appears in these comedies, and we need to recall, in order
to realize, the fact that Philemon and Menander were really
contemporaries of Alexander and Aristotle. But they give us a
picture, equally elegant and faithful, of that refined Attic society
beyond the circles of which comedy never travels. Even in the dim
Latin copy, through which we chiefly know it, the grace of the
original is not wholly obliterated; and more especially in the pieces
which are imitated from Menander, the most talented of these poets,
the life which the poet saw and shared is delicately reflected not so
much in its aberrations and distortions as in its amiable every day
course. The friendly domestic relations between father and daughter,
husband and wife, master and servant, with their love-affairs and
other little critical incidents, are portrayed with so broad a
truthfulness, that even now they do not miss their effect: the
servants' feast, for instance, with which the -Stichus- concludes is,
in the limited range of its relations and the harmony of the two
lovers and the one sweetheart, of unsurpassed gracefulness in its
kind. The elegant grisettes, who make their appearance perfumed and
adorned, with their hair fashionably dressed and in variegated, gold-
embroidered, sweeping robes, or even perform their toilette on the
stage, are very effective. In their train come the procuresses,
sometimes of the most vulgar sort, such as one who appears in the
-Curculio-, sometimes duennas like Goethe's old Barbara, such as
Scapha in the -Mostettaria-; and there is no lack of brothers and
comrades ready with their help. There is great abundance and variety
of parts representing the old: there appear in turn the austere
and avaricious, the fond and tender-hearted, and the indulgent
accommodating, papas, the amorous old man, the easy old bachelor, the
jealous aged matron with her old maid-servant who takes part with her
mistress against her master; whereas the young men's parts are less
prominent, and neither the first lover, nor the virtuous model son who
here and there occurs, lays claim to much significance. The servant-
world--the crafty valet, the stern house-steward, the old vigilant
tutor, the rural slave redolent of garlic, the impertinent page--forms
a transition to the very numerous professional parts. A standing
figure among these is the jester (-parasitus-) who, in return for
permission to feast at the table of the rich, has to enterta