187 Epicharmus and Phormis were the first writers in the island of Sicily; but this is in the vague manner of his dates, and not to be relied upon: he takes no notice of Aristotle's express assertion, that Epicharmus was long senior to Chionides; and yet he might have recollected, that facts are so far in favour of Aristotle's chronology of these poets, that there is a title upon record of one of Chionides's plays called The Persians, which must have been posterior to the Persian æra, when it is on all hands agreed that Epicharmus was living.

Amongst the epigrams of Theocritus, published by Henry Stevens in 1579, there are some lines upon Epicharmus, which appear to have been inscribed upon the pedestal of a statue of brass, which the Syracusans had set up in his honour as their fellow-citizen: it consists of ten lines in the Doric dialect, which he used; it settles the point of his birth, expressly saying he was a Syracusan, and ascribes to him the invention of Comedy

'Epicharmus, the man who invented Comedy.'

In the conclusion, it celebrates him for the many useful maxims which he gave for the instruction of youth; but this I am disposed to think may apply to the circumstance of his having been a schoolmas. ter at Syracuse; for if we are to take our judgment of Epicharmus's drama from his imitator Plautus, perhaps its morality, though not to be overlooked amongst other excellencies, is nevertheless not the most striking feature in its character. And though it is probable that Epicharmus did not launch out into that personality, which the freer Athenians in,

dulged to such excess, yet I can suppose him to have been not very chaste in his dialogue, from the anecdote which Plutarch gives us, of his being heavily fined and compelled to manual labour by order of Hiero for certain obscene jests, which he suffered to pass in hearing of his queen: I must ground another remark upon this anecdote, respecting the time in which he is generally thought to have struck out his comedy, as being long antecedent to the time of Hiero; which being admitted, it will follow that he was near the close of his life, when this sentence of manual labour was executed upon him; a kind of punishment so very unlikely to be inflicted on a man of ninety-six years by a prince of Hiero's magnanimity and benevolence, that if I am to take the anecdote for granted, I cannot assent to those authorities that have placed him so high in time, for the purpose only of putting his title of first founder of comedy out of dispute.

Upon the whole, I think it likely the Athenians wrote comedy as soon as the Sicilians, but that Epicharmus was the first who formed his drama upon the poems of Homer: it is also clear, that his countryman and contemporary Phormis wrote comedy as soon, or nearly as soon as he did; for although Theocritus, in the epigram above cited, says expressly that Epicharmus struck out comedy, yet it must be remarked that Theocritus was a Syracusan by birth, living in the time of Ptolemy Lagus; and in giving this testimony for his fellow-citizen, it is more than probable he spoke locally of the Sicilian comedy only, as Suidas did in after times, when he said that Epicharmus and Phormis first struck out comedy in Sicily.

I would therefore fix Epicharmus's first comedy antecedent to Olymp. LXXV. at the lowest date,

because we have it from good authority that he was teaching scholars at Syracuse four years before the Persian æra; and this date is confirmed by the age of Phormis, who certainly flourished in the time of Gelon, and was in great favour in the court of that prince, who was predecessor to Hiero, and was succeeded by him in Olymp. LXXVII.

NUMBER CXXXVI.

EPICHARMUS was a liberal benefactor to the stage, Porphyry says that Apollodorus the grammarian made a collection of his plays in ten volumes; Suidas reckons fifty-two; Lycon only thirty-five; but modern philologists have given the titles of forty, with the authorities by which they are ascertained.

It is not my purpose in these papers to make a practice of loading the page with lists of titles, which may too truly be called dead names; but in the instance of an author like Epicharmus, who stands at the head of his department, every relique seems an object of some curiosity; and therefore, although the following catalogue may strike the dramatic reader as what may properly enough be called a beggarly account of empty boxes,' yet I shall proceed to enumerate the titles of forty comedies, all of which are, upon good grounds of criticism, ascribed to this celebrated author.

TITLES OF THE COMEDIES OF EPICHARMUS.

The Husbandman. The Halcyon. Amycus, Son of Neptune. The Banditti. Atalanta. The

Bacchæ. Busiris. Earth and Sea. The Fathers
of the People. The Bacchanalians. Diphilus.
Hope. The Festival. The Celebration of the
Victory. Hebe's Wedding. Juno's Nuptials.
Vulcan, or The Revels. The Ambassadors to the
Oracle. The Cyclops. The Reasoner. The
Megarensian. The Muses. The Islands. Niobe's
Wedding. Ulysses the Deserter. Ulysses Ship-
wreckt. The Chitterlings. The Pædagogues.
The Paragon.
The Persians. The Statesman.
Prometheus, the Fire-stealer. Pyrrha, the Wife
of Deucalion. The Sirens. The Isle of Scyros.
The Sphynx. The Trojans. Philoctetes. The
Chorus Troop. The Potters.

The same respect, which led me to insert these titles, led me also to search with all possible diligence for every fragment which I could find of Epicharmus. I wish they had been more in number, and of greater importance than they are; but such as they are, I have reason to believe they are the whole amount of what can be picked up from the wreck of this once valuable poet. The reader must not expect, that either in this author's instance, or that of any other Greek comedian, except in very few cases, that the particular play can be ascertained, to which the fragments belong; for the grammarians and others, who quote them, only give the name of the author, and not that of the comedy from which they extract them. I must in this place once for all give vent to an anxiety, which presses on my mind respecting these fragments of the Greek comedy, whether the insertion of them will or will not be approved of by the generality of my readers: my sole object is to furnish them with rational and moral amusement, and if I fail of that object in these

my hearty endeavours, I have taken a great deal of pains to render these passages into English in the best manner my capacity enabled me to do, to a very unfortunate purpose indeed. The learned reader will bear me witness, that these fragments have been the admiration of all ages; and I am sensible that very many of them possess intrinsic beauty both of style and sentiment; and if my translations have not robbed them of their original merit, some pleasure, and let me hope some profit, may attend their perusal. I have studied so to class them, as not to burthen or distract the reader with a mere succession of miscellaneous quotations without any reference or connection, which I am sensible could not be an agreeable mode of publication, though Stobæus, Hertelius and some others have taken it up; but on the contrary, I have endeavoured to introduce them with some anecdote or other, which serves to weave them into the thread of the work. Most of the translations will be found in metre, in which I have strove to copy the free style of our old metrical comic poets: some I have turned into rhyme, where the thought allowed it, and the expressions were terse and epigrammatical: others I have put into prose; and in all I have been as close and faithful to the original, as the language and my construction of the author would permit. If the candid reader will accept this preface in apology, I shall give him no further trouble on the subject.

Epicharmus, in one of his comedies (we may suppose The Statesman) introduces the following retort from some man of low birth to a prating old woman, who is vapouring about her ancestry.

"Good gossip, if you love me, prate no more:
What are your genealogies to me?

Away to those, who have more need of them!