[250] With the other distinctive features of Middle Comedy, though occasional reference may be made to them, we have less to do. It may not however be amiss, in passing, just to notice the spirit of the age, which, while it required personal attacks on men to be more or less veiled, allowed personal attacks of the fiercest description to be made on women openly by name. A remarkable instance of this is the Antilais of Epicrates, but it is far from being the only one. As for those Middle Comedies which are called after public men (e.g. the Theramenes of Cratinus junior), it would be easy to believe that these were all, as some of them certainly were, composed after the deaths of the persons whose names they bear, and that these names were simply used as types, in the way that Juvenal speaks of Tigellinus, &c.
[251] With regard to what we have described as the second feature of Middle Comedy, it may perhaps just be remarked that this constant habit of parodying and ridiculing love-stories would inevitably tend, in some sort, to bring the whole matter of love into contempt. And that the feelings of contempt so produced, and the similar feelings which originated them, would act and react on one another till both became even more accentuated, was equally inevitable. Nor must it be forgotten that the influence of tragedy, which might otherwise have served to counteract this tendency, was much less than it had been at an earlier period, for the revivals and imitations of Euripides, which held the tragic stage throughout the century, popular though some of them may have been, belonged in spirit to the previous generation, and were thus to a certain extent out of touch with contemporary feeling.
[252] Many plays of this class are called after real or imaginary Hetaerae, such as the Chrysis of Antiphanes, &c., &c., but these are, of course, not the only ones that deal with the subject.
[253] Ἀντιφάνης ὁ κωμῳδοποιὸς ὡς ἀνεγίνωσκέ τινα τῷ βασιλεῖ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ κωμῳδιῶν, ὁ δὲ δῆλος ἦν οὐ πάνυ τι ἀποδεχόμενος· δεῖ γάρ, ἔφησεν, ὦ βασιλεῦ, τὸν ταῦτα ἀποδεχόμενον ἀπὸ συμβόλων τε πολλάκις δεδειπνηκέναι καὶ περὶ ἑταίρας πλεονάκις καὶ εἰληφέναι καὶ δεδωκέναι πληγάς. (Athen. xiii. 555A.)
[255] No one who is familiar with the Middle Comedy is likely to wish to maintain that the words παρθένων φθοράς imply that the plays of Anaxandrides were similar in character to such plays as the Andria or the Adelphi of Menander. The exact nature of the παρθένων ἔρωτες of the Middle Comedy, which form, in fact, an infinitesimal part of the erotic element in that literature, will be fully discussed lower down. [pp. [159], [213].]
[256] Curious in this connection is the fact that, while the Captivi of Plautus is the only extant play derived from Anaxandrides, it is, at the same time, the only extant play of Latin Comedy which is not concerned with erotic subjects.
[257] That τραγήματα was merely a polite word for drinking, seems clear from Alexis, Polycleia:—
ὁ πρῶτος εὑρὼν κομψὸς ἦν τραγήματα·
τοῦ συμποσίου γὰρ διατριβὴν ἔξευρέ πως