FOOTNOTES:

The poet ought to keep in harmonyWith any subject that he has to treat:If women be his theme, then must his personBe toned and fashioned to a female mood;But when he writes of men he has no needTo study change; 'tis only what we have notWe seek to supplement by dressing up.Besides, how unæsthetic 'tis to seeA poet coarse and hairy! Just rememberFamed Ibycus, Anacreon, Alcæus,Who made our music and our metres flow,Wore caps, and followed soft Ionian fashions:And Phrynichus—this surely you have heard—Was beautiful and beautifully dressed;And this, we cannot doubt, is why his playsWere beautiful; for 'tis a natural lawThat like ourselves our work must ever be.

Modern writers upon whose lipsin udo est Mænas et Attismight take some of this satire not inaptly to themselves. But the crowning sport of theThesmophoriazusæis in the last scene, when Mnesilochus adapts thePalamedesand theHelenof Euripides to his own forlorn condition, jumbling up the well-known verses of these tragedies with coarse-flavored rustical remarks; and when at last Euripides himself acts Echo and Perseus to the Andromeda of his father-in-law, and both together mystify the policeman by their ludicrous utterance of antiphonal lamentations.

I have but scanty space for touching on one of the topics which theThesmophoriazusæsuggests—the satire of Aristophanes upon Athenian women, whom he invariably represents as profligate, licentious, stupid, drunken, thieves, and liars. Whether they were in any sense as bad as he has painted them—and he has given them a worse character than any other Greek poet, not even excepting Simonides of Amorgos—or whether their absence from the comic spectacles encouraged a paradoxical misrepresentation of their worst and most exceptional qualities, is not easy to decide. This at least is clear that, while comic exaggeration is obvious in every detail, the picture, overdrawn and coarse as it may be, accords with that of other and less copious Greek satirists; nor could it have been tolerated in a society where women held a station of respect and honor.[121]

The point of theThesmophoriazusæ, so far as the women are concerned, is that while Aristophanes pretends to show up Euripides for his abuse of them, his own satire is far more searching, and penetrates more deeply into the secrets of domestic life. What are the crimes of Phædra in comparison with the habits he imputes to Athenian wives and daughters? TheLysistratawill not bear discussion; but in passing I may notice the humor of the oath by wine which the inexorable heroine and her Spartan friend administer. Other oaths might be broken, but no Athenian wife or maid would incur the penalty of this dread imprecation: "If I fail, may the bowl be filled with water." Of the three comedies which treat of women, theEcclesiazusæhas the most permanent interest. Indeed,mutatis mutandis, its satire might almost be adapted to the present day, or to the future which our theorists upon the rights of women are preparing. The Athenian ladies disguise themselves as men, and crowd the assembly, where they outvote their husbands, sons, and brothers, and proclaim the supremacy of women in the State. Praxagora, the agitator of the scheme, is chosen strategis. She decides that a community of property and free-trade between the sexes are the two things wanted to insure general felicity. The point of the satire consists in this: that the arguments by which the women get the upper-hand all turn on their avowed conservatism; men change and shift, women preserve their old customs, and will maintain the ἦθος of the State; but no sooner have they got authority than they show themselves more democratic than the demagogues, more new-fangled in their political notions than the philosophers. They upset time-honored institutions and make new ones to suit their own caprices, squaring the laws according to the logic of feminine instincts. Of course speculations like those of Plato'sRepublicare satirized in the farcical scenes which illustrate the consequences of this female revolution. But perhaps the finest point about the comedy is its humorous insight into the workings of women's minds—its clear sense of what a topsy-turvy world we should have to live in if women were the lawgivers and governors.

In quitting Aristophanes I am forced to reflect upon the inadequacy of my attempts to interpret the secret of his strength and charm. The epithets which continually rise to our lips in speaking of him—radiant, resplendent, swift, keen, changeful, flashing, magical—carry no real notion of the marvellous and subtle spirit, that animates his comedy with life peculiar to itself. In dealing with no other poet is the critic or historian so powerless. No other work of art leaves so incommunicable an impression on the mind of the student. As for my words about Aristophanes, they are "sound and fury signifying nothing:" to be known, he must be read with admiration and delight. But those who have submitted themselves to the influence of his genius will understand what I mean when, in conclusion, I say that, with Plato and Aristophanes for guides, we can to some extent reconstruct the life of the Athenians, animate the statues of Myron and Lysippus, and see the aisles of the Parthenon or the benches of the Pnyx crowded with real human beings. Plato introduces us to the graver and more elegant side of Attic life, to the καλοκἀγαθοὶ and χαρίεντες, to men of sober tastes and good birth and exquisite breeding. Aristophanes acquaints us with men of pleasure, vulgar and uneducated characters, haunters of the law courts and the market-place and the assembly. From Plato we learn what occupied philosophers and people of distinction. Aristophanes tells us the popular jokes at Athens, how the political and military edicts recorded by Thucydides were familiarly discussed, how people slept and walked and dressed and dined. In Plato's Dialogues the fine Greek intellect is shown to us trained and tutored into exquisite forms of elevated culture. In Aristophanes, though art even more consummate has been used, we see the same refined intellect running riot and disporting itself with the flexibility of untamable youth. By Plato we are taught how dignified and humane the Greeks could be, by Aristophanes how versatile and human they were.

FOOTNOTES:[114]It is almost impossible to translate this word, which will frequently recur in the essay, and which seems to depend for its force upon the conception of the satiric spirit, as that which "stets vernichtet," the Mephistophilistic "verneinender Geist."[115]Since this chapter was written, Mr. Browning's interesting piece of criticism in verse,Aristophanes' Apology, containing a most clever caricature of Aristophanes, and a no less clever defence of Euripides, has appeared. I do not see any reason to alter the view expressed above concerning Greek Comedy.[116]See below, chap. xix.[117]As a minor instance of these sudden transitions from the touching to the absurd, take Charon's speech (Frogs, 185):τίς εἰς ἀναπαύλας ἐκ κακῶν καὶ πραγμάτων;τίς εἰς τὸ Λήθης πεδίον, ἢ 'ς ὄνου πόκας,ἢ 'ς κερβερίους, ἢ 'ς κόρακας, ἢ 'πι Ταίναρον.[118]This epithet contains the gist of the objection often brought against Aristophanes, that he assisted the demoralization which he denounced. If he did so, it was not by his grossness and indelicacy, but by his subtilty and refinement and audacity of universal criticism. The sceptical aqua-fortis of his age is as strong in Aristophanes as in Euripides.[119]ἀέναοι Νεφέλαι,ἀρθῶμεν φανεραὶ δροσερὰν φύσιν εὐάγητον,πατρὸς ἀπ' Ὠκεανοῦ βαρυαχέοςὑψηλῶν ὀρέων κορυφὰς ἐπὶδενδροκόμους, ἵνατηλεφανεῖς σκοπιὰς ἀφορώμεθα,καρπούς τ' ἀρδόμεναν ἱερὰν χθόνα,καὶ ποταμῶν ζαθέων κελαδήματα,καὶ πόντον κελάδοντα βαρύβρομον·ὄμμα γὰρ αἰθέρος ἀκάματον σελαγεῖταιμαρμαρέαις ἐν αὐγαῖς.ἀλλ' ἀποσεισάμενοι νέφος ὄμβριονἀθανάτας ἰδέας ἐπιδώμεθατηλεσκόπῳ ὄμματι γαῖαν.Clouds, 275.[120]Mnesilochus's criticism reminds us of Persius:ὡς ἡδὺ τὸ μέλος ὦ πότνιαι Γενετυλλίδες,καὶ θηλυδριῶδες καὶ κατεγλωτισμένονκαὶ μανδαλωτόν, ὥστ' ἐμοῦ γ' ἀκροωμένουὑπὸ τὴν ἕδραν αὐτὴν ὑπῆλθε γάργαλος.Thesm.130.[121]One of the most interesting chapters in Greek history still remains to be written. It should deal in detail with the legal and domestic position of free women at Athens, with the relation of their sons and husbands to Hetairai, and with the whole associated subject of paiderastia. Since this essay on Aristophanes was first published, Mr. Mahaffy has done much in his excellent book onSocial Life in Greecetowards clearing up our views upon these matters. But the topic still requires a fuller and more scientific handling. Mr. Mahaffy is particularly felicitous in marking the distinctions of the Herodotean, Thucydidean, and Euripidean estimates of women, in bringing into prominence theŒconomicusof Xenophon, and in laying stress upon the warfare of opinion which raged at Athens between conservatives of the Periclean tradition, represented by Aristophanes, and innovators, represented in poetry by Euripides, in philosophy by Plato. I cordially agree with him in his remark that "in estimating women at this time, the Alcestis and Macaria of Euripides are too high, and the women of Aristophanes are too low" (Social Greece, 2d ed. p. 228). The great difficulty which must have been felt by all thoughtful students of Greek literature is how to reconcile the high ideals of female character presented by the Attic tragedians with the contemptuous silence of Thucydides, with the verdict of Plato upon women-lovers as compared with boy-lovers, with the ribaldry allowed to comic poets, and with the comparative absence of female portraits in the biographies of great Athenians composed by Plutarch.

[114]It is almost impossible to translate this word, which will frequently recur in the essay, and which seems to depend for its force upon the conception of the satiric spirit, as that which "stets vernichtet," the Mephistophilistic "verneinender Geist."

[115]Since this chapter was written, Mr. Browning's interesting piece of criticism in verse,Aristophanes' Apology, containing a most clever caricature of Aristophanes, and a no less clever defence of Euripides, has appeared. I do not see any reason to alter the view expressed above concerning Greek Comedy.

[116]See below, chap. xix.

[117]As a minor instance of these sudden transitions from the touching to the absurd, take Charon's speech (Frogs, 185):τίς εἰς ἀναπαύλας ἐκ κακῶν καὶ πραγμάτων;τίς εἰς τὸ Λήθης πεδίον, ἢ 'ς ὄνου πόκας,ἢ 'ς κερβερίους, ἢ 'ς κόρακας, ἢ 'πι Ταίναρον.

[117]As a minor instance of these sudden transitions from the touching to the absurd, take Charon's speech (Frogs, 185):

τίς εἰς ἀναπαύλας ἐκ κακῶν καὶ πραγμάτων;τίς εἰς τὸ Λήθης πεδίον, ἢ 'ς ὄνου πόκας,ἢ 'ς κερβερίους, ἢ 'ς κόρακας, ἢ 'πι Ταίναρον.

[118]This epithet contains the gist of the objection often brought against Aristophanes, that he assisted the demoralization which he denounced. If he did so, it was not by his grossness and indelicacy, but by his subtilty and refinement and audacity of universal criticism. The sceptical aqua-fortis of his age is as strong in Aristophanes as in Euripides.

