magnificence, the comedy of men and manners occupies an important part
of their literature, and Aristophanes and Menander are as intimately
Greek as Sophocles. It is needless to speak of what we gain in our
knowledge of Greece from the preserved comedies of Aristophanes; and
if we follow the best ancient criticism, we must conclude that in
Menander we have lost a treasury of Greek life that cannot be
replaced. Quintilian, speaking at a distance from any national or
contemporary prejudice, uses terms of him such as we should not think
unworthy of Shakespeare.[1] These Attic comedians were the field out
of which epigrammatists, from that time down to the final decay of
literature, drew some of their graver and very many of their lighter
epigrams. Of the convivial epigrams in the Anthology a number are
imitated from extant fragments of the New Comedy; one at least[2]
transfers a line of Menander's unaltered; and short fragments of both
Menander and Diphilus are included in the Anthology as though not
materially differing from epigrams themselves.[3]

Part of this section might be classed with the criticism of life from
the Epicurean point of view. Some of the convivial epigrams are purely
unreflective; they speak only of the pleasure of the moment, the frank
joy in songs and wine and roses, at a vintage-revel, or in the
chartered licence of a public festival, or simply without any excuse
but the fire in the blood, and without any conclusion but the emptied
jar.[4] Some bring in a flash of more vivid colour where Eros mingles
with Bromius, and, on a bright spring day, Rose-flower crosses the
path, carrying her fresh-blown roses.[5] Others, through their light
surface, show a deeper feeling, a claim half jestingly but half
seriously made for dances and lyres and garlands as things deeply
ordained in the system of nature, a call on the disconsolate lover to
be up and drink, and rear his drooping head, and not lie down in the