The poets of the transition, of whom we have just been speaking, have introduced us, more or less, to most, if not all, of the features which belong to the Middle Comedy proper; at the same time, it may not be amiss, for clearness’ sake, to recapitulate briefly those features, in so far as they affect our immediate subject.
The points on which it is essential to concentrate the attention are three in number:—
(1) In Middle Comedy, the preponderance of politics as the main dramatic interest—a preponderance which, naturally, tended to exclude women from the stage—disappears, and, consequently, female characters step inevitably into a more prominent position.
(2) The restriction of the original license of Comedy, had led the comedians to devote their talents to parodying mythological subjects; the parodists of mythology would naturally find their readiest materials in the stories of the amours of the various gods, and hence erotic stories of a sort at once come to the fore.
(3) Middle Comedy being in great part, if not entirely, devoted to the realistic treatment of contemporary social life, the Hetaerae, who formed an important feature in that life, were necessarily brought into prominence.[249]
Of these three main features,[250] the first two will not require special illustration,[251] but the last is one on which it will be necessary to dwell for some time.
The Hetaera-plays[252] are one of the most characteristic features of the fourth century; indeed, it may almost be said that admiration for the Hetaera, and ridicule of the wife, were the two main social canons of the period. These plays seem to have been realistic representations of contemporary life, and their general character is sufficiently demonstrated by the well-known retort of Antiphanes to Alexander;[253] but while they all thus have, as it were, a certain family likeness, it would appear, beyond doubt, that they may be also divided into two distinct classes, viz., those that have a distinct erotic plot, and those that have none, the latter naturally belonging to an earlier period of development than the former.
Plays dealing with Hetaerae were not, as we have already seen, exclusively a feature of the fourth-century Comedy, though the majority of such plays does, of course, belong to this period. In the very beginnings of Comedy at Athens, we have at least three plays of this class from the pen of Pherecrates,[254] while, at a later period of the fifth century, other works of a similar character seem certainly to have appeared.
The general character of these plays, however, seems, in spite of the modernity of their subject, to have been essentially that prevailing during the early period to which they belong. Pherecrates and his imitators seem to have been merely concerned in drawing a picture—perhaps a somewhat burlesque one—of the general life of an Hetaera and her followers, and in dwelling upon the various comic incidents which might occur in her environment, without troubling to connect these incidents by means of any very definite story. In other words, the Hetaera-play of Pherecrates was still, in the main, that mixture of pantomime and variety-show with which one is familiar in Aristophanes, and with which one’s ideas of the early Athenian Comedy are usually associated. And that plays of this class continued to be produced with success till well into the fourth century, there seems no reason to doubt.