h of fancy[73] and in
beauty of lyric melody, he has few peers among the great poets of all
times.

The parabasis.

The distinctive feature of Old, as compared with Middle comedy, is the
_parabasis_, the speech in which the chorus, moving towards and facing
the audience, addressed it in the name of the poet, often abandoning all
reference to the action of the play. The loss of the _parabasis_ was
involved in the loss of the chorus, of which comedy was deprived in
consequence of the general reduction of expenditure upon the comic
drama, culminating in the law of the personally aggrieved dithyrambic
poet Cinesias (396).[74] But with the downfall of the independence of
Athenian public life, the ground had been cut from under the feet of its
most characteristic representative. Already in 414, in the anxious time
after the sailing of the Sicilian expedition, the law of Syracosius had
prohibited the comic poets from making direct reference to current
events; but the _Birds_ had taken their flight above the range of all
regulations. The catastrophe of the city (405) was preceded by the
temporary overthrow of the democracy (411), and was followed by the
establishment of an oligarchical "tyranny" under Spartan protection;
and, when liberty was restored (404), the citizens for a time addressed
themselves to their new life in a soberer spirit, and continued (or
passed) the law prohibiting the introduction by name of any individual
as one of the personages of a play. The change to which comedy had to
accommodate itself was one which cannot be defined by precise dates, yet
it was not the less inevitable in its progress and results. Comedy, in
her struggle for existence, now chiefly devoted herself to literary and
social themes, such as the criticism of tragic poets,[75] and the
literary craze of women's rights,[76] and the transition to Middle
comedy accomplished itself. Of the later plays of Aristophanes,
three[77] are without a _parabasis_, and in the last of those preserved
to us which properly belongs to Middle comedy[78] the chorus is quite
insignificant.

The Middle Comedy.

II. _Middle comedy_, whose period extends over the remaining years of
Athenian freedom (from about 400 to 338), thus differed in substance as
well as in form from its predecessor. It is represented by the names of
thirty-seven writers (more than double the number of poets attributed to
Old comedy), among whom Eubulus, Antiphanes and Alexis are