ἐπὰν δὲ γήμῃς, οὐδὲ σαυτοῦ κύριον
ἔξεστιν εἶναι· τὰς γὰρ εὐθύνας μόνον
ἐφημερινὰς τὰς τοῦ βίου κεκτήμεθα.
(Incert. 34.)
The examination of these fragments has been very barren of any but negative results, but this very barrenness is not perhaps without a certain significance. The Middle and the New Comedy kept the stage at Athens (to the exclusion, in great part, of original tragedy) without a check during the fourth century; but at the same time, the continuity of the dramatic tradition that pervades them is by no means unbroken, and the differences between the two styles of art are very marked. Of all these differences, there is none more striking than that in the treatment of the erotic element. This, which, though introduced early enough into the Middle Comedy, yet never attained to any real development there, appears suddenly in the New Comedy as a feature of overwhelming importance. Nor is this all. The erotic element, which, from henceforward, occupies so prominent a place in comedy, differs in character toto caelo from that which occurs in the earlier dramas. Instead of the ἑταίρα, the New Comedy introduces us to the παρθένος; instead of marriage being the stock subject of ridicule, it becomes the hero’s ideal.[367]
This change of attitude is so marked, that it seems impossible to regard the later feeling as a development of the earlier; the revolution is so violent, that it seems inevitable to admit that it came in some manner from without. And, as a matter of fact, if we consider the period from which the New Comedy dates, it is by no means difficult to conjecture what the source of this external influence may have been.
Menander brought out his first play, at a very early age, in 322; about this time, Asclepiades and Philetas were already coming into prominence; those influences which induced the Coan school to speak of women in a manner so different from that of previous writers, may well have impressed the Athenian also, and produced a body of poets who, though differing in certain important points from the “Alexandrians,” were yet distinctly romantic.
To this subject of the romantic element in the New Comedy, I hope at some future time to be able to return,[368] so that I will not speak of it further here, except so far as to point out that, firstly (an obvious fact, but one that seems sometimes strangely ignored), the New Comedy is distinctly later in date than the Coan school of poets, and cannot therefore, under any circumstances, claim priority for the introduction of the romantic element into literature; while secondly, if the introduction of this element was really due, as is commonly asserted, to the influence of Euripides, it seems strange that, while so many of his views were common property at Athens from the very beginning of the fourth century, not one of the Athenian playwrights, some of whom studied him so thoroughly, should have felt this particular influence till nearly a century after his death.