VI. The Poets of the Transition.
To return after this somewhat lengthy digression to our examination of the poets of the transition.
Plato, even more than his model Aristophanes, was a follower of the political school of Cratinus, revelling in personal attacks of the most violent kind, and hence there seems little reason to doubt that such of his plays as bear the stamp of Middle Comedy belong to his later period, and were only produced, decidedly invita Minerva, when the free license of abuse had been artificially checked. Hence the allusions in his works to women or erotic subjects seem to have been unusually scarce. In the Adonis, mention is made of the rival lovers of the hero, Aphrodite and Dionysus; but there is nothing to indicate that this play contained anything of the nature of a serious exposition of the respective claims of male and female love. The Zeus Cacumenus very probably introduced Zeus in his usual comic character of the adulterer, as did the Nyx Macra,[242] and the Europe may very possibly have treated of a similar subject. More original, however, and interesting than these is the Phaon, which seems to have been one of the poet’s latest works, and which furnishes a good specimen of his manner of treating women. Phaon, having been presented by Aphrodite with the cosmetics which were to inspire universal passion, appears surrounded by a crowd of admiring women, who are, however, refused access to his presence, unless they perform certain propitiatory rites (Fr. 2), and otherwise prove themselves worthy of the honour. The means by which one lady eventually qualifies (Fr. 4) can only be guessed, but the language of Fr. 3 seems to suggest that the contest was somewhat after the manner of those described in Anth. Pal. v. 35 or Alciphron i. 39, 4 seqq.[243] The interest of this piece lies in the fact that the plot is, despite its ribald handling, unequivocally a love-story, and, as such, perhaps distinct from any piece that we have hitherto had occasion to examine. That the love-story is, however, of the kind which belongs essentially to Middle Comedy, and has nothing whatever in common with those of the later romantic comedy, will become abundantly clear when we come to deal with the points of difference between these two schools of art.[244]
The information to be gained from the remains of the other poets of the transitional period is sadly scanty. The Moechi of Ameipsias, a play which, to judge by the title, might have thrown much light on the present subject, is hopelessly lost. Of the Sappho even the title is doubtful. The celebrated Ichthys of Archippus seems to have contained punning allusions to the Hetaerae Sepia and Aphye, a sign of the growing inclination to discuss this class of persons on the stage. The latter lady, or a namesake of hers, is mentioned by Callias in his Cyclopes. Of the Atalanta of the same writer, one line is preserved:
κέρδος αἰσχύνης ἄμεινον· ἕλκε μοιχὸν ἐς μυχόν,
which seems in some sort to suggest that episode in the life of the mythical Atalanta, daughter of Schoeneus, which led to her metamorphosis[245]; but, seeing that even the title Atalanta is doubtful, this conjecture cannot be considered as very certain. Strattis appears to have introduced Lais on the stage in his Macedones (Fr. 5), and in his parodies of the Medea, the Phoenissae, &c., the female characters of Euripides doubtless came in for their full share of ridicule, though no definite evidence to this effect has been preserved.
A little more information is to be gained from the works of those poets who belonged to the very end of the period of transition. Thus, the plays of Theopompus, which deal almost exclusively with Middle Comedy subjects, furnish several instances of that treatment of female characters with which one is familiar in the plays of the Middle Comedy proper. The Aphrodisia introduces us to the Hetaerae celebrating their customary festival. Fr. 1 affords a specimen of the remarks passed on absent friends on such occasions,[246] while Fr. 2 gives further details of the festivities. The solitary but considerable fragment of the Nemea (called after the Hetaera of that name) gives a lively description of a scene in which an intending lover is doing his best to gain the approval of the lady’s lena, a class which was, doubtless, as devoted then to the curto vetus amphora collo as it was 400 years later.[247] In the Capelides it is equally possible to get a glimpse of the action of the piece. A man dropping in at the bar of a house he has been in the habit of frequenting, and finding himself less effusively welcomed than he had had reason to hope (Fr. 3, 4), threatens to attack the proprietress and the rival of whom he is jealous (Fr. 5). Of the rest, the Hedychares described a wedding ceremony (Fr. 3),[248] the Callaeschrus contained an allusion to the expensiveness of certain Hetaerae, and general erotic allusions are not uncommon (e.g. Odysseus 1, Medus 2). The Stratiotides seems to have had some points in common with the Ecclesiazusae of Aristophanes. Alcaeus, who is one of the very latest in date of the writers usually ranked as belonging to the “Old” Comedy, deals in nearly all his plays with erotic subjects, mostly in the shape of mythological stories burlesqued. To this class belong the Pasiphae, the Hierus Gamus, the Endymion, the Ganymedes, and perhaps the Callisto, unless this be, like the Palaestra, named after an Hetaera. From this list of titles it may be seen that every style of love came in for treatment, but in no case are the fragments sufficiently numerous, for it to be possible even to hazard a guess as to what the nature of that treatment may have been. As to the plot of the Adelphae Moecheuomenae, we are equally in the dark, though the title seems to suggest the Aeolosicon of Aristophanes and the Canace of Euripides. Lastly, in the Antea of Eunicus and the Thalatta of Diodes, both named after Hetaerae, we have two further instances of a class of piece with which we have been steadily growing more familiar, the nearer we have approached the confines of the typical “Middle” Comedy.