The new Greek comedy

Front matter

t^iifcV;:

THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY

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

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 citystates 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 bewildering 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 unexpected 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 Lacedaemonians, 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 themselves 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, whatever 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 modified 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. Commerce 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 diminished, since only citizens possessed of the franchise were subject to conscription for military service, and the constitutional 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 magistrates invested with inquisitorial powers. This legislaxii 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 attained 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 tragedians was reproduced at the same festival. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were still supreme. The legislation 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 altogether 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 respectively 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 ! "

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 Antipater, 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 Parthenon 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 criticising 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 inconsiderable 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

§ 1. Personal Invective, 23; § 2. Mythical Elements, the Supernatural, 31.

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

§ 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

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.

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.

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

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

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

PATHETIC ELEMENTS IN NEW COMEDY— EXTENT AND

DIVERSITY OF THEIR DOMAIN 603

CONCLUSION oia

INDEX 633

THE NEW GREEK COMEDY INTRODUCTION

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 philological 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 information 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 considerably 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 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 fragments, 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).

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 presumption. 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).

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 useless. 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 documents, 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 establishing 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 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 representatives of the jueor] are mentioned between the representatives 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).

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

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 misinterpretation ? I maintain that this supposed misinterpretation 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 misunderstanding 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 exposed 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.