which seems in some sort to suggest that episode in the life of the mythical Atalanta, daughter of Schoeneus, which led to her metamorphosis[245]; but, seeing that even the title Atalanta is doubtful, this conjecture cannot be considered as very certain. Strattis appears to have introduced Lais on the stage in his Macedones (Fr. 5), and in his parodies of the Medea, the Phoenissae, &c., the female characters of Euripides doubtless came in for their full share of ridicule, though no definite evidence to this effect has been preserved.

A little more information is to be gained from the works of those poets who belonged to the very end of the period of transition. Thus, the plays of Theopompus, which deal almost exclusively with Middle Comedy subjects, furnish several instances of that treatment of female characters with which one is familiar in the plays of the Middle Comedy proper. The Aphrodisia introduces us to the Hetaerae celebrating their customary festival. Fr. 1 affords a specimen of the remarks passed on absent friends on such occasions,[246] while Fr. 2 gives further details of the festivities. The solitary but considerable fragment of the Nemea (called after the Hetaera of that name) gives a lively description of a scene in which an intending lover is doing his best to gain the approval of the lady’s lena, a class which was, doubtless, as devoted then to the curto vetus amphora collo as it was 400 years later.[247] In the Capelides it is equally possible to get a glimpse of the action of the piece. A man dropping in at the bar of a house he has been in the habit of frequenting, and finding himself less effusively welcomed than he had had reason to hope (Fr. 3, 4), threatens to attack the proprietress and the rival of whom he is jealous (Fr. 5). Of the rest, the Hedychares described a wedding ceremony (Fr. 3),[248] the Callaeschrus contained an allusion to the expensiveness of certain Hetaerae, and general erotic allusions are not uncommon (e.g. Odysseus 1, Medus 2). The Stratiotides seems to have had some points in common with the Ecclesiazusae of Aristophanes. Alcaeus, who is one of the very latest in date of the writers usually ranked as belonging to the “Old” Comedy, deals in nearly all his plays with erotic subjects, mostly in the shape of mythological stories burlesqued. To this class belong the Pasiphae, the Hierus Gamus, the Endymion, the Ganymedes, and perhaps the Callisto, unless this be, like the Palaestra, named after an Hetaera. From this list of titles it may be seen that every style of love came in for treatment, but in no case are the fragments sufficiently numerous, for it to be possible even to hazard a guess as to what the nature of that treatment may have been. As to the plot of the Adelphae Moecheuomenae, we are equally in the dark, though the title seems to suggest the Aeolosicon of Aristophanes and the Canace of Euripides. Lastly, in the Antea of Eunicus and the Thalatta of Diodes, both named after Hetaerae, we have two further instances of a class of piece with which we have been steadily growing more familiar, the nearer we have approached the confines of the typical “Middle” Comedy.

VII. The Middle Comedy.

The poets of the transition, of whom we have just been speaking, have introduced us, more or less, to most, if not all, of the features which belong to the Middle Comedy proper; at the same time, it may not be amiss, for clearness’ sake, to recapitulate briefly those features, in so far as they affect our immediate subject.

The points on which it is essential to concentrate the attention are three in number:—

(1) In Middle Comedy, the preponderance of politics as the main dramatic interest—a preponderance which, naturally, tended to exclude women from the stage—disappears, and, consequently, female characters step inevitably into a more prominent position.

(2) The restriction of the original license of Comedy, had led the comedians to devote their talents to parodying mythological subjects; the parodists of mythology would naturally find their readiest materials in the stories of the amours of the various gods, and hence erotic stories of a sort at once come to the fore.

(3) Middle Comedy being in great part, if not entirely, devoted to the realistic treatment of contemporary social life, the Hetaerae, who formed an important feature in that life, were necessarily brought into prominence.[249]

Of these three main features,[250] the first two will not require special illustration,[251] but the last is one on which it will be necessary to dwell for some time.

The Hetaera-plays[252] are one of the most characteristic features of the fourth century; indeed, it may almost be said that admiration for the Hetaera, and ridicule of the wife, were the two main social canons of the period. These plays seem to have been realistic representations of contemporary life, and their general character is sufficiently demonstrated by the well-known retort of Antiphanes to Alexander;[253] but while they all thus have, as it were, a certain family likeness, it would appear, beyond doubt, that they may be also divided into two distinct classes, viz., those that have a distinct erotic plot, and those that have none, the latter naturally belonging to an earlier period of development than the former.

Plays dealing with Hetaerae were not, as we have already seen, exclusively a feature of the fourth-century Comedy, though the majority of such plays does, of course, belong to this period. In the very beginnings of Comedy at Athens, we have at least three plays of this class from the pen of Pherecrates,[254] while, at a later period of the fifth century, other works of a similar character seem certainly to have appeared.

The general character of these plays, however, seems, in spite of the modernity of their subject, to have been essentially that prevailing during the early period to which they belong. Pherecrates and his imitators seem to have been merely concerned in drawing a picture—perhaps a somewhat burlesque one—of the general life of an Hetaera and her followers, and in dwelling upon the various comic incidents which might occur in her environment, without troubling to connect these incidents by means of any very definite story. In other words, the Hetaera-play of Pherecrates was still, in the main, that mixture of pantomime and variety-show with which one is familiar in Aristophanes, and with which one’s ideas of the early Athenian Comedy are usually associated. And that plays of this class continued to be produced with success till well into the fourth century, there seems no reason to doubt.

The typical Hetaera-play of the Middle Comedy, however, is of an entirely different character. In this there is a definite plot, of which the Hetaera is the heroine, while the action of the piece is supplied by the struggles de nocte locanda of her various rival lovers. In fact, the Hetaera-play of Antiphanes or Alexis is a comedy in the modern sense of the word, while the Hetaera-play of an earlier period is still nothing but an extravaganza. The author of this great change is not known; perhaps it was Anaxandrides.

It is stated of Anaxandrides that he was the first to introduce ἔρωτας καὶ παρθένων φθοράς[255] into Comedy. This statement is, at first sight, rather difficult to understand, when one considers plays like the Nemesis of Cratinus, or the Cocalus of Aristophanes, not to speak of erotic episodes like the one which terminates the Ecclesiazusae of the latter writer; and it must be apparent that the mere introduction on the stage of such subjects cannot be the merit claimed by Suidas for Anaxandrides. The most simple explanation of the apparent anomaly would therefore seem to be, that what Suidas means to imply, is that Anaxandrides was the first to make erotic subjects the main interest of his plot, and to introduce his principal characters as taking part in them; for this, as we have already seen, was not the case with the earlier plays which dealt with erotic matters.

Whether this great advance was really due to Anaxandrides cannot, unfortunately, be proved with anything like certainty, for such fragments of his works as have survived are remarkably reticent on this particular subject;[256] but there can be no doubt that it took place about his time, so that there is at least a strong probability, under the circumstances, that it was the result of his influence.

On the first and older class of Hetaera-play, it is useless to dwell further; a certain vague idea of their general nature is all that can be gained by the study of their fragments, and the external evidence as to their character is equally meagre, while the intentional want of coherence which marked their action makes it obviously absurd to endeavour in any way to reconstruct them. The character of the second and, for our purposes, more important class, will be best explained by a brief examination of one or two striking specimens, the remains of which are sufficiently important to render it possible to follow their story, at any rate for a certain distance.

Thus, in the Campylion of Eubulus, we are introduced to two men, one of whom sighs with quite modern plaintiveness over the heavy burden of his love for a certain κοσμία ἑταίρα:

Through the agency of the friend, who is evidently more of a man of the world, the lovers meet at a supper party, which was probably at least a partie carrée. Here the friend gives vent to various cynical remarks on women:—

and, evidently a little sceptical as to the inviolable κοσμιότης of the lady, makes various efforts to induce her to commit herself, either by eating or drinking to excess[257] (Fr. 1, 5), or by displaying her talents in a questionable “song and dance.” (Fr. 6.) His efforts seem, however, to be unsuccessful, and at the end of the evening the hero is as hopelessly in love as ever:—

The dénouement of this interesting little story we do not know; let us hope it was a satisfactory one.

