in the
guests with drolleries and charades, or, according to circumstances,
to let the potsherds be flung at his head. This was at that time a
formal trade in Athens; and it is certainly no mere poetical fiction
which represents such a parasite as expressly preparing himself for
his work by means of his books of witticisms and anecdotes. Favourite
parts, moreover, are those of the cook, who understands not only how
to boast of unheard-of sauces, but also how to pilfer like a
professional thief; the shameless -leno-, complacently confessing to
the practice of every vice, of whom Ballio in the -Pseudolus- is a
model specimen; the military braggadocio, in whom we trace a very
distinct reflection of the free-lance habits that prevailed under
Alexander's successors; the professional sharper or sycophant, the
stingy money-changer, the solemnly silly physician, the priest,
mariner, fisherman, and the like. To these fall to be added, lastly,
the parts delineative of character in the strict sense, such as the
superstitious man of Menander and the miser in the -Aulularia- of
Plautus. The national-Hellenic poetry has preserved, even in this its
last creation, its indestructible plastic vigour; but the delineation
of character is here copied from without rather than reproduced from
inward experience, and the more so, the more the task approaches to
the really poetical. It is a significant circumstance that, in the
parts illustrative of character to which we have just referred,
the psychological truth is in great part represented by abstract
development of the conception; the miser here collects the parings of
his nails and laments the tears which he sheds as a waste of water.
But the blame of this want of depth in the portraying of character,
and generally of the whole poetical and moral hollowness of this newer
comedy, lay less with the comic writers than with the nation as a
whole. Everything distinctively Greek was expiring: fatherland,
national faith, domestic life, all nobleness of action and sentiment
were gone; poetry, history, and philosophy were inwardly exhausted;
and nothing remained to the Athenian save the school, the fish-market,
and the brothel. It is no matter of wonder and hardly a matter of
blame, that poetry, which is destined to shed a glory over human
existence, could make nothing more out of such a life than the
Menandrian comedy presents to us. It is at the same time very
remarkable that the poetry of