378 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE Comedy is dated roughly from 400 to the death of Alex- ander, in 336, and is characterised by a love of parody and the ridicule of poets and myths. The New, as we have said above, extended its sphere to all the subjects of ordinary life. The plots are well constructed, and often convincing. The reigns of the 'diadochi' formed a time full of adventure and intrigue, and real life supplied the stage with soldiers of fortune, kidnapped maidens, successful adventurers, and startling changes of fate, as well as with parasites and 'hetairai.' The diction, too, has an air of reality. It is a language based on life, and keeping close to life, utterly remote from the arti- ficial beauty of the contemporary epics and elegies. It aims at being ' urbane and pure ' as well as witty ; but it is not highly studied. Antiphanes and Alexis, of the Middle Comedy, wrote over two hundred plays each ; Menander and Philemon, over two hundred be- tween them. Much is said about the low moral tone of the New Comedy — on the whole, unjustly. The general sympathies of the poets are healthy enough ; only they refuse entirely to talk big, and they do perhaps fail to see the dramatic and imaginative value of the noblest sides of life. Menander himself was a close friend of Epicurus, and shocked people by * praising pleasure.' The talent and energy devoted to descriptions of eating and drinking in the Middle Comedy are sometimes cited as a symp- tom of the grossness of the age. But a feast was one of the traditional elements in comedy ; how could a
- komoidia ' go without its ' komos ' ? Our evidence,
too, is misleading, because it comes chiefly from the Banquet- Philosophers of Athenaeus, a book which specially ransacked antiquity for quotations and anecdotes upon convivial subjects. And, above all, it is well to remember