In the Agonis of Alexis again, we find a girl remonstrating with her mother, who wishes her to accept a rich but dissolute lover in preference to the νεανίσκος of her choice.

The mother, however, insists, in spite of the young man’s professions of (imaginary?) wealth (Fr. 2), in carrying off her daughter to the rich lover’s house, where, however, the hero also manages to turn up and make some cutting remarks on the family portraits (Fr. 3).[258] He then succeeds in making the mother drunk (Fr. 4), and so, we are led to believe—for the end is again veiled in obscurity—is enabled to elude her vigilance.[259]

Further evidence as to the character of this style of art may be obtained by studying several of the plays of Plautus, such as the Truculentus, the Mercator, or the Mostellaria, which seem to have been adapted directly from Greek works of this class, without being in any way influenced by the later romantic ideas.

But while the incidents which occur in the individual plays are naturally of an endless variety, certain broad features are recognisable throughout this literature.

Firstly, not only is love for an Hetaera enthusiastically praised, but it is specially described as the one love in life worth loving. The advantage of the Hetaera over the wife is such a stock subject, that it will be unnecessary to do more than mention one or two of the most striking passages in which the feeling finds expression, such as that cited in Athenaeus, xiii. 559 A, from the Athamas of Amphis:

or that quoted in the same place from the Corinthiastes of Philetaerus:

But this is not all. The advantages of Hetaera-love over adultery are expounded after a fashion that cannot fail to be startling to anyone who has not formed a clear conception of what “love” meant in the Athens of Demosthenes. A striking instance of this occurs in the Nannion of Eubulus,[260] and the same idea is still further developed in the Pentathlus of Xenarchus.

As for that “love of a man for a maid,” which is, so to speak, the very essence of the love-element in later Greek literature, it is simply ignored in Middle Comedy. A girl that one is going to marry has all the disadvantages of a wife, but for one thing. While the wife in esse is, as a later writer feelingly expresses it, “an immortal necessary evil,” and, therefore, cannot be altogether escaped from, there is no need to meet troubles halfway by drawing attention to the wife in posse. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we marry; and while we do so, let us have no Alexandrian skeleton at the feast to remind us of the fatal hour. And so, if the question be asked, “What did the Middle Comedy writers think of such love?” the answer is, “They did not think of it at all.”[261]

And this will serve to introduce us to a further question, in the answer to which lies the key to the whole of this part of our subject. What is actually meant by the “love” which we hear so often expressed for these Hetaerae? The answer may be simple and brief: ornari res ipsa vetat, contenta doceri: the love of the Middle Comedy is animal passion, pure and simple; the Hetaera caters for the appetites of the time in exactly the same way, even if in a different sphere, as the cook and the fishmonger, of whom we also hear so much, both to praise and blame, in this literature.[262] Of love in the modern sense of the word, of love as distinct from lust, there is nowhere any suggestion in the writers of the Middle Comedy. This fact is so patent to anyone who is familiar with the plays of this period, that one may, perhaps, be spared the trouble of its illustration. If anyone is inclined to doubt it, let him open the third volume of Meineke’s Comic Fragments at random, and read; he will soon be satisfied.

When this is the case, it is not surprising that we find “Platonic” love held up to consistent ridicule during the time of the Middle Comedy. A sufficiently striking example of this method is the passage quoted in Athenaeus, xiii. 563 C, from the Dithyrambus of Amphis:

But the clearest proof of all is that furnished by the fact that Plato himself, and Sappho, whose style of love was, as we have already had occasion to observe,[263] recognised as similar in spirit to that advocated by the philosopher, are, perhaps, the two favourite butts for the wit of the Middle Comedy. That the Plato of Aristophon, like the Hedychares of Theopompus, of which we have already spoken, and the Sapphos of Antiphanes, Amphis, Ephippus, and Timocles, were, at least some of them, in part devoted to this subject, it seems only reasonable to believe, while sporadic allusions to the matter are, of course, sufficiently common. The one possible exception to this general rule appears in the Helene of Alexis, where a character is introduced upholding the Platonic view of love; but it would be bold, in the face of so much evidence on the other side, to assert that this isolated statement in any way indicates the general tone of the comedy in question. It is far more likely that the champion of these views (perhaps Theseus[264]) was made to see the error of his ways and repent his lost opportunities before the play was out.

And akin in spirit to the above is the tendency, so common that it hardly needs special illustration, to throw ridicule on the married state and on family life in general.[265] When the man, who is called the originator of the erotic element in Middle Comedy, can write words like these:

and mean them, there can be little doubt as to the tendency of that erotic element which he was the first to introduce. In fact, not only is marriage a favourite subject of ridicule, but it is one on which the writers of this period make some of their happiest remarks. There are few things in Antiphanes as good as the passage in the Philopator, where one man, meeting another, enquires after a friend, and hears that he has got married.

Alexis is seldom as amusing as when he proclaims (Incert. 34) marriage worse than disfranchisement.

Such, then, is the erotic element of the Middle Comedy—the praise of sensuality and the ridicule of all that is ennobling or virtuous. Alexis tells us all when he says:

Processit Vesper Olympo. It was time the Macedonian barbarians swept all this away and made place for cleaner things.[266]

VIII. The New Comedy.

The feeling on passing from the Middle to the New Comedy is like the fresh air on coming out of the bar of a public-house. The Middle Comedy is the last decaying branch of the old literature; the romantic New Comedy is one of the earliest and most vigorous offshoots of that new literature which sprang from the genius of Antimachus, and has continued to the present day. In the Middle Comedy, we are still face to face with the women of typical Athens, with the women of Aristophanes, at best with the women of Euripides,—and with the way in which typical Athens treated these women; in the New Comedy this is changed, and woman—the woman that can be loved as wife and mother—steps into her true place as object of, and partner in, the intensest and the purest passions of which humanity is capable.

It will be remembered that the Middle Comedy treatment, of women and love for women, had four main characteristics.

(1) The glorification of the Hetaera and of love for the Hetaera.

(2) The purely sensual nature of the love thus extolled.

(3) The ridicule of all love that was not sensual.

(4) The ridicule of family-life.

The New Comedy flatly contradicts every one of these principles. The love of which it treats is love for a virgin,[267] and the consummation of this love is marriage. Such love is by no means purely sensual; indeed, at times it is almost of a “Platonic” character. And lastly, not only is the sanctity of marriage strictly insisted upon, and the advantages of marriage as a system strongly maintained, but the family relations, anyhow among the younger generation, are often of a very pleasant character.

In fact, while the action of the Middle Comedy is concerned with a love, the consummation of which is a temporary sensual gratification, the action of the New Comedy is supplied by the efforts of its heroes and their adherents, to secure that the love which occupies so much of their thoughts may be made at once legitimate and permanent. It was New Comedy that first introduced on the stage the love of a life, as opposed to the love of an hour. If anyone were to ask what was the chief merit of Menander, the answer would be that he was the first to show the Athenians that “love for ever,” with which every poetaster and novel-reader has now been familiar for so many centuries.

But the differences between the treatment of women in the new literature, and that to which they were exposed in the literature we have just been studying, will be most readily made clear if we proceed at once to the detailed examination of the former.

The first and most prominent feature of the New Comedy treatment of the love of men for women is its insistance on marriage—that is to say, on a definite guarantee of permanence and constancy—as the one proper consummation of such love. In fact, as we have already had occasion to observe in another place, the idealisation of marriage is the basis of Greek romance.[268]

This insistance on marriage is, of course, most strikingly exemplified in the typical New Comedy plot, which is sufficiently familiar to every student of the Latin comedians. Thus, in five of these Latin plays, the Heauton Timorumenos (of Menander), the Phormio (of Apollodorus), the Rudens (of Diphilus), the Curculio, and the Poenulus,[269] the story is of exactly the kind that subsequently appears in the Greek novel—a young man falls in love with a virgin, and, after various misfortunes which threaten to separate the pair, they are eventually married, and live happily ever afterwards.

On this class of plot it is unnecessary to dwell, except that it may be worth while just to draw attention to the extremely passionate nature of the love which makes these young men so anxious to marry. The modern reader would instinctively expect that the confinement of love to these legitimate and, as one would now consider them, commonplace channels, would inevitably lead to a lessening of its charm, and a diminution of its force. As a matter of fact, the result was the very reverse. Not only has the character of man’s love for woman changed, but this love has developed an intensity of poetry and passion which has never belonged to it before.[270] Instances are easy to find; the most striking one is perhaps shown us at the meeting of Phaedromus and Planesium, in the Curculio (i. 3):

But there are others, almost equally forcible, in the Rudens (iv. 8)—where particular enthusiasm is expressed at the prospect of marriage, as opposed to the relation which had previously been the lover’s highest possible ideal,—the Poenulus (v. 4, 49)[272], and elsewhere.

But another and equally important type of story is that in which the man first seduces the woman, and then subsequently marries her. Plays of this description are the Andria, the Eunuchus, the Adelphi (all by Menander), the Aulularia, and the Cistellaria.[273]

Of these, the Cistellaria is different from the rest. Here, the girl Silenium, who, though supposed to be the daughter of a lena, has been brought up as a virgin (i. 3, 24), is induced by a promise of marriage to live with the man Alcesimarchus, a promise which is afterwards fulfilled only after a considerable delay. (i. 1, 90-100.) In the other four cases, however—and this is very important—the promise of marriage is subsequent to the seduction, and takes the form, not of an inducement to, but of a reparation for the latter. The lover regards the seduction as a crime, for which he is willing to make amends to the utmost of his power, while at the same time he is anxious to perpetuate and legalise his amour. He therefore adopts what we are accustomed in modern times to call an “honourable course,” and offers marriage to the woman whom he has loved and still loves. The importance of this feature is twofold—firstly, the close association thus brought about between marriage and love of the most “romantic” and unconventional description; and secondly, the perpetuation and legalisation of a form of love which is obviously by nature temporary and illegitimate. And thus the love-stories of the New Comedy may be said to begin where those of the Middle Comedy end; while the heroes of the latter are concerned with achieving the temporary satisfaction of their sensual desires, the heroes of the former are occupied in striving to make permanent atonement for the indiscretions which such desires have led them to commit.

To quote instances of what has been said: in the Andria the promise of marriage is distinctly an act of reparation, which the lover feels himself in duty bound to make. This is evident from the argument of Sulpicius Apollinaris,[274] and from various passages in the play.[275] The same is the case in the Adelphi.[276] Here Aeschinus, as soon as he considers what he has done, comes to the mother of Pamphila, and begs with tears to be allowed to marry her by way of reparation.[277] In the Aulularia, the petition of Lyconides to the miser Euclio is animated by a very similar spirit.[278] In the Eunuchus (which is, it must be remembered, the love-story of a boy of sixteen)[279], there is no opportunity for any such behaviour on the part of Chaerea, though his sincere regret (ii. 3, 33 seqq.), and his enthusiasm when the possibility of marriage becomes apparent (v. 8, 1 seqq.), show clearly enough that he is not intended to be an exception to the general rule.

It must not, however, be supposed that the feeling, which prompts the various characters of whom we have spoken to make reparation for their wrongdoing, is merely a feeling of repentance, or a regard for public opinion. It is love, and love of a most passionate kind, that makes them so anxious to marry the women they have wronged. Of the enthusiasm of the hero of the Eunuchus at the prospect of marriage we have already spoken; in the Adelphi, Aeschinus is equally elated under similar circumstances;[280] in the Aulularia, the anxiety and persistency of Lyconides are evidently inspired by the same feeling;[281] in the Andria, Pamphilus protests that nothing short of death will divide him from Glycerium.[282] That love which the Middle Comedy could not conceive of as outliving its sensual gratification, appears in the New Comedy, not weakened, but strengthened by time, and obstacles only serve to make the lover more determined to perpetuate and to legalise those emotions which had, to a previous generation, owed their chief charm to their freedom from the restraints of constancy and propriety.

In the Hecyra again, it is by marriage that, through a strange coincidence, the hero is eventually able to repair the wrong done to the heroine. In the Stichus, too, the plot turns on the constancy of two wives to their absent husbands,[283] while, in the Trinummus, there seems strong reason to believe, that it is not all love for Lesbonicus which makes Lysiteles so anxious to marry the former’s sister.[284]

To this evidence from the plays themselves may be added some further evidence of a more general kind. Marriage is mentioned by the anonymous author of the epigram in the C. I. G. 6083, as the most characteristic feature of Menander’s plays—

Still more emphatic is the testimony of Plutarch, who asserts (Sympos. vii. 712 C) that Menander is peculiarly suited for married men to hear and read—

Indeed, the essentially “proper” character of the Menandrean drama is emphasised by more than one ancient writer. That Comedy could be anything but indecent was a revelation to Athens of the fourth century, and it was a revelation for which she does not seem to have been particularly grateful; but the fact that it was a writer whose works were fit “pueris virginibusque legi,” who revolutionized the dramatic art, is one that a modern student of that revolution cannot afford to forget.[285]

Two of the plays mentioned above, the Hecyra and the Stichus, lead naturally to the consideration of another feature of the New Comedy treatment of marriage—a feature which, though less strongly marked than that of which we have just been speaking, is yet, if one considers what Greek feeling had previously been on this matter, perhaps even more remarkable. Not only is marriage held up as the lover’s ideal, but the actual married state is described as a state of happiness, and married people, even those who have been married for some time, are introduced to us as strongly attached to one another. How complete a revolution in Greek feeling such a state as this implies, need hardly be emphasised.[286] Yet, in the Stichus, we have a plot based on the determination of two women to remain faithful to their husbands (who have been absent for three years) in spite of the efforts of their father to induce them to do otherwise; they insist on remaining faithful, though their husbands are poor (Plaut. Stich. i. 2, 75 seqq.), and though they are uncertain whether their devotion is returned (i. 1, 36 seqq.). In the Hecyra again, it is the behaviour of Philumena after marriage which wins her husband’s heart (Ter. Hec. i. 2, 85 seqq.)—a remarkably modern form of love-story.

Various fragments, too, of Menander have a similar import, such as the famous passage from the Misogynes on the advantages of marriage—

or Menand. Incert. 73, where the husband takes up the cudgels in his wife’s behalf. Incert. 101, again, dwells on the close relationship existing between man and wife—

Incert. 100 points out that a wife must rule her husband by love—

and a careful reader will have no difficulty in finding other more or less important examples of the same spirit, both in Menander and in the Latin Comedians.

One important exception there is, of course, to this state of affairs, and that is the relation between the old men and their wives. The types of the hen-pecked husband and the Xanthippe-like wife are too familiar to need illustration. But here it is to be observed, that the husbands who appear in this position, are always old or elderly men, and this fact is probably not without its significance. In describing his elderly married men as unhappy, Menander was ridiculing, not marriage, but the mariages de convenance which had, before his time, been the regular thing at Athens. “These men are unhappy,” says Menander, “not because they are married, but because they have married wives whom they never loved, and whom they chose merely because of their money, or to please their relations. If they had married for love, the case might well have been different.” And thus the hen-pecked husband, who belongs to the old régime, is only a further argument in favour of the romantic love-matches of which Menander approved.

Of course the matter did not stop here. It was so easy to raise a laugh with a row between husband and wife, that Comedy was sure not to abandon the subject, even after its raison d’être had disappeared; and a modern audience, we know, is just as ready to laugh at the husband who has lost his latch-key as were the Athenians of the fourth century. But the point to be remembered is, that a pair of characters like Chremes and Sostrata in the Heauton Timorumenus, or Laches and Sostrata in the Hecyra, furnishes no real argument against the view that Menander and his followers of the New Comedy regarded marriage, if properly entered upon, as a state of happiness.

Another exception, and one that is perhaps in reality a more important one, is furnished by Menander’s Misogynes, a work which gained very great popularity, doubtless owing to the way in which it appealed to the lower instincts of the audience whom its author was trying to educate up; but here it has to be observed that, in the first place, as the play is lost, it is impossible to say what the actual dénouement was; while, secondly, there was no reason why a man of Menander’s versatile genius should not for once treat the subject of married life in an unusual manner, without in any way abandoning his general views on the subject.[287]

A further feature of the New Comedy treatment of marriage is the universal respect for its sanctity.[288] The adulterer, who is the favourite hero of mediaeval romance, is here invariably held up to contempt and hatred. The most familiar instance of this is, of course, the story in the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, but it is far from being an isolated one. The Halieis of Menander evidently treated of a somewhat similar subject,[289] which appears once more in the Eunuchus.[290] In the Andria again, Charinus is horror-stricken at the idea of committing adultery with the woman he loves, though, when accused of seducing the same woman, his only regret is that he cannot plead guilty to the charge.[291] An even more remarkable instance, and one perhaps without parallel, is furnished by the Hecyra, where the Hetaera Bacchis asserts that she had refused to admit her lover, Pamphilus, as soon as she learned that he was married.[292] It may be argued, of course, that she did this out of pique, but the very cordial nature of the meeting between the two (Ter. Hec. v. 4, 16, seqq.), and the fact that Bacchis knew that her lover had abandoned her sorely against his will (i. 2, 45 seqq.), and was still devoted to her (i. 2, 82), seem to suggest that this is not the most natural explanation of her conduct.[293]

The passages just described may serve to introduce us to a further feature of our subject—a feature in which the New Comedy is, if possible, even more remarkably unlike the Middle Comedy than in those which have already been discussed. In the Middle Comedy, as we have already had frequent occasion to observe, the wife and the husband are invariably held up to ridicule when compared with the Hetaera and her lover; in the New Comedy we may find this position exactly reversed. Instances are rare, (as is indeed to be expected, when we consider, in the first place, the strong current of popular feeling on the subject, and, secondly, the personal relations between the leading writers of the New Comedy and the prominent Hetaerae of the time,) but they do unquestionably occur. The most striking example is perhaps that in the Heauton Timorumenus, where not only is the Hetaera contrasted unfavourably with the virgin, (as she herself admits,)[294] but her lover is made consistently ridiculous as compared with the lover who contemplates marriage, and in the end comes off badly in the extreme. Very similar evidence is furnished by the Hecyra. In the struggle for the love of Pamphilus, which takes place in that play between the wife and the Hetaera, the former is completely successful, and her victory is gained by sheer amiability of temper (Ter. Hec. i. 2, 85 seqq.); indeed, so charming is she, that the Hetaera is driven in the end to congratulate her husband on his good fortune in having married her. (v. 4, 22.) And this victory of the wife becomes the more remarkable, when we observe that the Hetaera is evidently intended to be a very favourable specimen of her class, in every way deserving of the lover she is compelled to lose.[295]

While on this point, it may not be amiss to remark that it is by no means impossible that the famous Thais of Menander really belonged to this class of plays, and that the Hetaera, who gives her name to the piece, is intended as a parody on the typical Hetaera of Middle Comedy. This view, which is not improbable in itself, receives some support from the mock-heroic tone of Fr. 1 of the Thais,[296] and still more from Mart. xiv. 187;[297] but cannot, of course, be regarded as more than a possible suggestion.[298]

Of mere vulgar ridicule or abuse of the ordinary Hetaera, as heartless,[299] mercenary,[300] and the like, there is, of course, enough and to spare; but it would be unjustifiable to claim expressions such as these as distinctive of New Comedy, in the face of passages like Epicrates, Antilais, 2, or Anaxilas, Neottis, 1. Menander indeed makes a more serious charge, perhaps, when one of his characters asserts that an Hetaera cannot be good, for she makes a trade of sin: