  and  of  morals,  Menander  compares 
favourably  with  the  majority  of  his  fellows.  Hence  it 
is  not  at  all  surprising  that  it  was  repugnant  to  him  to 
become,  like  them,  a  mere  entertainer  of  the  crowd. 

Moreover,  Menander  had  in  his  youth  been  a  pupil  of 
Theophrastus,  and  must  have  been  well  acquainted  with 
Aristotle's  theories  about    laughter  and  about  the  use  of 

1  Anon,  rifpl  KoofxcfStas,  III.  Diihn  (=  II.  Kaib.),  §  17  :  Aa^irpus  nal  ^i(f  koI 
y4vei.  Cf.  Phaedr.,  V.  1,  12etseq.  According  to  St udniczka,  Menander's 
portrait  is  preserved  in  several  copies  or  imitations  of  a  work  of  the 
school  of  Lysippus,  especially  in  a  head  in  the  Jacobscn  collection 
(No.  1082).  The  seated  statue  in  the  Vatican  which  was  long  regarded  as 
a  statue  of  Menander  is  really  that  of  a  Roman  of  the  last  years  of  the 
Republic. 


494     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  various  forms  of  the  ridiculous.  Now,  what  was 
Aristotle's  theory?  A  few  words  in  the  Rhetoric  prove 
that  in  the  second  part  of  the  Poetics,  devoted  to  comedy, 
he  distinguishes  several  kinds  of  yelolov,  some  proper  for 
a  free  man,  others  for  a  slave. ^  A  passage  in  the  Ethica 
Nicomachea  completes  this  discussion.  It  shows  that 
Aristotle,  who  condemned  every  kind  of  excess,  also  con- 
demned the  constant  effort  to  amuse,  the  desire  to  pro- 
voke laughter  at  any  cost.  He  thought  horseplay  (rd 
^(oixoloxixd)  unworthy  of  a  free  man.^  There  is  reason 
to  believe  that  in  the  Poetics  he  applied  the  same  rules 
to  the  stage  as  to  life,  and  placed  a  ban  upon  horseplay, 
at  least  as  far  as  certain  roles  were  concerned.  But 
Aristotle  went  even  further;  he  not  only  forbade  a  free 
man,  a  man  of  gentle  breeding,  to  utter  vulgar  jokes,  but 
also  to  listen  to  them  or  to  take  pleasure  in  them.  Hence 
he  must  have  regarded  a  comedy  in  which  such  jokes 
abounded  as  an  entertainment  fit  for  the  rabble,  and  I 
believe  he  more  or  less  openly  urged  the  poets  to  cultivate 
a  more  elevated  type  of  comedy.  A  sentence  in  the 
Coislin  Treatise  (§  6)  apparently  preserves  his  views  on 
this  point  :  ovjujuergia  xov  cpo^ov  QeXsi  elvai  ev  roug  rgaycodiaig 
xal  rev  yeXoiov  iv  raig  xcojuq)diaig.  No  doubt  this  means 
that  the  hilarity  occasioned  by  comedy  should  keep  within 
proper  bounds  and  not  degenerate  into  sarcastic  sneers 
or  into  unbridled  vulgar  gaiety.  Just  as  good  tragedy 
accustoms  us  to  feel  a  proper  degree  of  pity  and  fear  in 
the  presence  of  an  object  worthy  of  it,  so  comedy  ought 
to  accustom  us  to  laugh  where  it  is  seemly  to  do  so.  In 
other  words,  it  ought  to  educate  us  in  laughter.  Hence 
it  may  be  that  by  showing  that  he  was  more  scrupulous 
than  his  predecessors  in  the  choice  of  laughter-provoking 
episodes,  Menander  consciously  and  purposely  put  into 
practice  the  teachings  of  the  Lyceum.  Indeed,  this  is 
not  the  first  time  that  we  discover  the  potent  influence 
of  Aristotle  in  the  early  stages  of  the  vea. 

1  Rhetor.,  III.  18,  7  P.,  1419. 

2  Mh.  Nic,  p.  1127  B,  1,  33-1128  B,  4. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  495 

§2 
Comic  Characters  and  Situations 

I  have  thought  it  necessary  to  insist  at  some  length  on 
the  vulgar  elements  of  the  via  because  we  are  sometimes 
too  much  inclined  to  ignore  them.  The  contrast  between 
the  new  style  and  that  which  preceded  it,  and  the  sustained 
elegance  of  Terence  help  to  mislead  us.  At  the  same 
time,  I  must  not  neglect  to  add  that  the  via  abounds 
in  comic  effects  that  are  more  justifiable  and  of  better 
alloy. 

In  the  lengthy  fragments  that  have  been  recently 
discovered,  comic  effects  are  most  frequently  produced  in 
a  spontaneous  way,  and  without  violating  good  taste,  by 
the  natural  development  of  characters  and  situations. 
While  watching  a  performance  of  the  ' EnixQenovxEQ  the 
spectators  must  have  laughed  at  the  sallies  of  Smierines, 
in  which  he  assures  Daos  and  Syriseus  that  he  has  not 
the  slightest  interest  in  their  affairs ;  at  the  impatience  of 
Syriseus,  who  has  to  be  called  to  order  and  menaced  with  a 
stick ;  at  the  plight  of  Daos  and  the  mechanical  stubborn- 
ness with  which  he  goes  on  repeating  the  same  lamenta- 
tions ;  at  the  fresh  trouble  that  comes  to  Syriseus  as  soon 
as  he  gets  possession  of  the  yvcoQio/j.aza;  at  the  ingenuous 
manner  in  which  Habrotonon  gives  voice  to  the  views  of 
a  courtesan,  and  at  the  way  in  which  she  parodies  the  talk 
current  among  women  of  her  class,  without  seeing  any  harm 
in  doing  so.  No  doubt  they  smiled  when  Onesimus  exposes 
the  scheme  of  that  sly  little  person,  and  were  amused  at 
the  mighty  wrath  of  the  terrible  grumbler  when  he  rubs 
up  against  the  innocent  Sophrone,  at  his  fright  while 
Onesimus  derides  him,  and  at  his  consternation  when, 
without  beating  about  the  bush,  the  roguish  fellow  tells 
him  the  whole  story.  In  the  Zajuia  Demeas  provokes 
laughter  when  he  puts  himself  on  a  wrong  scent  in 
order  to  exculpate  Mosehio,  or  when,  in  the  presence  of 
the  Samian  woman,  he   unsuccessfully  exerts  himself  to 


496     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

act  like  a  brutal  person;  further  on,  it  is  Moschio's  turn 
to  provoke  laughter  when  he  plans  pretending  to  join  the 
army  in  order  to  scare  his  father,  but  is  horribly  afraid 
that  he  will  not  be  prevented.  In  the  IJeQixELQOjuevr]  it  is 
amusing  to  see  Daos  coming  crestfallen  out  of  Myrrhina's 
house,  after  having  boasted  that  he  had  gained  the  lady's 
favour  for  his  master.  Towards  the  end  of  the  play 
Polemo  quite  unconsciously  amuses  us  when  he  shows 
how  uncertain  and  full  of  contradictions  is  love.  In  the 
Fecogyog  Daos  entertains  us  by  his  impudence,  his  burgher 
pride,  and  the  turn  he  gives  his  story;  after  having 
promised  to  give  good  tidings  he  relates  a  chapter  of 
disasters.  The  women  to  whom  he  speaks  are  quite  over- 
come, but  the  sly  fellow  enjoys  their  disappointment  and 
goes  on  imperturbably. 

While  we  wait  for  new  discoveries  to  increase  our  store 
of  Greek  comedies,  the  Roman  comic  writers  prove  that 
the  art  of  provoking  laughter  had  no  secrets  for  their 
predecessors.  We  need  not  hesitate  to  credit  the  latter, 
who  invented  the  plots  and  created  the  characters,  with 
the  comic  effects  arising  from  the  action  or  the  vagaries 
of  the  players. 

In  Plautus,  as  well  as  in  Terence,  such  effects  are  numer- 
ous. We  laugh  at  an  unexpected  turn,  at  the  brusque 
right-about-face  on  the  part  of  one  of  the  characters,  the 
unexpected  change  of  attitude  which  he  affects  or  which 
is  forced  upon  him ;  at  Chremes  (in  the  Heauton  Timorou- 
menos)  forgetting  all  about  his  system  and  his  forbearance 
as  soon  as  he  has  troubles  of  his  own;  at  Ballio  smitten 
in  the  midst  of  his  triumph  and  cast  down  in  the  twinkling 
of  an  eye  from  the  lofty  pedestal  of  his  arrogance ;  at 
Antipho  (in  the  Phormio)  taking  to  his  heels  as  soon  as 
he  hears  his  scolding  father  approach.  Sometimes,  on 
the  other  hand,  laughter  is  provoked  by  constant  repeti- 
tion of  the  same  thing ;  for  instance,  in  the  Adelphi,  when 
the  marplot  Demeas  constantly  returns  to  the  charge;  in 
the  Pseudolus,  where  the  arrival  of  the  real  Harpax,  after 
that  of  the  false  one,  gives  rise  to  an  amusing  repetition; 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  497 

in  the  Aulularia,  when  EucHo  immediately  regards  every- 
thing that  he  sees  or  hears  as  an  additional  menaee  to 
his  beloved  treasure.  Some  charaeters  provoke  laughter 
because  they  choke  with  rage  :  for  instance,  Aristophontes 
^  in  the  Captivi,  where  he  is  described  to  his  face  as  a  crazy 
'^epileptic;  or  Artemona  in  the  Asinaria,  who  is  obliged 
to  listen,  in  the  presence  of  witnesses,  to  a  recital  of 
her  shortcomings.  In  the  case  of  other  characters  the 
comic  element  consists  in  their  clumsy  inability  to  dis- 
guise their  feelings ;  thus  Chrcmes,  in  the  Eunuchus, 
displays  his  lack  of  courage  in  whatever  he  does,  and 
Lysidamus,  in  the  Casina,  continually  and  unwittingly 
divulges  his  plans  to  people  who  are  likely  to  compromise 
him.  Perplexity  is  also  a  theme  that  supplies  amusing 
scenes.  It  is  entertaining  to  sec  Epidieus,  Davus  (in  the 
Andria),  Syrus  (in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos),  or  some 
other  such  rogue,  temporarily  worsted.  The  situation  is 
even  more  comic  when  the  hero  is  stupid,  has  no  ideas, 
or  only  such  as  cannot  be  realised,  and  flounders  about 
in  pitiable  impotence.  This  is  what  happens  to  many  a 
young  lover,  as  well  as  to  many  a  greybeard,  even  when 
they  ask  advice  of  others.  An  instance  is  supplied  by  the 
passage  of  the  Phormio  in  which  Demipho  consults  his 
friends  and  finds  himself  more  at  a  loss  than  ever. 

I  cannot  pretend  to  enumerate  here  all  the  means  to 
which  New  Comedy  resorted  in  order  to  provoke  laughter. 
Such  an  enumeration  would  necessarily  be  incomplete 
and,  to  a  certain  extent,  useless,  for  among  these  means 
many  belong  to  the  stock-in-trade  of  comedy  of  all  times. 
But  there  is  one  kind  of  comic  effect  that  does  demand  our 
attention  on  account  of  the  special  favour  with  which  our 
poets  regarded  it — I  mean  the  comic  effect  arising  from 
misunderstanding,  or,  as  the  Coislin  Treatise  puts  it,  based 
upon  ajiaxn). 

There  are  plays — the  Menaechmi,  for  instance — which 
consist  almost  from  beginning  to  end  in  a  series  of  enter- 
taining blunders.     In  the  majority  of  the  other  plays  one 

K  K 


498     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

or  more  scenes  show  us  a  man  who  allows  himself  to  be 
deceived  by  false  appearances,  who  follows  a  false  trail, 
who  gets  excited  and  acts  in  a  manner  out  of  keeping  with 
the  actual  state  of  affairs  and  contrary  to  his  o^vn  wishes. 
We  see  Demea  trying  to  remember  the  fantastic  itinerary 
which  Syrus  prescribes  for  him,  and  declaring,  after  a  long 
goose-chase,  that  he  is  tired  out ;  ^  or  Theopropides,  whom 
Tranio  terrifies  with  the  adventure  of  the  ghost,  and 
who,  placing  faith  in  the  lying  slave,  believes  that  he  is 
in  a  house  of  his  own  while  he  is  really  in  one  belonging 
the  neighbour  Simo,  examines  the  house  which  he  thinks 
he  has  purchased  and  sympathises  with  the  regrets  of  the 
self-styled  seller.  Elsewhere,  Periphanes  enthusiastically 
adopts  the  splendid  plan  conceived  by  Epidicus.^  Hegio 
(in  the  Captivi)  thinks  that  he  sees  the  symptoms  of 
acute  madness  in  Aristophontes'  face.'  Parmeno  (in  the 
Eunuchus)  is  terrified  by  the  consequences  which,  accord- 
ing to  the  mischievous  Pythias,  followed  on  the  disguising 
of  Chaerea  as  a  eunuch,  which  he  himself  had  planned. 
Other  instances  are  legion. 

Often  the  comic  element  inherent  in  a  blunder  is  increased 
by  some  accidental  circumstance,  by  the  manoeuvres  which 
lead  up  to  it,  or  by  the  attitude  of  the  mystifier  or  of  the 
person  mystified. 

In  order  better  to  deceive  their  dupe,  thoroughgoing 
knaves  allow  him  to  overhear  feigned  stage  asides,  in 
which,  of  course,  they  are  careful  to  say  only  what  they 
wish  to  make  him  believe.  This  is  the  method  pursued  by 
the  malicious  Milphidippa,  the  maid  in  the  Miles  :  "  Are 
there  not  people  about  here  who  are  more  interested  in 
the  affairs  of  others  than  in  their  own,  who  might  spy 
upon  me  ?  I  dread  such  people,  who  might  annoy  me  and 
block  the  way,  if  my  mistress  were  to  pass  by  here  in 
going  from  her  house  to  him  whom  she  desires  to  possess — 
the  soldier  whom  she  loves — that  charming,  handsome 
Pyrgopolinices  "  (lines  994  et  seq.).    As  was  to  be  expected, 

1  Ad.,  572  et  seq.,  713  et  seq.  *  Ep.,  280  et  seq. 

3  Capt.,  659,  599,  603. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  499 

the  "  handsome  PyrgopoHnices  "  does  not  fail  to  take  the 
bait.  Sometimes  the  deeeption  is  earried  on  by  two  aetors. 
In  the  Asinaria  Leonidas,  in  the  presenee  of  the  donkey- 
seller,  but  without  appearing  to  see  him,  makes  believe 
that  he  is  a  tyrannieal  master  to  Libanus,  and  Libanus, 
his  accomplice,  pretends  to  fear  him;i  in  the  Phormio 
Geta,  aware  that  Demipho  is  listening  to  him,  heaps  insults 
on  the  parasite,  under  the  pretext  that  he  is  defending  his 
master's  reputation  against  his  slanders.  Elsewhere,  the 
cheat  makes  some  third  party  who  is  not  in  the  secret 
take  a  hand,  without  knowing  it,  in  his  plot :  for  example, 
the  servant  Mysis  in  the  Andria,  whose  amazement  is  so 
comic." 

But  it  does  not  suffice  to  know  how  to  lie  with  assurance, 
and  to  have  a  fertile  imagination,  in  order  to  fool  people. 
A  bit  of  sentimental  comedy  is  occasionally  helpful.  The 
stage  profligates  do  not  fail  to  make  use  of  it,  and  they 
discover  new  means  of  provoking  laughter  through  such 
hypocritical  displays.  We  may,  for  example,  call  to  mind 
how  Chrysalus  and  Davus  (in  the  Andria)  parade  their  fine 
sentiments.  The  former  pretends  to  be  deeply  moved 
by  the  paternal  troubles  of  Nicobolus ;  in  tones  of  sincere 
attachment,  if  not  of  politeness,  he  deplores  his  losing 
his  faculties  and  "  failing  "  from  old  age.^  The  latter, 
on  the  other  hand,  pretends  to  admire  Simo's  schemes, 
which  he  has  seen  through,^  and  while  both  of  them  are 
the  objects  of  very  well-founded  suspicion,  they  put  on 
great  airs  of  injured  innocence. 

On  the  other  hand,  those  who  are  cheated  or  make 
mistakes  may  become  particularly  ridiculous  if,  following 
their  natural  disposition,  misled  by  their  whims  and  blinded 
by  their  conceit,  they  blunder  with  zest  and  satisfaction. 
PyrgopoHnices  is  delighted  by  the  lies  with  which  he  is 
bombarded  and  which,  for  the  time,  gratify  the  old 
braggart's  vanity.^     Theopropides  is  beside  himself  with 

^  As.,  407  et  seq.  *  Andr.,  745  et  soq. 

3  Bacch.,  816  et  seq.  *  Andr.,  588-589. 

^  Miles,  985,  999  ot  soq.,  1038  et  seq.,  1224,  1269  et  seq. 


500     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

joy  when  Tranio  tells  him  that  his  son  has  begun  to 
speculate.^  Demea  is  proud  to  see,  in  the  behaviour  with 
which  Syrus  credits  Ctesiphon,  the  natural  result  of  his 
own  excellent  instruction.^  Ballio  receives  Harpax,  who 
is  responsible  for  his  discomfiture,  haughtily,  and  loftily 
disdains  the  machinations  of  the  enemy  at  the  very 
moment  when  we  discover  that  he  has  already  fallen  a 
victim  to  them.^ 

Foolish  suspicion  can  be  just  as  laughable  as  too  ready 
credulity.  Simo,  in  the  Andria,  is  a  case  in  point.  When 
Pamphilus  is  ready,  or  pretends  to  be  ready,  to  yield  to 
his  authority,  and  declares  that  he  is  willing  to  marry, 
Simo  at  first  manifests  a  disappointment  that  is  comic ;  * 
he  ought  to  be  delighted,  as  everything  is  shaping  itself 
in  accordance  with  his  wishes ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  he  is 
a  little  bit  disappointed,  and  seems  sorry  that  all  his 
preparations  for  a  struggle  have  been  entirely  wasted. 
Later  on,  when  the  midwife  inconsiderately  speaks  of  the 
new-born  child,  it  is  Simo's  suspicious  mood  that  saves 
the  compromising  situation  at  his  own  expense;  by  too 
quickly  coming  to  the  conclusion  that  he  is  being  cheated 
he  suggests  to  his  antagonist  the  idea  and  the  means  of 
cheating  him.^ 

Another  amusing  character  is  the  cheat  caught  in  his 
own  trap.  Davus  (in  the  Andria)  succeeds  all  too  well 
in  making  the  aged  Simo  believe  that  Pamphilus  would, 
if  need  be,  marry  Chremes'  daughter.  He  is  taken  at  his 
word,  and  his  successful  lie  is  his  ruin.  Towards  the  end 
of  the  Miles  Palaestrio  has  a  narrow  escape  from  a  similar 
experience ;  he  makes  such  a  masterly  pretence  of  being 
brokenhearted  at  leaving  Pyrgopolinices  that  the  good- 
natured  fellow  is  on  the  point  of  changing  his  mind  and 
keeping  so  devoted  a  servant.^ 

The  special  humour  of  certain  expressions  adds  to  the 
fun  of  the  situation  in  many  scenes  that  are  concerned 

1  Most.,  638-639.  *  Ad.,  564  et  seq.         ^  Pseud.,  1162et8eq. 

*  Andr.,  434  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  492  et  seq. 

«  Miles,  1358  et  seq.,  1368  et  seq. 


COMIC    ELEMENTS  501 

with  a  blunder.  At  least  this  is  often  the  case  in  Plautus 
and  Terence,  and  I  imagine  that  it  was  also  the  case  in  the 
Greek  poets  whom  they  imitated. 

Some  of  these  expressions  are  amusing  simply  because 
they  emphasise  the  error  into  which  one  or  the  other  of 
the  actors  has  fallen,  and  because  they  enable  us  at  once 
to  gauge  its  extent.  This  is  the  case  when,  after  the 
comedy  has  been  played  at  his  expense,  Chremes  (in  the 
Andria)  maintains  that  he  has  discovered  the  real  truth : 
"  I  saw  with  my  own  eyes  the  serving-maid  quarrelling 
with  Davus."  In  vain  does  Simo,  who  likewise  stubbornly 
persists  in  his  error,  declare  that  one  of  the  actors — 
according  to  him  it  was  Mysis — was  merely  trying  to 
frighten  him.  Chremes,  unwilling  to  retract,  replies  : 
"  they  were  quarrelling  for  all  they  were  worth ;  neither 
of  them  knew  I  was  present."  ^ 

We  must  give  special  attention  to  the  humour  of 
ambiguous  expressions.  As  a  rule,  such  ambiguity  is  a 
subtlety  on  the  part  of  the  cheat — an  additional  score  off 
his  dupe.  When  they  are  face  to  face  with  Hegio,  who 
mistakes  the  one  for  the  other,2the  two  "captives"  make 
endless  allusions  to  their  true  personalities.  In  the  Mostel- 
laria  Tranio  compares  his  master  Theopropidcs  and  his 
neighbour  Simo  in  ambiguous  terms  to  two  buzzards  who 
are  made  fun  of  by  a  crow.^  Nor  is  Chrysalus,  in  the 
Bacchides,  less  impudent.  In  his  presence  Nicobolus 
complains  that  the  treacherous  message  of  Mncsilochus 
is  written  in  such  small  characters  that  he  cannot  read  it. 
"  Yes,"  says  Chrysalus,  who  had  dictated  the  letter, 
"  the  writing  is  small  for  one  who  does  not  see  well,  but 
it  is  big  enough  for  one  who  has  good  eyes."  *  Elsewhere 
an  actor  unwittingly  makes  use  of  expressions  in  which 
the  audience,  who  are  acquainted  with  the  secrets  of  the 
plot,  are  delighted  to  discover  a  double  meaning.  The 
blustering  soldier  ^  has  just  dismissed  his  mistress,  and  tells 
us    how  touching  the   leave-taking  was  :    "  Never,"   says 

1  Andr.,  838  et  soq.  »  Capt.,  417-418,  426-427. 

3  Most.,  832  etseq.  ♦  Bacch.,  991-992.  »  Miles,  1202 


502     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

he,  "  was  I  loved  so  much  by  that  woman  as  to-day  "  ; 
the  poor  fellow  is  far  from  suspecting  that  the  reason  for 
such  a  display  of  affection  was  delight  at  the  separation. 
Simo,  in  the  Andria,  is  unconsciously  ironical  when  he 
thanks  Davus  and  confides  in  him  after  having  come  to 
terms  with  Chremes  :  "  Now,  Davus,  since  it  is  to  you  only 
that  I  owe  this  marriage,  I  beg  you  to  make  every  effort 
to  reform  my  son,"  I  may  also  call  attention  to  the 
famous  scene  between  Lyconides  and  Euclio,  in  the 
Aulularia,  in  which  each  of  the  speakers  mistakes  the  mean- 
ing of  the  other's  words,  the  old  man  thinking  only  of  his 
pot  and  the  youth  of  his  lady-love,  the  latter  accusing 
himself  of  having  ravished  the  girl,  the  former  complain- 
ing of  robbery.  The  ambiguity  continues  as  long  as  the 
utmost  limits  of  probability  allow,  thus  adding  vastly  to 
our  entertainment. 

We  have  seen  how  many  changes  can  be  rung  on  the 
motif  of  misunderstandings.  The  way  in  which  the  comic 
poets  constantly  like  to  return  to  it  seems  to  me  to  be 
quite  characteristic,  and  the  diversity  of  effects  they 
derived  from  it  is  an  interesting  proof  of  their  imaginative 
resources. 


CHAPTER    III 

PATHETIC    ELEMENTS    IN    NEW    COMEDY 
EXTENT    AND    DIVERSITY    OF    THEIR    DOMAIN 

HOWEVER  frequent  the  occasions  for  laughter  may 
have  been  in  the  via,  they  were  not  continuous. 
But  for  a  few  lyrical  passages,  there  are  hardly  five  or  six 
successive  lines  in  Aristophanes  that  do  not  contain  some- 
thing calculated  to  make  people  split  their  sides  with 
laughter.  Everything  is  steeped  in  comedy.  Things  that 
are  in  themselves  most  serious,  things  by  which  the  poet 
places  the  greatest  store,  present  a  humorous  side  in  his 
plays.  This,  however,  was  no  longer  the  case  in  the  age 
of  New  Comedy.  Scenes  like  the  scene  of  insanity  in  the 
Mercator,  in  which  an  actor  makes  it  his  business  to  be  droll 
in  a  situation  which  does  not  lend  itself  to  that  sort  of  thing, 
were,  as  I  believe,  the  exception.  The  via  does,  indeed, 
still  keep  rude  jesters  whose  sorrow  and  wrath,  and  even 
despair,  provoke  laughter — figures,  that  is,  who  more  than 
the  rest  preserved  the  element  of  the  grotesque  in  their 
appearance,  such  as  slaves  and  parasites.  But  side  by  side 
with  them,  the  other  actors  may,  if  the  situation  calls  for  it, 
speak  the  language  of  reason  or  express  the  most  serious 
sentiments.  In  the  lengthy  fragments  of  the  original 
plays,  especially  in  those  of  the  Fecogyog,  the  KoXa^,  the 
' EnixQETiovxEQ,  and  the  JJeQiHeiQojuivrj,  and  in  the  fragments 
of  the  anonymous  plays  published  by  M.  Jouguet,  the 
author  by  no  means  gives  us  occasion  for  uninterrupted 
hilarity.  If  we  examine  the  Roman  imitators,  Terence 
moves  us  more  than  he  amuses  us.  Even  Plautus,  the 
cheerful  Plautus,  is  occasionally  serious  or  pathetic.  In 
the  plays  of  both  of  these  poets  we  sometimes  find  special- 
ists, if  I  may  use  the  term,  who  represent  the  comic 
element,  associated  with  persons  who  would  not  by  them- 
selves provoke  laughter,  as,  for  instance,  Parmeno  as  a 
third   party  between   Phaedria  and   Thais,^  or   Stasimus 

1  Euti.,  98  ot  seq. 
503 


504     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

(in  the  Trimimmus)  between  Lesbonicus  and  Philto,^  or 
the  two  slaves  in  the  Asinaria  whose  horseplay  affords 
such  a  glaring  contrast  to  the  lamentations  of  the  lovers. ^ 
But  occasionally  these  specialists  also  withdraw,  and  the 
fun  is  simply  interrupted. 

Moreover,  the  proportion  of  elements  that  do  not  pro- 
voke laughter  varies  very  much  to  suit  various  cases.  The 
Trinummus,  in  which,  throughout  long  scenes,  there  is  not 
even  the  ghost  of  a  joke,  and  the  Hccyra,  the  prototype 
of  pathetic  comedy,  are  probably,  in  so  far  as  they  are 
"  mixed  "  plays,  the  limit  of  what  the  public  tolerated. 
It  is  worth  noting  that  one  of  these  dramas  is  by  Apollo- 
dorus  of  Carystos,  who  belongs  to  the  second  generation 
of  New  Comedy,  and  that  the  other  is  an  imitation  of 
a  work  by  Philemon,  the  oldest  representative  of  this 
style,  and  is  not  apparently  a  product  of  the  last  years 
of  his  career.  On  the  other  hand,  the  original  of  the 
Menaechmi,  one  of  the  merriest  of  all  the  plays,  was  written 
after  the  accession  of  Hiero,  that  is  to  say,  after  275  or 
270.  This  statement  suffices  to  keep  us  from  thinking 
that  the  tone  of  the  comic  writers  grew  less  and  less  hilari- 
ous. There  was  no  sustained  evolution  of  this  sort,  and 
if  in  successive  periods  there  was  a  general  preference  for 
more  or  less  fun,  we  are  not  able  to  distinguish  these 
periods.  From  the  point  of  view  I  am  now  taking  it  is 
even  difficult  to  classify  the  chief  representatives  of  the  via. 
Among  the  plays  of  Menander  there  is  at  least  one,  the 
Zafzia,  in  which  everything  that  has  survived  is  amusing. 
Plautus  has  preserved  for  us  two  of  Philemon's  plays  :  the 
Trinummus,  which  is  in  part  so  serious,  and  the  Mostellaria, 
which  is  amusing  almost  from  beginning  to  end.  In  the 
Phormio  and  in  the  Hecyra  Terence  has  preserved  for  us 
two  examples  of  Apollodorus'  plays  which,  though  they 
vary  in  point  of  sprightliness,  we  may  regard  as  equally 
representative  of  his  style.  Hence  we  have  good  reason 
to  be  cautious  about  drawing  conclusions. 

^  Trin.,  454  et  seq.  »  As.,  591  et  seq. 


PATHETIC    ELEMENTS  505 

Let  us  now  consider  the  nature  of  the  incidents  that 
interrupt  the  laughter-provoking  elements,  and  what 
effects  they  may  be  expected  to  produce. 

To  our  taste,  the  least  interesting,  or,  at  all  events,  the 
least  dramatic  of  them,  are  the  moral  discourses  of  which 
I  have  spoken  in  a  former  chapter.  If  they  are  at  all 
lengthy  we  are  apt  to  think  them  tedious,  and  I  am 
inclined  to  believe  that,  in  too  large  doses,  they  also  bored 
a  Greek  audience.  In  this  respect,  however,  the  Greeks 
appear  to  have  been  particularly  patient.  Reasoners 
and  pedants  as  they  were,  the  Greeks  of  every  epoch  lent 
a  willing  ear  to  sententious  utterances.^  These  are  to  be 
found  as  early  as  the  Homeric  epics;  they  abound  in 
Hesiod  and  Pindar,  they  are  the  basic  element  of  elegiac 
poetry,  and,  above  all,  after  the  time  of  Euripides  invaded 
the  domain  of  tragedy.  Hence  the  people  who  went  to 
see  New  Comedy  were  prepared  long  beforehand  to  hear 
and  relish  them. 

The  purpose  of  many  passages  is  to  call  forth  pity  or 
emotion,  though  I  am  not  sure  that  the  distress  of  Ballio's 
little  servant,^  or  even  the  timid  complaints  of  Philaenium,^ 
in  spite  of  their  poetic  qualities,  stirred  the  mass  of  the 
ancient  spectators  very  deeply;  in  the  former  case  it  is 
a  question  of  a  slave ;  in  the  latter  of  a  poor  girl  of  uncer- 
tain birth,  both  creatures  hardly  worthy  of  much  interest. 
But  at  all  events  Palaestra's  *  lamentations,  Sostrata's 
complaints  in  the  Adelphi,^  the  account  of  Chrysis'  last 
moments  or  of  her  funeral  in  the  Andria,^  or  the  portrayal 
of  Phanium's  distress  at  the  beginning  of  the  Fhormio,'^ 
cannot  have  failed,  then  as  now,  to  move  sensitive  souls. 
A  pathetic  theme  that  was  very  often  introduced  by  the 
poets  of  the  new  period  is  the  grief  for  a  person  who  is 
absent  or  has  disappeared.  Very  frequently  they  dis- 
dained to  introduce  it  on  account  of  its  triteness,  just  as 
they   avoided   the    effusions   of  the   dvayvcooioeig,    or   else 

1  Cf.  Stickney,  Lea  Sentences  dans  la  poesie  grecque  (Paris,  1903). 

^  Pseud.,  767  et  seq.  '  As.,  515  et  seq.  *  Rud.,  185  et  seq. 

*  4d.,  288etseq.     *  ^ndr.,  127  ot  seq.,  282  et  seq.     '  PAorm.,  91  et  seq. 


506     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

condensed  them  into  a  few  words.  But  this  was  not 
always  the  case.  In  the  Rudens  a  few  words  suffice  to 
indicate  Daemones'  grief. ^  In  the  Captivi  Hegio's  wound 
is  still  fresh,  and  we  cannot  but  pity  the  poor  father, 
although  the  violence  of  his  pain  leads  him  to  indulge 
in  unwarranted  harshness.  And  finally,  in  the  Heauton 
Timor oumenos,  Menedemus,  tormented  by  remorse,  is  a 
truly  touching  figure,  and  excites  unbounded  compassion. 
One  of  the  original  comedies,  the  ' EnirQSjiovreg,  presents, 
in  the  person  of  Charisius,  another  actor  who  gives  vent 
to  his  remorse  in  very  strong  terms.  Who  would  not  be 
moved  when  the  unhappy  man,  having  been  forgiven  by 
Pamphila  and  disowned  by  Smicrines  after  the  discovery 
of  his  transgression,  admits,  in  words  that  betray  a  wild 
despair,  the  downfall  of  his  pride  and  the  failure  of  his 
life? 

But  it  is  chiefly  the  emotion  of  lovers,  their  griefs,  and 
sometimes  their  joys  that  make  appeal  to  our  sympathy. 
Emotional  scenes  abound  in  Terence,  and  we  find  similar 
scenes  in  the  original  in  the  fragments  of  the  Fecogyog,  the 
"Hqcoq,  the  Zaf.ua  and  the  IleQixsiQOfievr}.  There  are  several  in 
Plautus,  and  there  are  signs  indicating  that  he  suppressed 
others  in  order  not  to  fatigue  a  vulgar  audience.  True,  not 
all  the  passages  on  which  we  can  pass  judgment  rise  to 
great  heights  of  pathos.  The  lamentations  of  the  lover  in 
the  Fecogyog  must  have  left  the  audience  somewhat  cold. 
Their  interest  lay  rather  in  their  contents  than  in  their 
tone,  more  in  the  information  they  gave  about  the  trend 
of  the  plot  than  in  the  portrayal  of  a  state  of  mind. 
Doubtless  this  was  true  of  many  similar  soliloquies  that 
occur  at  the  beginning  of  a  comedy.  Elsewhere  the  im- 
pression is  spoiled  by  pompousness  or  by  affectation.  The 
appeals  to  the  gods,  to  the  stars,  the  imprecations,  the 
proposed  suicides,  certainly  soon  came  to  be  considered 
as  mere  conventions,  if,  indeed,  they  had  not  always  been 
so  considered.  W^hen  he  is  not  making  jests,  Charinus, 
in  the   Mercator,   indulges  in  puerile  reflections.  ^     With 

1  Rud.,  106,  742  et  seq.  *  Merc,  590,  591. 


PATHETIC    ELEMENTS  507 

the  exception  of  that  thoroughly  dehghtful  scene  of 
the  Asinaria  in  which  Argyrippus  and  Philaenium  take 
leave  of  one  another,  there  is  none  that  is  not  marred  by 
some  pretentiousness,  which  can,  I  believe,  be  traced  to 
Demophilus — 

A. :  "  Farewell,  Philaenium ;  I  shall  see  you  in  Pluto's 
realm,  for  I  have  fully  decided  to  end  my  life." 
Ph. :  "  Why,  I  beg  you,  do  you  desire  to  bring  about  my 
death,  which  I  have  not  deserved?  "  A. :  "  Bring  about 
your  death  ?  I,  who,  if  I  saw  that  life  were  deserting  you, 
would  give  you  mine  and  would  add  my  days  to  yours?  " 
Ph. :  "  Wherefore,  then,  your  threats  to  put  an  end  to 
your  life?  For  what,  think  you,  shall  I  do,  if  you  do 
what  you  say  ?  I  am  resolved ;  I  shall  do  to  myself  what 
you  do  to  yourself."  ^ 

Other  passages,  on  the  other  hand,  are  conceived  in  a 
spirit  of  delightful  candour.  Witness  Phaedria's  farewell 
to  his  beloved  Thais,  in  the  Euniichus — 

"  You  ask  what  I  desire  ?  That,  though  you  are  with 
this  soldier,  you  should  be  far  away  from  him;  that,  day 
and  night,  you  should  love  me,  long  for  me,  dream  of  me, 
wait  for  me,  think  of  me,  wish  for  me ;  that  I  should  be 
your  joy,  that  you  should  belong  entirely  to  me — in  a 
word,  that  your  heart  should  be  mine,  since  I  am  yours."  ^ 

Fenelon  relished  this  passage.  He  writes  :  "  Can  one 
ask  for  anything  more  frankly  and  truly  dramatic?" 
His  praise  is  well  deserved,  and  I  think  the  greater  part 
of  it  ought  to  be  awarded  to  Menandcr.  Other  passages 
that  go  straight  to  the  heart  are  :  Acschinus'  soliloquy  in 
the  Adelphi,^  certain  parts  of  the  role  of  Pamphilus  in 
the  Hecyra,^  and  the  mournful  confession  of  Selenium  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Cistellaria;  for  in  them  we  feel  that 
hearts  have  really  been  moved.  Sometimes  a  few  words 
underscored  by  a  bit  of  stage  play  suffice  to  produce  ex- 
ceedingly pathetic  effects.     This  is  the  case  in  the  Ilcauton 

1  .4sm.,  606  et  soq.     *  Eun.,   190  ot  soq. 

»  Ad.,  610  ot  seq.      *  Hec,  281  et  seq.,  402  ct  seq.,  485  ot  soq. 


508     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

Timoroumenos  when  Antiphila  suddenly  meets  Clinia.^ 
In  the  IleQixeiQOfxevr]  the  impetuous  Polemo,  after  getting 
over  an  attack  of  anger,  can  do  nothing  but  repeat,  Hke 
a  weeping  child  :  "  Glycera  has  left  me,  she  has  left 
me — Glycera,  O,  Pataecus  !  "  ^  His  stammering  and  his 
sobs  of  grief  are  more  eloquent  of  the  poor  man's  state  of 
mind  than  any  long  speeches  could  be. 

The  passages  of  which  I  have  just  spoken  correspond, 
in  the  comedies  of  the  rea,  to  the  scenes  in  tragedy  which 
make  appeal  to  our  pity.  Other  passages  correspond  to 
the  tragic  scenes  of  terror,  due  allowance  being  made  for 
the  difference  of  spirit.  To  this  class  belongs  the  scene 
in  the  Rudens  in  which  Labrax,  who  was  supposed  to  have 
been  drowned,  unexpectedly  appears  and  again  jeopardises 
the  freedom  of  two  unfortunate  women  who  have  barely 
escaped  shipwreck,'  and  also  the  passage  in  the  Captivi 
in  which  Tyndarus,  frightened  at  the  discovery  of  his 
rascality,  takes  flight  at  the  approach  of  Aristophontes,'* 
as  well  as  the  subsequent  passage  in  which  he  finds  him- 
self the  defenceless  victim  of  cruel  retaliation.  As  a  rule 
we  do  not  take  the  apprehensions  of  slaves  very  seriously, 
nor  worry  about  the  punishment  that  awaits  them,  as 
even  they  themselves  refer  to  it  in  a  jocose  vein.  But  the 
calamities  and  the  squaring  of  accounts  which  we  should 
view  with  composure,  or  even  with  amusement,  if  they 
were  about  to  befall  a  mere  Scapin,  appear  in  a  different 
light  when  they  suddenly  menace  the  honour,  the  love, 
or  the  dearest  interests  of  persons  who  are  sympathetic 
to  us.  When,  in  lines  231  of  the  Phormio,  Demipho, 
announced  by  the  trembling  Geta,  comes  raging  on  to  the 
stage,  and  in  a  loud  voice  declaims  against  the  disregard 
of  paternal  authority,  we  experience  something  like  the 
fear  that  drove  Antipho  to  flight.  While  watching 
Pamphilus  and  Simo  face  to  face  with  one  another  at  the 
close  of  the  Andria,  the  spectators  must  have  started  and 
felt  their  hearts  beat  if  the  scene  were  well  performed. 

1  Heaut.,  405  et  seq.  *  UeptK.,  243-244. 

^  Rud.,  442  et  seq.  *  Capt.,  516  et  seq. 


PATHETIC    ELEMENTS  509 

In  reading  the  Hecyra  curiosity  and  even  compassion 
yield  to  anxiety  as  soon  as  we  find  out  what  is  going  on 
at  Myrrhina's  house ;  we  dread  lest  the  secret  be  dis- 
covered, and  Philumena  be  doomed  to  dishonour.  On 
the  other  hand,  in  the  Rudens  and  in  the  Cistellaria  we 
are  stirred  by  the  delay  that  occurs  in  the  recognition  of 
the  heroines,  and  by  the  sudden  changes  of  fortune  through 
which  they  risk  losing  their  or]/iieta. 

Besides  fear  and  pity,  tragedy  sometimes  calls  forth 
admiration  and  transmits  to  the  souls  of  the  audience  a 
thrill  of  noble  enthusiasm  and  of  lofty  sentiment.  Effects 
similar  to  these  occur  in  the  vea,  though  they  are,  of  course, 
on  a  more  humble  and  everyday  scale.  Certain  characters 
in  the  plays  please  us  on  account  of  their  uprightness, 
because  they  portray  mankind  in  a  favourable  light,  and 
because  they  gratify  the  philanthropic  optimism  that  lies 
dormant  in  many  of  us.  To  this  class  belong  Syriscus, 
in  the  ' EnixQsnovxeq,  who  so  eagerly  looks  after  the  interests 
of  a  poor  foundling;  Hegio  and  Geta,  in  the  Adelphi,  both 
so  concerned  about  protecting  Sostrata;  the  gentle  and 
modest  Eunomia,  entirely  absorbed  in  the  happiness  of 
her  brother;  Philematium,  that  model  of  gratitude; 
Chremes,  in  the  Heauton  Timoroumenos,  who  inquires 
with  solicitude  after  the  troubles  of  a  stranger,  his  neigh- 
bour of  a  few  weeks;  the  compassionate  Ptolemocratia, 
in  the  Rudens,  and  the  hospitable  Daemones;  the  good, 
but  peevish,  Cleaenetus,  in  the  Feajgyog ;  unselfish  Crito,  in 
the  Andria ;  Bacchis,  in  the  Hecyra,  who  rejoices  that  she 
has  been  able  to  re-establish  peace  in  the  household  of 
her  former  lover;  the  two  sisters,  in  the  Stichus,  who 
are  devotedly  attached  to  their  husbands.  All  these 
personages,  and  many  others,  I  imagine,  formed  in  the 
theatre  a  sort  of  band  of  honest  folk  in  whose  company 
honest  folk  among  the  audience  felt  themselves  at  home, 
while  even  the  less  virtuous  spectators  doubtless  con- 
descended to  show  a  moment's  sympathy.  Occasion- 
ally one  of  the  dramatis  personac  rises  beyond  the  level  of 
ordinary  virtue  and  reaches  the  heights  of  sacrifice.     In 


610     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

the  Cistellaria  Selenium  subordinates  herself,  disappears 
■without  a  murmur,  and  does  not  wish  to  have  the  faith- 
less Aleesimarchus  saddened  by  reproaches  about  his 
betrayal  after  he  has  deserted  her — or  at  least  when  she 
thinks  that  he  has  deserted  her.  In  the  Hecyra  Sostrata, 
fearing  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  conjugal  happiness  of 
her  son,  humbles  herself,  renounces  all  the  comforts  of 
her  ordinary  existence,  and  condemns  herself  to  exile  in 
the  country.  In  the  Andria  Pamphilus  is  willing  to 
sacrifice  his  wealth  and  his  social  standing  to  his  love,  and 
later  on,  when  confronted  with  Simo's  suspicions,  he  is 
prepared  to  sacrifice  even  his  love  to  his  honour.  And 
finally,  in  the  Captivi,  pathos  rises  to  a  height  worthy, 
as  one  would  have  said  in  former  times,  of  the  cothurnus. 
It  is  very  difficult  not  to  share  Hegio's  admiration  while 
listening  to  the  pseudo-Philocrates'  farewell  to  the  sham 
Tyndarus,  even  though  one  does  not  share  his  mistake.^ 
And  further  on,  when  the  bold  lie  has  been  discovered, 
how  striking  is  the  tone  in  which  Tyndarus  answers 
threats  and  reproaches  ! 

"  Little  do  I  care  for  death  as  long  as  I  have  not  deserved 
it  through  evil  deeds  of  my  own.  Should  I  die  here,  and 
should  he  not  return  as  he  has  promised  to,  I  should, 
after  my  death,  have  the  honour  of  having  rescued  my 
captive  master  from  slavery  and  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
enemy,  and  of  having  enabled  him  to  return  as  a  free 
man  to  his  country  and  to  his  father,  and  of  having  pre- 
ferred to  expose  myself  to  danger  in  order  that  he  should 
not  perish. — Hegio  :  Go,  then,  and  rejoice  in  your  glory  on 
the  shores  of  the  Acheron. — Tyndarus :  He  who  dies  by 
a  courageous  act  perishes,  but  does  not  lose  his  life."  ^ 

Never  has  the  satisfaction  that  comes  of  duty  per- 
formed at  whatever  cost  found  nobler  expression,  and 
this  passage  deserves  to  be  compared  to  certain  scenes  in 
tragedy ;  for  instance,  to  the  scene  in  which  Antigone,  after 
her  heroic  act  of  disobedience,  defies  the  wrath  of  Creon. 

1  Capt.,  432  et  seq.  ^  jr^j^^.^  6g2  et  seq. 


PATHETIC    ELEMENTS  511 

These  examples  suffice  to  give  an  idea  of  the  scope  of 
the  vea;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  contains  the  whole  gamut 
of  human  passions.  Tliough  hmitcd  in  its  subject  matter 
— more  limited  than  that  of  ancient  comedy — its  wider 
range  gave  it  the  advantage  over  its  elder  sister.  Plutarch 
openly  says  as  much  when  he  admires  in  the  comic 
writers  of  the  new  period,  in  comparison  with  their 
predecessors,  "the  mixture  of  gaiety  with  seriousness."  ^ 
Quintilian  alludes  to  this  when  he  praises  the  sustained 
dignity  of  speech  with  which  Menander  endows  all  his 
actors — fathers  and  sons,  soldiers  and  rustics,  rich  and 
poor,  angry  people  and  suppliants,  gentle  as  well  as  surly 
characters.^  Towards  the  end  of  the  fourth  and  during 
the  third  century  the  performance  of  a  comedy  offered 
an  entertainment  of  a  very  varied  character.  The  vulgar 
part  of  the  audience  was  treated  to  the  traditional  horse- 
play, much  of  which  constituted  a  sort  of  interlude  or 
side  dish  in  the  course  of  the  performance.  Tender- 
hearted people  and  young  folk  had  a  chance  of  experienc- 
ing pleasant  sensations ;  they  were  glad  to  discover  in  the 
play  a  portrayal  of  their  joys  and  of  their  troubles.  Mature 
and  experienced  people  liked  to  listen  to  the  voice  of 
reason,  and  applauded  the  judicious  utterances,  the  con- 
cise formulae  in  which  their  own  views  about  life,  the 
w'orld  and  mankind  shone  forth  with  the  brilliancy  of 
thoughts  well  expressed.  Thinkers  and  liberal  and 
courageous  minds  were  now  and  then  led  to  meditate,  to 
examine  society  with  a  critical  eye,  and  to  abandon  errors 
and  prejudices ;  sensitive  spirits  and  learned  people  enjoyed 
the  truthful  psychology,  the  correctness  and  grace  of 
style,  the  discreet  humour  and  the  fine  irony.  Thus  men 
of  quite  divergent  temperaments  found  something  to 
satisfy  them,  as  they  sat  side  by  side  watching  the  same 
play. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  not  all  the  poets  of  the  vea 
were  able  to  make  equally  felicitous  use  of  the  resources 
at  their  command.     Diphilus,  as  far  as  we  can  judge  his 

1  Plut.,  Quaest.  Sympod.,  VII.  8,  3,  7.  «  Quint.,  X.  1. 


612     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

writings  by  the  fragments  and  by  two  of  Plautus'  plays 
(the  Rudcns  and  the  Casino),  appears  to  have  clung  to 
the  earlier  tradition,  and  to  have  attached  scant  import- 
ance to  incidents  that  were  not  amusing.  When  Philemon 
ceases  to  provoke  laughter  by  means  that  often  lacked 
refinement,  he  readily  goes  to  an  opposite  extreme,  and 
runs  the  risk  of  making  us  ya%vn.  A  critic  has  rightly 
said  that  his  moral  discourses,  which,  as  I  have  already 
pointed  out,  are  very  frequent,  easily  become  pedantic. 
Even  the  most  attractive  of  the  serious  passages  that 
Plautus  copied  from  him  —  the  conversation  between 
Philematium  and  Scapha  —  is  open  to  this  reproach. 
Apollodorus,  if  the  Phormio  and  the  Hecyra  afford  a  fair 
basis  on  which  to  form  an  opinion  of  his  talent,  sinned 
in  the  way  of  monotony  and  affectation.  He  was  more 
sentimental  than  impassioned,  more  mournful  than 
pathetic.  Probably  some  of  the  points  in  w^hieh  Menander 
showed  great  superiority  were  the  versatility  and  diversity 
of  his  style,  and  his  ability  to  set  all  the  chords  of  the 
soul  vibrating  without  shock  or  jar.  He  was  certainly 
something  very  different — and  much  greater — than  a  mere 
fashionable  writer  and  maker  of  fine  speeches.  His  art 
was  not  an  art  of  semi-tones,  as  one  might  be  led  to  sup- 
pose by  some  of  the  Latin  imitations.  Owing  to  recent 
discoveries  we  are  now  able  to  recognise  that  forcefulness 
which  good  judges  in  ancient  times  found  and  admired  in 
him,  and  we  have  proof  that  in  his  plays  graceful  senti- 
ments and  restrained  emotions  alternated  with  the  most 
fierce  and  violent  transports,  all  portrayed  in  a  manner 
true  to  nature. 

The  variety  of  dramatic  effects  which  a  single  play  of 
the  new  period  was  capable  of  producing  explains  why 
this  style  of  composition  met  with  widespread  success  in 
its  day,  and  also  why  this  success  was  lasting.  If  we 
read  the  comedies  of  Plautus  and  Terence  in  quick  succes- 
sion it  is  hard  to  avoid  a  feeling  of  satiety,  and  we  should 
be  likely  to  declare  that  "it  is  always  the  same  thing." 


PATHETIC    ELEMENTS  513 

Such  a  summary  judgment — as  little  flattering  for  the 
audicnees  of  early  days  as  for  the  playwrights — would  be 
unjust,  and  I  think  that  it  will  not  be  amiss  to  revise  it, 
now  that  my  review  of  the  via  is  drawing  to  a  close. 

We  have  seen  that  the  conditions  surrounding  dramatic 
poetry  in  the  fourth  and  third  centuries  made  it  excusable 
for  authors  to  take  up  themes  that  had  already  been  dealt 
with.  Similarly,  we  might  allege  that,  as  the  public  went 
to  the  theatre  only  at  great  intervals,  they  meanwhile 
forgot  what  they  had  heard,  and  were  not  bored  by 
repetition.  But  such  an  excuse  would  be  weak  and 
hardly  fair.  There  are  other  more  valid  ones  to  bring 
forward. 

What  are  the  chief  grounds  for  this  charge  of  monotony 
that  is  raised  against  the  veat  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  certain  episodes  and  certain  situations  reappear  in 
several  comedies ;  indeed,  I  have  shown  this  at  some  length 
myself,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  deny  it.  Nevertheless, 
it  is  the  material  and  the  ending  of  the  plot  that  are 
repeated  most  persistently,  and  this  repetition  is  chiefly 
responsible  for  the  general  similarity  existing  between 
many  of  the  plays.  Before  the  regular  plot  begins  we 
hear  a  story  of  seduction  or  of  rape,  of  children  exposed 
by  their  parents  and  brought  up  by  strangers ;  at  the 
close  of  the  play  we  witness  a  recognition,  often  brought 
about  by  material  things  (rings,  jewellery,  garments,  etc.), 
a  reconciliation,  or  a  marriage.  But  between  the  begin- 
ning and  the  end  the  field  is  open  for  countless  variants 
and  for  countless  new  incidents.  The  frame  remains  the 
same,  but  the  pictures  which  appear  in  it  may  vary. 
Hence  we  must  avoid  a  hasty  judgment  which  might 
include  a  host  of  playwrights  of  all  ages,  as  well  as  the 
comic  writers  of  the  new  period.  How  many  plays  in  our 
own  day  begin  with  adultery  or  divorce,  and  end,  accord- 
ing to  the  character  of  the  author  or  the  fashion  of  the 
day,  with  a  final  separation  of  two  people  who  had  thought 
they  were  in  love,  or  else  with  forgiveness — forgiveness 
on  one  side,  or  both  sides,  and  more  or  less  steeped  in 

L  L 


514     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

tears  ?  Yet  the  authors  would  protest  were  we  to  insinuate 
that  they  say  the  same  thing  over  and  over  again — and 
they  would  be  quite  right.  Such  and  such  a  repetition, 
at  which  a  modern  reader  of  Menander,  of  Terence  or  of 
Plautus  takes  umbrage,  because  he  discovers  it  four  or 
five  times,  would,  I  believe,  appear  less  serious  to  him  were 
he  able  to  go  through  the  entire  repertoire  of  the  vea,  and 
thus  to  find  that  it  recurs  incessantly.  By  the  force  of 
facts  the  optical  illusion,  the  lack  of  perspective  that 
caused  his  strictures,  would  then  disappear;  he  would 
learn  no  longer  to  confound  the  essential  with  the  non- 
essential, and  that  to  understand  an  ancient  work  of  art 
he  must  acquire  the  taste  of  the  ancients. 

We  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  when  the  writers 
of  New  Comedy  dealt  with  the  same  subjects  several  times, 
they,  after  all,  only  followed  a  course  that  was  taken  by 
all  the  artists  of  Greece.  The  Greeks  never  demanded 
that  works  of  art  should  be  highly  original.  As  has  been 
correctly  observed,  their  architects  during  many  centuries 
always  built  one  temple  just  like  another;^  several  of 
their  sculptors,  even  some  of  the  greatest,  limited  them- 
selves to  reproducing  a  few  types,  a  few  attitudes ;  their 
story-writers,  long  before  they  wrote  purely  imaginative 
tales  or  romances,  repeated,  without  becoming  bored 
themselves  or  boring  anybody  else,  old  legends,  famous 
adventures,  which  in  their  original  version  were  not  even 
always  of  Hellenic  origin ;  ^  their  tragic  writers,  instead 
of  entering  on  the  path  opened  up  by  Agathon,  who  wrote 
a  tragedy  in  which  everything — including  the  facts  and 
the  characters — was  free  invention,  dealt  more  and  more 
with  the  misfortunes  of  a  few  heroes,  like  Oedipus,  Telephus 
and  Orestes,  with  which  the  audience  was  already  familiar. 
What  the  artists  were  concerned  with  and  what  pleased 
the  public  was  not  a  complete  novelty,  but  subtle  variants, 
clever  retouches,  and  in  certain  cases  the  plot  may  have 
appeared  to  have  the  greater  merit  the  more  the  subjects 

*  Lechat,  Le  Temple  grec,  p.  89. 

*  Cf.  B6rard,  Les  Phiniciens  et  VOdyssee,  V.,  II.  p.  584. 


PATHETIC    ELEMENTS  515 

with  -which  it  dealt  had  been  used,  and  the  narrower 
the  hmits  in  which  it  moved.  Rightly  considered,  Greek 
comedy  was  neither  more  nor  less  monotonous  than 
tragedy,  narrative  poetry,  sculpture  or  architecture,  and 
it  must  be  judged  according  to  the  same  principles  and 
with  due  regard  to  the  same  state  of  mind. 

Besides,  Greek  comedy  was  not  so  monotonous  as  the 
palliata  would  lead  us  to  suppose.  We  must  not  forget 
what  I  have  said  of  the  diversity  of  personages  who, 
though  they  lacked  very  striking  characteristics,  often 
possessed  an  individual  disposition  and  way  of  thinking. 
In  order  to  get  an  idea  of  how  large  and  how  varied  the 
domain  of  the  vea  was,  we  ought  somehow  to  multiply 
this  diversity  by  that  of  the  sentiments,  the  emotions  and 
the  passions  which  the  dramatis  jjcrsonae  felt.  Neither 
Plautus  nor  Terence  allows  us  to  see  the  product  of  this 
multiplication.  Plautus  had  a  contempt  for  psychological 
subtleties,  and  gives  undue  importance  to  certain  traits 
while  he  suppresses  others ;  he  spoils  the  light  and  shade 
and  omits  entire  portions  of  the  picture  in  order  to  make 
room  for  grimaces  and  quibbles.  Terence  is  much  more 
careful  and  well-meaning,  but  he  lacks  the  vigour  necessary 
to  reproduce  the  outlines  and  the  vividness  of  his  models ; 
he  blurs  the  contours,  weakens  the  tones,  and  envelops 
the  whole  plot  in  a  rather  dull,  grey  atmosphere ;  in  a 
word,  his  plays  reproduce  only  "  a  half  of  Menander."  ^ 
Hence  the  style  of  which  Menander  was  a  representative 
cannot  have  lacked  diversity.  It  must  certainly  be  ad- 
mitted that  this  diversity  did  not  so  much  concern  the 
more  immediately  apparent  elements  of  comedy,  such  as 
its  incidents  or  the  social  standing  of  the  dramatis  pcrsonae, 
as  it  concerned  details  of  character,  of  pathos  and  expres- 
sion. In  the  field  of  literature  it  was  analogous  to  that 
diversity  which,  at  about  the  same  period,  distinguished 
those  most  attractive  of  all  works  of  art — the  tcrra-cotta 
statuettes  from  Tanagra.  Like  the  characters  in  comedy, 
the  pretty  figurines  of  these  clay-modellers  are  not  engaged 

1  O  dimidiate  Menander  !    (Caesar). 


516     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

in  very  diverse  occupations,  nor  do  their  poses  differ  very 
much  from  one  another.  But  who  would  dare  to  say 
that  they  are  all  alike,  or  who  would  be  bored  by  looking 
at  them?  Even  when  the  pose  remains  the  same,  some 
detail  in  the  figure  or  in  the  costume — a  more  slender  or 
more  supple  waist,  a  loftier  brow  or  one  that  is  bent  in 
meditation,  a  firmer  or  more  languishing  bearing,  a  more 
nervous  or  spiritless  gesture,  a  flowing  cloak,  or  one  that 
clings  to  the  body — suffices  to  ensure  endless  variations. 
A  faithful  portrayal  of  the  countless  peculiarities  in  which 
human  souls  differ  when  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
identical  occurrences  must  have  done  as  much  for  the 
characters  of  the  via. 

Of  course,  one  must  have  a  keen  mind,  a  delicate  sensi- 
bility, in  order  to  discover  this  kind  of  diversity.  But 
these  qualities  were  certainly  not  lacking  in  the  Athens  of 
Hypereides  and  Epicurus,  nor,  as  I  believe,  in  many  other 
parts  of  the  Hellenic  world  of  that  period.  It  is  clear 
that  what  I  have  said  in  various  parts  of  this  book  about 
dovvetot  dxQoarai,  the  vulgar  and  unintelligent  crowd  with 
which  our  poets  had  to  reckon,  because  they  filled  the 
seats  in  the  theatre,  does  not  apply  to  the  entire  audience. 
As  I  neither  failed  to  recognise  nor  tried  to  disguise  the 
fact  that  not  every  Athenian  was  Attic,  I  shall  certainly 
not  be  suspected  of  entertaining  too  much  admiration  for 
ancient  Greece  when  I  say  that,  of  the  audiences  that 
went  to  the  plays  of  a  Philemon,  a  Menander  or  an 
Apollodorus,  a  goodly  number  were  worthy  of  these 
authors.  At  the  close  of  the  classical  period  the  refinement 
and  subtilty — in  the  best  sense  of  the  word — that  were 
at  all  times  innate  in  almost  every  Greek  had,  by  more 
than  a  century  and  a  half  of  remarkable  intellectual 
training,  grown  to  a  very  high  degree  of  perfection. 
Great-grandsons  of  Socrates'  companions,  or  of  the  sophists 
and  the  admirers  of  Euripides,  grandsons  of  the  disciples 
of  Plato  and  of  the  readers  of  Isocrates,  sons  of  those  who 
had  heard,  or  who  themselves  had  heard,  powerful  orators 
and    gifted    speech-writers    and    philosophers,   expert   in 


PATHETIC    ELEMENTS  517 

psychological  and  ethical  analyses,  the  cultivated  Athenians 
during  the  last  third  of  the  fourth  century  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  third  must  have  constituted  a  picked  audience 
which  did  not  allow  an  iota  of  the  most  subtle  variants 
or  of  the  most  unobtrusive  innovations  to  escape  their 
attention.  With  such  an  audience  the  vea  could  well 
have  a  fairly  long  career  before  it  exhausted  itself. 


CONCLUSION 

SUCH  was  New  Comedy.  Now  that  I  am  about  to  bid 
it  farewell  it  seems  useless  to  repeat,  in  a  general  con- 
clusion, what  has  already  been  said  in  the  special  conclu- 
sions of  the  various  chapters.  I  shall  rather  indicate,  in 
a  few  words,  the  place  New  Comedy  held  in  the  whole 
history  and  evolution  of  Greek  letters. 

A  short  time  ago  Maurice  Croiset  wrote  an  essay  entitled 
Menander,  the  Last  of  the  Attic  Writers,'^  and  what  Croiset 
says  of  Menander  can  be  said  of  that  style  of  composition 
in  which  Menander  excelled;  the  vea  was  the  last  form 
of  literature  that  can  be  called  Attic. 

By  this  I  mean,  in  the  first  place,  that  it  was  the  last 
that  had  its  centre  at  Athens.  Beginning  with  the  third 
century,  poems  of  another  kind — elegies,  epigrams,  idylls, 
didactic  poems — flourished  in  the  Peloponnesus  and  on 
the  shores  of  Asia,  in  the  islands  and  in  Egypt,  as  well  as 
elsewhere.  For  those  who  cultivated  these  classes  of 
poetry  Athens  was  no  longer  a  fatherland  nor  a  place  of 
meeting ;  for  those  of  our  own  day  who  write  their  history 
the  name  of  the  city  of  Euripides,  of  Plato  and  of  Demos- 
thenes makes  room  for  that  of  Alexandria,  Cos,  Pydna, 
Antioch  and  Pergamum.  But  New  Comedy  had  for  its 
most  illustrious  representative  an  Athenian  of  the 
Athenians,  whose  entire  life  was  passed  in  sight  of  the 
Acropolis  and  the  shores  of  Salamis,  who,  when  invited 
to  seek  gain  and  glory  at  the  court  of  King  Ptolemy, 
refused ;  whose  devotion  to  Attic  soil  Alciphron  ^ — 
doubtlessly  according  to  a  reliable  tradition — has  pictured 
in  graceful  and  forceful  words.  Many  of  his  rivals  and 
successors  were  foreigners,  natives  of  the  most  diverse 
parts  of  the  Hellenic  world.  Philemon  was  born  at 
Syracuse  or  at  Soloi,  Diphilus  at  Sinope,  Lynceus  at  Samos, 
one    Apollodorus    at    Carystus    and     another    at    Gela, 

1  Minandre  le  dernier  des  Attiques.  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  April  15, 
1909. 

*  Ale,  IV.  18. 

618 


CONCLUSION  519 

Phoenicides  at  Megara,  Poseidippus  at  Cassandria ;  and  so 
on.  But  almost  all  of  them  spent  a  considerable  part  of 
their  life  at  Athens,  and  although  all  their  works  were  not 
written  for  Attic  theatres,  the  best  of  them  were  destined 
for  that  stage.  To  secure  the  votes  of  the  people  of 
Cecrops,  to  be  included  in  the  dvaygacpai  of  the  poets  who 
won  prizes  at  the  Lenaea  or  the  Dionysia  iv  aoxei,  was, 
in  their  eyes,  a  consecration  which  very  few  of  them 
failed  to  seek.  When  Athenaeus  says  of  Macho  of  Sicyon 
(or  of  Corinth),  a  contemporary  of  Apollodorus  of  Carystus, 
Ovx  idida^s  6'  'Ady'p'rjOL  ret?  xcojucodiag  rdg  eavrov,  dXX'  h 
'Ahiardgeia,  he  evidently  intends  to  call  attention  to 
something  exceptional.^ 

By  remaining  true  to  the  Athenian  public  and  to  the 
stage  that  had  been  glorified  by  Aeschylus,  Sophocles  and 
Euripides,  by  Cratinus,  Eupolis  and  Aristophanes,  by 
Plato  the  comic  writer,  by  Antiphanes  and  Eubulus,  the 
poets  of  the  new  period  no  doubt  enjoyed  the  advantage 
of  having  to  deal  with  a  public  that  was  more  cultivated 
and  more  capable  of  enjoying  their  works,  but  they  lost 
the  opportunity  of  finding  richer  material  for  their  plays. 
The  Athens  in  which  they  lived  had  sunk  to  the  rank  of 
a  small  town.  I  am  far  from  believing  that  its  inhabitants, 
regarded  as  men,  were  not  the  equals  of  their  ancestors, 
but  they  no  longer  had  great  questions  to  discuss  or  great 
interests  to  defend.  Though  they  were  affected  by  the 
turmoil  of  the  age,  their  country  was  no  longer  an  import- 
ant factor  in  the  world's  history;  it  was  no  longer  the 
heart  or  the  brain  of  Hellenism.  The  life  that  people 
led  at  Athens  when  they  were  not  blockaded  and  starved 
by  hostile  armies  or  oppressed  by  a  tyrant  must  have 
been  somewhat  drowsy,  monotonous  and  narrow.  This 
accounts  for  that  poverty  of  ideas  in  the  works  of  the  via 
which  could  not  be  disguised  by  skilful  treatment.  The 
comic  writers  of  this  period  were  excellent  painters,  but 
they  had  mediocre  models.  This  fact  does  not  detract 
from  their  merit,  but  it  detracts  from  the  interest  of  their 

1  Ath.,  p.  C64  A. 


620     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

works.  We  cannot  but  regret  that  the  greatest  of  them 
were  not  able  to  behold  the  ever  fresh,  infinitely  diverse 
and  vivid  spectacle  of  the  great  Hellenistic  centres, 
instead  of  living  and  writing  in  the  midst  of  a  super- 
annuated society  and  of  having  their  vision  limited  by  a 
narrow  horizon  to  traditional  characters  and  petty  occur- 
rences which  afforded  no  variety.  W^hen  we  read  in 
Quintilian  that  Menander  gave  "  a  complete  picture  of 
hfe,"  ^  and  that,  in  watching  the  poet's  plays,  or,  more 
generally  speaking,  the  plays  of  the  via,  we  can  resuscitate 
the  memory  of  the  time  in  which  they  appeared,  we  must 
recognise  that  Quintilian' s  words  require  some  correction 
and  reservation.  A  "  complete  picture,"  perhaps,  of 
"life"  as  far  as  character  is  concerned;  but  of  the  life 
of  society  what  a  small,  insignificant  part  !  And  how 
strange  it  is  that  the  comedy  of  a  period  like  that  of  the 
Diadochi  and  of  the  first  Epigoni,  full  of  effervescence, 
of  innovations  and  upheavals,  of  a  period  that  looked  so 
exclusively  towards  the  future,  should  have  subsisted  on 
worn-out  incidents  and  elements  that  had  been  inherited 
from  the  past  ! 

Not  only  is  New  Comedy  the  last  great  form  of  literary 
production,  in  point  of  time,  that  flourished  at  Athens, 
but  it  is  the  culmination  of  much  progress  of  which  Attica 
had  been  the  scene  and  Attic  writers  the  chief  promoters, 
and  in  it  are  concentrated  for  a  supreme  outburst  of  glory 
some  of  the  most  precious  qualities  of  Athenian  genius. 
On  this  point  I  need  not  waste  many  words,  as  I  need 
only  confirm  observations  previously  made.  The  clever- 
ness and  subtlety  of  observation  that  make  the  works  of 
the  via  attractive  had  manifested  themselves  much  earlier, 
in  older  comedy  and  in  the  tragedies  of  Euripides,  in 
some  Socratic  writings  and  in  the  orations  of  the  speech- 
writers.  Whenever  I  re-read  the  soliloquy  of  Demeas 
in  the  Zafxia  I  involuntarily  think  of  the  account  of  the 
murder  of  Eratosthenes  in  Lysias'  oration,  and  certainly 
it  is  not  merely  the  similarity — which,  as  a  matter  of 
1  Quint.,  X.  1,  70. 


