[187] Fr. 125.
[188] And the interval is in reality even longer, for but little of the later work of Aristophanes has survived.
[189] For an examination of the fragments of the Middle Comedy, vide [Excursus F].
[190] It may not be out of place to emphasise here once more the difference that exists between regarding women as an object of interest or importance, and regarding them as an object of love; for the two have been confused by many, not only in estimating the influence of Euripides (cp. supra, pp. [40, 50]), but also in considering the events of the earlier part of the fourth century. Thus many have pointed to the agitation in favour of “women’s rights” satirised in the Ecclesiazusae, or to the great social importance of the Hetaerae (as illustrated in the Middle Comedy, &c.), or to the generally ameliorated condition of women of every class, as proofs of the existence at this period already of the romantic feeling. But to those who care to consider the matter clearly, it must be apparent that all these things are really beside the question. The improved state of women and their increasing power may have helped, and doubtless did help, to spread the romantic feeling when once it had originated; but they were in the first instance entirely independent of it. One does not ipso facto feel a romantic attachment for people because one is compelled to recognise them socially, while in these days of extended franchises it is surely not necessary to repeat that political recognition is not the same as love.
[191] Cp. Quint. x. 1, 53; Anth. Pal. vii. 409, &c.; vide Dübner, Asii &c. Frag. p. 28 seqq. (at the end of Didot’s Hesiod).
If the epigram attributed to Antimachus in Anth. Pal. ix. 321, be really his, he must further be regarded as one of the originators of the Dedicatory Epigram. Cp. Reitzenstein, Epig. u. Skol. p. 131.
[192] For a full account of it, vide Bach, Philetas, &c., Epimetrum iii. (p. 240); Dübner, op. cit. p. 40.
Λύδης δ’ Ἀντίμαχος Λυσηΐδος ἐκ μὲν ἐρωτος
πληγεὶς Πακτωλοῦ ῥεῦμ’ ἐπέβη ποταμοῦ.