Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/268

eaten away by the growth of an individualism which more and more was coming to regard itself as linked with social existence solely through the fact of common government, that is, by chains not of sympathy but of force. Lyric and epic poetry had in the city commonwealth given way to the drama; and when the old morality and political freedom, upon which Athenian comedy and tragedy had been based, were weakened, almost the only scope for a new Athenian poetry lay in the direction of a new drama of some sort. Tragedy, of course, this new drama could not be; for not only had the old morality been undermined, but the hero-worship which old Athenian tragedy expressed was impossible in a society of individual units, equally assertive of their own personal merits and distrustful of any character transcending the very limited degree of greatness which their own associations rendered probable. Comedy, on the other hand, was admirably suited to such a society; not, indeed, the comedy of Aristophanes, with its extravagant political caricature, its allegorical or typical characters, through which satire on classes and individuals is conveyed, but the comedy of contemporary life and manners, in which analysis of individual character could be wrought out in a spirit of polished ridicule resembling that of Molière. It is usual to say that the "Middle" comedy of Athens, exchanging a tone of philosophic and literary criticism for the political farce of the old comedy and losing the chorus, lasts from about 390 B.C. to 320, Antiphanes, Alexis, Arâros, being its chief makers; and to date the "New" comedy of manners, with its stock characters of father, son, parasite, soldier of fortune, as beginning about 320 B.C., its chief makers being Menander, Philemon, Diphilus, and terminating about 250 B.C. But any such exact limits are artificial. Our real interest lies not in these uncertain