Middle Comedy

The greatest names before Aristophanes are those of Cratinus and Eupolis; but from about 470 B.C. there seems to have been a continuous succession of comic dramatists, amongst them Plato Comicus, the author of 28 comedies, political satires Aristophanes. and parodies after the style of the Middle Comedy.

The thratta, then, is really a genuine sea-fish; and Mnesimachus in his Horse-breeder, mentions it; and Mnesimachus is a poet of the middle comedy.

“Comic Platon,” Greek poet, called “the prince of the middle comedy,” flourished 445 B.C.;

Such fabulous traditions continued sometimes to occupy the scenes of the middle comedy, and it was not till the new was introduced that the sphere of the comic drama was confined to the representation of private and domestic life.

Two hundred and fifty-five comedies, written by Alexis of Thurium, the titles of which have been collected by Meursius, and a few fragments of them by Stephens, are said to have been composed in the happiest vein of the middle comedy of the Greeks, which possessed much of the comic force of Aristophanes and Cratinus, without their malignity.