τίνι δεδούλωταί (sc. ὁ ἐραστής) ποτε;
ὄψει; φλύαρος. κ.τ.λ....
... καιρός ἐστιν ἡ νόσος
ψυχῆς.
(Menand. Incert. 14.)
That is: Menander, a writer familiar with love in its most passionate forms (θιασώτην καὶ ὀργιαστήν), gives us a sober and serious view of the matter. After expressing his astonishment at the ways of lovers, he furnishes us with a realistic account of love as it actually is (ὥσπερ ἐστὶν ἅμα λαλεῖ),[316] and then proceeds to investigate its causes. For a moment he is puzzled, and questions with himself, but soon he finds the true answer. καιρός ἐστιν ἡ νόσος ψυχῆς. Love is an affection of the soul as distinct from the body, and has only an accidental connection with the latter.[317]
Equally forcible, though in another way, is a passage from the Poenulus. The lover and his slave are watching the two girls, and the slave expresses his utter contempt for his master’s “Platonic” affection, to which the latter answers that he loves Adelphasium as he loves the gods.[318] Another case is in the Curculio, where the love of Phaedromus for Planesium is fed on nothing more substantial than kisses;[319] another in the Hecyra, where it is distinctly pointed out that the love of Pamphilus for his wife is induced by other than sensual considerations.[320] Other instances, of more or less significance, every reader of the Latin comedians will be able to supply for himself; and it is further worth observing that when a New Comedy character, as occasionally does happen, is made to speak slightingly of “Platonic” love, such a character is always a slave, never a person of refinement.[321]
To proceed to the final point of essential difference between Middle and New Comedy, it will be remembered that, in the former class of literature, family life and the mutual relations of members of a family were among the stock subjects of ridicule, and that no remarks expressive of any other views on this matter are to be found there, at any rate before a very late period.[322] Family life, as depicted in the New Comedy, is by no means ideal; indeed, as we have already had occasion to remark, the unhappy relations between husband and elderly wife are, under certain circumstances, a favourite subject of ridicule, even with Menander.[323] But yet instances to the contrary are to be found, and are, in fact, by no means very uncommon. Not to speak of the cases of devotion of wife to husband and husband to wife—such as those in the Stichus, &c., already sufficiently discussed[324]—the relations between father and children, and, still more, mother and children,[325] are often described as of the most delightful character.
Of the former, there are interesting examples in Menand. Incert. 59:
αἰσχύνομαι τὸν πατέρα, Κλειτοφῶν, μόνον,