Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 23, 2025
They carried this luxury so far with respect to the theatre itself, that the perfection in essentials was sacrificed to the accessories of embellishment. Even among the Greeks dramatic talent was far from universal. The theatre was invented in Athens, and in Athens alone was it brought to perfection. The Doric dramas of Epicharmus form only a slight exception to the truth of this remark.
This is the opinion of good judges, and of Hesiod in particular, who says somewhere 'To Vice, in crowded ranks, the course we steer, The road is smooth, and her abode is near; But Virtue's heights are reached with sweat and pain, For thus did the immortal powers ordain. A long and rough ascent leads to her gate, Nor, till the summit's gained, doth toil abate. And to the same purpose Epicharmus:
Hence too both Tragedy and Comedy are claimed by the Dorians as their discoveries; Comedy by the Megarians by those in Greece as having arisen when Megara became a democracy, and by the Sicilian Megarians on the ground that the poet Epicharmus was of their country, and a good deal earlier than Chionides and Magnes; even Tragedy also is claimed by certain of the Peloponnesian Dorians.
So far is comedy the offspring of the Dorians not the Dorians of a sullen oligarchy, with whom to vary an air of music was a crime not the Dorians of Lacedaemon but of Megara and Syracuse of an energetic, though irregular democracy of a splendid, though illegitimate monarchy. But the comedy of Epicharmus was not altogether the old comedy of Athens.
The citizens of Egesta, in Sicily, erected a monument to a certain Philip, who was not their fellow-citizen, but of Croton, for his distinguished beauty; and the people made offerings at it. In an ancient song, ascribed to Simonides or Epicharmus, of four wishes, the first was health, the second beauty.
The dull person will like what is dull, and the common person what is common; a man whose ideas are mixed will be attracted by confusion of thought; and folly will appeal to him who has no brains at all; but best of all, a man will like his own works, as being of a character thoroughly at one with himself. This is a truth as old as Epicharmus of fabulous memory
Yet if Horace inform us rightly, that the poet of Syracuse was the model of Plautus, perhaps in the Amphitryon we can trace the vein and genius of the father of true comedy; and the thoughts and the plot of the lost Epicharmus may still exist, mutilated and disguised, in the humours of the greatest comic poet of modern Europe.
Other subjects, included in the Saturae of Ennius, were the Hedyphagetica, a humorous didactic poem on the mysteries of gastronomy, which may have suggested similar effusions by Lucilius and Horace; the Epicharmus and Euhemerus, both in trochaics, the latter a free translation of the iera anagraphae, or explanation of the gods as deified mortals; and the Epigrams, among which two on the great Scipio are still preserved, the first breathing the spirit of the Republic, the second asserting with some arrogance the exploits of the hero, and his claims to a place among the denizens of heaven.
Now, however, I see a goal, and when I have reached it, there is nothing more to be feared; but you seem to me to follow the opinion of Epicharmus, a man of some discernment, and sharp enough for a Sicilian. A. What opinion? for I do not recollect it. M. I will tell you if I can in Latin; for you know I am no more used to bring in Latin sentences in a Greek discourse than Greek in a Latin one.
Other great artists labored in generous competition,—sculptors, painters, and architects,—to make Athens the most beautiful city in the world. It was this branch of literature which peculiarly marked the age of Pericles—the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. The first regular comedies were produced by Epicharmus, who was born in Cos, B.C. 540, and exhibited at Syracuse.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking