Adultery is often the subject of comic descriptions, focusing on the tricks of unfaithful wives or bold lovers and the stupidity of cuckolded husbands, and possibly inspired by popular adultery tales. Dramatization of adulterous affairs,...
moreAdultery is often the subject of comic descriptions, focusing on the tricks of unfaithful wives or bold lovers and the stupidity of cuckolded husbands, and possibly inspired by popular adultery tales. Dramatization of adulterous affairs, though common in mime, was rarer in Greek comedy. It occurs in a few plays with contemporary setting, as well as in travesties of related myths (e.g. Helen’s abduction, or Zeus’ love for Alcmene).
Antiphanes, active from the 380s to the late fourth century BCE, was the most prolific dramatist of Middle Comedy. He probably wrote not only for Athenian festivals but also for other cities or itinerant troupes, and produced various types of play: mythological travesties, as well as domestic comedies with love plots and recognitions, heralding the style of New Comedy. He developed many comic figures which became standard characters in later drama (misanthrope, miser, superstitious man, boastful soldier, rustic, parasite, cook). He liked producing innovations on stock motifs and deftly exploited the resources of comic language.
deikelistai (meaning “mimes” or “impersonators”) was the local name for the performers of a type of folk comic play in Sparta. According to the Laconian historian Sosibius, their unsophisticated performances, conducted in simple language, concerned themes such as the stealing of fruit (also a traditional part of Spartan boys’ education) and the foreign doctor. Both these elements are paralleled in other varieties of Doric comedy (Sicilian, Megarian), as well as in Attic comic theatre. Sosibius considered this type of spectacle as old, and Plutarch testifies to its existence in the fifth century BCE.
Glycera, a hetaira, is presented as Menander’s mistress in sources of the Imperial age. Alciphron invented an exchange of letters between the couple, discussing the invitation of King Ptolemy, who wishes to lure Menander to Egypt. This love affair is a biographical fiction, probably developed in Hellenistic times. Glycera’s figure is based on homonymous female characters of Menander’s plays, as well as on a historical hetaira of the same name. The relationship between Diphilus and the hetaira Gnathaena (attested earlier in anecdotes by Lynceus and Machon) may also have served as a model.
Lynceus of Samos, a pupil of Theophrastus, produced plays of New Comedy in Athens, although the report that he competed against Menander is doubtful. His writings also include a treatise on Menander and a collection of anecdotes about figures of Athenian social life (hetairai, parasites etc.), sometimes involving famous comic poets of the time. These may rely on first-hand experience or information.
Machon, a poet of New Comedy, produced his plays in Ptolemaic Alexandria, probably in the context of the early Ptolemies’ efforts to promote their capital as a centre of comic art. His surviving titles and fragments suggest typical New Comedy plots, with misunderstandings, recognitions, and food themes, but also include uncommon elements (e.g. a cook fond of eating his own dishes). Machon also published the Chreiai, a collection of versified anecdotes about celebrated parasites, hetairai, and other figures of social life, many of whom are mentioned in Middle and New Comedy. His work displays coarse humour and caustic satire.
Maeson, a character of Megarian comedy, was said to have been created by a Megarian actor of the same name (a tradition of doubtful historicity). Maeson appeared as a cook, servant, sailor, and in other dramatic roles, being portrayed as ignorant, uncouth, and gluttonous. A slave mask of Attic New Comedy was also called Maeson. A proverb about ingratitude is attributed to “Maeson the Megarian”, though on obscure grounds.
Megara, a city between Athens and Corinth, was known for its local kind of farce (Megarian comedy). Megarians claimed to have first invented the genre of comedy around the early sixth century BCE, a doubtful assertion. Aristotle was familiar with comic performances at Megara in his time, but no dramatic festivals are recorded in later periods.
Megarian comedy, an improvised popular farce produced at Megara, was known to fifth-century Athenian audiences. There was rivalry between the comic traditions of Athens and Megara: poets of Old Comedy condemned Megarian jokes as vulgar, while the Megarians claimed to have first invented the genre of comedy. The Attic playwrights’ references, combined with later testimonia, reveal some of the motifs and characters of Megarian comic drama: obscene jests, slaves tossing nuts to the audience, the hungry Heracles cheated of his dinner, a cook and glutton named Maeson, possibly also the stealing of fruit and the drug-seller. The scene of the Megarian man visiting Dicaeopolis in Aristophanes’ Acharnians may parody material from Megarian performances.
Persia, the head of a large Eastern empire in Classical times, is presented in Greek comedy as a land of excessive wealth and luxury. Its typical comic traits include a fairytale abundance of gold and precious objects, massive consumption of food and drink, rich exotic clothing, pompous officials and courtiers, voluptuousness, and effeminacy. Old Comedy, in particular, proudly recalls the past Greek victories in the Persian Wars and considers contemporary Persia a great, dangerous, but alluring power.
Riddles, a favourite pastime in Attic symposia, became popular especially in Middle Comedy. They are propounded and solved on stage in numerous scenes, often set in a sympotic context. A particular group of them concern culinary items described by a comic cook in high-flown riddling language. Spectators enjoyed the dramatized sympotic game, presumably attempting to find the solution before the characters did. Riddles also functioned as a form of humour and were sometimes subjected to parody as a stock comic theme.
Susarion, named as the inventor of comedy in Hellenistic and later sources, is variously described as an Attic poet active in the deme of Icaria or as a Megarian. These variant traditions presumably stem from the rivalry between Athens and Megara concerning the origins of comedy. The single fragment attributed to Susarion is a later forgery. His historical identity, when not doubted, becomes the object of widely differing theories.
Thais, a brazen, profit-loving hetaira, was a central character in Menander’s play of that name and later became the emblematic type of the comic courtesan for Roman authors. In an epigram of Martial, the young Menander is presented as having a love affair with Thais. This is meant as a playful metaphor for the composition of the corresponding comedy; it does not imply the existence of a broader biographical tradition about Thais and Menander.
Timon, mentioned in Old Comedy as the emblematic misanthrope, was a proverbial figure well known to the audience. Aristophanes’ Lysistrata suggests that he became a man-hater because of the wickedness of his fellow-men, a theme later developed in Lucian’s dialogue Timon, which perhaps reworks comic material. The traditions about Timon may have influenced the portrayal of other theatrical misanthropes, such as Menander’s Knemon.
