1Yet this contemptible poet carried off from Euripides the tragic garland, Olymp. XCI. 2, B. c. 415. In the Pax, Aristophanes applies the term unxavodipas to the family. From the Scholiast it appears that Xenocles was celebrated for introducing machinery and stage shows, especially in the ascent or descent of his Gods. From the two lines in the Nubes, quoted above, we may infer that the father, Carcinus, was like his son, fond of introducing the deities. ACESTOR was another of the tragic contemporaries of Aristophanes, by whom he is charged with being a foreigner, and not an Athenian citizen. PYTHANGELUS is barely named in the Rance (86); where the Scholiast informs us that he was a sorry tragedian. MORSIMUS, Son of Philocles, and MELANTHIUS, are assailed by Aristophanes in the Chorus of the Pax3, where the family of Carcinus suffer. The worst imprecation Cleon can invoke upon himself, if he hate not the sausage-seller, is Καὶ διδασκοίμην προσᾴδειν Μορσίμου τραγῳδίαν.—Eq. 399. And Hercules, enumerating the criminals who are plunged in the Tartarean Bópßopos, concludes the lists of parricides, perjurers, and swindlers, &c. with 5 Η Μορσίμου τις ῥῆσιν ἐξεγράψατο. Melanthius was afflicted with the leprosy, to which the Comic poet alludes in the Aves (151). In the Pax (974), he is ridiculed for his gluttony. MORYCHUS is another tragedian, whose gormandizing notoriety Aristophanes mentions in the Acharnians and the Pax. 6. 1. See Bentley above, p. 23. He 2. Aves, 31, with Schol. Vespæ, 1221, with Brunck's note. 3. Pax, 775, &c. 4. Ranæ, 151. 5. See Athen. viii. p. 343. 6. Dicæopolis (Acharn. 852.) addresses the Copaic eel as piλn de Mopúxy: and again Trygæus prays Peace (Pax, 970.) that when marketing he may have to fight for hampers of Copaic eels Μορύχῳ, Τελέα, Γλαυκέτῃ, ἄλλοις τένθαις πολλοῖς. seems to have been a fop as well as an epicure1. The same failings are ascribed to him by Plato the Comedian. IOPHON was the son of Sophocles, whose plays he was suspected of exhibiting as his own. Be that as it may, he is represented as being the best tragic poet at the time when the Ranc was composed; for Sophocles, Euripides, and Agathon were then dead. Iophon is said to have contended against his father, with much honour to himself as a dramatist. He, too, is the son who is reported to have brought the unsuccessful charge of dotage against the age of Sophocles. See above, p. 46. CLEOPHON was contemporary with Critias3. His style was perspicuous, but not elevated, and sometimes the addition of a loftysounding epithet to a trifling noun made it ridiculous. His characters were drawn with an accurate but unpoetic adherence to reality. Ten tragedies of his are enumerated by Suidas and Eudocia, and a piece called Mavdpóßovλos by Aristotle3, from its name a comedy or other light poem. 6 STHENELUS is coupled by Aristotle with Cleophon as instances of too low a style. His compositions appear to have been dull and uninteresting7; for which fault we find him ridiculed by Aristophanes in a fragment of the Gerytade, Α. καὶ πῶς ἐγὼ Σθενέλου φάγοιμ' ἄν ῥήματα; B. εἰς ὄξος ἐμβαπτόμενος ἢ λευκούς ἅλας. 1. Ζῇν βίον γενναῖον, ὥσπερ Μόρυχος. Vespa, 506.In the same play (1142) Philocleon compares his handsome new cloak Mopuxou oάypati. 2. Ἡρακλῆς. τί δ ̓; οὐκ Ἰοφῶν ζῇ; τοῦτο γάρ τοι καὶ μόνον Ἡρακλῆς͵ εἶτ ̓ οὐχὶ Σοφοκλέα, πρότερον ὄντ ̓ Ευριπίδου, Διόνυσος. οὐ, πρίν γ' ἂν Ἰοφῶντ', ἀπολαβὼν αὐτὸν μόνον, 3. Arist. Rhet. i. 15. iii. 7. 4. Id. Poet. ii. 5. xxii. 2. Herm. Tyrwhitt (§ 4, note) however is inclined to doubt whether the Cleophon here mentioned be the tragic poet. He suspects, too, that the Cleophon noticed in the Rhetoric was some orator. 5. Soph. Elench. xv. 14. 6. Poet. xxii. 2. 7. Athen. ix. p. 367. Pollux, vi. 65. Schol. ad Vespæ, 1303. See also Tyrwhitt (Poet. § 37). 68 ASTYDAMAS. MELETUS. APHAREUS. EURIPIDES. SOPHOCLES. Harpocration1 likewise informs us that he was attacked by another comic writer as a plagiary. ASTYDAMAS first exhibited Olymp. xcv, 3, B. c. 398, and lived sixty years. He was the son of Morsimus, and grandson of Philocles, the nephew of Eschylus. He studied under Isocrates, and composed two hundred and forty tragedies, according to Suidas; a rather improbable number. MELETUS was the contemporary of Euripides, who is accused by 3 Aristophanes of copying his scolia. The Scholiast (in l. c. ) asserts that this Meletus was the unworthy accuser of Socrates. On the same authority we are informed that he was a frigid, inanimate poet, and a bad, unprincipled man. APHAREUS1 was the step-son of Isocrates. He began to exhibit Olymp. cIII, B. C. 368, and continued to compose till B. C. 341. He produced thirty-five or thirty-seven tragedies, and was four times victor. EURIPIDES junior, was the nephew of the great dramatist of that name3. Besides his own compositions he also exhibited several plays of his uncle then dead; one of which gained the prize. Böckh suspects that he reproduced the Iphigenia in Aulis, and perhaps the Palamedes. To this Euripides is ascribed by Suidas an edition (ekdoots) of Homer. SOPHOCLES, the grandson of the great tragedian, exhibited the Edipus Coloneus of his grandfather Olymp. XCIV, 4, B. c. 401. He first contended in his own name Olymp. XCVI, B. c. 3967. SOSICLES, a native of Syracuse, composed seventy-three tra 1. Harpoc. in V. 3. 2. Diod. Sic. xiv. 43. οὗτος δ ̓ ἀπὸ πάντων μὲν φέρει πορνιδίων 4. Plutarch in Isoc. 5. Suidas in V. See also Böckh de Trag. Græc. xiv. and xviii. 6. Arg. Ed. Col. apud Elsmleium ad Bacch. p. 14, and Suidas. 7. Diod. Sic. xiv. 53. 8. Suidas in V. Ranæ, 1297, gedies, and was seven times victor. He lived during the reigns of Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander. HERACLIDES PONTICUS, the pupil of Aristotle, wrote a work on the three great tragedians, and also published a series of dramas under the name of Thespis1. Under the Ptolemies flourished several tragic poets, particularly the seven distinguished by the appellation of the Pleiades. They were contemporary inmates at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and are stated by the Scholiast on Hephæstion 2 to have been Homer, son of Mycon, Sositheus, Lycophron, Alexander, Eantiades, Sosiphanes, and Philiscus. Of their dramatic works not a fragment remains. The loss is probably not great, if we may judge from the only poetical piece composed by one of that body which is left us, the Cassandra of Lycophron3. The creative powers of the Greeks were now so completely exhausted, that henceforth they were under the necessity of repeating the works of the ancient masters 1. 1. Laertius. v. 87. See above, page 15. note. 2. P. 32. ed. Pauw. The particular individuals, who composed the Pleiades, and their works are matters of great uncertainty. Should any one wish for a full discussion of this subject, he may refer to an article in the Acta Soc. Philolog. Lipsiensis, Vol. 11. pars 2, p. 389, &c. 3. Schlegel, Vol. 1. p. 189. 4. In the fourth century after the Christian æra a strange dramatic piece-fabula longè insulsissima (Porson, Orest. 837)—was published under the name of Gregory Nazianzenus, entitled, Xρioros Tάoxwv. See Porson Orest. 857. Medea, 389. 1314, &c. This is the last recorded Greek tragedy, if such it can be called. It seems to have been a mere piece of mosaic patch-work, composed of disjointed lines and phrases gathered here and there from the old dramatists, and so arranged as to give the history of the Passion: something after the manner of the Virgilius Evangelizans by Alexander Ross. CHAPTER II. SECTION I. THE OLD COMEDY. THE early history of Grecian Comedy is enveloped in still more obscurity than that of Grecian Tragedy. 1We have seen its origin referred by Aristotle to the Phallic songs of the ancient rustic Bacchanalia. This fact stands single and solitary. The same great critic acknowledges his own inability to trace downwards the progress of this branch of the Drama. The utmost, therefore, that modern research can hope to accomplish, is to form by inference and conjecture a faint line of connexion between those rude Bacchanalian ebullitions and the finished dramas of Aristophanes. The first shape, then, under which Comedy presents itself, is that of a ludicrous, licentious, and satyrical song; the extemporal effusion of a body of carousing countrymen, whilst accompanying the procession of the Phallus. In emerging from the disorderly bursts of these Phallic aurooxedido para towards a more regular form, the first step of Comedy would be, as in the progress of Tragedy, the establishment of a chorus, and the introduction of something like subject and composition into its songs and recitations. 3 The performers no longer, as heretofore, directed their jests 1. See above, p. 5. For a critical account of Grecian Comedy the reader is referred to the extracts from Schlegel's Lectures, given below, Part ii. 2. Αἱ μὲν οὖν τῆς τραγῳδίας μεταβάσεις, καὶ δι ̓ ὧν ἐγένοντο, οὐ λελήθασιν· ἡ δὲ κωμῳδία, δία τὸ μὴ σπουδάζεσθαι ἐξ ἀρχῆς, ἔλαθε.—Poet. v. 3. 3. Ἰάμβιζον ἀλλήλους.-Aristot. Poet. iv. 10. This was probably the æra of Susarion. He is called the Inventor of Comedy by the Arundel Marble; and his date may be inferred to be about 562 B. c. If the Marble be correct, by the term кwμwdía, as applied to him, we can understand nothing beyond a kind of rough extemporal farce performed by the chorus, into which Susarion might have improved the Phallic song. We are also told by Aristotle that the Megarians claimed the invention of comedy: Τῆς μὲν κωμῳδίας οἱ Μεγαρεῖς, οἵ τε ἐνταῦθα, ως ἐπὶ τῆς παρ' αὐτοῖς δημοκρατίας γενομένης, καὶ οἱ ἐκ Σικελίας. (Poet. iii. 5.) With |