Hosts routed, lakes of gore, and hills of slain,
An Iliad, work divine! raised from a day’s campaign.
By this time Greece was ready for definite mirth and laughter. What has come to be known as the Old Comedy was to the Athenians, we are told, what is now shown in the influences of the newspaper, the review, the Broadside, the satire, the caricature of the times and manners.
Nor were cartoons missing, for the grotesque pictures were as important a factor as the verbal or written words.
The Old Comedy is marked by political satire of a virulent personality. This is prohibited in the Middle Comedy, and replaced by literary and philosophical criticism of the ways of the citizens. The New Comedy, more repressed still, is the comedy of manners, and its influence continued to the Roman stage and further.
Of the Old Comedy, save for a few lesser lights, Aristophanes is the sole representative.
At the festivals of the god Dionysus, two elements were present. One the solemn rites, which developed into tragedy, and the other the grotesque and ribald orgies which were equally in evidence and which culminated in the idea of comedy.
The license of these symbolic representations was unbridled and all rules of decorum and decency were violated in the frenzied antics.
Doubtless many writings now lost to us were filled with the broad humor of the day, but we have only the plays of Aristophanes left.
Of the life of this Athenian not much is known. He was born after 450 B.C. and it was after the Peloponnesian War that he wrote his plays.