438 HISTORY OF THE state than a distinct species. Consequently, we find, along with many features resembling the old comedy, also some peculiarities of the new. Aristotle indeed speaks only of an old and a new comedy, and does not mention the middle comedy as distinct from the new. The poets of the middle comedy are also very numerous ; they occupy the interval between 01. 100. b.c. 380, and the reign of Alexander. Among the earliest of them we find the sons of Aristophanes, Araros and Philippics, and the prolific Enbulus, who flourished about 01. 101. b.c. 376 : then follows Anaxandrides, who is said to have been the first to introduce into comedy the stories of love and seduction, which afterwards formed so large an ingredient in it* — so that we have here another reference to the new comedy, and the first step in its subsequent develope- ment. Then we have Amphis and Anaxilaus, both of whom made Plato the butt of their wit; the younger Cratinus ; Timocles, who ridi- culed the orators Demosthenes and Hyperides ; still later, Alexis, one of the most productive, and at the same time one of the most eminent of these poets : his fragments, however, show a decided affinity to the new comedy, and he was a contemporary of Menander and Philemon. t Antiphanes began to exhibit as early as 383 b.c. ; his comedies, however, were of much the same kind with those of Alexis : he was by far the most prolific of the poets of the middle comedy, and was distinguished by his redundant wit and inexhaustible invention. The number of his pieces, which amounted to 300, and according to some authorities ex- ceeded that number, proves that the comedians of this time no longer contended, like Aristophanes, with single pieces, and only at the Lenaea and great Dionysia, but either composed for the other festivals, or, what seems to us the preferable opinion, produced several pieces at the same festival. J § 7. These last poets of the middle comedy were contemporaries of the writers of the new comedy, who rose up as their rivals, and were only distinguished from them by following their new tendency more decidedly and more exclusively. Menander was one of the first of these poets, (he flourished at the time immediately succeeding the death of Alexander,§) and he was also the most perfect of them, which will not surprise us if we consider the middle comedy as a sort of preparation for the new.||
- The Cocalus of Aristophanes (Araros) contains, according to Platonius, a
scene of seduction and recognition of the same kind with those in the comedies of Menander. t It appears hy the fragment of the Hypobolimeeus, (Athen. XI. p. 502. u. Meineke Hist. Crit, Com. Grcec. p. 315.) % Concerning Antiphanes, see Clinton, Philol. Mus. I. p. 558 foil., and Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Gr. p. 304 — 40. It appears from the remarks of Clinton, p. C07, and Meineke, p. 305, that the passage attributed hy Atherueus IV. p. 156. c, to Antiphanes, in which king- Seleucus is mentioned, is probably hy another comic poet. § Menander brought out his first piece when he was still a young man (jfvfZos), in 01. 114, 3. B.C. 322, and died as early as 01. 122, 1. b.c. 291. i| According to Anon, de comocdia, Menander was specially instructed in his act by Alexis.
