In comedy proper names, and consequently introductions, are less important. The names of tragedy were largely traditional and conveyed a meaning to all educated persons in the audience as soon as they heard them (see [pp. 127 f.], above); but in comedy a character might almost as well have no name at all as one which had no associations for the spectators. Accordingly, Aristophanes and Plautus left many of their characters nameless. Of course when well-known citizens of Athens, such as Socrates, Euripides, or Lamachus, were ridiculed, they were definitely named at their first appearance. When a significant comic name was employed it was not mentioned until the audience was in a position to appreciate the point of the joke, sometimes not until well along in the play. Thus in Aristophanes’ Birds the names of Pisthetaerus (Plausible) and Euelpides (Hopeful) are first mentioned at vss. 644 f.
I conclude this section with three examples of clever introductions. In Euripides’ Bacchanals (vss. 170 ff.) the blind Tiresias cries:
Gate-warder, ho! call Cadmus forth the halls
... Say to him that Tiresias
Seeks him—he knoweth for what cause I come,
and Cadmus, coming out, replies:
Dear friend, within mine house I heard thy voice,
And knew it, the wise utterance of the wise.
[Way’s translation]
The announcement of a new character’s coming was usually a pretty artificial device, but it is plausibly employed a little farther on (vss. 210 ff.) in this same play, when Cadmus says: