Greek New Comic Fragments

Abstract

The expression “Greek New Comedy” traditionally indicates a specific phase of Attic Comedy dated to the late 4th and 3rd centuries bce, although New Comedies continued to be written well into the Imperial period. New Comedies bring onto the stage fictional characters, domestic situations, and love-stories, and their plots tend to repeat common elements. Ancient sources identify over sixty New Comedy poets and consistently name three dramatists as the main representatives of this genre: Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon. Menander was born in 342/1 and died around 290 bce; the biographies of his two rivals are largely obscure but Philemon was reportedly older than Menander while Diphilus was one of Menander’s contemporaries. Unlike Menander, they were both born outside Athens. Two or three more authors were added to the list of the best New Comedy poets: Philippides, Apollodorus of Carystus, and Posidippus. New Comedy poets were generally more prolific than their 5th-century colleagues, but their plays are largely lost. Menander is the only author whose comedies survive thanks to a series of lucky papyrus findings in the 20th century: we have one complete comedy, Dyskolos, and substantial portions of several more. The dramas written by other New Comedy poets survive only in short fragments preserved by a few papyri and, most often, by ancient authors largely interested in linguistic peculiarities or moralizing excerpts. The standard collection of the fragments (F) of Greek Comedy and the testimonia (T) for Greek comic poets is Kassel and Austin 1983–2001 (Poetae Comici Graeci, cited under Editions and Translations), which is generally abbreviated as “K-A.” While surviving fragments are typically not very informative, an important source for our knowledge of Greek New Comedies is Roman Comedy. Roman poets adapted select plays into Latin, often disclosing the titles, the authors, and other details of their Greek models. Roman comedies give us indirect access to their now lost Greek originals.