Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry / A fragment printed for the use of scholars

by E. F. M. Benecke

I. The Classification of Comedy

The classification of Greek Comedy has been, from the earliest times, a subject of dispute. The ancient critics, for the most part, divided comedy into two classes only—the Old Comedy, which has a parabasis, and the New Comedy, which has none. According to these critics, the acme of the Old Comedy was reached during the Peloponnesian War, that of the New Comedy during the reign of Alexander. That this system of classification, though sound as far as it goes, is not an adequate one, will be admitted by every student of the subject, and need not be further discussed. The alternative division of comedy into three classes, corresponding roughly to the sixth, seventh, and eighth so-called periods of Greek literature[202]—a scheme of arrangement that has on the whole been most generally accepted in modern times—is also not a very satisfactory one; for, apart from the initial objection that it, like all similar chronological arrangements, is far too rigid to be applied to anything so intangible as a literary tendency, there is the further and graver objection that there is really no essential difference whatever between the comedies performed at Athens during the reign of Philip and those performed there in the time of Alexander.

The Orge of Menander, produced in the year after the death of the latter monarch, might have been produced, as far as one can judge of its character by its remains, in any year of the previous fifty.

At the same time, however, it is certain that a division of comedy into three classes rather than two is necessary; for that the work of, say, Apollodorus Carystius, differs as much from that of Antiphanes as anything the latter ever wrote does from the work of Eupolis, is a fact that no one acquainted with the subject is likely to question.

The only satisfactory system of classification is that based, not on style or chronology, but on subject. Greek comedy falls naturally into three great divisions—the Political, the Social, and the Romantic,[203] and, to come at once to the point, these three divisions are characterised by three distinct ways of regarding women. The Political Comedy practically ignores women altogether; the Social Comedy admits the fascination of woman’s society as an incident in a man’s life; the Romantic Comedy claims woman’s love as the one topic of absorbing interest for men.

And here it may at once be observed that the relation between the first two forms of art is somewhat different from that which exists between them and the last. The Social Comedy was the natural and logical development of the original primitive comedy, and the Comedy of Cratinus, with its political motive, was but a temporary branch of the art, which, though growing at one time to such striking proportions as well nigh to conceal the parent stem, yet never actually prevented the growth and development of the latter. The Romantic Comedy, on the other hand, was the result, not of development, but of revolution. It was a deliberate attempt (undertaken in the first instance, it would seem, by a single man of genius) to inoculate the old Athenian drama with those romantic ideas which were by this time beginning to be freely expressed in various other parts of Greece, and to combine the teaching of the epic erotic legends, which were in essence ideal, with the realism of Social Comedy.[204]

This being the case, one would not unnaturally expect to find a more decided line of cleavage between the writers of the two last phases of Comedy than is apparent in the previous case. And this is unquestionably so. Throughout the fifth century we find political and social comedy flourishing side by side, the great mass of the comedians being equally at home in either branch of the art, while, towards the close of that century and at the beginning of the next, the boundary line between the writers of “Old” and “Middle” Comedy is notoriously a very faint one. At the end of the fourth century, on the other hand, the victory of the Romantic Comedy was rapid and well-nigh complete, while there is generally no difficulty in saying without hesitation to which of the two classes, the modern or the old-fashioned, any given play of the transition belonged.[205]

But while the most satisfactory classification of Greek Comedy is unquestionably one on the lines suggested above, the ordinary division into Old, Middle, and New Comedy, is so generally recognised that it has seemed to me inadvisable to ignore it altogether, and so these terms will be found occurring repeatedly in the following pages. To avoid the possibility of any misunderstanding, however, it may be remarked that the term, “New Comedy,” will always be used in the sense of romantic comedy. The term, “Middle Comedy,” will be used in its ordinary sense, except that it will be extended to cover all works, irrespective of author, which are akin to the school of Antiphanes and Eubulus. The unsatisfactory term, “Old Comedy,” will only be used in those passages where the context renders its meaning unmistakable.