Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/347

LATER GROWTH OF COMEDY. 325 among poor ; nor is there any criticism more unfounded than that which represents such an obligation as hard and oppressive upon rich men. Most of them spent more than they were legally compelled to spend in this way, from the desire of exalting their popularity. The only real sufferers were the people, considered as interested in a just administration of law ; since it was a prac- tice which enabled many rich men to acquire importance who had no personal qualities to deserve it, and which provided them with a stock of factitious merits to be pleaded before the dikas- tery, as a set-off against substantive accusations. The full splendor of the comic muse was considerably later than that of the tragic. Even down to 460 B.C. (about the time when Perikles and Ephialtes introduced their constitutional reforms), there was not a single comic poet of eminence at Athens ; nor was there apparently a single undisputed Athenian comedy before that date, which survived to the times of the Alexandrine critics. Magnes, Krates, and Kratinus probably also Chionides and Ekphantides 1 all belong to the period beginning about (Olym piad 80 or) 4GO B.C. ; that is, the generation preceding Aristopha- nes, whose first composition dates in 427 B.C. The condition and growth of Attic comedy before this period seems to have been unknown even to Aristotle, who intimates that the archon did not begin to grant a chorus for comedy, or to number it among the authoritative solemnities of the festival, until long after the practice had been established for tragedy. Thus the comic chorus in that early time consisted of volunteers, without any choregus publicly assigned to bear the expense of teaching them or getting up the piece ; so that there was little motive for authors to bestow care or genius in the preparation of their song, dance, and scur- rilous monody, or dialogue. The exuberant revelry of the phal- lic festival and procession, with full license of scoffing at any one present, which the god Dionysus was supposed to enjoy, and with the most plain-spoken grossness as well in language as in ideas, formed the primitive germ, which under Athenian genius 1 See Meinckc, Hist. Critic. Com' tor. Groecor. vol. i, p. 26, scq. Grysnr and Mr. Clinton, following Suidas, place Chionides before the Persian invasion ; but the words of Aristotle rather countenance the later date (Poetic, c 2).