CONCLUSION  521 

fact,  is  far  from  complete — between  the  misfortunes  of 
the  comic  character  and  those  of  liVsias'  cHent  which  calls 
forth  this  reminiscence.  Works  like  the  orations  On  the 
murder  of  Eratosthenes,  Against  Simo,  For  the  Invalid,  On 
the  inheritance  of  Philoctemon,  Against  Neaera,  Against 
Eubididcs,  Against  Evergos  and  Mnesibulos,  Against  Conon, 
Against  Callicles,  Against  Athenogenes,  For  Lycophron — I 
quote  almost  at  random — contain  many  qualities  that  reveal 
the  same  quickness  of  vision,  the  same  sense  of  picturesque 
and  vivid  detail,  the  same  "  skill  in  playing  new  parts," 
that  we  admire  in  our  poets,  and  which,  in  spite  of  the 
difference  in  their  style  of  writing,  create  a  kinship 
between  men  like  Lysias,  Hypereides,  Apollodorus,  and 
even  Demosthenes,  on  the  one  hand,  and  Philemon  and 
Menander  on  the  other.  The  art  of  dialogue  which  was 
brought  to  so  high  a  degree  of  perfection  by  certain  drama- 
tists of  the  new  period  had  developed  in  the  drama  and 
in  philosophical  literature  since  the  fifth  century.  Tragedy 
alone  had  supplied  abundant  examples  of  the  portrayal 
of  love.  Tragedy  had  also  served  as  a  guide  in  the  con- 
struction of  plays,  and  especially  in  the  art  of  leading  up 
to  the  plot,  while  the  older  comedy  taught  its  younger 
sister  convenient  and  amusing  devices.  In  a  word,  not- 
withstanding the  disappearance  of  so  many  works  of  the 
fifth  and  fourth  centuries,  and  notwithstanding  the  loss 
of  the  /xeo-)],  we  are  in  a  position  to  determine  wuth  cer- 
tainty the  antecedents  for  almost  everything  that  charac- 
terises New  Comedy  in  point  of  ideas,  as  well  as  of  form ; 
and  it  appears  to  us  to  be  the  universal  heir,  as  it  were, 
of  all  that  went  before. 

This,  however,  does  not  mean  that,  in  the  history  of 
literature.  New  Comedy  is  interesting  merely  as  a  re- 
capitulation and  a  last  phase.  Granted  that  it  received 
much  and  from  all  possible  sources,  it  also  gave  much, 
and  many  later  works,  besides  those  to  which  I  have 
resorted  in  reconstructing  it,  owe  something  to  it — some 
portion  of  their  substance,  some  turn  of  thought,  some 


522     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

settings,  some  forms  of  expression.  The  literary  posterity 
of  the  vea  is  long  and  very  ramified.  But  it  is  not  within 
the  scope  of  my  plan  to  give  an  account,  however 
succinct,  of  them,  and  it  must,  therefore,  suffice,  in  con- 
clusion, to  point  out  its  descendants,  so  to  speak,  in  the 
first  degree. 

In  the  Hellenistic  period  mimes  of  various  kinds 
flourished  or  had  their  revival.  But  was  the  grand 
dramatic  mime  known  as  early  as  this — that  mingling  of 
prose  and  verse,  of  declamation  and  song,  accompanied 
by  dancing  and  music,  which  was  later  on  to  be  the 
delight  of  Rome  and  Byzantium  for  many  hundred  years  ? 
Notwithstanding  the  researches  of  Reich,  ^  this  is  an  open 
question.  The  only  remnants  of  a  composition  of  this 
order,  some  fragments  found  at  Oxyrhynchus,^  are  of 
uncertain  date ;  perhaps  they  are  not  older  than  the 
papyrus  itself  which  has  preserved  them,  which  dates 
from  the  second  century  after  Christ.  On  the  other 
hand,  passages  from  Aristocles  and  Aristoxenus  of 
Tarentum,  handed  down  by  Athenaeus,^  conclusively 
prove  the  existence  among  the  Alexandrians  of  chanted 
mimes,  of  which  the  "  Grenfell  fragment,"  *  a  papyrus 
from  Tebtunis,^  a  potsherd  from  Thebes  ^  and  possibly 
also  the  Aoxqixov  aofia,  classified  by  Bergk  as  a  popular 
song,'  still  give  us  some  idea.  The  urban  idylls  of 
Theocritus,  the  mimiambs  of  Herondas  (a  theme  from  one 
of  them  reappears  in  the  Oxyrhynchus  MoixsvtQia),^  are 
typical,  from  the  beginning  of  the  third  century  onwards, 
of  another  variety  of  mimes  which  were  meant  to  be  read 
or   recited.     And   finally,    a   terra-cotta   lamp,    found    at 

1  Reich,  Der  Mimus,  I.  (Berlin,  1903,  Chap.  VI.  §  6,  p.  475-562). 

*  Oxyrh.,  Chap.  VIII.  p.  41  et  seq.     Herondae  Mimiamhi,  fourth  edition, 
by  Crusius  (1905),  p.  102  et  seq. 

3  Ath.,  p.  620  D  et  seq.,  621  B  et  seq. 

*  Grenfell,  An  Alexandrian  Erotic  Fragment  (Oxford,  1896),  Herondae 
Mim.*,  p.  117  et  seq. 

*  Tebtunis  papyri,  Vol.  I.  p.  8  et  seq.     Herondae  Mim.*,  p.  124-125. 
«  Melanges  Perrot  (1902),  p.  291.     Herondae  Mim.^,  p.  126-127. 

'  Ath.,  p.  697  B.     See  Crusius'  note,  Herondae  Mim.*,  p.  120. 

*  Oxyrh.  pap.,  Vol.  III.  p.  47  et  seq.     Herondae  Mim.*,  p.  Ill  et  seq. 


CONCLUSION  523 

Athens,  but  probably  made  in  Egypt,  represents  three 
persons  without  masks  (whom  a  description  designates  as 
juijuoXoyoi),  engaged  in  an  animated  eonvcrsation.^  This 
proves  that  very  shortly  after  the  best  period  of  the  via, 
if  not  during  that  period,  short  plays  with  several  actors, 
which  were  perhaps  to  a  large  extent  improvisations, 
were  regularly  played  outside  the  theatre,  and  that  they 
enjoyed  popular  favour.  Naturally,  the  question  arises 
what  these  various  mimes — all  of  which  arc  more  or  less 
closely  related  to  the  dramatic  style — may  have  owed  to 
New  Comedy. 

There  certainly  was  a  kinship  between  them.  Aristo- 
xenus  of  Tarentum  said  of  one  class  of  chanted  mimes, 
which  were  performed  by  XvoimSol  or  juayqj6oi,  that  they 
were  naQu  xr)v  xcojuqjdiav.  Among  the  characters  portrayed 
by  these  [.iayq>doL,  Athenaeus,  probably  quoting  Aristoeles, 
mentions  procuresses,  gay  lovers  who  visit  their  mis- 
tresses— two  types  that  were  not  ignored  in  comedy — and 
he  adds  that  the  juayojdoi  frequently  chose  comic  subjects 
{xco/Lnxag  vnoOeoeig  Xa^ovxeq)  and  performed  them  after  their 
own  fashion  {vTtEXQidrjoav  xara  rrjv  idiav  aycoyijv  xat  diddeoiv). 
The  title  of  the  dramatic  performance,  a  scene  of  which 
is  represented  on  a  terra-cotta  lamp  (the  title  appears 
near  the  actors),  belongs  to  the  comic  repertoire  :  'ExvQa. 
More  than  one  incident  in  Herondas  reminds  us  of  comedy. 
In  the  first  mimiamb  the  situation  of  the  young  wife 
whose  husband  has  been  abroad  for  a  long  time  resembles 
the  situation  of  the  two  sisters  in  the  Stichus ;  her  virtue 
is  assaulted  by  a  faithless  counsellor,  just  as  the  virtue 
of  Philematium  was  by  Scapha  in  the  Mostellaria.  In  the 
second  mimiamb  the  pander  Baltarus  had  the  same  mis- 
haps as  Sannio  in  the  Adclphi.  By  bringing  the  man  who 
had  insulted  him  to  justice,  he  carries  out  a  threat  of 
Sannio's,  and  when  he  cynically  admits  his  own  infamy, 
and  recalls  with  satisfaction  that  of  his  father  and  grand- 
father, he  likewise  resembles  Sannio,  or  the  stage  parasites 

1  Ath.  Mitth.,  1901,  p.  1  et  seq.  and  Pluto,  I.;  cf.  Philologits,  1903, 
p.  35  et  seq. 


524     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

whose  degradation  has  been  handed  down  from  father  to 
son. 

Of  course,  I  cannot  pretend  to  point  out  in  a  few  words 
all  the  analogies  that  can  be  found  between  the  mime  and 
New  Comedy.  But  how  many  differences  and  contrasts 
exist,  side  by  side  with  these  analogies  !  Many  of  the 
subjects  which  were,  as  far  as  we  know,  dealt  with  in 
these  "  mimes "  are  entirely  foreign  to  high  comedy.^ 
For  example,  the  school  scene  in  the  third  mimiamb,  the 
outburst  of  fierce  jealousy  on  the  part  of  Bitinna  in 
Herondas  and  that  of  the  Oxyrhynchus  fxoixevxQia,  the 
obscene  conversation  in  the  sixth  mimiamb,  and  the  tales 
about  adultery  committed  by  women  which,  according 
to  Aristocles,  formed  the  chief  subject  of  the  poems 
recited  by  the  Xvouodoi.  Even  the  scene  of  the  tempta- 
tion in  the  first  mimiamb,  in  which  we  have  just  recog- 
nised elements  that  are  familiar  to  the  vea,  when  taken 
in  its  entirety,  is  not  an  episode  of  comedy,  for  in  comedy 
the  folk  like  Gyllis  do  not  direct  their  attacks  against 
respectable  married  women.  Nor  is  the  paraklausithyron 
of  the  "  Grenfell  fragment  "  like  a  scene  in  comedy,  for 
on  the  stage  it  is  not  the  woman  who  sighs  at  the  door 
of  the  man  she  loves,  but  the  man  who  tries  to  move  the 
hard-hearted  beauty.  If  other  subjects  which  occur  in 
the  mimes  are  also  found  in  the  comic  poets,  they  are  not, 
at  any  rate,  a  part  of  the  special  repertoire  of  the  new 
period,  but  belong  rather  to  that  of  earlier  comedy.  To 
this  order  belong  the  scenes  taken  from  the  life  of  crafts- 
men, like  that  which  is  the  subject  of  the  seventh  mimiamb, 
or  like  those  which  are  apparently  indicated  by  the  titles 
ZvvEQya^ofxevoi  and  "  IoxadoTcco^f]g,  or  the  visit  to  the  temple 
of  Asclepius  in  the  fourth  mimiamb,  and — though  Menan- 
der  himself  wrote  a  Zvvaqiox&oai — the  banquet  by  which 
the  'AnovrjOTiCovoai  broke  their  liturgical  fast. 

^  Incidentally  I  may  observe  that  in  the  mimiambs  of  Herondas  the 
scene  is  almost  always  indoors — the  interior  of  a  shop,  of  a  school,  of  a 
law-court,  a  temple  or  a  private  house.  As  we  know,  nothing  is  more 
foreign  to  comedy. 


CONCLUSION  525 

Even  in  instances  where  there  is  a  real  or  an  apparent 
coincidence  between  the  via  and  the  mime  it  does  not 
necessarily  follow  that  the  latter  was  inspired  by  the 
former.  The  mime  did  not  originate  in  the  third  century ; 
it  is  as  old  as — nay,  older  than  comedy,  and  at  a  very  early 
period  it  favoured  certain  types  that  were  also  used  by 
the  comic  writers.  If  the  /xijuoXoyoi  of  the  third  century 
performed  a  play  called  'Exvqd,  it  does  not  by  any  means 
follow  that  their  poet  got  his  inspiration  from  a  play  by 
Apollodorus  which  had  the  same  title,  or  from  some  play 
of  the  vea  in  which  a  mother-in-law  appeared.  The  'Envqa 
of  the  infioloyoL  may  well  have  originated  in  the  domain  of 
the  mime  without  being  under  any  obligation  to  comedy, 
and  the  same  may  be  said  of  Herondas'  MaorgoTtog  and 
Jloovo^ooxog.  Moreover,  in  addition  to  the  choice  of 
subjects,  the  tone  of  the  mime  distinguishes  it  in  an 
unmistakable  manner  from  New  Comedy.  In  the  mimes 
it  is,  as  a  rule,  more  coarsely  realistic  and  vulgar.  In 
order  to  provoke  laughter  the  jester  in  the  "  Oxyrhynchus 
mime"  uses  and  misuses  a  broad  joke  of  which  there  can 
hardly  be  any  question  in  the  plays  of  the  fifth  century  : 
nogdij.  In  Herondas  the  dramatis  personae  are  anything 
but  prudes;  they  call  everything  they  speak  of  by  its 
true  name,  and  they  speak  of  everything;  the  archaic 
dialect  of  their  speech  docs  not  disguise  its  popular  tone. 
In  the  fragments  of  the  chanted  mimes  the  style  is  less 
homogeneous,  and  occasionally  it  admits  of  pompousness 
and  of  a  certain  pretence  of  poetry.  Elsewhere  the  words 
are  no  less  bold  than  the  thoughts.  Hence,  as  a  whole, 
there  is  something  sensual  and  dissolute  in  the  mimes 
that  must  have  accorded  well  with  the  female  attire  of 
the  ?.voicpdoi  and  their  indecent  gestures,  and  we  might 
search  in  vain  for  anything  like  it  in  the  extant  works  of 
our  comic  writers. 

In  short,  the  development  of  the  mimes  on  Greek  soil 
during  the  last  centuries  before  the  Christian  era  appears 
to  have  been  coincident  with,  rather  than  subordinate  to, 
that   of    comedy.     If,    after   the   time   in    which   the   via 


526     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

flourished,  this  style  of  play  attraeted  more  talented  men 
and  created  more  stir,  it  is  not,  as  I  believe,  because  they 
found  models  and  encouragement  in  the  works  of  authors 
like  Philemon,  Menander  or  Apollodorus.  This  recrudes- 
cence of  activity — which,  by  the  way,  is  perhaps  more 
apparent  than  real — is  sufficiently  explained  by  the  grow- 
ing taste  for  realism  and  by  the  relaxation  of  the  literary 
tyranny  of  Athens,  owing  to  which  styles  of  writing  that 
had  hitherto  been  spurned  and  despised  by  Athenian 
pride  ventured  to  claim  attention.  Far  from  giving 
encouragement  to  the  mimes.  New  Comedy  injured  it  by 
keeping  it  in  the  background;  subsequently  the  mime 
was  to  have  a  signal  revenge,  and  from  the  beginning  of 
our  era  to  supplant  comedy  for  centuries. 

Let  us  pursue  our  inquiry  in  another  direction. 

Among  the  epigrams  of  the  third  and  second  centuries 
which  have  been  preserved,  more  than  one  reminds  us 
strongly  of  a  situation,  a  character  or  a  sentimental 
incident  met  with  in  the  comic  writers.  "  Take  a  dozen 
shrimps — but  you  must  select  them — and  five  wreaths, 
wreaths  of  roses.  What's  that  ?  You  say  you  have  no 
money  ?  We  have  been  robbed  !  Will  no  one  go  and 
beat  that  Lapith?  He  is  a  pirate,  and  not  a  servant. 
Aren't  you  robbing  us  ?  Eh  ?  Bring  your  account. 
Phryne,  come  here  with  the  counters.  Oh,  the  sly  fox  ! 
Wine,  five  drachmae ;  sausage,  two  drachmae ;  eggs,  hare, 
mackerel,  oil-cakes,  honey-cakes.  .  .  .  To-morrow  we'll 
reckon  it  all  up.  Now  go  to  Aischra  the  perfumer  ..." 
{Anth.  Pal.,  V.  181).  "  Go  to  market,  Demetrius,  ask 
Amyntas  for  three  blue  fish,  ten  small  seaweed  fish  and 
crook-backed  shrimps — he  is  to  count  them  himself — two 
dozen.  Get  these  things  and  come  back.  Also  fetch  six 
wreaths  of  roses  at  Thauborius'.  Make  haste,  and,  as  you 
pass,  just  tell  Tryphera  to  come  "  {Anth.  Pal.,  V.  185). 
These  two  epigrams  by  Asclepiades  might  have  been 
uttered  by  Philolaches  when  he  sends  Tranio  to  market, 
or  by  Lesbonicus  when  he  makes  up  accounts  with 
Stasimus.     "  One  day  I  was  dallying  with  the  enchanting 


CONCLUSION  527 

Hermione ;  she  wore  a  belt  embroidered  with  flowers, 
and,  O  Goddess  of  Paphos !  on  it  one  read  these  words  in 
letters  of  gold  :  Love  me  always  and  do  not  grieve  if  I 
give  myself  to  another  "  {Anth.  Pal.,  V.  158).  "  Do  not 
imagine,  Philaenis,  that  you  deeeive  me  with  your  eloquent 
tears.  Yes,  I  know  you  love  no  one  more  dearly  than  me, 
as  long  as  you  lie  by  my  side.  But  if  some  one  else 
embraced  you,  you  would  say  that  you  loved  him  more 
dearly  than  you  do  me  "  {Anth.  Pal.,  V.  186).  The  first 
of  these  passages  is  by  Asclepiades,  the  second  by 
Poseidippus.  Philaenis  and  Hermione  are  of  the  same 
school  as  Menander's  Phronesium  or  Thais.  "  Euphro, 
Thais,  Boidion,  old  hags  who  would  be  worthy  daughters 
of  Diomedes,  forty-oared  galleys  for  the  use  of  privateer 
captains,  have  thrown  over  Agis,  Cleophon  and  Antagoras 
respectively,  stark  naked,  and  poorer  than  if  they  had 
been  shipwrecked.  Wherefore  flee  with  your  ships  from 
the  pirates  of  Aphrodite  !  They  are  worse  than  the 
Sirens  "  {Anth.  Pal.,  V.  161).  This  epigram  is  attributed 
to  Asclepiades  or  to  Hedylus.  It  transports  us  to  a  world 
with  which  we  are  well  acquainted — the  world  of  the 
mariners,  with  their  coarse  pleasures,  and  of  the  low 
women  who  "pluck"  them.  The  likening  of  the  ruined 
vavxlrjQOQ  to  a  shipwrecked  man  who  is  cast  naked  upon 
the  shore  recalls  the  passage  containing  the  lamentations 
of  Diabolus ;  ^  the  likening  of  the  rapacious  courtesan  to 
a  pirate  recalls  an  expression  of  Messenio's ;  ^  the  com- 
parison with  the  Sirens  is  identical  with  those  which  occur 
in  Anaxilas  ^  and  in  several  of  Alciphron's  epistles,^  and 
like  those  which  Plautus,  in  various  passages,  implies 
rather  than  freely  expresses.^  "  If  Pythias  has  company, 
I'm  off;  but  if  she  is  sleeping  alone,  by  Zeus !  Nico,  let  me 
in.  And  say  to  her,  so  that  she  may  know  who  I  am  : 
He  came  drunk,  through  the  midst  of  the  robbers  ( ? ), 
with   saucy  Eros   as    his   guide."  ^     Such  are   the   words 

1  Asin.,  134-135.  -  Mcnacch.,  344. 

3  Anaxilas,  fr.  22.  *  Ale,  I.  G,  2 ;  21.  3. 

«  Bacch.,  471 ;  True,  350,  568;  etc.  •  Anlli.  Pal.,  V.  213. 


528     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

of  Poseidippus  (or  possibly  of  Asclepiades).  Diniarchus 
might  have  said  as  much  to  Astaphium.  Now  let  us 
listen  to  Callimaehus  :  "  Conopion,  may  you  sleep  as  you 
make  me  pass  the  night  here  on  the  icy  threshold  of  your 
house ;  may  you  sleep  as  you  make  your  lover  rest.  And 
you  felt  no  pity,  not  even  in  your  dreams  !  The  neigh- 
bours take  pity,  but  you,  not  even  in  your  dreams  !  But 
ere  long  your  white  hair  will  make  you  remember  all 
this."  ^  The  lover  forced  to  remain  at  the  door  is,  as  we 
know,  a  figure  belonging  to  the  comic  repertoire.  The 
last  thrust  recalls  Epicrates'  spiteful  words  to  Lais,  who 
has  grown  old,^  or  the  pessimistic  predictions  of  Scapha.^ 
"  Callignotus  has  sworn  to  lonis  that  no  man  or  woman 
friend  would  ever  be  dearer  to  him  than  she  is.  He  has 
sworn,  but  there  is  good  reason  for  saying  that  a  lover's 
oaths  do  not  enter  the  ears  of  the  Immortals.  Now  he 
glows  with  a  fire  lighted  by  a  man,  and  as  for  the  poor 
woman,  there  is  as  little  talk  or  concern  about  her  as 
about  the  Megarians"  {Anth.  Pal.,  V.  6).  The  misfortune 
that  befell  lonis  is  the  same  that  Selenium  dreaded,  and 
Callignotus'  oath  is  on  a  par  with  that  of  Alcesimarchus.* 
The  poet's  remark  about  the  treachery  of  love  is  like  that 
of  the  aged  courtesan  :  Nil  amori  injurium  st.^  "  Zeus,  my 
friend,  say  nothing"  (Asclepiades  exclaims,  after  having 
told  of  one  of  his  amorous  exploits) ;  "  thou,  too,  hast 
known  love  "  {Anth.  Pal.,  V.  767).  And  elsewhere  :  "  I 
am  impelled  by  the  god  who  is  thine  own  master,  O  Zeus, 
by  the  god  whom  thou  didst  obey  when  thou  didst  pene- 
trate a  brazen  chamber  "  {Anth.  Pal.,  V.  64).  The  omni- 
potence of  Eros  is  often  proclaimed  in  comedy,  and  comic 
heroes  are  quick  to  excuse  their  failings  by  invoking  the 
example  set  by  the  gods.  Now  let  us  turn  to  Meleager. 
"  Timarion,  your  kiss  is  birdlime,  your  glance  is  fire.  If 
you  look  at  me  you  burn ;  if  you  touch  me,  I  am  caught  " 
{Anth.    Pal.,    V.    96).     Viscus    merus    vostrast    hlanditia, 

1  Anth.  Pal.,  V.  23.  *  Epicrates,  fr.  3. 

'  Most.,  201-202.  *  Cist.,  99-103. 

