XIII
COMEDY
Before Aristophanes
Ancient comedy, a development from the mumming of the vintage and harvest feasts, took artistic form in the two great centres of commercial and popular life, Syracuse and Athens. The Sicilian comedy seems to have come first. Epicharmus is said to have flourished in 486. He was a native of Cos, who migrated first to Sicilian Megara, and then to Syracuse. His remains are singularly scanty compared with his reputation, and it is hard to form a clear idea of him. He was a comedy-writer and a philosopher, apparently of a Pythagorean type. His comedies are partly burlesques of heroic subjects, like the Cyclops,* Busîris,* Promâtheus,* resembling the satyric dramas of Athens, and such comedies as the Odyssês,* and Chirônes* of Cratînus. Others, like the Rustic* and the Sight-Seers,* were mimes, representing scenes from ordinary life. In this field he had a rival, Sophron, who wrote 'Feminine Mimes' and 'Masculine Mimes,' and has left us such titles as the Tunny-Fisher,* the Messenger,* the Seamstresses,* the Mother-in-Law.* A third style of composition followed by Epicharmus was semi-philosophical, like the discussion between 'Logos' and 'Logîna,' Male and Female Reason, or whatever the words mean. And he wrote
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