[119]ἀέναοι Νεφέλαι,ἀρθῶμεν φανεραὶ δροσερὰν φύσιν εὐάγητον,πατρὸς ἀπ' Ὠκεανοῦ βαρυαχέοςὑψηλῶν ὀρέων κορυφὰς ἐπὶδενδροκόμους, ἵνατηλεφανεῖς σκοπιὰς ἀφορώμεθα,καρπούς τ' ἀρδόμεναν ἱερὰν χθόνα,καὶ ποταμῶν ζαθέων κελαδήματα,καὶ πόντον κελάδοντα βαρύβρομον·ὄμμα γὰρ αἰθέρος ἀκάματον σελαγεῖταιμαρμαρέαις ἐν αὐγαῖς.ἀλλ' ἀποσεισάμενοι νέφος ὄμβριονἀθανάτας ἰδέας ἐπιδώμεθατηλεσκόπῳ ὄμματι γαῖαν.Clouds, 275.

[119]

ἀέναοι Νεφέλαι,ἀρθῶμεν φανεραὶ δροσερὰν φύσιν εὐάγητον,πατρὸς ἀπ' Ὠκεανοῦ βαρυαχέοςὑψηλῶν ὀρέων κορυφὰς ἐπὶδενδροκόμους, ἵνατηλεφανεῖς σκοπιὰς ἀφορώμεθα,καρπούς τ' ἀρδόμεναν ἱερὰν χθόνα,καὶ ποταμῶν ζαθέων κελαδήματα,καὶ πόντον κελάδοντα βαρύβρομον·ὄμμα γὰρ αἰθέρος ἀκάματον σελαγεῖταιμαρμαρέαις ἐν αὐγαῖς.ἀλλ' ἀποσεισάμενοι νέφος ὄμβριονἀθανάτας ἰδέας ἐπιδώμεθατηλεσκόπῳ ὄμματι γαῖαν.

Clouds, 275.

[120]Mnesilochus's criticism reminds us of Persius:ὡς ἡδὺ τὸ μέλος ὦ πότνιαι Γενετυλλίδες,καὶ θηλυδριῶδες καὶ κατεγλωτισμένονκαὶ μανδαλωτόν, ὥστ' ἐμοῦ γ' ἀκροωμένουὑπὸ τὴν ἕδραν αὐτὴν ὑπῆλθε γάργαλος.Thesm.130.

[120]Mnesilochus's criticism reminds us of Persius:

ὡς ἡδὺ τὸ μέλος ὦ πότνιαι Γενετυλλίδες,καὶ θηλυδριῶδες καὶ κατεγλωτισμένονκαὶ μανδαλωτόν, ὥστ' ἐμοῦ γ' ἀκροωμένουὑπὸ τὴν ἕδραν αὐτὴν ὑπῆλθε γάργαλος.

Thesm.130.

[121]One of the most interesting chapters in Greek history still remains to be written. It should deal in detail with the legal and domestic position of free women at Athens, with the relation of their sons and husbands to Hetairai, and with the whole associated subject of paiderastia. Since this essay on Aristophanes was first published, Mr. Mahaffy has done much in his excellent book onSocial Life in Greecetowards clearing up our views upon these matters. But the topic still requires a fuller and more scientific handling. Mr. Mahaffy is particularly felicitous in marking the distinctions of the Herodotean, Thucydidean, and Euripidean estimates of women, in bringing into prominence theŒconomicusof Xenophon, and in laying stress upon the warfare of opinion which raged at Athens between conservatives of the Periclean tradition, represented by Aristophanes, and innovators, represented in poetry by Euripides, in philosophy by Plato. I cordially agree with him in his remark that "in estimating women at this time, the Alcestis and Macaria of Euripides are too high, and the women of Aristophanes are too low" (Social Greece, 2d ed. p. 228). The great difficulty which must have been felt by all thoughtful students of Greek literature is how to reconcile the high ideals of female character presented by the Attic tragedians with the contemptuous silence of Thucydides, with the verdict of Plato upon women-lovers as compared with boy-lovers, with the ribaldry allowed to comic poets, and with the comparative absence of female portraits in the biographies of great Athenians composed by Plutarch.

Three Periods in Attic History.—The Three Kinds of Comedy: Old, Middle, New.—Approximation of Comedy to the Type of Tragedy.—Athenæus as the Source of Comic Fragments.—Fragments of the Old Comedy.—Satire on Women.—Parasites.—Fragments of the Middle Comedy.—Critique of Plato and the Academic Philosophers.—Literary Criticism.—Passages on Sleep and Death.—Attic Slang.—The Demi-Monde.—Theophrastus and the Later Rhetoricians.—Cooks and Cookery-books.—Difficulty of Defining the Middle from the New Comedy.—Menander.—Sophocles and Menander.—Epicureanism.—Menander's Sober Philosophy of Life.—Goethe on Menander.—Philemon.—The Comedy of Manners culminated in Menander.—What we mean by Modernism.—Points of Similarity and Difference between Ancient and Modern Comedy.—The Freedom of Modern Art.

