Another current error regarding the Alexandrian period both in Egypt
and in Greece (Menander and the New Comedy) is that a regard for
purity enters as a new element into its literature. It does, in some
instances, less, however, as a virtue than as a _bonne bouche_ for
epicures,[318] as is made most patent in that offshoot of the
Alexandrian manner, the abominably _raffiné_ story of Daphnis and
Chloe. There may also be traces of that "longing for an ennobling of
the passion of love" of which Rohde speaks (though I have not found
any in my own reading, and the professor, contrary to his favorite
usage, gives no references); but apart from that, the later Greek
literature differs from the older not in being purer, but by its
coarse and shameless eroticism, both unnatural and natural. The old
epics and tragedies are models of purity in comparison, though
Euripides set a bad example in his _Hippolytus_, and still more his
_Aeolus_, the coarse incestuous passion of which was particularly
admired and imitated by the later writers.[319] Aristophanes is
proverbial for his unspeakable license and obscenity. Concerning the
plays of Menander (more than a hundred, of which only fragments have
come down to us and Latin versions of several by Terence and Plautus),
Plutarch tells us, indeed, that they were all tied together by one
bond--love; but it was love in the only sense known to the Greeks, and
always involving a hetaira or at most a [Greek: pseudokorae] or
_demie-vierge_, since respectable girls could not be involved in
realistic Greek love-affairs.
Professor Gercke has well remarked (141) that the charm of elegance
with which Menander covers up his moral rottenness, and which made him
the favorite of the _jeunesse dorée_ of his time, exerted a bad
influence on the stage through many centuries. There are a few
quasi-altruistic expressions in the plays of Terence and Plautus, but
they are not supported by actions and do not reach beyond the sphere
of sentimentality into that of sentiment. Here again I may adduce
Rohde as an unbiassed witness. While declaring that there is "a
longing for the ennobling of the passion in actual life" he admits
that
"really _sentimental effusions_ of love are strikingly rare
in Plautus and Terence.[320] One might think the authors of
the Latin versions had omitted the sentimental passages,
were it not that in the remnants of the Newer Comedy of the
Attic writers themselves there are, apart from general
references to Eros, no traces whatever of sentimental
allusions."[321]