did produce, but at a date fifty or sixty years subsequent to
Aristophanes' day, and recognized by themselves as belonging to an
entirely different genre. Hence the distinction drawn between 'The Old
Comedy,' of which Cratinus and his younger contemporaries, Eupolis and
Aristophanes, were the leading representatives, and which was at
high-water mark just before and during the course of the great struggle
of the Peloponnesian War, and 'The New Comedy,' a comedy of manners, the
two chief exponents of which were Philemon and Menander, writing after
Athens had fallen under the Macedonian yoke, and politics were excluded
altogether from the stage. Menander's plays in turn were the originals of
those produced by Plautus and Terence at Rome, whose existing Comedies
afford some faint idea of what the lost masterpieces of their Greek
predecessor must have been. Unlike the 'Old,' the 'New Comedy' had no
Chorus and no 'Parabasis.'

This remarkable and distinctive feature, by-the-bye, of the Old Comedy,
the 'Parabasis' to wit, calls for a word of explanation. It was a direct
address on the Author's part to the audience, delivered in verse of a
special metre, generally towards the close of the representation, by the
leader of the Chorus, but expressing the personal opinions and
predilections of the poet, and embodying any remarks upon current topics
and any urgent piece of advice which he was particularly anxious to
insist on. Often it was made the vehicle for special appeal to the
sympathetic consideration of the spectators for the play and its merits.
These 'parabases,' so characteristic of the Aristophanic comedy, are
conceived in the brightest and wittiest vein, and abound in topical
allusions and personal hits that must have constituted them perhaps the
most telling part of the whole performance.

Aristophanes deals with all questions; for him the domain of the Comic