Histories, which exist in all countries where the drama is much
cultivated, as a subordinate species of Tragedy : the other Tragedies
we may call myths or fables[1] as distinguished from the true stories,
to which they bore the same relation in the subdivision of Ionian
literature, that the Epos bore to the history of Herodotus.
In the course of time, another rib was taken from the side of
the primary Tragedy, and Tragi-comedy sprang up under the
fostering care of Euripides, which was probably the forerunner of
the (
Greek characters) of Rhinthon, Sopatrus, Sciras, and Blæsus[2].
One old specimen of this kind of play remains to us in the (Greek characters) of Euripides, which was performed as the satyrical drama of a
Tragic Trilogy, 438 B.C., and we are inclined to consider the
Orestes as another of the same sort[3]. It resembled the regular
Tragedy in its outward form, but contained some comic characters,
and always had a happy termination.
Of the Satyrical Drama we have already spoken : we cannot,
however, quit the subject of Tragedy and its subordinate forms,
without noticing a play called (Greek characters), which was,
according to Herodian[4], a satyrical drama. This statement has
occasioned some difficulties. It has been asked[5], were the Helots,
who doubtless composed the chorus, dressed like satyrs, or mixed
up with satyrs? But if it was a satyrical drama, what mytho-
logical subject is reconcilable with a chorus of Helots? and on
the same supposition, how could the comedian Eupolis, to whom
Athenæus[6] ascribes the play, have been its author? for a trespass
by a comedian on the domains of the tragic muse, to whom the
satyrical drama belonged, was, especially in those times, something
- ↑ The words of Suidas, quoted above, appear to allude to this distinction; (
Greek characters).
- ↑ Muller's Dor. iv. ch. 7, § 6.
- ↑ In an argument to the Alcestis, published from a Vatican MS. (No. 909) by
Dindorf, in 1834, we find the following words: (Greek characters)
The last sentence is a repetition in effect of the statement in the Copenhagen argument. (Matthiæ, vii. p. 214.) On the date see Welcker, Rheinisch. Mus. for 1835, p. 508; Clinton, F. H. Vol. i. p. 424.
- ↑ See Eustathius on Iliad ii. p. 297.
- ↑ By Müller in Was für eine Art Drama "waren "die Heloten"? Niebuhr's Rhein, Mus. III. p. 488,
- ↑ IV. p. 138.
Macbeth were unknown to the spectators; at present, parts of them might be moulded into tragedies like the Greek; that is, if a Sophocles were to rise up."