6  Ibid.,  103.  Cf.  Men.,  fr.  449. 


CONCLUSION  529 

says  Pistoclerus  to  Bacchis ;  ^  and  Cleareta  compares  the 
profession  of  a  courtesan  to  the  occupation  of  a  fowler.^ 
"  My  soul  counsels  me  to  flee  the  love  of  Ileiiodora,  know- 
ing by  experience  what  tears  and  torments  it  costs.  Thus 
speaks  my  soul ;  but  I  have  not  the  courage  to  fly,  for 
my  imprudent  soul  itself  that  counsels  me,  while  coun- 
selling, loves  Ileiiodora  "  {Anth.  Pal.,  V.  24).  Here  we 
have  the  state  of  mind  of  Diniarchus,^  or  rather  that  of 
Phaedria,*  expressed  in  subtle  terms.  "  Tell  her  this, 
Dorcas ;  listen,  repeat  it  all  to  her  two  or  three  times, 
Dorcas.  Run;  do  not  tarry,  fly.  One  moment,  I  beg 
you,  one  moment,  Dorcas ;  wait  a  bit.  Dorcas,  whither 
are  you  running  before  you  know  it  all  ?  To  what  I  told 
you  long  ago  add  this.  .  .  .  But  why  should  I  rave  any 
more  ?  Say  nothing  at  all  .  .  .  unless  .  .  .  Say  every- 
thing, do  not  spare  yourself  about  saying  everything. 
Really,  Dorcas,  what  is  the  use  of  sending  you  ?  See,  I 
will  go  with  you  myself — and  ahead  of  you"  (Anth.  Pal., 
V.  182).  This  pretty  passage  recalls  a  passage  in  the 
JleQixeigojuevrj,  in  which  Polemo  sends  Doris  to  Glycera, 
and  follows  her  to  the  door  and  overwhelms  her  with 
advice. 

These  comparisons,  to  which  I  could  easily  add  many 
more,  are  interesting  in  themselves,  but  the  main  point 
is  that  they  lead  to  another  more  important  and  more 
far-reaching  comparison.  In  the  course  of  this  book  I 
have,  on  several  occasions,  though  only  incidentally, 
called  attention  to  the  striking  resemblance  between 
comedy  and  Latin  elegy.  A  careful  comparison  of  these 
two  kinds  of  poetry  warrants  the  assertion  that  they  have 
many  points  of  contact,  and  a  great  number  of  common 
elements.  In  the  elegiac  poets,  as  in  the  comic  writers, 
the  god  of  love  is  regarded  as  the  most  powerful  of 
the  gods,  and  as  lord  of  the  universe;  they  speculate 
as  to  why  sculptors  and  painters  should  have  given 
him   a   pair   of    wings ;    recommend    a    life    of    pleasure 

1  Bacch.,  50.  *  Asin.,  215. 

*  True,  766  ot  soq.  *  Eun.,  70  et  soq. 

M  M 


iS80  THE    NEW    GREEK    COMEDY 

in  view  of  the  dreariness  of  old  age  and  the  approach 
of  death;  pity  and  rebuke  old  men  who  meddle  with 
love;  they  declare,  now,  that  beauty  needs  no  elegance 
of  dress  in  order  to  please,  and  again,  that  careful 
attire  increases  beauty,  or  makes  up  for  the  lack  of 
it.  In  both  kinds  of  poetry  we  find  the  same  types 
of  character  and  the  same  kind  of  people :  the  lover 
deeply,  and  sometimes  charmingly,  in  love,  who  sees  a 
richer  rival  given  preference ;  the  woman  who  is  greedy 
for  money  and  for  presents,  quick  to  ask  and  quick  to 
refuse,  wheedling  and  mendacious;  the  serving-maid  who 
is  the  accomplice  of  her  mistress's  deceit;  the  duenna  who 
corrupts  young  girls  and  suppresses  their  inclination 
towards  unselfishness,  honesty  and  fidelity,  and  teaches 
them  how  to  make  their  fortunes.  We  have  the  same 
cult  of  amorous  exploits  :  passion  suddenly  awakens  and 
promptly  invades  the  heart  of  the  lover;  at  sight  of  his 
beloved  he  becomes  rigid,  mute  and  stupid;  he  declares 
that  the  pangs  of  love  are  the  most  cruel  in  the  world,  and 
describes  them  with  the  help  of  metaphors  consecrated 
by  custom,  and  compares  them  to  the  worst  tortures  in 
mythology;  they  cannot  be  hidden,  and  make  him  who 
endures  them  look  pale  and  thin;  nothing  can  make  him 
forget  them;  they  grant  him  no  repose,  and  force  the 
lover  constantly  to  besiege  the  door  of  his  fair  one,  drive 
him  to  violence,  to  house-breaking,  to  nocturnal  excesses 
which  the  Roman  police  would,  I  believe,  have  regarded 
with  an  unfriendly  eye.  I  am  not  attempting  to  do  more 
than  give  a  few  general  and  superficial  hints ;  for  a  more 
precise  statement  and  for  further  details  I  refer  the  reader 
to  the  commentaries  on  the  Latin  elegiac  poets — par- 
ticularly on  Propertius  and  Ovid — to  Leo's  Plautinische 
Forschungen  and  to  Holzer's  dissertation  De  poesi  amatoria 
a  comicis  atticis  exculta,  ah  elegiacis  imitatione  expressa 
(Marburg,  1899). 

How  can  we  explain  so  many  similarities  between  the 
comic  writers  and  the  elegiac  poets  ?  Doubtless  Propertius 
and  Ovid  may  have  imitated  Menander  directly,  for  his 


CONCLUSION  531 

name  occurs  several  times  in  their  works,  as  does  that  of 
one  of  his  heroines — the  celebrated  Thais.  But  the  fact 
that  these  similarities  also  occur  in  Greek  authors  of  a  late 
period,  who  cannot  have  imitated  either  the  comic  writers 
or  the  Roman  elegiacs — in  authors  like  Musaeus  and 
Nonnus,  the  writers  of  epistles,  Philostratus  and  Aristae- 
nctus,  and  in  the  writers  of  romances — makes  another 
explanation  more  plausible.  The  common  source  of  all 
these  writers  and  of  the  poets  of  the  Augustan  age  was 
probably,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  a  style  of  composition 
which  had  itself  been  derived  from  New  Comedy  :  Hellen- 
istic love  poetry.  What  was  this  poetry?  This  question 
has  given  rise  to  much  controversy.  According  to  one 
view,  the  only  love-poems  known  to  the  Alexandrians  in 
which  the  poet  spoke  in  his  own  name  and  described  his 
own  feelings,  were  the  epigrams,  and  the  great  elegies  of 
Philetas  and  Callimachus  always  retained  a  narrative 
character.  According  to  another  view,  the  third  century 
already  witnessed  the  production  of  lengthy  subjective 
compositions  which  were  in  every  way  analogous  to  the 
works  of  Propertius,  Tibullus  and  Ovid.^  We  need  not 
take  sides  in  this  discussion.  Epigram  or  elegy,  it  matters 
little.  Besides,  the  difference  between  the  two  is  not 
always  clear,  and  certain  poems,  considered  by  them- 
selves, may  just  as  correctly  be  called  short  elegies  as  long 
epigrams.  The  main  thing  for  us  is  the  recognition  of 
the  fact  that,  beginning  with  the  third  century,  a  whole 
series  of  themes  found  in  the  via  spread  beyond  the 
stage  and  furnished  regular  material  to  a  new  order  of 
poetry.  Moreover,  though  they  do  not  entirely  agree,  all 
modern  investigations  into  the  sources  of  Roman  elegiac 
poetry,  as  well  as  those  into  the  sources  of  the  erotic 
letters  or  tales  of  the  later  period,  agree  in  warranting 

^  See  the  contemporaneous  and  conflicting  works  of  Jacoby  (Zur 
Entstehung  der  romischen  Elegie,  in  the  Rheiniaches  Museum,  1905,  p.  38 
et  seq.),  and  of  Gollnisch  (Quaeationea  elegiacae.  Diss.  Breslau,  1905),  which 
refer  to  the  works  of  tlieir  predecessors.  For  a  full  discussion  of  this 
question  consult  Auguste  Couat,  La  poiaie  alexandrine  sous  lea  trois 
premiers  PtoUmeea,  passim.  ( — Tr.). 


532     THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDY 

this  conclusion.  Hence  the  relation  existing  between 
New  Comedy  and  that  poetry  which  so  soon  afterwards 
shone  forth  in  the  brightest  light — erotic  poetry — is  not 
one  of  mere  succession,  but  of  true  kinship.  The  latter 
descended  from  the  former,  and  it  was  from  the  former 
that  it  received  the  lighted  torch. 


INDEX 


Action.     See  Plot. 

Actors,     Rule    of    Three,    289-297; 
rarely   applicable   to    Plautus    and 
Terence,    290 ;    nor    to    Menander, 
290 ;  examples  of  more  tlian  three 
speakers    at    once,    293;    meaning 
and  purpose  of  rule,  295;  the  law 
does    not   aid    in   dotermininp   the 
origin  of  scenes  in  question,  297. 
Actors,  their  movements,  361-367. 
Acts,    Law    of    Five,    289 ;    ancient 
testimony,  371-373;  origin  of  rule, 
383-385;    usually   observed,    383; 
antiquity  of  the  division,  371-372; 
acts     divided     by     chorus,     373 ; 
original  fragments  give  no  decisive 
evidence,     373;     division     of    the 
several  plays  into  acts,  374-383. 
Adventures,  character   of,    in  N.  C, 
184-205.     Of    war,    politics,    civic 
life,  184^185;    business   life,  185- 
187 ;  legal  affairs,  185-187  ;  travel, 
185;      pleasure.     187-188.       Love 
afifairs,    188-197:    inception,    189- 
190  ;  obstacles.  190-197 ;  competi- 
tion between  rivals,  192 ;  quarrels, 
192-193 ;    ways  of  raising  money, 
193-194;    cheating  of  the  pander, 
195;      father's      opposition,     195- 
197.      Accouchement  s,    197.      Ex- 
posure of  infants,  198,  199,  210- 
211 ;  practised  even  by  respectable 
families,     211.       Substitution     of 
children.  199,  211 ;  as  a  protection 
against  divorce.  211.     Kidnapping, 
199,  207-208.     UapaK\avcrieupa,  19l. 
Abductions,    192.     Divorce,    198- 
199.    Recognitions,  200-201 ;  com- 
monly  of   exposed  children,   200; 
resulting  in  marriage,  201.    Pirates, 
207.     Rape  and  assault,  208-210. 
Wearing  of  disguises.  195.     Other 
occurrences,    201-205.      Most     arc 
not  inventions  of  N.  C,  231-232. 
Aelian,  Epist.  Ru.'^t.  13-16,  166, 
Afranius,  imitated  Menander's   Qais, 

29. 
Alciphron,  relation  to  N.  C,  3,  17-18, 
51;  his  value  in  determining  the 
nature  of  Comedy.  50-51.  EpiKt. 
Parasit.  relate  to  JL  C.  as  well  as 
to  N.  C,  18 ;  parasites,  74,  76-77 ; 

533 


courtesans,  79-80,  88,  some  are 
really  in  love,  91 ;  banquets,  187. 
References  to  the  Epint.  :   1 1  2.  70  ; 

II  8.  59;  II  11.  60,  101;  II  i:{. 
60;  II  17.  59;  II  2<i.  61:  II  lis. 
59;    II   :n.   59;    II   :«.   60,   101. 

III  2.  75;  III  3.  74;  III  4.  74, 
468;  III  5.  75;  III  7.  74,  76; 
III  8.  76;  III  9.  74;  III  lo.  78; 
III  11.  78;  III  12.  74;  III  13.  74, 
76;  III  14.  76,  86;  III  15.  54,  74; 
III  17.  78;  III  24.  54;  III  2r>.  74; 
III  26.  74, 123;  111  27.  74;  III  28. 
76,101;  11132.74;  11133.74,123; 
III  34.  59,  61,  63,  74;  III  35.  74; 

III  37.  78.  IV  1.  18;  IV  2.  18; 

IV  3.  18;  IV  4.  18;  IV  5.  18; 
IV  9.  80;  IV  10.  18;  IV  11.  91; 
IV  12.  88;  IV  13.  89;  IV  14.  89; 
IV  15.  80;  IV  18.  18;  IV  19.  18, 
163. 

Alexandria  as  a  literary  centre,  518- 

519. 
Alexis,  belongs  partly  to  N.  C,  10; 
relation  to  Lucian,  17;  treatment 
of  parasites,  26,  of  philosophers, 
101 ;  frg.  2,  165  ;  'h-KtyXavKuixtvos, 
probably  the  original  of  Naevius' 
Glaucoma,  16,  202 ;  ATj/uvrptos, 
probably  the  original  of  Turpilius' 
Demetrius,  16  ;  AwplS-qs.  29  ;  EiVoi- 
Ki(6/x(vos,  201 ;  frg.  89,  417  ;  Kaiixv- 
Sdvios,  possibly  the  original  of 
Plautus'  Poenulus,  14,  280-281, 
its  date,  14,  its  division  into  acts, 
381;  frg.  107,  338;  MapSpayopi(o- 
/ueVr?,  202;  frg.  148,  417;  frg.  156, 
231. 

Ampins,  belongs  to  M.  C,  10. 

Amusements,  46;  life  of  pleasure, 
187-188;  banquets,  187-188; 
games   and   festivals,   188. 

Anaxilas,  treatment  of  panders,  228; 
"AypoiKos,  253. 

Anaxandrides,  frg.  41,  480. 

Anaxippus,  treatment  of  parasites, 
26  ;  'EyKaXvirro/JLevos,  191  ;  Kf pavy6s, 

29. 

Angiportus,  stage  devices,  344. 
Antiphanes,  two  comic  poets  of  this 

name,  10 ;  attacks  on  parasites,  26 ; 

the  cook  one  of  his  favourite  char- 


534 


INDEX 


actors,  226;  'ApiTaCoiJ.4vr},  228; 
MaKdaKT],  and  Lucian,  17 ;  NeoTTi's, 
253,  frg.  168,  417;  frg.  195,  75; 
Tifj-oiv,  probably  the  original  of 
Lucian's  Ti7no7i,  17,  299,  plot,  299, 
253;  frg.  212,  232;  -IxaiVkos,  29; 
*jA.aJTis,  source  of  the  title,  28; 
frg.  239,  232;  frg.  261,  231;  frg. 
288,  403. 

Atriffroi,  171. 

Apollodorus,  2vve(pij$oi,  141. 

Apollodorus  Carystius,  90 ;  the  cook 
in  his  plays,  98;  humour  and 
seriousness,  504  ;  weaknesses,  512 ; 
'Airo\flTrovffa,ivg.  1,123;  AiajSoAos, 
meaning  of  title,  92 ;  'E/cupa,  original 
of  Terence's  Hccyra,  13,  plot,  377- 
378,  relation  to  the  mime,  525 ; 
'E7ri5i/ca^<ijU€i/os,  original  of  Terence's 
Phormio,  13,  its  free  treatment  by 
Terence,  43-44. 

Apollodorus  Gelous,  treatment  of 
parasites,  25. 

Archedicus,  scurrility,  24 ;  treatment 
of  courtesans,  25. 

Archilochus    braggart  soldier  in,  226. 

Aristaenetus,  Epist.  II  22.,  123. 

Aristophanes,  a  source  of  N.  C,  232, 
for  soliloquy,  333,  for  asides,  334 ; 
on  education,  446 ;  his  language, 
256-257,  different  from  language 
of  N.C.,  269.  Plots  of  Acharnians, 
Peace,  Plutus,  298 ;  his  moral  pur- 
pose, 439. 

Aristophon,  treatment  of  parasites, 
26 ;  ^i\o>vi^7]s,  29. 

Aristotle,  his  criterion  for  the  periods 
of  Comedy,  9 ;  his  influence  on 
N.  C,  30-31,  254;  on  plot,  304, 
buffoonery,  494. 

Asides,  330-331 ;  mute  soUloquies, 
331-332 ;  stage  whispers,  331-332  ; 
explanatory  asides,  433-434, 

Athenians,  519.     See  also  Audience. 

Athens  as  a  literary  centre,  518-519 ; 
as  a  city,  519. 

Atticists,  their  opinion  of  Menander's 
diction,  257-258. 

Audience,  Athenian,  its  culture, 
492-493;  their  keenness,  516-517; 
intelligence  of  Greek  and  Roman 
audiences,  399. 

Axionicus,  frg.  6,  78. 

Banquets,  common  in  M.  C,  rare  in 

N. C,  301 ;  187-188. 
Baton,  frg.  7,  101. 
Braggarts,   95-102;   163-165;   265; 

465-467. 

Caecilius   Statius,   Aethrio,  origin  of 


title,  33  ;  Dardanus,  copy  of  Menan- 
der's AapSavos,  31 ;  Karine,  probably 
a  copy  of  Menander's  Kapivi),  16 ; 
PZocr?(m,copy  of  Menander's  nA.c^Ktoi', 
15;  Ploc.,  frg.  8,  69,  frg.  18,  67; 
Si/naristosae,  probably  a  copy  of 
Menander's  'S.vvapiarwffai,  16  ;  Syne- 
phebi,  copy  of  Menander's  1,vvt<pr]^oi, 
15 ;  Titthe,  probably  a  copy  of 
Menander's  Tit0t;,  16. 

Callimachus,  531. 

Cantica,  369,  385-386. 

Characters,  52-183.  See  also  Brag- 
garts, Cooks,  Courtesans,  Family, 
Fathers,  Foreigners,  Gods  and 
Heroes,  Lovers,  Misers,  Pander, 
Parasites,  Philosophers,  Physicians, 
Poor,  Procuress,  Rich,  Rustics, 
Slaves,  Soldiers,  Soothsayers,  Syco- 
phant. Fortune-hunter  does  not 
appear,  148 ;  characters  primarily 
humorous,  94-102 ;  men  of  affairs, 
102-103 ;  minor  professional  char- 
acters, 103-104 ;  walk  of  life  does 
not  affect  the  real  character,  172- 
173;  elpwves,  165-166;  grumblers, 
churls,  misanthropes,  166-171 ; 
&iri(TroL,  171 ;  superstitious  people, 
171-172.  Characters  possessing 
individuality,  172-183 :  old  men, 
173-177 ;  young  men,  177-180 ; 
slaves,  180-181 ;  episodic  charac- 
ters, 181 ;  foils,  181-183.  Protatic 
characters,  414-416.  Means  of 
identification  of  entering  charac- 
ters, 422-423.  Characters  are 
average  people,  446. 

Children,  relations  with  parents,  126- 
127 ;  exposure,  124,  198-199,  210- 
211,  in  predecessors  of  N.  C,  231 ; 
kidnapping,  199,  207-208;  sub- 
stitution, 199,  211,  in  predecessors 
of  N.  C,  231-232,  in  contemporary 
life,  232. 

Chorus,  personnel,  336-339 ;  charac- 
ter of  its  songs,  338-339 ;  its  omis- 
sion an  advantage  to  the  play- 
wright, 368 ;  date  of  disappearance, 
368-369;  divided  the  acts,  373; 
discrepancy  between  time  con- 
sumed and  the  advancement  of 
the  plot,  339. 
Clearchus  of  Soli,  precursor  of  N.  C, 

253. 
Comic  elements,  463-502 :  gross  and 
refined,  463^94;  vulgarity,  464- 
473;  buffoonery,  464^73;  brag- 
garts, 465-467 ;  parasites,  467-469  ; 
lack  of  respect  for  authority,  469 ; 
drunkenness,  470-471 ;  puns,  474- 
484 ;  irv'iyos,  480-481 ;   parody  of 


INDEX 


585 


lofty  style,  480-482 ;  coined  words, 
482-483  ;  meaningless  words,  483- 
484;  slang,  484;  obscenity,  485; 
costume,  486-489;  masks,  486- 
488.  Comic  elements  in  the  act- 
ing, 489-491.  Characters  prim- 
arily humorous,  94-102,  495-502. 
Comic  situations,  495-502 :  mis- 
understanding, 497-498;  decep- 
tion, 498-500 ;  deceiver  caught  in 
his  own  trap,  500;  ambiguous 
expressions,  501-502. 

Contamination,  48-50,  275-288 ; 
almost  the  only  change  from 
originals,  285 ;  dates  of  secondary 
originals  of  contaminated  plays 
uncertain,  15. 

Conventions;  regarding  the  opening 
of  the  play,  328-334 ;  regarding 
the  length  of  the  play,  334-^340. 

Cooks,  are  braggarts,  charlatans, 
thieves,  98-99 ;  other  character- 
istics, 99  ;  seldom  appear  in  Plautus, 
never  in  Terence,  98 ;  in  contem- 
porary life,  222-223 ;  in  Dorian 
Farce  and  M.  C,  226  ;  are  favourite 
characters  in  Comedy,  302-303; 
dress,  488. 

Costumes,  486-489. 

Courtesans,  79-91 ;  chief  character- 
istics, 79;  greed,  ingratitude,  79- 
81 ;  their  arts  :  adornment,  flattery, 
coquetry,  81-86  ;  defensive  arts,  86— 
87 ;  malice  and  indecent  language 
not  in  evidence.  88 ;  some  exhibit 
good  traits,  89-91,  240 ;  treatment 
in  N.  C,  26;  names  of,  as  titles  of 
plays,  28-29.  In  contemporary 
life,  218-219;  in  0.  C.  and  M.  C, 
227. 

Crobylus,  'Airayx^M-e^os,  153. 

Customs  in  N.  C,  compared  with  con- 
temporary life,  206-240;  generally 
in  accord,  206 ;  deeds  of  violence, 
207-210 ;  other  incidents,  211-216  ; 
legal  matters,  212-214.  See  also 
Adventures,  Society,  and  the 
various  characters. 

Demophilus,  probable  epoch,  13 ; 
'Ot>ay6s,  original  of  Plautus'  Asi- 
naria,  13,  plot,  376,  pretentious- 
ness, 507. 

Digressions  from  plot,  299-304,  309. 

Diodorus  Comicus,  belongs  to  N.  C, 
9 ;  f rgg.  2,  35-40,  77. 

Diophantus,  MfTO(/<i(,'Ve)/os,  201. 

Dioxippus,  probably  belongs  to  M.  C, 
11. 

Diphilus,  used  many  mythological 
titles,   31 ;   defects   of  style,   272 ; 


gross  humour,  464—465,  492  ;  clung 
to  the  old  comic  tradition,  511-512. 
References  to  the  plays  :  "Afiaarpis, 
29,  date,  30;  'EKaiiiiv  fj  ^povpoiifTfs, 
184 ;  'EyuTTopoj  only  sure  N.  C.  frg. 
showing  local  colour,  54 ;  'Evayl- 
(oi'Tfs   (or   'EuaylffnaTa),  202,  date, 

30 ;    0tTTaA7j,    102 ;    KA7jpoi»^f  i/oi, 

original  of  I'lautus'  Caaina,  13; 
Aiiixviat,  original  of  Turpilius'  Lem- 
niae,  31,  meaning  of  title,  33; 
Uv-nixiriov,  202;  frg.  69,  70;  frgg. 

74-75,  77;  '2.vvairodvTiaKOvrfs,  origi- 
nal of  Plautus'  Commorient  en,  15, 
and,  in  part,  of  Terence's  Adelpfn, 
13,  to  what  extent,  276-277, 
interpretation  of  title,  153  ;  2u»'copir, 
29;  TfAfaias,  29.  Frg.  104,  70; 
126,  102,  202.  Wrote  the  original 
of  Plautus'  Rudens,  13,  337. 

Disguises,  195  ;  in  Tragedy  and  N.  C, 
232-233. 

Divorce,  198-199. 

Dorian  Farce,  a  source  for  N.  C, 
226,  230. 

Dreams,  in  Tragedy  and  N.  C,  233. 

Education,  440-443. 

Etpuvis,  165-166. 

Elegy,  Greek,  531-532. 

Elegy,  Latin,  529-532. 

Entr'actes,  335-340 ;  usually  four  in 
number,  383-384;  their  position, 
384.     See  also  Chorus. 

Ephippus,  frg.  3,  350 ;  'Oixotoi,  253. 

Epicharmus,  a  source  for  N.  C, 
226. 

Epigenes,  two  comic  poets  of  this 
name,  10. 

Epigram,  526-532. 

Epinicus,  MrTjo-iirrdAe^oj,  29. 

Epistolographers,  their  Parasitic 
Epistles  relate  to  M.  C.  as  well  as 
to  N.  C,  18.  Infidelity  of  wives 
in,  123. 

Eubulus,  treatment  of  parasites,  26 ; 
panders  in,  228 ;  Udn(pt\os,  origin 
of  title,  28 ;  frg.  88,  417. 

Euphron,  treatment  of  parasites,  25- 
26;  lack  of  refinement,  492; 
2vv(<pij$oi,    141. 

Eupolis,  parasites  in,  228;  K6\aKts, 
228. 

Euripides,  source  for  N.  C,  230 ; 
exposure  and  substitution  of  chil- 
dren in,  231 ;  rape  in,  231 ;  mono- 
logues in,  333;  asides  in,  334;  love 
in,  250-251 ;  moral  precepts  in,  446. 
Inlhionce  on  j)li)t,  304.  DitTerenco 
of  language  from  that  of  N.  C, 
269. 


586 


INDEX 


Exposition,  411-421,  by  dialopue, 
412-416,  by  monuloKue,  416-420; 
long  expositions,  420-421. 

Family,  116-142.  Husbands  and 
wives,  116-123  ;  tyranny  of  dowered 
wives,  120-121,  jealousy,  122; 
infidelity  :  of  husbands,  121-122 ; 
of  wives,  122-123.  Children : 
relations  with  parents,  126-127 ; 
subordinate  position  of  daughters, 
126-129  ;  parents'  love  of  offspring, 
124-126  ;  exposing  of  children,  etc., 
see  this  subject  s.  v.  Adventures. 
Brothers  and  sisters,  140-141. 
Mothers-in-law,  139.  Fathers-in- 
law,  139.  Stepmothers,  139-140. 
Uncle-s,  140.  Family  customs  in 
Doric  Farce,  230.  Parents  in  pre- 
decessors of  N.  C,  231.  Marriage, 
116-123,  148,  before  N.  C,  230- 
231,  the  common  denouement  of 
N.  C,  201.  Divorce,  198-199.  See 
also  Men,  Women. 

Fathers,  123-138 ;  joys  and  sorrows 
of  paternity,  123  ;  love  of  offspring, 
124-126.  Usually  at  odds  with 
sons,  129  ;  reasons  :  egotism,  parsi- 
mony, 129,  nobler  motives,  130 ; 
sometimes  indulgent,  131 ;  reasons, 
131-135  :  resignation,  memory  of 
their  own  past,  131-133,  principle, 
134-135,  weakness,  135 ;  their 
indulgence  founded  on  contempo- 
rary life,  214.  Attitude  of  sons, 
135-138;  usually  respectful  and 
obedient,  135-136 ;  reasons  :  fear, 
devotion,  138 ;  sons  not  vicious, 
but  without  strong  filial  affection, 
138.  Authority  of  fathers,  even 
over  married  daughters,  214- 
215. 

Fielitz'  theory  of  the  threefold  division 
of  Comedy,  4-8. 

Foreigners,  52-57 ;  little  local  colour 
in  N.  C.,  53-54;  foreigners  not 
essentially  different,  54-56;  why 
introduced,  54-55 ;  dress,  55-56, 
488 ;  dialect,  56  ;  manners,  57. 

Gods  and  heroes,  31-34. 

Greek  features  of  Palliata  :  law,  40- 
42 ;  geography,  44-45  ;  mythology, 
45 ;  others,  45-50.  Comic  elements 
in  Palliata  taken  from  the  Greek, 
see  chapter  on  Comic  Elements, 
pp.  463-502,  passim. 

Herondas,  language  different  from 
that  of  N.  C,  269.  Procuress  in,  92. 
Mimiamb  I,  92,  523-524 ;  II,  523 ; 


III.  IV,  VI,  VII,  524.  Correspond- 
ence with  N.  C,  522-525. 

Hipparchus,  @ais,  29. 

Homer,  source  for  N.  C,  in  mono- 
logue, 333. 

Humour,  gross  and  refined,  463-494. 
iSee  also  Comic  Elements. 

Hypereides,  language  different  from 
that  of  N.  C,  269. 

Koivi],  in  Athens,  in  N.  C,  258-259. 

Language  and  Style,  256-272;  rhe- 
toric, 261;  vocabulary,  262;  style, 
262-272 ;  not  cramped  by  metre, 
262 ;  colloquial  elements,  262-270, 
little  variety,  264,  indefinite  words, 
264,  word-forms,  syntax,  phrase- 
ology, 264-265,  asyndeton,  266- 
267,  direct  quotation,  269 ;  puns, 
474-484 ;  Tvv:yos,  480-481 ;  parody 
of  lofty  style,  480-482;  coined 
words,  482—483  ;  meaningless  words, 
483-484;  slang,  484;  obscenity, 
485 ;  ambiguous  expressions,  501- 
502. 

Life  portrayed  by  N.  C.  See  Customs, 
Society,  Characters. 

Livius  Andronicus,  Gladiolus  probably 
a  copy  of  Philemon's  'Eyxf tpiStov, 
16. 

Lovers,  142-162.  Social  status,  142 ; 
husbands  and  wives,  142-143 ; 
causes  of  love,  143-149 :  usually 
physical,  143-144,  others,  144-149 : 
good  manners,  145,  mental  quali- 
ties, 145,  moral  qualities,  145-146, 
chivalry,  similarity  of  tastes,  146— 
147.  Girls  in  love,  149.  Bitterness 
of  love  :  its  causes,  150-152 ;  means 
of  rehef,  152-153 ;  thwarted  lover 
becomes  irritable  and  unjust,  152 ; 
his  feehngs :  resigned,  forgiving, 
153-154,  rarely  reproachful,  155, 
retaliation,  155-156,  jealousy,  157- 
158,  conflicting  emotions,  158-162, 
love  opposed  by  reason  or  worldly 
prejudice,  158-160,  by  respect  for 
father,  vanity,  avarice,  160-162. 
Love  affairs,  188-197 :  inception, 
189-190 ;  obstacles,  190-197  ;  rival- 
ry, quarrels,  192-193 ;  father's 
opposition,  195-197.  Methods  of 
obtaining  money,  193-194.  Cheat- 
ing the  pander,  195.  Rape  and 
assault,  208-210.  Predecessors  of 
N.  C.  in  depicting  love,  250-252. 
Immunity  of  lovers  from  punish- 
ment, 456-457.  Young  lovers  not 
immoral,  459.  Lovers  in  the  Mime, 
523. 


INDEX 


537 


Lucian,  Dialogues  of  the  Courtesans, 
their  relation  to  N.  C,  3,  17-18, 
50-51.  Parasites  in,  76 ;  cour- 
tesans in,  79-81,  88,  91 ;  braggart 
soldiers  in,  96-97  ;  banquets  in,  187  ; 
lovers'  quarrels  in,  192-193.  Timon, 
inspired  by  a  comedy,  jx-rhajis  the 
T/^o)./  of  Antiphanes,  17,  252,  299. 
lieferences  to  the  Dialogues  of  the 
Courtesans  :  1  82,  88,  157  ;  1 1  17, 
88,  91,  128,  148,  192;  111  81,  88, 
92,  155;  IV  155,  156,  157,  192; 
VI  81,  82,  92,  145;  VII  59,  80, 
81,  91,  92,  128,  138,  149;  Vlll  86, 
156,  157;  IX  91,  97;  X  101,  102; 
XI  88,  156;  XU  86,  88,  91,  92, 
155,  193;  XI II  75,  78,  94-95,  162, 
163-164;  XIV  81;  XV  80. 

Luscius  Lanuvinus,  his  portrayal  of 
a  madman,  202 ;  Phasma,  copy  of 
Menander's  ^dafxa,  15  ;  Thensaurns, 
copy  of  a  play  by  Menander,  15-16. 

Lysias,  his  language  different  from 
'that  of  N.  C,  269. 

Madness,  in  Tragedy  and  N.  C,  232. 

Magic,  157. 

Marriage,  116-123,  148 ;  in  N.  C.  and 
predecessors,  230-231.  The  com- 
mon denouement  of  N.  C,  201 
Attacks  of  N.  C.  had  no  influence 
on  life,  458. 

Masks,  486-488. 

Men,  Old,  possessing  individuality, 
173-177.  Young  men,  possessing 
individuality,  177-180 ;  character 
of  young  men,  209 ;  their  owner- 
ship of  property,  216  ;  comparison 
of,  as  treated  in  N.  C.  and  M.  C, 
232. 

Menander,  collections  of  fragments, 
2  ;  an  important  source  for  Lucian, 
17;  treatment  of  courtesans,  25, 
of  parasites,  25-26;  scurrility  in, 
30;  used  few  mythological  titles, 
31.  Ancient  criticism  of,  256- 
268;  Varro  on  the  'ASf\cpol  d, 
277.  Language  and  style,  256- 
272 ;  colloquial  elements,  262- 
270 :  lack  of  variety,  indefinite 
words,  264,  word-forms,  syntax, 
264-265,  phraseologv,  asvndeton, 
elliptical  phrases,  265-269,  direct 
quotation,  269.  'J'he  Three  Actor 
Law,  291-292;  plots,  300;  fond- 
ness for  T)6o7rou'a,  303;   coni])licatcd 

plots,  306;  double  1)1  .ts,  309,  311; 
chance  in  pint.  312-314;  improba- 
bihty  of  plot,  315-317  ;  moral  pre- 
cepts in,  444.  His  great  power  of 
combination,  311 ;  refinement,  492- 


494  ;  seriousness,  503  ;  elements  of 
superiority,  512;  the  life  he  por- 
trayed, 520  ;  relation  to  the  orators, 
520-521.  Wrotooriginalof  Luscius' 
Thensaurns,  15-16,  and  possibly  of 
PI.  .4«/.,  13. 

References  to  the  plays  and 
fragments  :  'A5eA(^ol  a,  original, 
in  part,  of  I'l.  Stich.  12,  282, 
a  possible  frg.,  118;  'ASeK<po\  0', 
original,  in  part,  of  Ter.  Ail.,  12, 
140,  to  what  extent,  276-277; 
'AXiui,  date,  30,  frg.  15,  204,  U>, 
123,  24,  428;  'AvSpia,  original,  in 
part,  of  Ter.  Andr.,  12,  276,  to 
what  extent,  277-278,  division 
into  acts,  381-382;  'Av5p6yvi'os, 
date,  30,  meaning  of  title,  33; 
"Attio-toj,  171 ;  'AppTj(p6pos,  103 ; 
'A(ppo5iffia,  frg.  86,  202;  frg.  'JO, 
69;  TfaipySs,  197-198,  compared 
with  PI.  Aid.,  235-236,  its  plot 
comphcatcd,  306,  Cleaenctus,  509, 
Daos,  496,  Gorgias  and  his  friend 
contrasted,  182,  the  lover  (frg.  94), 
67;  AaicTvAws,  168,  171,  frg.  103, 
171 ;  AapSavos,  original  of  Caecil. 
Stat.  Dardanus,  31,  meaning  of 
title,  33  ;  Aei(r<5ar^a.v,  171,  frg.  109, 
171-172;  Air  'E|a7raTcij/,  oriuinal  of 
PI.  Bacch.,  13,  frgg.  125,  126,  13; 
AvaKoXos,  166-617,  168-169,  frg. 
127  i6/rf.,  stage  setting,  341,  frg.  1 29, 
169 ;  ''EavThv  TiiJ.copoviJi.fvos,  original 
of  Ter.  Heaut.,  12,  its  treatment 
by  Terence,  43,  chorus,  337 ;  frg. 
160,  118;  'tiiriK\rjpos,  original  of 
Turpil.  Epicl.,  16,  compared  with 
PI.  Merc,  and  Ter.  Phorm.,  236; 
•E7riTpf7ro^T6j,  260-262,  the  Three 
Actor  Law  appHed,  291-292,  di- 
gression, 303 ;  complicated  plot, 
306,  chance  in  the  plot,  312- 
314,  improbability  of  plot,  315- 
317,  asyndeton  and  ellipsis,  265- 
269,  length  of  time  covered  by 
the  plot,  334,  personnel  of  chorus, 
336-338,  recognition  of  husband  as 
seducer,  200,  comparison  with  Ter. 
Hec,  234,  with  Eurip.  Alope,  233, 
line  392.  428,  frg.  175,  169,  char- 
acters. 315-317,  323,  495,  t'hari- 
sius,  323,  his  strugLdes,  160,  easy 
conscience,  190,  conversion,  452, 
remorse,  506,  improbabilit\-,  315- 
316,  Daos,  181,  Habrotonon,  90, 
458,  Habrotonon  and  Onesimus, 
247,  Onesimus,  180,  Pamphila, 
her  forbearance,  451,  improba- 
bility, 315-316,  Smicrines,  167- 
170,   309,    compared    with    Euclio 


588 


INDEX 


in  PI.  Anl..  13,  Syriscus,  his  up- 
rightness, 509 ;  EuvoGxoj,  original, 
in  part,  of  Ter.  Eun.,  12,  276,  278- 
280,  division  into  acts,  377 ;  "Hpto^, 

198,  interpretation  of  title,  32, 
recognition  of  husband  as  seducer, 
200,  chance  in  the  plot,  312, 
characters  :  Daos,  144,  Laches, 
190;  eais,  29,  frg.  217,  391-392; 
e^TraX-d.  157,  202,  frg.  229,  108, 
232,  203;  evcravp6s,  plot,  203, 
325,  compared  with  PI.  Pseud., 
239;  frg.  245,  172;  252,  65;  254. 
75  ;  Kapivn,  probably  the  original  of 
Caecil.  A'arme,  16, 202 ;  Kopx'jSi^i'ioj, 
probably  the  original,  in  part,  of  PI. 
Poen.,  i4,  280-281;  division  into 
acts,  381 ;  KfKpv<paKos,  date,  30 ; 
KiOapiiTT-fts,  a  possible  frg.,  12 ; 
K6\a^,  95,  144,  original,  in  part, 
of  Ter.  Eun.,  13,  235,  276,  377, 
to  what  extent,  278-280,  original 
of  Naevius'  Colax  and  Pi.  Colax, 
15-16,  comparison  with  UfpiKeipo- 
fxfp-n,  235,  frg.  294,  65,  Gnatho, 
76;  Kv$€pvvrat,  frg.  301,  67; 
AevKaSla,  original  of  Turpil.  Leu- 
cadia,  16,  meaning  of  title,  34,  stage 
setting,  341,  frgg.  311-313.  203, 
312,338;  Me'ejj,  date,  30 ;  frg.  323, 
65;  Mi(Toyvp-n^,  frgg.  327,  328,  186; 
Nou/cArjpoj,  possibly  the  original, 
in  part,  of  PI.  Asin.,  13,  239,  frg. 
350,  141 ;  EevoXSyos,  frg.  354,  138  ; 
'Op-yh,  date,  30 ;  UaiUov,  probably 
the  original  of  Turpil.  Paedion,  16, 
frgg.  372-373  compared  with  Turpil. 
Paed.  frg.   VIII,  16 ;   YlipiKeipofiffr], 

199,  Three  Actor  Law  applied, 
291-292,  personnel  of  chorus,  337, 
comic  characters,  496,  double  plot, 
309,  311,  chance  in  plot,  313, 
length  of  time  covered  by  plot, 
335,  lines  52  fE.,  427,  164  ff.,  427, 
243  f.,  508,  characters  :  247,  Gly- 
cera,  451,  Polemo,  178-179,  his 
impulsiveness,  324,  jealousy,  157- 
158,  193,  Polemo  and  Moschio, 
182,  the  play  compared  with  Ter. 
Eun.,  235,  with  K6\a^,  ibid.; 
Ilepivdla,  original,  in  part,  of  Ter. 
Andr.,  12,  276,  a  possible  frag- 
ment, 12,  a  possible  translation 
in  Ter.,  245,  the  midwife,  103; 
TIaSkiov,  original  of  Caecil.  Stat. 
Plocium,  15,  plot,  309,  311,  a  pos- 
sible frg.,  128,  frg.  403,  311,  404, 
69  ;  405,  63  ;  'VaTnCoixivr},  156  ;  'S.afiia, 
198,  260-261,  date,  30,  title,  54, 
psychology,  243,  plot,  307-308, 
improbability    of    plot,    315,    per- 


sonnel of  chorus,  336,  characters  : 
323,  comic  characters,  495-496, 
Uemeas,  173-175,  his  monologue 
improbable,  426,  Moschio's  con- 
flicting emotions,  161-162,  line 
114,  428,  338,  428,  a  bit  of  lively 
acting,  489-490 ;  'S.iKvwvios,  frg. 
439,  56,  444,  75 ;  'S.uvapLaTHxrai, 
probably  the  original  of  Caecil. 
Stat.  Synaristosae,  16;  1vvi<pj)&oi, 
original  of  Caecil.  Stat.  Synephebi, 
15,  141 ;  Tirdr],  probably  the 
original  of  Caecil.  Stat.  Titthe,  16, 
frg:  461,  428;  464,  74;  'rSpia, 
possibly  the  original  of  PI.  .4!//., 
168,  169,  frg.  466,  63;  'Ttto^oAj- 
fj.a:os,  200,  frg.  485,  69;  Pavlov, 
29 ;  ^d<T/j.a,  original  of  Luscius' 
Phasma,  15,  202,  211,  recognition 
of  a  husband  as  a  seducer,  200, 
plot,  309,  311,  depends  on  the 
passion  of  the  hero,  326,  com- 
pared with  PL  Miles,  235  ;  XaA/ci'y, 
frg.  512,  123,  186;  "V^vZ-npaKKvs, 
meaning  of  title,  32, 139  ;  ^o<po^ci]s, 
184.  Frg.  530.  69,  115,  172;  531, 
115;  534,  172;  536,  428;  544, 
172  ;  558  perhaps  from  the  original 
of  PI.  Cist.,  13,  189;  569,  155; 
587,  65;  588,  70;  601  {Uiao-yvv-ns), 
172;  608,  118;  612,  70;  624,  70; 
646,  157;  665,  65;  666,  70;  723, 
75;  741,  343;  809,  141;  830,  201; 
848,  118;  853,  201;  878,  92;  890, 
202 ;  924,  112 ;  929,  128. 

Messengers,  False,  taken  from  tra- 
gedy, 233. 

Metres,  369 ;  limitation  of  metre 
rarely  felt,  262. 

Middle  Comedy,  few  analogies  with 
Palliata,  17 ;  source  for  epistolo- 
graphers,  18 ;  treatment  of  cour- 
tesans, 24-25 ;  a  source  for  N.  C, 
232,  250-252;  defects  of  style, 
272 ;  fondness  for  description  and 
banquet  scenes,  300-301 ;  prob- 
ably furnished  the  original  of  PL 
Stichus  in  part,  301 ;  plot  in,  298- 
299  ;  monologue  in,  417,  436  ;  por- 
trayal of  foreign  characters  and 
regions,  54-57;  Hfe  of  pleasure  a 
favourite  theme,  187 ;  the  family, 
230;  parody  of  tragedy,  304; 
the  cook  a  favourite  character, 
226;  rustics,  58-59;  parasites,  74, 
228,  467  ;  courtesans,  81 ;  panders, 
228 ;  slaves,  229 ;  superstitious 
people,  252 ;  misers,  253. 

Mime  and  N.  C.,  522-526;  analogies, 
522-523 ;  differences,  524-525 ; 
mime   more   vulgar,   525 ;   charac- 


INDEX 


539 


ters,  523-524 ;  reasons  for  its 
prominence,  526. 

Misers,  168-171,  252-253. 

Mnesimachus,  AiktkoKos,  253. 

Models.     See  Sources. 

Monologues  in  N.  C,  328-332;  in 
predecessors,  332-334;  psyclu)lnf;i- 
cal  probability  of  :  justifiable,  329, 
unjustifiable, '329-330;  at  be.L'in- 
ning  and  end  of  play,  386-387 ; 
motivation,  417-419;  soliloquising 
prologues  and  dramatic  monologues 
not  always  clearly  distinguished, 
419 ;  long  monologues,  420-421, 
before  N.  C,  421.  Asides,  330- 
331;  mute  soliloquies,  331-332; 
monologues  used  to  reveal  what 
goes  on  behind  the  scenes,  425-430  ; 
narrative  monologues,  excessive  use, 
428,  before  N.  C,  428-429,  large 
part  in  N.  C,  435^36,  effect  on 
audience,  506. 

Moral  precepts,  443-453;  common- 
place, 446;  melancholy,  cheerful- 
ness, benevolence,  forbearance,  451. 

Music,  369-370. 

Mythical  elements,  common  in  M.  C, 
rare  in  N.  C,  31-32;  physical 
probability  respected,  34. 

Naevius,  Ariolus,  probably  a  copy  of 
Philemon's  'A-yvprTjs,  16 ;  Colax, 
copy  of  Menander's  KdXal,  15-16 ; 
Glaucoma,  probably  a  copy  of 
Alexis'   'AneyKavKuifj.fyos,  16. 

New  Comedy — 

Sources  of  our  knowledge,  1-3 ; 
meaning  of  the  term,  4-8;  Fielitz' 
theory  of  a  threefold  division  of 
comedy,  4-8 ;  probable  epoch  of 
several  poets  of  uncertain  date, 
9-11 ;  a  source  for  Lucian  and 
Alciphron,  17 ;  the  period  of  N.  C, 
19 ;  N.  C.  as  a  character  drama, 
163-183.  Repetitions  of  scenes  and 
incidents,  234-236;  of  titles,  237; 
criticised  in  antiquity  for  this, 
237-328;  reasons  for  repetition, 
238.  Its  world  somewhat  apart 
from  real  life,  239 ;  defects  visible 
through  palliata,  2S6;  its  modern 
spirit,  370;  its  prudishness,  461; 
its  diversity,  515-517;  adapted  to 
its  audience,  516 ;  originality,  514- 
517;  monotony  not  to  bo  judged 
wholly  by  Plant  us  and  Terence 
515.  Dependence  on  earlier  drama 
for  plot,  226-240;  see  0.  C,  M.  C, 
Tragedy,  Doric  Farce,  Aristophanes, 
Euripides.  More  refined  than  its 
predecessors,   492-494;    details   of 


composition  compared  with  pre- 
decessors, 435-436.  Audience  :  its 
keenness,  516-517;  not  entirely 
refined,  492-493.  The  life  it  por- 
trayed, 520.  Its  |)lace  in  Greek 
lileraturc,  518-532;  the  last  form 
of  Attic  litiTature,  518;  its  heri- 
tage, 519-521 ;  influL-nce  on  later 
literature,  521-532;  its  relation 
to  the  orators,  520-521;  to  Theo- 
critus, 522;  to  the  Ei)igrani,  526- 
532;  to  Latin  Elegy,  529-532. 
References  to  the  fragmenki  ade- 
spotu,  frg.  104,  428;  341,  172; 
487,  65. 

Subject  matter  of  N.  C.  23-272; 
qualities  alien  to  it,  23-35:  scur- 
rility, 23-31,  mythical  and  super- 
natural elements,  31-35 ;  qualities 
it  possessed,  36-51.  Dramatis 
personae,  52-183 :  foreigners  and 
rustics,  52-63;  poor  and  rich, 
sycophants  ami  parasites,  63-78 ; 
types  of  professional  people,  78— 
104 :  courtesans,  79-91,  procur- 
esses, 92,  panders,  92-94,  soldiers, 
94-97,  cooks,  98-100,  physicians, 
100,  i)hilosophers,  100-102,  sooth- 
sayers, 102,  men  of  affairs,  102- 
103,  other  professional  people, 
103-104  ;  slaves,  104-116  ;  family, 
116-142;  lovers,  142-162;  charac- 
ters and  individual  figures,  163- 
183:  boasters,  163-165,  dpwvfs, 
165-166,  grumblers,  166-171, 
misers,  168-171,  &TTiffToi.  171, 
superstitious  people,  171-172,  in- 
dividual characters,  172-183,  epi- 
sodic characters,  181,  foils,  181- 
183,  slaves,  180-181.  Adventures, 
184-205:  of  war,  politics,  civic  life, 
184-185;  business  life.  185-187; 
legal  matters,  185-187 ;  pleasure, 
187-188 ;  games  and  festivals.  188  ; 
amatory  adventures,  188-197; 
divorce,  198-199;  exposure,  sub- 
stitution,and  kidnapping  of  infants, 
199;  recognitions,  200-201;  mar- 
riage the  common  denouement  of 
N.  C,  201;    other   episodes,  201- 

205.  Realism  and  imagination  in 
N.  C,  206-272;  literary  sources 
and  repetitions,  206-272;  customs, 
206-240;  as  compared  with  those 
of    real    life,   gencrallv   in    accord, 

206,  kidnapping.  207-208,  assault 
and  rape,  208-210,  exposure  and 
substitution  of  infants.  210-211, 
legal  matters.  212-214,  indulu'cnco 
of  fathers.  214.  tyranny  of  dowered 
wives,  215-216,  license  of    slaves, 


540 


INDEX 


216-217,  courtesans,  218-219, 
parasites,  flatterers,  219-220,  brag- 
gart soldiers,  220-222,  cooks,  222- 
223,  relation  to  predecessors,  224- 
240;  psychology,  240-256,  charac- 
ter drawing,  240-245,  fondness  for 
axioms,  244;  language,  256-272, 
colloquial  elements,  262-272. 

Structure  of  the  plays  of  N.  C, 
275-436.  Matters  illustrated  chiefly 
by  Latin  Comedies,  275-297  :  con- 
tamination, 275-288 ;  violations  of 
the  law  of  five  acts  and  of  the  rule  of 
three  actors,  289-297 ;  meaning  and 
purpose  of  the  latter  rule,  295.  In- 
ternal construction  of  the  comedies, 
the  plot  or  action,  298-327  :  main 
structure  of  the  plot,  digressions, 
298-304 ;  simplicity  and  intricacy 
of  the  plot,  304—311 ;  mainsprings 
of  the  action,  312-327  ;  chance,  312- 
315  ;  psychology  of  the  characters, 
316-327.  External  structure,  stage 
conventions,  328-370 :  conventions 
regarding  the  opening  of  the  play, 
soliloquies  and  asides,  328-334 ; 
conventions  regarding  the  length 
of  the  plays,  the  entr'acte-^,  334- 
340 ;  chorus,  336-339  ;  conventions 
regarding  stage  setting,  unity  of 
place,  340-370 ;  irp6evpov,  348-355 ; 
movements  of  actors,  361-367 ; 
omission  of  chorus  an  advantage, 
368.  External  structure  of  the 
comedies,  peculiarities  of  dramatic 
technique,  371-436  :  division  into 
five  acts,  371-387;  division  of  the 
several  plays  into  acts,  374-375, 
379-380 ;  prologue  and  exposition, 
387-421 ;  justification  of  prologue, 
392-395 ;  exposition  by  dialogue, 
412-416 ;  by  monologue,  416-420  ; 
ways  of  making  the  plot  intel- 
ligible, 421-436;  identification  of 
characters,  422-425  ;  ways  of  reveal- 
ing what  goes  on  behind  the  scenes, 
425-430;  explanatory  asides,  433- 
434. 

Purpose  of  N.  C.  and  the  causes 
of  its  success,  439-532.  Didactic 
purpose  and  moral  value,  439—462  : 
plays  with  a  thesis,  and  moral  pre- 
cepts, 439-453 ;  education,  440- 
443 ;  edifying  and  offensive  sub- 
jects, 453-462;  religion,  453-454; 
morals,  454-462 ;  rewards  and 
punishments,  454-457 ;  moral  tone 
high,  459-462.  Comic  elements, 
463-502 :  gross  fun  and  refined 
fun,  463-494;  buffoonery,  464- 
473 ;    lack    of    reverence    for    the 


great,  469;  drunkenness,  470-471; 
puns,  474-484;  obscenity,  485; 
costume,  486-489;  comic  elements 
in  the  acting,  489-491 ;  comic 
characters  and  situations,  495-502. 
Pathetic  and  serious  elements, 
extent  and  diversity  of  their 
domain,  503-517  :  moral  discourses, 
505 ;  grief,  remorse,  505-506 ; 
emotions  of  lovers,  506-508 ;  scenes 
exciting  fear,  508-509 ;  exciting 
admiration,  509-511.  Cause  of 
success  of  N.  C,  512-517.  Many 
of  these  subjects  are  analysed  s.  vv. 
Nicostratus,  two  comic  poets  of  this 
name,  10 ;  Aid0o\os,  meaning  of 
title,  92;  ToKLffrris,  228. 

Old  Comedy,  source  for  N.  C.  :  for 
parasite,  228,  slave,  229,  super- 
stitious man,  252,  exposition,  413- 
418 ;  rarely  serious,  503. 

Orators,  influence  on  N.  C,  520-521. 

Ovid,  influenced  by  N.  C,  530-532. 

PalHata — 

Relation  to  N.  C,  3.  Fragments, 
sources  usually  uncertain,  15.  Few 
connections  with  M.  C,  17.  Dates 
of  originals  of  extant  plays,  12-17 ; 
dates  of  secondary  originals  of 
contaminated  plays  uncertain,  15. 

Roman  colouring,  36-44:  legal, 
36-39,  geographical,  37-38,  reli- 
gious, 38-40,  42;  largely  adapted 
from  Greek  originals,  40-44 ;  Greek 
details  Romanised,  36-42,  sup- 
pressed, 43-44,  retained,  44-47; 
substance  is  Greek,  38 ;  Greek  law, 
40-42,  geography,  44-45,  myth- 
ology, 45 ;  other  Greek  features, 
45-50,  et  passim  in  chapter  on 
Comic  Elements.  Probable  origin 
of  those  elements  which  have 
neither  Greek  nor  Roman  colour, 
47-50. 

Free  treatment  of  original  not 
common,  43-50 ;  contamination 
and  omission  almost  only  impor- 
tant changes  from  originals,  285 ; 
extent  to  which  they  enlighten 
us  about  the  composition  of  their 
prototypes,  275-297 ;  their  inde- 
pendence, 295. 

No  local  colour,  53-54 ;  amuse- 
ments, 46 ;  cantica  not  from  N.  C, 
369,385-386  ;  division  of  the  several 
plays  into  acts,  374-383.  Prologus 
argumentativus,  388 ;  prologues  of 
Terence,  401.  Coined  words,  482- 
483.    Less  varied  than  N.  C,  515. 


INDEX 


54,1 


Pander,  his  nature,  92-94;  in  M.  C. 
and  N.  C.  228. 

VlapaKAauffiOupa,  191. 

Parasites,  18,  25-26,  73-78  ;  pluttonv, 
73-74,  467-469;  treatment  by 
other  characters,  74;  not  resentful, 
77 ;  pride  in  their  profession,  78 ; 
buffooas,  flatterers,  76 ;  services 
to  patrons,  74-76;  in  contem- 
porary life,  219-220;  in  0.  C.  and 
M.  C,  228 ;  associated  especially 
with  the  braggart  soldier  in  N.  C, 
229 ;  favourites  in  N.  C,  302-303. 

Parody  of  lofty  style,  304. 

Pathetic  elements  in  N.  C,  503-517 : 
moral  discourses,  505 ;  grief,  re- 
morse. 505-506;  lovers'  emotions, 
506-508 ;  scenes  exciting  fear,  508- 
509;  admiration,  509-511. 

Pedag(jgues,  103. 

nepnT(Teta,  306. 

Philemon,  belongs  to  N.  C,  10-11. 
Chronological  notes,  30  ;  treatment 
of  parasites,  25  ;  of  courtesans,  25  ; 
defects  of  style,  271 ;  moral  pre- 
cepts, 444-445 ;  gratitude  rare  in 
his  plays,  455 ;  humour  and 
seriousness,  504 ;  weaknesses,  512. 
References  to  the  plays :  'AyvpTTjs, 
probably  the  original  of  Naevius' 
Ariolus,  16 ;  'Avaveov/^evT^,  meaning 
of  title,  157,  202 ;  'EyxeipiStov,  pro- 
bably the  original  of  Livius  Andro- 
nicus'  Gladiolus,  16 ;  "Efx-Kopos, 
original  of  PI.  Merc,  13;  'Efoi/ci- 
C6nfvos,  201 ;  frg.  23, 271 ;  &v(ravp6s, 
original  of  PI.  Trin.,  13,  203; 
Moix<^s,  meaning  of  title,  123  ;  Nt^|, 
perhaps  the  original  of  PI.  Ampk., 
14,  meaning  of  title,  33;  Utwxv, 
frg.  67,  203 ;  nupp6s,  29 ;  UvpcpSpos, 

263  ;  1\jvf<pT)&os,  141 ;  iiafxa,  prob- 
ably original  of  PI.  Most.,  13,  202; 
^vKaKv,  184.  Frg.  91,  389;  92,  70; 
9-4,  271;  9t),  114;  97  probably 
from  a  prologue,  403;  130  prob- 
ably from  a  prologue,  403 ;  143, 
400. 

Philetas  and  N.  C,  531. 

Philippides,  treatment  of  courtesans, 
25 ;  'hvaveovaa,  meaning  of  title, 
157,  202. 

Philos(5pher.s,  27 ;  are  braggarts,  100- 
102 ;  their  vices,  101 ;  dress,  488- 
489.    Schools  of  philosophy,  448. 

Physicians,  100. 

Pirates,  207. 

Plautus,  relation  to  N.  C,  3;  his 
originals  and  their  dates,  13-16 ; 
fidelity  to  originals,  47-48;  lets 
actors    address    audience,    in    thig 


like  his  originals,  428;  puns  and 
jokes,  476;  scorn  for  psychology, 
48,  515.  See  also  Contamination, 
and  the  several  plays.  Originality, 
43,  282,  283 ;  no  essential  element 
of  any  plot  necessarily  Roman,  43; 
no  local  colour,  53-54.  Ill-drawn 
characters,  241.  Contamination, 
48,  280-288.  Three  Actor  Law, 
294-297;  division  of  the  several 
plays  into  five  acts,  374-383.  Plot, 
299-327;  simple  plots,  304-305; 
complicated  plots.  306-308  ;  chance 
in  the  plot,  312-315 ;  improba- 
bilities in  the  plot.  317-321.  Pro. 
logues,  406-407.  Moral  precepts, 
444-446.  Coined  w.irds,  482-483. 
Comic  characters,  496-497 ;  serious- 
ness, 503.  Many  of  these  subjects 
are  analysed  s.  vv.  See  also 
Pa  Hi  at  a. 
References  to  the  plays — 

Amphitryon,  date  of  original,  13- 
14 ;  perhaps  a  copy  of  Philemon's 
Nu^,  14 ;  only  example  of  a  m3-thical 
title  in  N.  C.  31 ;  probably  not  con- 
taminated, 378-379.  Lines  325  f., 
333,  367  f.,  Greek  puns  in,  478; 
551,  430  ;  Mercury,  404r^05. 

Asinaria,  date  of  original,  13; 
copy  of  Demophilus'  'Ovayos,  13 ; 
perhaps  also,  in  part,  of  Menander's 
NavKKripos,  13  ;  relation  to  original, 
491 ;  changes,  376 ;  probable  omis- 
sions, 48;  simphcity  of  plot,  305; 
chance  in  plot,  314 ;  a  weak  scene, 
422^123.  Lines  606  ff.,  507 ;  880  IT., 
347-348;  a  lost  scene.  354^355; 
burlesque  acting,  491 ;  preten- 
tiousness, 507.  Characters :  the 
donkey -seller  well  drawn,  102 ; 
Demaenetus,  134;  Diabolus  and 
Argyrippus,  182.  The  play  com- 
pared with  PI.  Meynicchmi,  236; 
with  the  ^avK\vpos,  239;  with  PI. 
Miles,  235;  with  PI.  Most.,  236; 
with  PI.  True,  235. 

Aulularia,  date  of  original,  13; 
perhaps  a  copy  of  an  unknown 
play  of  Menander,  13,  116 ;  pos- 
sibly of  his  'TSpta,  168;  probable 
omissions  of  original  scenes,  48; 
a  possible  chance,  423 ;  Creek 
features,  41-42;  plot,  308,  325; 
double  plot,  309,  310;  im[)roba- 
bility  of  plot.  320;  prologue  nee<l- 
less,  397.  Line  395,  setting  of  a 
scene,  344;  2S0  11.,  a  Greek  pun 
in,  477;  371  ff.,  soliloquy  poorly 
motivated,  427 ;  478  ff.,  probably 
from    Menander,    446;   508    ff.,   a 


542 


INDEX 


irv?7oy,  480;  587  ff.,  identity  of 
slave  lonj;  uncertain,  423;  592  ff., 
115;  motivation  of  action  of  iStro- 
biliis,  364 ;  lost  part  of  play, 
376;  probably  an  entr'acte  between 
081  and  808.  365.  Characters  : 
Euclio,  167-170,  326,  improba- 
bility, 320,  reformation,  442,  com- 
pared with  Smicrincs  in  Mcnan- 
der's  'ETTiTpfirovTei,  13 ;  Eunomia, 
her  altruism,  509  ;  Mcgadoriis,  241, 
change  of  mind,  395,  improbability, 
320,  comparison  of  play  with 
Menander's  VeupySs,  235-236. 

Bacchides,  copy  of  Menander's  Air 
'E|o7rari.r,  13 ;  plot,  307-308,  326- 
327 ;  chance  in  plot,  315 ;  improb- 
ability, 319 ;  depends  on  Mnesi- 
lochus'  stupidity,  326  ;  Three  Actor 
Law,  294.  Characters,  246,  Bac- 
chis  the  Athenian,  83-84;  Lydus, 
103;  Mnesilochus,  171,  243-244, 
stupidity,  326;  Nicobulus,  241, 
credulity,  319  ;  Pistoclerus,  83-84 ; 
Philoxenus,  327;  Philoxenus  and 
Nicobulus,  182. 

Captivi,  date  of  original,  14,  18 ; 
where  original  was  presented,  52 ; 
simplicity  of  plot,  305 ;  chance  in 
plot,  312 ;  improbability  of  plot, 
319 ;  length  of  time  covered  by 
plot,  334-335.  Lines  498  ff.,  mis- 
use of  narrative  form,  426  ;  516  ff., 
508;  759-761,  434.  Characters: 
Ergasilus,  302;  Hegio,  241,  his 
credulity,  319,  his  grief,  506. 

Casina,  copy  of  Diphilus'  KXrjpov- 
fievoi,  13  ;  relation  to  original,  471. 
491 ;  omissions  from  original,  48 
prologue  is  from  original,  389-390 
plot,  299,  307-308;  setting  of  a 
scene,  344.  Lines  37  f.,  from  the 
Greek,  407;  319-320,  a  Greek  pun 
in,  477;  356,  a  Greek  joke  in,  479 ; 
burlesque  acting,  491.  Characters  : 
Lysidamus  and  Alcesimus,  182 ; 
Myrrhina,  241 ;  Olympio,  60,  his 
honesty,  62. 

Cistellaria,  copy  of  an  unknown 
play  of  Menander  (cf .  Men. ,  f rg.  558 ), 
13 ;  where  original  was  presented, 
52 ;  prologue  from  original,  389- 
390 ;  chance  in  plot,  312 ;  improba- 
bihty  of  plot,  321 ;  plot  depends 
on  eccentricity  of  Alcesimarchus, 
326 ;  delayed  recognition,  509. 
Lines  1  ff.,507;  290,157;  543  ff., 
identity  of  characters  long  un- 
certain, 422-423.  Characters : 
Alcesimarchus,  his  eccentricity, 
326;  Gymnasium,  89;  Lampadio, 


improbability,  321 ;  Selenium,  249, 
her  heroism,  610. 

Colax,  copy  of  Menander's  KjXaf, 
15-16. 

Commorientes,  copy  of  Diphilus' 
'S.vvairodvriffKovTes,  15. 

Curculio,  date  of  original,  14 ; 
where  original  was  presented,  62 ; 
changes  from  original,  377;  probably 
had  a  prologus  argumentativus,  397  ; 
plot  possibly  mutilated,  305  ;  chance 
in  plot,  312 ;  improbability  of  plot, 
320-321 ;  inconsistency  in  exposi- 
tion, 414.  Lines  414-416,  a  Greek 
pun  in,  477.  Character:  Therapon- 
tigonus,  improbability,  320-321. 
The  play  compared  with  PI.  Pseud., 
235. 

Epidicus,  date  of  original,  14; 
probable  changes  from  original,  44 ; 
simplicity  of  plot,  305 ;  probably 
had  a  prologus  argumentativus,  397. 
Lines  16-17,  a  Greek  joke  in,  479; 
472  ff.,  356.  Character  :  Epidicus, 
unpunished,  455-456. 

Menaechmi,  date  of  original,  14 ; 
Greek  features,  41 ;  plot,  307-308 ; 
chance  in  plot,  314  ;  improbability 
of  plot,  34-35 ;  setting  of  a  scene, 
344.  Line  59,  407.  Characters  :  the 
two  Menaechmi,  183, 241 ;  Messenio, 
180;  Peniculus,  302.  The  play 
compared  with  PI.  As.,  236 ;  with 
PI.  Merc,  and  Ter.  Phorm.,  236. 

Mercator,  copj'  of  Philemon's 
"E/xiropoi,  13 ;  improbability  of  plot, 
321.  Lines  225  ff.,  434;  499  ff.,  soli- 
loquy ill  motivated,  427.  Charac- 
ters :  Demipho,  improbability,  321 ; 
Demipho  and  Lysimachus,  182 ; 
Lysimachus,  improbability,  321. 
The  play  compared  with  Menan- 
der's 'EiriKXripos  and  Ter.  Phorm., 
236;  with  PL  Men.  and  Ter. 
Phorm.,  236. 

Miles  Gloriosus,  copy  of  the  'AAo- 
^liiv  and  Mlvfjiai,  280  ;  date  of  chief 
original,  14 ;  date  of  secondary 
original  uncertain,  15 ;  scene,  why 
not  at  Athens,  53 ;  contamination, 
280,  286-287,  380-381;  its  theme 
unique,  191 ;  digging  through  the 
wall  not  purely  a  stage  device,  211 ; 
chance  in  plot,  312 ;  improbabiUty 
of  plot,  319 ;  plot  hinges  on  Pyrgo- 
polinices,  32i5 ;  stories  with  similar 
plots,  224-225  ;  needless  repetition, 
431-433;  Three  Actor  Law,  294- 
296.  Characters  :  Periplecomenus, 
302  ;  PyrgopoUnices,  his  stupidity, 
319,  his   boasts,  466,  on  him  the 


INDEX 


543 


plot  depends,  325 ;  .Scolcdrus,  319. 
The  play  compared  with  Mcnandcr's 
*dafxa,'285;  with  PI.  As.,  235. 

Mostellnria,  probably  a  copy  of 
Philemon's  iacjfxa,  13,  202;  date 
of  original,  13;  relation  to  orifrinal, 
471;  plot,  326-327,  imim)bability, 
317;  division  into  acts,  382-383. 
Lines  371  ff.,  setting,  346 ;  ;57r),  a 
Greek  pun  in,  477;  892,  a  Greek 
pun  in,  477-478;  1041  ff.,  soliloquy 
ill  motivated,  427.  Characters  : 
Grumio,  62;  Philematiiim,  509; 
Simo,  173;  Theopropides,  327; 
Tranio,  180-181,  improbability, 
317.  The  play  compared  with  1*1. 
^1*'.,  236. 

Fersa,  date  of  original,  14-15; 
only  surviving  play  of  M.  C,  228; 
compared  with  plays  of  N.  C,  232 ; 
Greek  features,  40-42 ;  reason  for 
making  Dordalus  a  foreigner,  55 ; 
portrays  contemporary  life,  213; 
contains  many  soliloquies,  436. 

Poenulus,  copy  of  the  Kapxv^o''tos, 
probably  Menander's,  14 ;  also  of 
an  unknown  play  by  an  unknown 
author,  280-2)81 ;  date  of  original, 
14,  18 ;  where  original  was  pre- 
sented, 52 ;  relation  to  original, 
163,  491 ;  contamination,  280-281, 
380-381 ;  reason  for  having  foreign 
characters,  54-55  ;  Greek  features, 
42 ;  burlesque  acting,  491.  Lines 
16^5,  405-406 ;  398,  700,  759-760. 
Greek  metaphors  in,  479.  Charac- 
ters :  Adelphasium  and  Antera- 
stilis,  182  ;  the  Advocati,  42 ;  Agora- 
stocles,  67,  his  conflicting  emotions, 
162 ;  Antamoenides,  302. 

Pseudolus,  copy  of  two  unknown 
plays,  281 ;  date  of  chief  original, 
14;  date  of  secondary  original 
uncertain,  15 ;  relation  to  original, 
472  ;  contamination,  281,  287-288 ; 
some  original  work  of  Plautus,  283  ; 
simplicity  of  plot,  305;  chance  in 
plot,  3l4;  improbability  of  plot, 
319.  Line  229,  a  Greek  joke  in, 
479;  585,  a  Greek  pun  in,  477. 
Characters:  Cook,  302;  Harpax, 
319  ;  Simo  and  Callipho,  182.  The 
play  compared  with  Menander's 
0r]ffavp6s,  239;  with  PI.  Cure, 
236;  with  Tcr.  Phorm..  234-235. 

Eudens,  copy  of  an  unknown  j)lay 
of  Diphilus,  13 ;  relation  to  original, 
472,  491 ;  original  work  by  Plautus, 
383;  scene,  why  not  at  Athens, 
63;  Three  Actor  Law.  294,  296; 
plot,  308 ;  an  awkward  digression, 


309;  chance  in  the  plot,  312,  314; 
incortsistency,  383;  delayed  recng- 
nition,  509;  burlesque  acting,  491. 
Lines  442  ff.,  508;  593  tl.,  434; 
742-744,  434;  12()5  ff.,  430.  Char- 
acters :  Daemones,  509 ;  Gripus, 
309;  Ptolemocratia,  509.  The 
play  compared  with  PI.  Vid., 
236. 

Stichus,  copy  of  Menander's  'ASeA- 
<po\  o  and  two  other  plays,  12,  281- 
282 ;  dates  of  secondary  originals 
uncertain,  15 ;  part  perhaps  from 
M.  C,  301;  contamination,  48, 
281-282 ;  some  original  work  of 
Plautus,  282 ;  a  possible  line  of 
original,  118;  plot  and  digressions, 
299.  Lines  87  ff.,  346-348, 353-354. 
Characters:  Gelasimus,  302;  the 
two  sisters,  182,  their  fear  of 
parental  authority  justified,  215, 
their  devotion,  509. 

Trinximmus,  copy  of  Philemon's 
@7](Tavp6s,  13,  203  ;  date  of  original, 
504;  seriousness,  504;  simplicity 
of  plot,  305 ;  psychology,  324-325 ; 
prologue,  402.  Lines  1137  ff.,  430, 
433.  Characters :  Lysiteles  and 
Lesbonicus,  182 ;   Philto,  67. 

TruculentuH,  date  of  original,  14 ; 
date  of  secondary  original  uncer- 
tain, 15  ;  plot  and  digressions,  299  ; 
probably  contaminated,  380  ;  moral 
precepts,  445.  Line  762,  157 ;  822, 
a  Greek  pun  in,  478.  Characters  : 
Astaphium,  79-80;  Diniarchus, 
159;  Phronesium,  80-81,  87; 
Strabax,  59;  Stratylax,  59,  62, 
63,  167.  The  play  compared  with 
PI.  As.,  235. 

Vidularia,  stage  setting,  341 ; 
the  plaj'  compared  with  PI.  Bvdens  , 
236. 
Plot,  298-327 ;  main  structure,  digres- 
sions, 298-304;  general  nature  in 
N.  C,  298 ;  digressions  became 
fewer  in  fourth  century,  because 
of  influence  of  tragedy,  303-304 ; 
simplicity  or  intricacv  of  ])lnt,  304- 
311 ;  double  plots,  309-311  ;  main- 
springs of  the  action,  312-327; 
chance,  312-315;  psychology  of 
the  characters,  316-327;  psycho- 
logical improbabilities,  315-322, 
relatively  few,  322.  Dependence 
on  earlier  drama,  226-240;  the 
plot  in  Aristoph.,  298;  in  M.  C, 
298-299.  Methods  of  making  plot 
intelligible.  421-436. 
Politics,  usually  avoided  in  N.  C., 
439. 


544 


INDEX 


Poor,  63-78 ;  usually  suspicious  of 
rich,  70-71 ;   envious,  72. 

Po-cidij)pup,  lack  of  rciinenient,  492 ; 
'Ava0\fTra;v,  202;  'A7ro»fX»;oMfVrj,  143, 
frg.  4,  123  ;  'Apfftvorj,  29  ;  'Epfxa<pp6- 
SiTos,  meaning  of  title,  33;  Mera- 
<pfp6fifvoi.  frg.  15.  101 ;   Mvp/uf}^,  33. 

Procuress,  92;  in  the  Mime,  523. 

Professional  people,  78-104. 

Prologue,  387-421 ;  prologus  argu- 
meyitativus,  388 ;  spoken  by  a  god, 
388  ;  Prologus.  391-392,  a  weakness, 
ibid.,  justification,  392-398 ;  ante- 
cedents of  the  prologue,  390 ;  pur- 
pose, 392;  what  it  did  and  what  it 
did  not  contain,  401-411 ;  pro- 
logues of  Terence,  401 ;  derived  in 
part  from  parabasis  of  O.  C,  404; 
different  kinds,  409-411. 

Propertius  and  N.  C,  530-532. 

UpoBvpov,  348-355 ;  evidence  for, 
348-353 ;  difficulties  involved,  353  ; 
confers  no  advantage,  354. 

Proverbs.     See  Moral  Precepts. 

Psychology,  240-256  ;  characters  over- 
drawn, 240-241 ;  psychology  true, 
but  superficial  and  commonplace, 
242-244  ;  quick  and  accurate,  245  ; 
fidelity  to  nature,  246 ;  literary 
sources  for  psychology  of  certain 
characters,  250-256 ;  moral  types, 
252 ;  exactitude  often  sacrificed  to 
raise  a  laugh  or  to  help  on  the 
action,  242 ;  psychology  in  Plautus 
and  Terence,  48-50;  fondness  for 
moral  precepts,  244. 

Purpose  of  N.  C. — 

1.  To  instruct. 

2.  To  amuse ;  set  Comic  Elements. 

3.  To  excite  emotion;  see  Pathetic 

Elements. 
Didactic  purpose,  439-453  :  poli- 
tics usually  avoided,  439 ;  educa- 
tion, 440-443 ;  few  plays  with  a 
thesis,  442-443 ;  moral  precepts, 
443-453,  are  rather  commonplace, 
446 ;  melancholy,  449  ;  cheerfulness, 
450  ;  benevolence.  450 ;  forbearance, 
451 ;  moral  value  of  N.  C,  453^62 ; 
edifying  and  offensive  subjects, 
453-462. 

Realism  and   Imagination,  206-272 ; 

customs,     206-240 ;      psychology, 

240-256  ;  language,  256-272.    See 

these  topics. 
Recognitions,  200-201 ;  before  N.  C, 

231-232 ;   marriage  as  a  result  of 

recognition,  201. 
Rehgious  features,  Greek,  42. 
Rhetoric.    See  Language  and  Style. 


Rich,  64-69;  riches  the  only  im- 
portant social  distinction  in  N.  C, 
64;  the  rich  not  really  rich,  64; 
the  newly  rich,  65 ;  little  display 
of  wealth,  66;  evil  characteristics 
of  the  rich,  66,  immorality,  68-69  ; 
the  rich  who  have  become  poor, 
69;  summary,  69. 

Roman  Comedy.     See  Palliata. 

Rustics,  57-63 ;  ridiculed  for  super- 
ficial defects,  58-59  ;  lack  of  refine- 
ment, 59 ;  mental  characteristics, 
60 ;  lack  of  eloquence,  60-61 ;  sus- 
picion, superstition,  stinginess,  61 ; 
honesty,  62 ;  dress,  488. 

Scenes,  where  laid,  34 ;  always  Greek, 
44 ;  scenes  laid  ekewhere  than 
where  play  is  acted,  52-54. 

Scurrility,  23-31. 

Serious  Elements.  See  Pathetic 
Elements. 

Simylus,  belongs  to  N.  C,  9. 

Slaves,  104-116 ;  great  numbers  and 
diversity,  104  ;  resourcefulness,  cun- 
ning, rascality,  105-106 ;  lack  of 
discretion,  fondness  for  slander 
and  gossip,  107-108 ;  laziness, 
sensuality,  stealing,  lying,  un- 
scrupulousness,  108-110  ;  no  hatred 
for  masters,  little  criminaUty,  110  ; 
license,  216-217 ;  why  they  are 
thus  portrayed,  217 ;  reasons  for 
wrongdoing,  111-112 ;  virtues  : 
devotion,  112-114 ;  diligence,  dig- 
nity, 115.  Rustic  slaves,  59,  their 
honesty,  62 ;  slaves  of  the  rich  are 
insolent,  67-68 ;  slaves  with  indi- 
viduality, 180-181 ;  incidents  in 
their  lives  are  rarely  mentioned, 
203 ;  sympathy  for  slaves,  450— 
451 ;  their  immunity  from  punish- 
ment, 455 ;  slaves  in  0.  C.  and 
M.  C,  229. 

Society  of  N.  C.  is  democratic,  63-64 ; 
social  conditions,  64 ;  class  hatred, 
72.    See  also  Customs,  Poor,  Rich 

Soldiers, 94-97 ;  vulgar,  brutal, stupid, 
95;  braggarts,  95-97;  braggart 
soldiers  in  contemporary  life,  220- 
222;  in  literature  before  N.  C, 
226-227.    Dress,  488. 

Soliloquy.     See  Monologue. 

Soothsayers,  102. 

Sophilus,  ^wTpix"*"''^^'  228. 

Sosipatrus,  probably  belongs  to  M.  C, 
11. 

Sources,  Literary,  of  plots,  characters, 
incidents,  224-240 ;  for  psychology 
of  certain  characters,  250-256; 
tragedy,  250-251 ;  M.  C,  250-252 ; 


INDEX 


545 


philosophy,  253-266  ;  of  monologue, 
333.  Inconsistencies  before  N.  C, 
368;  details  of  composition  com- 
pared with  predecessors,  435-436; 
superior  refinement  of  N.  C,  492- 
494.  See  also  Tra;;edy,  O.  ('., 
M.  C,  Euripides,  Aristophanes. 

StaKc  Sotting,  340-360;  remained 
same  throughout  tlio  i)lay,  340; 
inconsistencies  in  N.  C.  and  earlier, 
341-360;  lonf;  specclics  of  entering 
actors,  341-342;  speeches  inaudible 
to  other  actors  on  the  stage,  343- 
346  ;  indoor  scenes  laid  out  oi  iloors, 
346-355;  the  irpoBvpov,  348-355; 
confidential  iliscussions  outdoors, 
355-358;  comuiunication  between 
persons  inside  and  outside  of  the 
house,  358-362;  precedents,  355, 
358,  360. 

Stephanus,  probably  belongs  to  N.  C, 
11 ;  <l>iAoA.o/(&)i',  440. 

Strato,  probably  belongs  to  M.  C,  11 ; 
^oiviKihr]s,  29. 

Structure,  275-436.  T.  Internal,  275- 
327 ;  see  Contamination,  Plot,  Five 
Acts,  Three  Actors,  Digressions, 
nepiTrtVeio.  II.  External,  328-436  ; 
see  Conventions,  Monologues,  Asides, 
Entr'actes,  Stage  Setting,  Tlpo6vp»v, 
Actors  :  their  movements.  Chorus, 
Metres,  Music,  Five  Acts,  Exposi- 
tion, Prologue.  Characters. 

Subject  Matter  of  N.  C,  23-272. 

Subjects,  Edifj'ing  and  Offensive, 
453-462 ;  rcUgion,  453-454 ;  moral- 
ity, rewards  and  punishments, 
454-456;  moral  tone,  454-462; 
some  characters  immune  from 
punishment,  455-457;  attacks  on 
marriage  had  no  influence,  458 ; 
evil  characters  generally  win  no 
sympathy,  459.  Subjects  seldom 
or  never  treated  :  politics,  24, 184 ; 
war,  184 ;  civic  life  and  duties, 
travel,  184-185;  l)usiness  and  legal 
matters,  185-187;  conjugal  in- 
fidelity, unnatural  love,  460. 

Success  of  N.  C,  its  causes,  512- 
517. 

Supernatural  Elements,  common  in 
M.  C,  rare  in  N.  C,  31-35. 

Superstitious  people,  171-172;  drawn 
from  older  literature,  262. 

Sycopliant,  73. 

Technique.     See  Structure,  E.xternal. 

Terence,   relation   to   N.    C,   3 ;    his 

originals  and  their  dates, 12-13  ;  his 

treatment  of   originals,  43,  49-50, 

in  prologue,  412;  actors  speaking 

NN 


to  audience,  428;  moral  precepts, 
446;  lacks  the  variety  of  N.  C, 
515;  sec  also  Contamination,  and 
the  several  plays.  Oricinality,  283- 
284;  psychology,  48-50  ;  little  local 
colour,  63-54 ;  no  example  of  a 
cook,  98;  ill-drawn  characters,  241. 
contamination,  48-50,  276-280, 
284 ;  division  of  the  plays  into  acts, 
374-383;  Three  Actor  Law.  290- 
291 ;  complicated  plots,  396 ;  double 
lilots,310;  chance  in  plot,  312-315; 
improbabihtics  of  plot,  317-322; 
prologue :  no  p.  argumcnlalivits, 
401 ;  moral  precepts,  446 ;  comic 
characters,  496-497 ;  seriousness, 
503.  Sec  also  Palliata. 
References  to  the  plays — 

Adelphi,  copy  of  Mcnander's 
ASfXcpol  3'  and  Diphilus'  ^wairo- 
dvrjffKouTfs,  12-13 ;  what  came  from 
each,  276-277;  variation  from  ori- 
ginal. 49  ;  contamination,  276-277 ; 
plot,  310,  326-327;  prologue,  417; 
lino  288,  motivation  of  Sostrata's 
actions,  364 ;  610  If.,  507.  Charac- 
ters :  Aeschinus,  66 ;  Aeschinus  and 
Ctesipho,  182;  Demea,  167,  his 
reformation,  442;  Ceta,  509; 
Hegio,  70-71,  509;  Micio,  135, 
327,  his  theory  of  education,  440- 
441 ;  Micio  and  Demea,  182.  The 
play  compared  with  Ter.  Heatit., 
235. 

A  ndrio,  copy  of  Mcnander's  'A^/Spfa 
and  TlepLvQia,  12 ;  what  came  from 
each,  276-278 ;  variations  from 
original.  49;  title  no  indication  of 
racial  difference,  54.  Contamina- 
tion, 276-278.  Plot,  308,  310; 
chance  in  plot,  313,  316 ;  i  ni  - 
probabilities  of  plot.  317-318,  322 ; 
division  into  acts,  381-382.  Lines 
220-224,  434 ;  872  ff.,  508.  Charac- 
ters :  Chrcmes.  326;  Chremes  and 
Simo,  182:  Crito,  509;  Clvccrium, 
146;  the  midwife,  103;  Pampliilus, 
146, 161,  his  devotion  to  duty,  510 ; 
Pamphilus  compared  with  Antipho 
of  Ter.  Phorm.,  177-178;  Simo. 
177,  improbabihty,  317-318,  322, 
his  suspicious  nature,  326*. 

Ennuclms,  copy  of  Mcinndcr's 
Evv'ovxos  and  KoAa^,  12-13 ;  what 
came  from  each,  276,  278-280;  a 
scene  probably  from  th(>  Ko'Aa^, 
144  ;  contamination,  276,  278-280  ; 
plot  depends  on  tlie  chaiacters  of 
the  two  brothers.  326-326.  Lines 
190  ff'.,  507;  502-575,  430;  015  ff., 
misuse    of    narrative    form,    426; 


546 


INDEX 


754  ff.,  sotting,  344;  817,  niutiva- 
lioii  t)f  the  actions  <.)f  Pythias 
and  Thais,  364;  .S40  tL,  monologue 
ill  motivated,  427.  Characters  : 
(."haerea,  179-180,  326;  Chaerea 
and  Chremes,  182;  Chrenics,  241- 
242 ;  Gnat  ill.,  taken  from  t  lie  KoAa|. 
74  ;  Parmeno,  180 ;  Phacdria,  248- 
249,  326 ;  Thais,  87,  90,  a  natural 
eharactei',  458.  Tlie  play  com- 
pared with  Menandcr's  KoAa|  and 
nfptKeipoiJ.evri,  235. 

HcniitoH  Tiinoroiaiicnos,  copy  of 
Menander's  EavThi/  Ttixiapov/xevos, 
12;  treatment  of  original,  43;  not 
contaminated,  284 ;  plot,  307,  310 ; 
chance  in  plot,  315 ;  improbabili- 
ties of  plot,  318,  320-322;  ending, 
326 ;  length  of  time  consumed  by 
the  plot,  334.  Lines  405  ff.,  508; 
014  tf.,  motivation  of  the  entrance 
of  Sostrata,  363.  Chorus  in  the 
original,  337.  Characters :  Anti- 
phila,  146 ;  Bacchis,  improbability, 
322;  Chremes,  134,  177,  his  right 
to  disown  his  son,  215,  improb- 
ability, 320,  327,  his  theory  of 
education,  440-441,  uprightness, 
509;  Clinia,  159,  improbability, 
321-322 ;  Clinia  and  Clitipho,  182 ; 
Clitipho,  160 ;  Menedemus  and 
Chremes, 182 ;  Syrus,  improbability, 
318-319.  The  play  compared  with 
Ter.  Ad.,  235. 

Hecyra,  copy  of  the  'E/cupa  of 
Apollodorus  Carystius,  13 ;  date  of 
original,  504  ;  changes  from  original, 
377-378;  not  contaminated,  284; 
plot,  326 ;  chance  in  the  plot,  312- 
313 ;  suspense,  509 ;  Three  Actor 
Law,  290.  First  scene,  416 ;  line 
108,  motivation  of  actions  of  Sos- 
trata and  Laches,  363;  243  ff., 
improbability,  359;  572-574,  434. 
Characters :  affection  of  mother 
and  son,  129 ;  Bacchis,  90,  her 
cleverness.  326,  overdrawn,  458- 
459,  her  altruism,  509  ;  Laches  and 
Phidippus  contrasted,  175-177, 
182,  Pamphilus,  147,  his  struggles, 
159-160,  his  monologue,  426,  an 
appealing  character,  507 ;  Parmeno, 
180;  Phidippus,  326;  Sostrata, 
generosity,  326,  devotion  to  son, 
510.  The  play  compared  with 
Menander's  'EinTpfizovTis,  234. 

Phormio,  copy  of  the  'EinSiKaCS- 
fifvos  of  Apollodorus  Carystius,  13  ; 
free  treatment  of  original,  43-44, 
49 ;  not  contaminated,  284 ;  Three 
^.ctor  Law,  294;   legal  procedure 


regular.  212;  faulty  double  pl.it, 
310;  oliance  in  the  plot,  312. 
Lines  1  ff..  416;  231,  508;  738, 
iiil(T])rctation,  364.  Characters: 
Anlipho,  147,  liis  struggles,  160- 
161,  compared  with  Pamphilus 
in  Ter.  Andr.,  177-178;  Antipho 
anil  Phacdria,  182 ;  Chremes  and 
Demipho,  182 ;  Demipho,  66,  177 ; 
Phanium,  why  a  foreignei-,  55, 
well   behaved,   146 ;    Phormio,   71. 

^The  play  compaied  with  Mcnan- 
ler's  'EiriKArtpos  and  PI.  Merc,  and 
with  the  Men.  and  Merc,  of  PI., 
236;  with  PI.  Psend.,  234-235. 

Theocritus,  urban  idylls  and  N.  C, 
522. 

Theognetus,  ^acrixa,  202. 

Theophilus,  frg.  12,  417. 

Theophrastus,  teacher  of  Menander, 
31 ;  a  source  for  N.  C,  254-256. 

Tibullus  and  N.  C,  531-532. 

Timocles,  belongs  to  M.  C,  10; 
treatment  of  parasites,  26. 

Titles  of  plays,  of  small  value  in  de- 
termining subject  matter,  27-29, 
54, 104. 

Townspeople,  peculiarities,  63. 

Tragedy,  a  source  for  N.  C.  in  many 
jjoints,  232-233;  love  in,  250-252, 
521;  plot,  303-304;  monologue, 
333,  429;  asides,  334;  prologue, 
392-393,  399 ;  exposition,  413-414, 
416-418,  421;  indoor  scenes  laid 
out  of  doors,  361 ;  division  into 
acts,  372;  decline  of  chorus,  383- 
384;  Five  Act  Law,  384-385. 
Parody  of  Tragedy  in  M.  C,  304. 

Turpilius,  Bocthuntes,  frg.  VI,  157; 
Demetrius,  probably  a  copy  of 
Alexis'  ATf)ixi\TpLos,  16 ;  Demiurgus, 
frg.  n,  69 ;  Epiclcrus,  copy  of 
Menander's  'EiriKX-npos,  16 ;  Hetaera, 
frgg.  I,  IL  189 ;  Loiiniac,  copy  of 
Diphilus'  A-n/xviai,  31,  frgg'-  IV,  V, 
204 ;  Leucadia,  155,  copy  of  Menan- 
der's AivKaSia,  16  ;  Paedion,  prob- 
ably a  copy  of  Menander's  UatSiov, 
16,  cf.  frg.  VIII  with  Men.,  frgg. 
372,  373. 

Unity  of  Action,  298-311.     See  Plot. 

Unity  of  Place,  340-367.  See  Stage 
Setting. 

Unity  of  Time,  334-340 ;  inconsist- 
encies, 339-340. 

Vestibulum,  348-355. 

War,  not  an  important  subject  of 
N.  G.,  184. 


INDEX 


547 


Women  in  N.  C,  characterization, 
116;  objects  of  hatred,  116;  ex- 
travagance, superstition,  loquacity, 
119 ;  love  of  quarrelling,  120 ; 
tyranny  of  dowered  wives,  tcniiior, 
suspicion  and  jealousy,  120-122; 
their  tyranny  founded  on  contem- 
porary life,  215-216;  infidelity  of 
wives  rare  in  N.  (1,  122-123;  in- 
fidelity in  epistolographers,  123 ; 
Bubordinato    position    of    mothers 


and  daughters,  126-129;  indulgent 
mothers,  matchmakers,  127-128. 
Abductions  rare,  192;  accouchc- 
ments,  197;  dangers  besetting 
women,  208-209.  .Subject  t(t 
fathers  even  alter  marriage,  215. 
Dowries,  68.  Vices  satirized  in 
N.  C.  antl  predecessors,  230. 
Women's  morality  high  in  N.  C-, 
460-461. 


THE    END 


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