universal respect for its sanctity.[288] The adulterer, who is the
favourite hero of mediaeval romance, is here invariably held up to
contempt and hatred. The most familiar instance of this is, of course,
the story in the _Miles Gloriosus_ of Plautus, but it is far from
being an isolated one. The _Halieis_ of Menander evidently treated
of a somewhat similar subject,[289] which appears once more in the
_Eunuchus_.[290] In the _Andria_ again, Charinus is horror-stricken at
the idea of committing adultery with the woman he loves, though, when
accused of seducing the same woman, his only regret is that he cannot
plead guilty to the charge.[291] An even more remarkable instance,
and one perhaps without parallel, is furnished by the _Hecyra_, where
the Hetaera Bacchis asserts that she had refused to admit her lover,
Pamphilus, as soon as she learned that he was married.[292] It may be
argued, of course, that she did this out of pique, but the very cordial
nature of the meeting between the two (Ter. _Hec._ v. 4, 16, _seqq._),
and the fact that Bacchis knew that her lover had abandoned her sorely
against his will (i. 2, 45 _seqq._), and was still devoted to her (i. 2,
82), seem to suggest that this is not the most natural explanation of her
conduct.[293]
The passages just described may serve to introduce us to a further
feature of our subject—a feature in which the New Comedy is, if possible,
even more remarkably unlike the Middle Comedy than in those which have
already been discussed. In the Middle Comedy, as we have already had
frequent occasion to observe, the wife and the husband are invariably
held up to ridicule when compared with the Hetaera and her lover; in the
New Comedy we may find this position exactly reversed. Instances are
rare, (as is indeed to be expected, when we consider, in the first place,
the strong current of popular feeling on the subject, and, secondly, the
personal relations between the leading writers of the New Comedy and the
prominent Hetaerae of the time,) but they do unquestionably occur. The
most striking example is perhaps that in the _Heauton Timorumenus_, where
not only is the Hetaera contrasted unfavourably with the virgin, (as she
herself admits,)[294] but her lover is made consistently ridiculous as
compared with the lover who contemplates marriage, and in the end comes
off badly in the extreme. Very similar evidence is furnished by the
_Hecyra_. In the struggle for the love of Pamphilus, which takes place
in that play between the wife and the Hetaera, the former is completely
successful, and her victory is gained by sheer amiability of temper (Ter.
_Hec._ i. 2, 85 _seqq._); indeed, so charming is she, that the Hetaera
is driven in the end to congratulate her husband on his good fortune in
having married her. (v. 4, 22.) And this victory of the wife becomes the
more remarkable, when we observe that the Hetaera is evidently intended
to be a very favourable specimen of her class, in every way deserving of
the lover she is compelled to lose.[295]
While on this point, it may not be amiss to remark that it is by no means
impossible that the famous _Thais_ of Menander really belonged to this
class of plays, and that the Hetaera, who gives her name to the piece,
is intended as a _parody_ on the typical Hetaera of Middle Comedy. This
view, which is not improbable in itself, receives some support from the
mock-heroic tone of _Fr._ 1 of the _Thais_,[296] and still more from
Mart. xiv. 187;[297] but cannot, of course, be regarded as more than a
possible suggestion.[298]
Of mere vulgar ridicule or abuse of the ordinary Hetaera, as
heartless,[299] mercenary,[300] and the like, there is, of course,
enough and to spare; but it would be unjustifiable to claim expressions
such as these as distinctive of New Comedy, in the face of passages like
Epicrates, _Antilais_, 2, or Anaxilas, _Neottis_, 1. Menander indeed
makes a more serious charge, perhaps, when one of his characters asserts
that an Hetaera cannot be good, for she makes a trade of sin:
οὐδέποθ’ ἑταίρα τοῦ καλῶς πεφρόντικεν,
ἣ τὸ κακόηθες πρόσοδον εἴωθεν ποιεῖν.
(_Incert._ 107.)
This is, however, an isolated expression, for Menand. _Incert._ 36, at
first sight similar, is really different.
But, though the writers of the New Comedy are careful, as a general rule,
to avoid anything that might have seemed too severe a stricture on that
system of Hetaera-worship which was so distinctive a feature of the age,
they are unmistakably emphatic in their assertion that such sensual love
is not the only kind of love of which a man is capable. The chivalrous
manner in which the lover of New Comedy often behaves to his lady, is one
of the clearest features of the change which the authors of the romantic
school had succeeded in bringing about on the Athenian stage.
At once the most striking and the most perplexing illustration of this
is furnished by the character of Thrasonides in Menander’s celebrated
play, the _Misumenus_. This Thrasonides, who belongs to the regular type
of the _Miles Gloriosus_, is in love with a slave-girl, whom he has
obtained in the course of his wars;[301] but he has so disgusted her
with his boasting (like Leontichus in Lucian) that she has conceived a
most violent hatred for him. He then, though she is his slave, and though
his passion is so great that he cannot sleep for thinking of her,[302]
instead of using his undoubted power to accomplish what he wishes,[303]
tries every means that he can imagine in order to conciliate her,
“sending her gifts, and weeping, and praying,”[304] that she may look
more favourably upon him.
The _dénouement_ of the play is lost. It is not impossible that in the
end the slave-girl was identified as an Athenian, and carried off by some
more acceptable lover, who thus profited by the chivalrous conduct of
his rival, or she may even have turned out to be the soldier’s sister,
as in the _Curculio_ or the _Epidicus_, in either of which cases the
scruples of Thrasonides would be necessary to the working of the plot.
But all this is, for our present purpose, of no importance. What is of
importance, and of the utmost importance, is the fact that Thrasonides,
though he is so violently in love with the girl, will not make use of his
unquestioned power to gratify this passion, because of the dislike which
she feels for him. In fact, his love is of such a kind that he does not
merely want to satisfy a sensual appetite—he wants to be loved. Unless
he can feel that she loves him, none of those privileges, which, to the
ordinary Hetaera-lover of the day, would have been of themselves the
complete consummation of love, are of any value to him. ἔξεστί μοι τοῦτο
καὶ βούλομαι, οὐ ποιῶ δέ.
The aim of the lover is not to gratify himself, but to inspire love.[305]
That we are here face to face with a form of love which is not only
actually absent from Middle Comedy, but is by nature absolutely foreign
to that literature and could not possibly appear in it, is too obvious to
need further emphasis.[306]
This much, then, is clear; but there remains a most perplexing question,
which, though it is a little aside of our immediate subject, is yet too
interesting to be passed by altogether. Why is it Thrasonides, the _Miles
Gloriosus_ whom all the Comedians are banded together to ridicule, who
appears as the most chivalrous lover of the whole of New Comedy?[307]
Why is a man who is universally regarded as a fool, made to give
expression to such elevated sentiments, and to follow such a noble line
of conduct? The first explanation that suggests itself is, of course,
“Because he is a fool.” This view is certainly advanced in a passage
of Plutarch, where Thrasonides is compared to the miser who starves
rather than make use of the food he has in the house,[308] and seems to
find favour too with Thrasonides’ own slave.[309] But this explanation
is not a very satisfactory one, somehow. However great a fool Menander
might wish to make of the mercenary soldier of the time, this does not
seem the natural line for his folly to take, nor was it the line, as we
know from historical evidence, that the folly of these people actually
did as a rule take. A Pyrgopolinices must, one would have thought, have
been a far more familiar figure to citizens who had enjoyed a Macedonian
occupation, than a Thrasonides. One might, perhaps, imagine that the
behaviour of Alexander to the wife and daughters of Darius—behaviour
which was regarded in Greece as somewhat remarkable[310]—had suggested
the character of Thrasonides, for, after all, the ideal soldier of
the age, whether for good or evil, is always Alexander; only it seems
doubtful whether a single action of an unusual kind could serve to form
so constant a type as the chivalrous soldier-lover. At one time I thought
that, as the soldier of New Comedy has generally served in Asia, perhaps
he might be supposed to have imported his advanced romantic ideas from
one of those Greek Asiatic cities which were, as we know, the original
home of Greek romance, and indeed of all important developments of Greek
erotic literature.[311] But there is to modern notions so great an
incongruity in the idea of, say, the Colonel of a West India regiment so
influenced by the latest school of literature as to model his life on it,
that, though such a character would not, perhaps, have seemed so absurd
to the Greeks as it does to us, still, in the absence of all definite
evidence, I have preferred not to lay undue stress upon what is, after
all, entirely a matter of conjecture. Indeed, the question remains to me
a very obscure one, and I cannot at present see any satisfactory solution
of it.
But, whatever may have been the causes which led to the creation of this
particular character, the soldier-lover of a more or less Thrasonides
type is an unquestionable feature of New Comedy. Besides the hero of
the _Misumenus_, of whom we have spoken, in the _Sicyonius_ (also by
Menander) we find another soldier, Stratophanes, who buys a slave-girl,
and then treats her as if she were a free woman.[312] To the same class
of feeling, though expressed in a somewhat different way, belongs the
remorse which the soldier Polemon (in the _Periceiromene_ of Menander)
feels for the wrong he has done to his αἰχμαλώτῳ ἐρωμένῃ.
A case in some respects similar, though in others different, is that of
the soldier Stratippocles, in the _Epidicus_, who falls in love with his
captive, but does not touch her.[313] The differences, of course, here
are that, firstly, the play belongs to Middle Comedy, its moral being
that Stratippocles will be happier with his _fidicina_ than with the girl
of high birth, for whom he has formed the chivalrous attachment;[314]
while, secondly, the continence of the hero is not so much a feature
of his character as a necessity for the development of the plot; and,
thirdly, the soldier is here not a mercenary, but an Athenian citizen,
who has been fighting against the Thebans. But though, therefore,
the case of the _Epidicus_ does not belong to the same category as
those previously discussed, the association in it of the soldier with
chivalrous behaviour towards women is yet worthy of notice, and, even if
only a coincidence, is still an interesting one.[315]
Apart, too, from these very remarkable instances, there are not a few
passages scattered about in the remains of the New Comedy which serve to
show that the “love,” of which there is so much talk in that literature,
is not the merely animal passion of an earlier period. Of these, a
striking one is that preserved in Plutarch, _ap._ Stob. _Flor._ lxiii. 34:
τῶν Μενάνδρου δραμάτων, says Plutarch there, οὐκ ἴσως ἁπάντων
ἓν συνεκτικόν ἐστιν ὁ ἔρως, οἷον πνεῦμα κοινὸν διακεχυκώς; ὃν
οὖν μάλιστα θιασώτην τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ὀργιαστὴν ἴσμεν, τὸν ἄνδρα
συνεπιλαμβάνωμεν εἰς τὴν ζήτησιν, ἐπεὶ καὶ λελάκηκε περὶ τοῦ
πάθους φιλοσοφώτερον. ἄξιον γὰρ εἶναι θαύματος φήσας τὸ περὶ
τοὺς ἐρῶντας, ὥσπερ ἐστὶν ἅμα λαλεῖ. εἶτα ἀπορεῖ καὶ ζητεῖ πρὸς
ἑαυτόν·
τίνι δεδούλωταί (sc. ὁ ἐραστής) ποτε;
ὄψει; φλύαρος. κ.τ.λ....
... καιρός ἐστιν ἡ νόσος
ψυχῆς.
(Menand. _Incert._ 14.)
That is: Menander, a writer familiar with love in its most passionate
forms (θιασώτην καὶ ὀργιαστήν), gives us a sober and serious view of
the matter. After expressing his astonishment at the ways of lovers, he
furnishes us with a realistic account of love as it actually is (ὥσπερ
ἐστὶν ἅμα λαλεῖ),[316] and then proceeds to investigate its causes. For a
moment he is puzzled, and questions with himself, but soon he finds the
true answer. καιρός ἐστιν ἡ νόσος ψυχῆς. Love is an affection of the soul
as distinct from the body, and has only an accidental connection with the
latter.[317]
Equally forcible, though in another way, is a passage from the
_Poenulus_. The lover and his slave are watching the two girls, and
the slave expresses his utter contempt for his master’s “Platonic”
affection, to which the latter answers that he loves Adelphasium as
he loves the gods.[318] Another case is in the _Curculio_, where the
love of Phaedromus for Planesium is fed on nothing more substantial
than kisses;[319] another in the _Hecyra_, where it is distinctly
pointed out that the love of Pamphilus for his wife is induced by other
than sensual considerations.[320] Other instances, of more or less
significance, every reader of the Latin comedians will be able to supply
for himself; and it is further worth observing that when a New Comedy
character, as occasionally does happen, is made to speak slightingly of
“Platonic” love, such a character is always a slave, never a person of
refinement.[321]
To proceed to the final point of essential difference between Middle
and New Comedy, it will be remembered that, in the former class of
literature, family life and the mutual relations of members of a family
were among the stock subjects of ridicule, and that no remarks expressive
of any other views on this matter are to be found there, at any rate
before a very late period.[322] Family life, as depicted in the New
Comedy, is by no means ideal; indeed, as we have already had occasion
to remark, the unhappy relations between husband and elderly wife are,
under certain circumstances, a favourite subject of ridicule, even with
Menander.[323] But yet instances to the contrary are to be found, and
are, in fact, by no means very uncommon. Not to speak of the cases of
devotion of wife to husband and husband to wife—such as those in the
_Stichus_, &c., already sufficiently discussed[324]—the relations between
father and children, and, still more, mother and children,[325] are often
described as of the most delightful character.
Of the former, there are interesting examples in Menand. _Incert._ 59:
αἰσχύνομαι τὸν πατέρα, Κλειτοφῶν, μόνον,
ἀντιβλέπειν ἐκεῖνον οὐ δυνήσομαι
ἀδικῶν· τὰ δ’ ἄλλα ῥᾳδίως χειρώσομαι.
_Incert._ 108:
ὁ σκληρότατος πρὸς υἱὸν ἐν τῷ νουθετεῖν
τοῖς μὲν λόγοις πικρός ἐστι, τοῖς δ’ ἔργοις πατήρ.
_Incert._ 113:
μηδὲν ὀδύνα τὸν πατέρα, γιγνώσκων ὅτι
ὁ μέγιστον ἀγαπῶν δι’ ἐλάχιστ’ ὀργίζεται.
_Incert._ 117:
οὐδέποτ’ ἀληθὲς οὐδὲν οὔθ’ υἱῷ πατὴρ
εἴωθ’ ἀπειλεῖν, οὔτ’ ἐρῶν ἐρωμένῃ.[326]
The charming interview between the father and his two daughters in the
_Stichus_ (i. 2, 32 _seqq._), is a further, equally striking instance.
Of the latter relation, that between mother and children, there is a
good instance in this same play (i. 2, 51), where, after the father has
propounded his intention of marrying again, his daughter reminds him that
it will be hard for him to find a second wife like his first.
AN. pol ego uxorem quaero, postquam vostra mater mortua est.
PA. facile invenies et peiorem et peius moratam, pater,
quam illa fuit; meliorem neque tu reperies neque sol videt.
A still more striking case is that in the _Hecyra_, where the mother of
Pamphilus, thinking that it is her presence which renders it impossible
for her son’s wife to live with him, resolves to sacrifice herself, and
go into voluntary exile into the country.[327] The same idea, though
less pleasantly expressed, is apparent in Syrus’ remark in the _Heauton
Timorumenus_ (v. 2, 38):
matres omnes filiis
in peccato adiutrices, auxilio in paterna iniuria.
But it is needless to multiply instances of a state of affairs with
which every attentive reader of Plautus and Terence must be sufficiently
familiar.[328]
IX. THE ORIGINS OF THE ROMANTIC COMEDY.
The above investigation into the nature of New Comedy, and into the
points of difference between it and the earlier literature, leads
naturally to the consideration of a further and final question—that of
the origin of these differences which are so strikingly apparent. We
have seen that the romantic New Comedy differs entirely in its treatment
of women from every form of dramatic art which had preceded it.[329] In
fact, we have seen that, while the Middle Comedy belongs still entirely
to the first or classical period of Greek literature, the New Comedy,
with its striking romantic features, belongs essentially to that second
period, which it is usual to call the Alexandrian, and forms, indeed, one
of the departments of literature in which the romantic tendencies of that
period can be studied to the best advantage. What we have to consider is
therefore this: How did Athenian Comedy acquire these romantic features
which are so conspicuously absent from its earlier phases? when did it
acquire them? and to whom was the acquisition due?
The last of these three questions may be best considered first. There
seems every reason to believe that this introduction of the romantic
element was due to Menander rather than to Philemon.[330] There can be
no question that of the two writers, Philemon is the less distinctively
romantic. Of the typical New Comedy love-stories preserved in Plautus
and Terence, not one professes to be derived from him. The allusions to
women altogether are proportionately much fewer in his fragments than in
those of Menander; while a large proportion, again, of such allusions
as there are, are either references to Hetaerae, or else belong to the
old-fashioned misogyny of Middle Comedy. The detailed examination of his
style of art, which occurs in the _Florida_ of Apuleius, is altogether
strongly suggestive of Middle Comedy;[331] indeed, Apuleius actually
describes him as “mediae comoediae scriptor.” It is further to be
remarked that the number of coarse allusions to women is proportionately
far greater in Philemon than in Menander. Indeed, the whole study of
Philemon’s treatment of women leaves one with the impression, not only
that he was at heart a follower of the old school, but that even when
he did for any reason adopt the romantic principle, he developed this
principle from a more sensual point of view than Menander. That this
tendency to coarseness is in sympathy with the earlier spirit of Athenian
comedy, but is entirely foreign to its romantic development, need hardly
be emphasised, after all that has already been said on the subject. And
it may not be altogether beside the question here, to call attention
to Philemon’s invariable pessimism—pessimism most characteristic of a
conservative mind in an age of progress, but hardly consistent with such
qualities as would be required of the originator of a great artistic
and social revolution.[332] Furthermore, Philemon is regularly spoken
of as the rival of Menander;[333] the reverse is never the case,
notwithstanding the fact that the relative ages of the two playwrights
would have made the latter the more natural way of putting the case.
Again, the much greater success of Philemon at the time, notwithstanding
the well-nigh unanimous contrary verdict of subsequent ages,[334] seems
to show clearly that he was the more old-fashioned of the two; for, as
is well known, originality is seldom very welcome on the stage. And
lastly, the very large proportion of Philemon’s works which appear to
have belonged to Middle Comedy pure and simple—a point which will be
further discussed directly—seems to be further evidence that this was
his natural _métier_, and that it was only a spirit of rivalry with
Menander which made him turn his attention to a style of art with which
he had no real sympathy.[335] As for the _Hypobolimaeus_, that proves
nothing, for there is no evidence whatever by which to fix the date of
this resuscitation of the _Cocalus_ of Aristophanes; indeed, if anything,
it rather suggests that Philemon found such subjects so little congenial,
that he had to borrow his materials, instead of being able to produce
them himself.
All this, it may be argued, proves little as to the claims of Menander
over Philemon. Indeed, it may even be urged that the very fact that
Philemon is the less distinctively romantic of the two, renders it
probable that the first introduction of the romantic element was due
to him. But such an argument, though at first sight plausible enough,
rests on an imperfect comprehension of the real nature of the romantic
principle in Greek comedy. Were this principle a direct development of
tendencies characteristic of the earlier phases of the literature, it
would doubtless be right to assume that its first appearance in any
tangible shape would be of an unemphatic and tentative kind; but the
romantic principle is no such development of previous tendencies. It is
not a development, but a regeneration; it is not a growth from within,
but an annex from without. Whatever anyone may suppose to be the origin
of the romantic element, no one with any acquaintance with the subject
is likely to wish to maintain that the virgin-love of New Comedy is
developed out of the Hetaera-worship of its predecessor on the stage.
Indeed, there can be little doubt that, so far from New Comedy appealing
to those tastes which Middle Comedy had fostered, its remarkable success
was in great part due to a strong reaction against the latter. And thus
there is every reason to believe that, when once the new emotion found
expression on the stage, such expression was immediately clear and
unmistakable; and that therefore, in looking for the originator of the
movement, one must look for that writer of the period whose works exhibit
the romantic features most strongly and consistently, and must regard
those other writers, in whom such features are less prominent, as more
or less unwilling imitators. And if this be so, there can be little real
doubt as to the validity of Menander’s claim.
The next question to be considered is—When was this introduction of the
romantic element into Greek comedy first brought about? We know that
Philemon began to exhibit in 330, and that the date of Menander’s first
play is 322; but these facts do not of themselves furnish any information
as to the origin of New Comedy proper. For it is an unquestionable
fact, and one of the greatest importance in this connection, that both
Philemon and Menander wrote plays which are not romantic, and which
belong, therefore, to Middle, rather than to New Comedy. And on this fact
hinges the whole question of the date of the introduction of the romantic
element into Athenian Comedy.
Of the ninety-seven plays of Philemon, which Platonius states were
in his time extant,[336] hardly fifty titles are preserved, and of
these, well-nigh a third obviously belong to what were evidently Middle
Comedies.[337] When we consider how extremely probable it is that the
majority of the plays now entirely lost belonged also to this class (for
it is obvious that a later age would tend to preserve such plays as were
in harmony with the romantic tastes then prevailing, rather than those
that were not), it becomes clear that a very large proportion of the
plays of Philemon were not New Comedies at all. With Menander the same
is to a certain extent, though not in an equal degree, also true. Of
about a hundred plays that he produced during the thirty-two years of his
literary activity, while a dozen or so, presumably unsuccessful efforts
of his earlier years, are entirely lost, some twenty besides, of those
whose titles we know, must be ranked with the old, rather than with the
new form of dramatic art.