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.
II. The Origin of Comedy.
Comedy was, in its origin, as seems indeed necessary from its nature, social rather than political. The scenes which the first comic actors aimed at depicting appear, beyond doubt, to have been representations of amusing incidents in the everyday life of ordinary people, and were in no way concerned with state policy; while the personalities with which this form of entertainment originally abounded, were aimed rather at rival actors than at well-known public characters, and had nothing at all in common with political lampoons. It is true that Comedy generally received its chief impulses at times of great popular license under democracies,[206] but this fact really means no more than that, at such periods, the amusements of the people received greater attention than would be the case under a tyranny or an oligarchy. No doubt these extempore slanging-matches became, at an early time already, very general in character, and contained, among other promiscuous allusions, occasional references, probably none too complimentary, to important contemporary events or personages; but that this was not their main feature, nor that which supplied their chief interest, seems shown, inter alia, by the fact that the first artistic development they received at the hands of Epicharmus was by no means in this direction. Nor, indeed, do the earliest Attic comedies appear to have been political in character, the few fragments of them which survive seeming, in every case, to deal with social subjects.[207]
The first writer to make Comedy political—that is, the first writer to give to the “Old” Comedy of Athens that which is, by modern readers, generally regarded as its most essential characteristic—was Cratinus. He, abandoning in great part that endeavour to amuse which had been the primary object of his predecessors, deliberately made use of Comedy as a political party engine, or, as he would perhaps have preferred to call it, as a means of attacking those who did harm to the state.[208] The success of the new element thus imported seems to have been very great; but, at the same time, it must not be supposed that the work of Cratinus was all of this nature. In the first place, some of his plays were of a distinctly general character. Thus the Odysses was a simple parody of the Odyssey of Homer, and, as such, was the distinct forerunner of a class of piece very common in the Social Comedy of the fourth century.[209] The Cleobulinae, with its enigmas, is equally suggestive of another feature of the same period of art. In like manner, the Panoptae, with its attacks on the philosopher Hippo, the Seriphii, with its mythological allusions, and the Horae, with its apparent discussions of tragedy, all point to the direction in which lay the true development of the art of Comedy.[210]
But, popular as the indiscriminate mud-throwing of Cratinus undoubtedly was with a large section of that cultured Athenian audience which one is taught to admire, a certain reaction was, in course of time, almost inevitable; and such a reaction was actually furnished by the comedies of Crates. Crates is described as the first Attic comedian to develop Comedy on the lines of Epicharmus, and to introduce a plot with apparently fictitious or allegorical characters, instead of merely bringing public characters on the stage and making them ridiculous.[211]
From a very early period, therefore, Comedy at Athens falls into two classes, the personal, which is usually also political, and the general or social, though the line of demarcation is not, of course, a very rigid one, since writers of the latter class would seldom feel much hesitation in attacking anyone who had made himself particularly obnoxious to them, even if he were a political character, while those of the former were also frequently compelled, for equally personal reasons, to set a limit to their righteous indignation. Thus Pherecrates, the most important of the actual imitators of Crates,[212] is by no means averse to an occasional personality, while a writer of the very opposite school, Hermippus, was yet the author of the Athenas Gonae.[213] Plato and Aristophanes are, of course, equally striking instances of the same fact occurring at a later date.
From the preceding paragraphs, which might have been considerably extended, had it not lain somewhat outside the present subject to extend them, one fact at least will be abundantly clear. That system of treating subjects rather than persons as material for comedy which is sometimes spoken of as a distinctive feature of “Middle” Comedy (using that term in its chronological sense), had already been in vogue at Athens from the very earliest times; in fact, what are commonly called “Old” and “Middle” Comedy are, in spirit, intimately associated with one another, and the most important differences between them are in purely external matters, brought about by external causes.[214]