PLATON AND THE EVOLUTION OF GREEK COMEDY

Ralph M. Rosen
University of Pennsylvania
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In tracing the formal changes in comic drama from the fifth to the fourth centuries, it is common to point to such things as the waning role of the chorus and parabasis, an increasing subordination of lyric elements, and a tendency towards more coherent, unified plots.1 But changes in subject matter, topoi, themes and tone are more difficult to ascertain, especially in light of the wholly fragmentary nature of the comedy that survives from the period between Aristophanes and Menander. Handbooks tell us that along with the decline of the Athenian polis at the end of the fifth century, such hallmarks of Old Comedy as personal invective, obscene language and political satire also disappeared. But such generalizations obviously stem from the careless assumption that fourth-century comedy must have been more like Menander than Aristophanes. In fact, when one looks at the comic fragments from the middle decades of the fourth century, it is striking just how many elements normally associated with Old Comedy appear.2 Still, however artificial and imprecise the labels we assign to literary movements may be, most scholars would agree that they remain constructs useful for organizing the undifferentiated material history leaves us.

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