period of time, so the great artistic achievements in Greek oratory and prose in the
late fifth and fourth centuries presuppose gradual development of a scientific
awareness of language and psychology of a kind systematised by Aristotle in his
Rhetoric.
Literature of the Hellenistic age
Athens remained a cultural centre and one particular form, New Comedy, flourished
in the theatre. The New Comedy of general manners, unlike the Old Comedy of
Aristophanes, is no longer political, that is intimately concerned with public affairs
and the workings of the city-state, which has now lost something of its independence
in the greater Macedonian empire. Aristophanic wit, indecency and caricature give
way to humour, decorum and the realistic presentation of typical characters, the
realism being such as to have prompted a famous question ‘O Menander, O life, which
of you imitated the other?’
In addition to substantial fragments, one complete play by Menander was
discovered in the twentieth century, the Dyskolos (‘The Peevish Man’), which was
performed in 316. It has a five-act structure, a chorus that is no more than a musical
interlude between acts and a prologue figure as in Euripides to set the scene. The
central character is an obstacle in the way of the young man who has fallen in love
at first sight with his daughter. Only when he has been rescued from near death after
falling down a well does the peevish old man (who is much tormented by a garrulous
cook and an impertinent slave) learn the error of his ways: ‘Only disasters can educate
us’ (ll. 699–700), and accommodate his misanthropy to the common-sense norms of
social living. Likewise, the young man is put to the test to prove himself worthy of the
happy marriage that awaits him at the play’s end. The New Comedy depends for its
effect upon the clever manipulation of the stereotypical, whether this be of characters
like the boasting soldier, the shameless bawd, the manipulative slave and the stern
father, or of plot devices like recognition by means of rings and necklaces, substitution
of children and mistaken identity. It does not challenge the audience but confirms the
norms of a bourgeois world. Through Roman imitation it has greatly influenced
modern European drama.
Gradually, the centre of gravity moved elsewhere to the capitals of the new
Hellenistic kingdoms. Great libraries were established at Alexandria, Pergamum and
Antioch endowed by royal patronage. By virtue of the pre-eminence of its museum,
that is, its shrine to the Muses, and its library, Alexandria soon became the literary
capital of the Hellenistic world. To the scholars of the Alexandrian library, one of the
most famous of whom was Aristarchus (c. 217–c.145), noted for his work on Homer,
the world is indebted for the preservation of the Greek classics in reasonably good
LITERATURE 175