NUMBER CXLV.

ANAXANDRIDES.

ANAXANDRIDES of Rhodes, son of Anaxander, was author of sixty-five comedies, with ten of which he bore away the prizes from his competitors. Nature bestowed upon this poet not only a fine genius, but a most beautiful person, his stature was of the tallest, his air elegant and engaging, and, whilst he affected an effeminate delicacy in his habit and appearance, he was a victim to the most violent and uncontroul. able passions, which, whenever he was disappointed of the prize he contended for, were vented upon every person and thing that fell in his way, not excepting even his own unfortunate dramas, which he would tear in pieces and scatter amongst the mob, or at other times devote them to the most ignominious uses he could devise: Of these he would preserve no copy, and thus it came to pass that many admirable comedies were actually destroyed and lost to posterity. His dress was splendid and extravagant in the extreme, being of the finest purple richly fringed with gold, and his hair was not coiled up in the Athenian fashion, but suffered to fall over his shoulders at its full length: his muse was no less wanton and voluptuous than his manners, for it is recorded of him, that he was the first comic poet, who ventured to introduce upon the scene incidents of the grossest intrigue: he was not only severe upon Plato

and the Academy, but attacked the magistracy o Athens, charging them with the depravity of their lives, in so daring and contemptuous a style, that they brought him to trial, and by one of the most cruel sentences upon record condemned the unhappy poet to be starved to death.

Zarottus and some other commentators upon Ovid interpret that distich in his Ibis to allude to Anaxandrides, where he says, ver. 525-6,

Utve parum stabili qui carmine læsit Athenas.
Invisus pereas deficiente cibo.

"Or meet the libeller's unpitied fate,
Starv'd for traducing the Athenian state."

I know this interpretation of Zarottus is controverted upon the authority of Pausanias, and Ovid is supposed by some to point at Mævius, by others at Hipponax; but as the name of the sufferer is not given, those who incline to the construction of Eustathius, as well as Zarottus, will apply it to our author.

Of the titles of his comedies eight and twenty remain, but for his fragments, which are few in number, I discover none which seem to merit a translation; had he spared those which his passion destroyed, happy chance might perhaps have rescued something worth our notice.

ARISTOPHON.

This poet has left us more and better remembrancers of his muse, though fewer of his history: that he was a writer of the Middle Comedy is all I can collect, which personally concerns him: the titles of four of his comedies are in my hands, but

though Plutarch, Athenæus, Laertius, in his Pythagoras, Stobæus and Gyraldus all make mention of his name, none of them have given us any anecdotes of his history.

Love and matrimony, which are subjects little touched upon by the writers of the Old Comedy, became important personages in the Middle Drama; the former seems to have opened a very flowery field to fancy, the last appears generally to have been set up as the butt of ridicule and invective.-Our author for instance tells us

'A man may marry once without a crime, But curs'd is he, who weds a second time.'

On the topic of love he is more playful and inge

nious

Love, the disturber of the peace of heaven,
And grand fomenter of Olympian feuds,
Was banish'd from the synod of the Gods:
They drove him down to earth at the expence
Of us poor mortals, and curtail'd his wings
To spoil his soaring and secure themselves
From his annoyance-Selfish, hard decree!
For ever since he roams th' unquiet world,
The tyrant and despoiler of mankind.'

There is a fragment of his comedy of the Pythagorista, in which he ridicules that philosopher's pretended visit to the regions of the dead

"I've heard this arrogant impostor tell,
Amongst the wonders which he saw in hell,
That Pluto with this scholars sate and fed,
Singling them out from the inferior dead:
Good faith! the monarch was not over-nice,
Thus to take up with beggary and lice,'

In another passage of the same satirical comedy ho thus humorously describes the disciples of Pytha-goras

So gaunt they seem, that famine never made
Of lank Philippides so mere a shade;

Of salted tunny-fish their scanty dole,'
Their beverage, like the frog's, a standing pool,
With now and then a cabbage, at the best
The leavings of the caterpillar's feast:
No comb approaches their dishevell❜d hair
To rout the long establish'd myriads there;
On the bare ground their bed, nor do they know.
A warmer coverlid than serves the crow;
Flames the meridian sun without a cloud?
They bask like grasshoppers and chirp as loud:
With oil they never even feast their eyes;
The luxury of stockings they despise,

But bare-foot as the crane still march along
All night in chorus with the screech-owl's song.'

Of AXIONICUS the comic poet I have nothing to relate, but that he was a writer of reputation in the period we are describing, and that we have the titles of six of his comedies, with a small parcel of uninteresting fragments, chiefly to be found in Athe

næus.

BATHON I must also pass over like the former, no records of his history, and only a few fragments of his comedies, with three of their titles, remaining.

Though I class CHÆREMON amongst the writers of the Middle Comedy, I have some doubt if he should not have been in the list of Old Dramatists, being said to have been the scholar of Socrates: he is celebrated by Aristotle, Athenæus, Suidas, Stobæus, Theophrastus and others, and the titles of nine of his comedies are preserved in those authors, with some scraps of his dialogue. Aristotle relates that in his comedy of The Hippocentaur he intro

duced a rhapsody, in which he contrived to mix every species of metre, inventing, as it should seem, a characteristic measure for a compound monster out of nature.

Of CLEARCHUS we have a few fragments, and the fitles of three comedies preserved by Athenæus; the same author gives us the title of one comedy by CRITON, of four by CROBYLUS, and of two by DEMOXENUS, one of which is the Self-Tormentor, or Heautontimorumenos; this poet was an Athenian born, and seems to have been a voluminous writer. Of DEMETRIUs there remains only one fragment, yet we have testimony of his having been a comic poet of this period of great reputation.

DIODORUS was a native of Sinope, a city of Pontus, and the birth-place of many eminent poets and philosophers; we have the titles of three of his comedies, and from the few fragments of his works now existing I have selected these which follow

This is my rule, and to this rule I'll hold,

To chuse my wife by merit not by gold;
For on that one election must depend
Whether I wed a fury or a friend.'

When your foe dies, let all resentment cease,
Make peace with death, and death shall give you peace.'

I meet with another fragment of this author, which is so far curious, as it contains a bold blasphemy against the supreme of the heathen deities, and marks the very loose hold, which the established religion had upon the minds of the common people of Athens at this period, who must have been wonderfully changed by the new philosophy from the times of Eschylus and Aristophanes, who both incurred their resentment in a very high degree for daring to affront