The two centuries during whichcomedy flourished at Athens may be divided into three marked periods of national and political existence. Between 448 and 404 B.C., under the Periclean administration and until the end of the Peloponnesian war, the Demos continued through all vicissitudes conscious of sovereignty and capable of indefinite expansion. Then came the dismantlement of Athens by Lysander and the dismemberment of the old democracy. From 404 to 338 B.C., Athens, though humbled to the rank of a second-class State, and confused in foreign and domestic policy, retained her freedom, and exercised an important influence over the affairs of Hellas. She no longer, however, felt within herself the force of youth, the ambition of conquest, or the pride of popular autocracy. Her intellectual activity was turned from political and constitutional questions inwards to philosophy and literature. From 338 to about 260 B.C. this metamorphosis of the nation was carried further and accomplished. Athens ceased to be a city of statesmen and orators, and became the capital of learning. She was no longer in any true sense free or powerful, though populous and wealthy and frequented by cultivated men of all nations. Not only had public interest declined, but the first fervor for philosophy was past. Amodus vivendisuited to a tranquil, easy, pleasure-loving people, who rejoiced in leisure and combined refined amusements with luxury, had been systematized in the Epicurean view of life. To accept the conditions of existence and to make the best of them, to look on like spectators at the game of the world, and to raise no troublesome insoluble questions, was the ideal of this period. Fifty years after the last date mentioned, the Romans set their foot on Hellas, and Greek culture began to propagate itself with altered forms in Italy.

To these three periods in the national existence of Athens the three phases through which comedy passed correspond with almost absolute accuracy. Emerging from the coarse Megarian farces and the phallic pageants of the Dionysian Komos, the old comedy, as illustrated by Aristophanes, allowed itself the utmost license. It incarnated the freedom of democracy, caricaturing individuals, criticising constitutional changes, and, through all its extravagances of burlesque and fancy, maintaining a direct relation to politics. Only a nation in the plenitude of self-contentment, conscious of vigor and satisfied with its own energy, could have tolerated the kind of censorship these comic poets dared to exercise. The glaring light cast by Aristophanes upon abuses in the State reminded his audience of the greatness and the goodness that subsisted with so much of mean and bad. From their high standpoint of security they could afford, as they imagined, to laugh, and to enjoy a spectacle that travestied their imperfections. At the same time an undercurrent of antagonism to the Aristophanic comedy made itself felt from time to time. Laws were passed prohibiting this species of the drama in general (μὴ κωμῳδεῖν), or restricting its personality (μὴ κωμῳδεῖν ὀνομαστί), or prohibiting the graver functionaries of the State from exhibiting comic plays. These laws, passed, abrogated, and repassed between 440 and 404 B.C., mark the ebb and flow of democratic liberty. After the humiliation of Athens at the close of the Peloponnesian war, the political subject-matter of the old comedy was withdrawn, and the attitude of the audience was so altered as to render its peculiar censorship intolerable. Meanwhile, the speculative pursuits to which the Athenians since the days of the sophists had addicted themselves began to tell upon the character of the nation, now ripe for the second or literary stage of comedy. The poets of this period had not yet arrived at the comedy of manners which presents a close and faithful picture of domestic life. They directed their wit and humor against classes rather than characters. Philosophers and poets, parasites and hetæræ, took the place of the politicians. Nor did they abandon the old art-form of Attic comedy, for it is clear that the Chorus still played an important part in their plays. At the same time, in comedy as in tragedy, the Chorus came to be less and less an integral part of the drama; and while more attention was paid to plot and story, the grotesque allegories of the first period were dropped. The transition from the old to the middle comedy is signalized by theFrogsof Aristophanes, which, maintaining the peculiar character of the elder form of art, relinquished politics for literature. The new comedy, known to us through the fragments of Menander and the Latin imitations, abandoned the Chorus altogether, and produced a form of art corresponding to what we know as the comedy of character and manners in the modern world. Interest was concentrated on the fable, and the skill of the poet was displayed in accurate delineations of domestic scenes. The plot seems to have almost invariably turned on love-adventures. Certain fixed types of character—the parasite, the pimp, the roguish servant, the severe father, the professional captain, the spendthrift son, the unfortunate heroine, and the wily prostitute—appeared over and over again. To vary the presentation of these familiar persons taxed the ingenuity of the playwright, as afterwards in Italy and France, during the tyranny of pantaloon and matamore, Leandre and prima amorosa.

Tragedy and comedy, though they began so differently, had been gradually approximating to one type, so that between Menander and the latest followers of Euripides there was scarcely any distinction of form and but little difference of subject-matter. The same sententious reflection upon life seasoned both species of the drama. The religious content of the elder tragedy and the broad burlesque of the elder comedy alike gave place to equable philosophy. The tragic climax was sad; the comic climax gay: more license was allowed in the comic than in the tragic iambic: comedy remained nearer to real life and therefore more interesting than tragedy. Such, broadly speaking, were the limits of their differences now. In this approximation toward artistic similarity comedy rather than tragedy was a gainer. It is clear that the Aristophanic comedy could not have become permanent. To dissociate it from the peculiar conditions of the Athenian democracy was impossible. Therefore the process by which the old comedy passed into the middle, and the middle into the new, must be regarded as a progression from the local and the accidental to the necessary and the universal. The splendor that may seem to have been sacrificed belonged less to the old comedy itself than to the genius of Aristophanes, who succeeded in engrafting the most brilliant poetry upon the rough stock of the Attic farce. Tragedy, on the contrary, lost all when she descended from the vantage-ground of Æschylus. It must not, however, be imagined that the change in either case depended upon chance. It was necessitated by the internal transmutation of the Athenians into a nation of students, and by the corresponding loss of spontaneity in art. For the full development of the comedy of manners a critical temper in the poet and the audience, complexity of social customs, and inclination to reflect upon them, together with maturity of judgment, were required. These conditions, favorable to art which seeks its motives in a spirit of tolerant, if somewhat cynical, philosophy, but prejudicial to the highest serious poetry, account for the decline of tragedy and the contemporaneous ascent of comedy in the fourth century B.C. The comedy of Menander must therefore be considered as an advance upon that of Cratinus, though it is true that this comedy is the art of refined and senescent, rather than of vigorous and adolescent, civilization, and though it flourished in the age of tragic dissolution. In the Vatican may be seen two busts, of equal size and beauty, wrought apparently by the same hand, and finished to the point of absolute perfection. One of these is Tragedy, the other Comedy. The two faces differ chiefly in the subtle smile that plays about the lips of Comedy, and in the slight contraction of the brows of Tragedy. They are twin sisters, born alike to royalty, distinguished by such traits of character as tend to disappear beneath the polish of the world. There is no suggestion of the Cordax in the one or of the Furies in the other. Both are self-restrained and dignified in ideality. It was thus that the two species of the drama appeared to the artists of the later ages of Hellenic culture.

The student of Greek fragments may not inaptly be compared to a man who is forming a collection of sea-weeds. Walking along the border of the unsearchable ocean, he keeps his eyes fixed upon the pools uncovered at low tide, and with his foot turns up the heaps of rubbish cast upon the shore. Here and there a rare specimen of colored coralline or delicately fibred alga attracts his attention. He stoops, and places the precious fragment in his wallet, regretting that all his wealth is but the alms of chance, tossed negligently to him by the fretful waves and wilful storms. To tread the submarine gardens where these weedsand blossoms flourish is denied him. Even so the scholar can do no more than skirt the abysses of the past, the unsearchable sea of oblivion, garnering the waifs and strays offered him by accident.

As Stobæus provides the most extensive repertory of extracts from the later Greek tragedians, so it is to Athenæus we must turn for comic fragments. Thishelluo librorumboasted that he had read eight hundred plays of the middle comedy, and it is obvious that he was familiar with the whole dramatic literature of Athens. Yet the use he made of this vast knowledge was comparatively childish. Interested for the most part in deipnosophy, or the wisdom of the dinner-table, he displayed his erudition by accumulating passages about cooks, wines, dishes, and the Attic market. From an exclusive study, therefore, of the extracts he transmitted, we might be led to imagine that the Greek comedians exaggerated the importance of eating and drinking to a ridiculous extent. This, however, would be a false inference. The ingenuity of the deipnosophist was shown in bringing his reading to bear upon a single point, and in adorning the philosophy of the kitchen with purple patches torn from poetry. We ought, in truth, rather to conclude that Attic comedy was an almost inexhaustible mine of information on Attic life in general, and that illustrations, infinitely various, of the manners, feelings, prejudices, literature, and ways of thinking of the ancient Greeks might have been as liberally granted to us as the culinary details which amused the mind of Athenæus.

When so much remains intact of Aristophanes, it is not worth while to do more than mention a few of the fragments preserved from the other playwrights of the old comedy. The first of these in Meineke's collection may be translated, since it stands, like a motto, on the title-page of all Greek comedy:[122]"Hear, O ye people! Susarion says this, the son of Philinus, the Megarian, of Tripodiscus: Women are an evil; and yet, my countrymen, one cannot set up house without evil; for to be married or not to be married is alike bad." In turning over the pages of Meineke,[123]we feel inclined to call attention to the beauty of some lines on flowers written by Pherecrates (Metalles, fr. 2, andPersai, fr. 2), and to a curious passage on the changes wrought by Melanippides, Kinesias, and Timotheus in Attic music (Cheiron, fr. 1). The comic description of the Age of Gold by Telecleides (Amphictyones, fr. 1) might be paralleled by Heine's picture of heaven, where the geese flew about ready roasted with ladles of sweet sauce in their bills. What Hermippus says about the Attic market (Phormophoroi, fr. 1) is interesting for a different reason, since it throws real light upon the imports into Attica. The second fragment from the same comedy yields curious information about Greek wines. After mentioning the peculiar excellences of several sorts, the poet gives the palm to Saprias, so called because of its old, mellow, richly scented ripeness. "When the jar is opened, a perfume goes abroad of violets and roses and hyacinths, a wonderful scent that fills the house. This nectar is ambrosia and nectar in one. Keep it for my friends, but to my enemies give Peparethian." Eupolis supplies a description of parasites (Kolakes, fr. 1), the first detailed picture of a class that played a prominent part in Attic social life.[124]We may also mention, in passing, the fragment of a parabasis (Incert. Fab.fr. 1) which censures the Athenian audience for preferring foreign to native poets, and contains a reference to Aristophanes. Phrynichus yields the beautiful epitaph on Sophocles (Mousai, fr. 1) already quoted;[125]nor must his amusing caricature of a bad musician be passed over (Incert. Fab.fr. 1), for the sake of this line:

Μουσῶν σκελετός, ἀηδόνων ἠπιάλος, ὕμνος Ἅιδου,

"Mummy of Muses, ague of nightingales, hymn of Hades." Those who are curious about Greek games will do well to study the description of the cottabos in Plato (Zeus Kakoumenos, fr. 1) and to compare with it a fuller passage from Antiphanes[126](Aphrodites Gonai). Plato, again, presents us with a lively picture of a Greek symposium (Lacones, fr. 1), as well as a very absurd extract from a cookery-book, whereof the title was Φιλοξένου καινή τις Ὀψαρτυσία, "A new Sauce-science by Philoxenus" (Phaon, fr. 1). From Ameipsias might be selected for passing notice an allusion to Socrates (Konnos, fr. 1) and a scolion in two lines upon life and pleasure, sung to the flute at a drinking-party (Incert. Fab.fr. 1). Finally, Lysippus has spoken the praises of Athens in three burlesque iambics[127](Incert. Fab.fr. 1): "If you have never seen Athens, you are a stock; if you have seen her, and not been taken captive, a donkey; if you are charmed and leave her, a pack-ass."

On quitting the old for the middle comedy we find ourselves in a different intellectual atmosphere. The wit is more fine-spun, the humor more allusive; language, metre, and sententious reflections begin alike to be Euripidean. The fertility of the playwrights of this period was astounding. Antiphanes, one of the earliest, produced, according to some authorities, 260, and Alexis, one of the latest, 245 comedies on a great variety of subjects. It is doubtful, however, whether the authorship of these plays was accurately known by the Byzantine Greeks, from whom our information is derived. The fragments show that a strong similarity of style marked the whole school of poets, and that the younger did not scruple to pilfer freely from the elder. On the whole, the question of authorship is of less interest than the matters brought to light by such extracts as we possess. It has been remarked above that ridicule of the philosophers and parodies of the tragic poets were standing dishes in the middle comedy. Antiphanes has a fling at the elegant attire of the academic sages (Antaios), while Ephippus describes a philosophical dandy of the same school (Nauagos, fr. 1, p. 493). Their doctrines are assailed with mild sarcasm. A man, when asked if he has a soul, replies: "Plato would tell me I don't know, but I rather think I have" (Cratinus,Pseudupobolimaios, p. 516). In another play some one is gently reminded that he is talking of things about which he knows nothing—like Plato (Alexis,Ankylion, p. 518). Again, Plato is informed that his philosophy ends in knowing how to frown[128](Amphis,Dexidemides, p. 482). In another place it is discovered that hissummum bonumconsists in refraining from marriage and enjoying life (Philippides,Ananeosis, fr. 2, p. 670). Other philosophers, the Pythagoreans (Alexis,Tarantini, frs. 1, 2, 3, pp. 565, 566), and Aristippus (Galatea, fr. 1, p. 526), for example, come in for their share of ridicule. The playwrights not unfrequently express their own philosophy, sad enough beneath the mask of mirth. Very gloomy, for example, is the view of immortality recorded by Antiphanes (Aphrodisios, fr. 2, p. 358); while the comparison by Alexis of human life to a mad pastime enjoyed between two darknesses (p. 566) has something in it that reminds one of a dance of death. Very seldom has the insecurityof all things, leading to devil-may-care self-indulgence, been more elegantly expressed than by Antiphanes (Stratiotes, fr. 1, p. 397). Anaxandrides, for his part, formulates theological agnosticism in words memorable for their pithy brevity (Canephorus, p. 422):

ἅπαντές ἐσμεν πρὸς τὰ θεῖ' ἀβέλτεροικοὐκ ἴσμεν οὐδέν·We're all mere dullards in divinityAnd know just nothing.

ἅπαντές ἐσμεν πρὸς τὰ θεῖ' ἀβέλτεροικοὐκ ἴσμεν οὐδέν·

We're all mere dullards in divinityAnd know just nothing.

One thing is clear in all such utterances, that the deeper speculations of Plato and Aristotle had taken no hold on the minds of the people at large, and that such philosophy as had penetrated Athenian society was a kind of hedonistic scepticism. Epicurus, in the next age, had nothing to do but to give expression to popular convictions. Take, for one instance more, these lines from Amphis (Gynæcocratia, p. 481):

πῖνε, παῖζε· θνητὸς ὁ βίος· ὀλίγος οὑπὶ γῇ χρόνος.ἀθάνατος δ' ὁ θάνατός ἐστιν, ἂν ἅπαξ τις ἀποθάνῃ.Drink and play, for life is fleeting; short our time beneath the sky:But for death, he's everlasting, when we once have come to die.

πῖνε, παῖζε· θνητὸς ὁ βίος· ὀλίγος οὑπὶ γῇ χρόνος.ἀθάνατος δ' ὁ θάνατός ἐστιν, ἂν ἅπαξ τις ἀποθάνῃ.

Drink and play, for life is fleeting; short our time beneath the sky:But for death, he's everlasting, when we once have come to die.

Occasionally, the same keen Attic wit is exercised upon old-fashioned Greek proverbs. Simonides had said that health, beauty, and moderate wealth were the three best blessings. Anaxandrides demurs (Thesaurus, fr. 1, p. 421): the poet was most certainly mad; for a handsome man, if he be poor, is but an ugly beast.

A few of the fragments throw some light upon dramatic literature. Antiphanes (Poesis, fr. 1, p. 392) compares tragedy and comedy with covert irony: Blest indeed is the lot of a tragic play, for, to begin with, the spectators know the whole legend by the name it bears, and then, when the poet gets tired, he has only to lift the machine like his finger, and, hocus-pocus, all is ended; but in a comedy everything must be made from the beginning and explicitly set forth—persons, previous circumstances, plot, catastrophe, and episode—and if a jot or tittle is overlooked, Tom or Jerry in the pit will hiss us off the stage. The cathartic power of tragedy is described by Timocles (Dionysiazusæ, p. 614) in lines that sound like a common-sense version of Aristotle: Man is born to suffer, and there are many painful things in life; accordingly he has discovered consolation for his sad thoughts in tragedies, which lure the mind away to think of greater woes, and send the hearer soothed, and at the same time lessoned, home—the poor man, for example, finds that Telephus was still more poor, the sick man sees Alcmæon mad, the lame man pities Philoctetes and forgets himself; if one has lost a son, Niobe is enough to teach him resignation; and so on through all the calamities of life: gazing at sufferings worse than our own, we are forced to be contented.

Some of the most charming of the comic fragments are descriptions of sleep. A comedy variously ascribed to Antiphanes and Alexis bears the name of Sleep, and contains a dialogue (p. 570), of which the following is a version:

A.Not mortal, nor immortal, but of bothBlent in his being, so that gods nor menCan claim him for their own; but ever freshHe grows, and then dies off again to nothing,Unseen by any, but well known to all.B.Lady, you always charm me thus with riddles.A.Yet what I say is clear and plain enough.B.What boy is this that has so strange a nature?A.Sleep, O my daughter, he that cures our ills.

B.Lady, you always charm me thus with riddles.

A.Yet what I say is clear and plain enough.

B.What boy is this that has so strange a nature?

A.Sleep, O my daughter, he that cures our ills.

Scarcely less delicate are the two following lines (pp. 749, 607):

ὅ τι προῖκα μόνον ἔδωκαν ἡμῖν οἱ θεοί,τὸν ὕπνον,

and

ὕπνος τὰ μικρὰ τοῦ θανάτου μυστήρια.[129]

In this connection I may quote a beautiful fragment from Diphilus (Incert. Fab.fr. 5, p. 647) on Death and Sleep:

There is no life without its share of evil,Griefs, persecutions, torments, cares, diseases:Of these death comes to cure us, a physicianWho gives heart's ease by filling us with slumber.

Before engaging in a group of fragments more illustrative of common Greek life, I will call attention to the examples of Attic slang furnished by Anaxandrides (Odysseus, fr. 2, p. 424). To translate them into equivalent English would tax the ingenuity of Frere; but it is worth noticing that thisargot, like that of our universities or public schools, is made up of the most miscellaneous material. Religious ritual, the theatre, personal peculiarities, the dust that is the plague of Athens, articles of dress, and current fables all supply their quota. It is, in fact, the slang of cultivated social life.

Next to cooks, parasites, and fishwives, thedemi-mondeof Athens plays the most prominent part in comedy of the middle period.[130]The following couplet from a play of Philetærus (Kunegis, fr. 3, p. 477) might be chosen as a motto for an essay on this subject:

οὐκ ἐτὸς ἑταίρας ἱερόν ἐστι πανταχοῦ,ἀλλ' οὐχὶ γαμετῆς οὐδαμοῦ τῆς Ἑλλάδος.

This pithily expresses the pernicious relation in which the mistress, dignified by the name of companion, stood in Attic Hellas towards the married wife. The superiority of the former over the latter in popular appreciation is set forth with cynical directness by Amphis (Athamas, fr. 1, p. 480).

The Greeks had no sort of shame about intersexual relations; and of this perfect freedom of speech the comic poets furnish ample illustration in their dealing with the subject of adultery. There is not here the faintest trace of French romance. Sentiment of some kind is required to season the modern breaches of the seventh commandment. To the Greeks, who felt the minimum of romance in intersexual love, adultery appeared both dangerous and silly, when the laws of Solon had so well provided safety-valves for vice.[131]At the same time, the pages of the comic poets abound in violent invectives against licentious and avaricious women who were the ruin of young men. Anaxilas (Neottis, fr. 1, p. 501), in a voluble invective against "companions" of this sort, can find no language strong enough. They are serpents, fire-breathing chimeras, Charybdis and Scylla, sea-dogs, sphinxes, hydras, winged harpies, and so forth. Alexis describes the artswhereby they make the most of mean attractions, and suit their style to the current fashion (Isostasion, fr. 1, p. 537). Epicrates paints the sordid old age of once-worshipped Lais in language that might serve as a classic pendant to Villon'sRegrets de la belle Héaulimiere(Antilaïs, fr. 2, p. 510). In no point does the civilized society of great cities remain so constant as in the characteristics of Bohemian life. In this respect Athens seems to have been much the same as Venice in the sixteenth, and Paris in the nineteenth century.

What these playwrights say of love in general scarcely differs from the opinions already quoted from the tragic poets. Amphis (Dithyrambus, fr. 2, p. 482) and Alexis (Helene, p. 532;Traumatias, fr. 2, p. 569;Phædrus, fr. 1, p. 571;Incert. Fab.fr. 38, p. 582) may be referred to by the curious. It is worth while at this point to mention that some valuable illustrations of the later Attic comedy are to be drawn from the collectors of characteristics, like Theophrastus, and from rhetoricians who condensed the matter of the comic drama in their prose. The dialogues of Lucian, the letters of Alciphron, the moral treatises of Plutarch and Maximus Tyrius, and the dissertations of Athenæus are especially valuable in this respect. Much that we have lost in its integrity is filtered for us through the medium of scholastic literature, performing for the middle comedy imperfectly that which Latin literature has done more completely for the new.

In dealing with the old comedy, one reference has been already made to cooks and cookery-books. In the middle comedy they assume still more importance, and in the secondary authors of the new comedy they occupy the foreground of the picture, thanks to Athenæus. Cooks at Athens formed a class apart. They had theirstations in the market, their schools, their libraries of culinary lore, their pedantries and pride and special forms of knavery. The Roman custom of keeping slaves to cook at home had not yet penetrated into Greece. If a man wanted to entertain his guests at a dinner-party, or to prepare a wedding-feast, he had to seek the assistance of a professionalcordon bleu, and the greatchefensconced himself for the day, with his subordinates, in the house of his employer. It is clear that these customs offered situations of rare comic humor to the playwright. Everybody had at some time felt the need of the professional cook, and everybody had suffered under him. In an age, moreover, which was nothing if it was not literary, the cooks caught the prevailing tone, and professed their art according to the rules of rhetoric.

εἰς τοὺς σοφιστὰς τὸν μάγειρον ἐγγράφω[132]

exclaims one of the characters of Alexis (Milesia, fr. 1, p. 551), after a scientific demonstration of the sin of letting sauces cool. A paterfamilias in a play of Strato (Phœnikides, p. 703) complains that he has brought a "male sphinx" in the shape of a cook into his house. The fellow will not condescend to use any but Homeric language, and the master is quite puzzled. It is in vain that he takes down the Homeric glossary of Philetas. Even this does not mend matters. The cook is a more recondite scholar than the grammarian. A professor of the culinary art in a play of Nicomachus (Eileithuia, p. 717) explains to his employer the broad scientific basis upon which the art of cooking rests. Astrology, geometry, medicine, and natural history are all necessary. Another, in Damoxenus(Syntrophi, p. 697), discusses various schools of philosophy from the culinary point of view. He begins by saying that he has spent four talents and nearly three years in the school of Epicurus, and has learned that a cook who has not mastered metaphysics is worthless. He must have Democritus and Epicurus at his fingers' ends, understand the elements of fire and water, comprehend the laws of harmony, and arrive at a profound contempt for Stoical self-discipline.[133]The study of cookery-books employs as much time and demands as much enthusiasm as the study of the sages. A cook in Baton (Euergetæ, p. 685) shakes off sleep and trims the midnight oil that he may meditate the weighty precepts of his masters in the art.[134]Another, in Euphron (Adelphi, p. 679), expounds the various virtues of his predecessors, and remarks that his own peculiar merit consists in clever larceny. The same author makes a cook explain to his pupil the distinctions he ought to observe in catering for a club and for a wedding-party (Synephebi, p. 682). One of the fragments of Menander turns, finally, upon the art of treating guests of different nationalities to different dishes (Trophonius, p. 46). In this passage Menander seems to have had in mind some lines of Diphilus (Apolipousa, fr. 1, p. 633). Another curious extract from the latter poet (Zographus, fr. 2, p. 638) consists of a long harangue delivered by a master-cook to hisprotégé, a waiter, concerning the advantages and disadvantages of various houses into which he gains admittance by his art. A merchant just returned from sea, a spendthrift heir, and a leader of thedemi-mondeare good customers because of their prodigality. On the whole, the impression left upon our minds is that, whatwith democracy, all-pervading pedantry, and professional pride, high life below stairs in Athens was even more difficult to tolerate than it is in England.

To draw a firm line of demarcation between the middle and the new comedy would be impossible. I have already expressed my opinion that the comic drama culminated, within the limits determined for it by antique society, in the art of Menander. The modulations through which it passed before attaining to this final stage were numerous, and there are indications that the types invented for the middle comedy persisted in the new. What really created the third manner, and carried the comic art to its perfection, was the appearance of a truly original genius in the person of Menander. The playwrights who succeeded could not fail to feel his influence, and plied their craft within the sphere he had traced.

Menander was the nephew of Alexis, the pupil of Theophrastus, the exact contemporary and intimate friend of Epicurus. From his uncle he received the traditions of dramatic art; from his master he learned the peripatetic method of analysis; together with his friend he put in practice the philosophy of ἀταραξία which passes by the name of Epicureanism. His adequacy to the spirit of his own age can only be paralleled by that which we observe in Sophocles. As Sophocles exactly represents the period of Attic perfection, so the sadder and more sober years of disillusionment and premature decay find full expression in Menander. His personal beauty, the love of refined pleasure that distinguished him in life, the serene and genial temper of his wisdom, the polish of his verse, and the harmony of parts he observed in composition, justify us in calling Menander the Sophocles of comedy. Like Sophocles, he showed the originality of his genius by defining the limits of his art. He perfected the comic drama by restricting it more closely to real life. The love-tales—ἔρωτες καὶ παρθένων φθοραί—which Anaxandrides is said to have introduced, became the fixed material of the new comedy. Menander, however, used this subject-matter less for sensational effect or sentimental pathos than for the expression of a deep and tranquil wisdom. If we were to judge by the fragments transmitted to us, we should have to say that Menander's comedy was ethical philosophy in verse; so mature is their wisdom, so weighty their language, and so grave their tone. The brightness of the beautiful Greek spirit is sobered down in him almost to sadness. Middle age, with its maturity, has been substituted for youth with its passionate intensity. Taking Menander for our guide, we cannot cry: "You Greeks are always children." Yet the fact that Stobæus found him a fruitful source of sententious quotations, and that alphabetical anthologies were made of his proverbial sayings, ought not to obscure his fame for drollery and humor. The highest praise awarded by the Romans to Terence is contained in the apostrophedimidiate Menander; and it appears that what the Latin critics thought their poet wanted was the salt of Attic wit, the playful ease and lively sparkle of his master. It is certain that well-constructed plots, profound analysis of character, refined humor, and ripe philosophy were blent and subordinated to the harmony of beauty by Menander. If old men appreciated his genial or pungent worldly wisdom, boys and girls read him, we are told, for his love-stories. One thing at least he never could have been—loud or vulgar. And for this reason, perhaps, we learn less from Menander about parasites and cooks than from his fellow dramatists.

Speaking broadly, the philosophy in vogue at Athens during the period of the new comedy was what in modern days is known as Epicureanism. This is proved by the frequent references made by playwrights to pleasure as thesumum bonum,[135]as well as by their view of life in general. Yet it would be unjust to confound the grave and genial wisdom of Menander with so trivial a philosophy as that which may be summed up in the sentence "Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."[136]A fragment from an unknown play of his expresses the pathos of human existence with a depth of feeling that is inconsistent with mere pleasure-seeking (p.56):

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