Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Map
- BOOK III POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE DORIANS
- BOOK IV DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS, ARTS, AND LITERATURE OF THE DORIANS
- CHAP. I
- CHAP. II
- CHAP. III
- CHAP. IV
- CHAP. V
- CHAP. VI
- CHAP. VII
- CHAP. VIII
- CHAP. IX
- APPENDIX VI
- APPENDIX VII
- APPENDIX VIII
- APPENDIX IX
- Index of subjects
- Index of authors
- ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS
CHAP. VII
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Map
- BOOK III POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE DORIANS
- BOOK IV DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS, ARTS, AND LITERATURE OF THE DORIANS
- CHAP. I
- CHAP. II
- CHAP. III
- CHAP. IV
- CHAP. V
- CHAP. VI
- CHAP. VII
- CHAP. VIII
- CHAP. IX
- APPENDIX VI
- APPENDIX VII
- APPENDIX VIII
- APPENDIX IX
- Index of subjects
- Index of authors
- ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS
Summary
On the comic, tragic, and lyric poetry of the Dorians.
1. At Athens, a coarse and ill-mannered jest was termed a Megarian joke; which may be considered as a certain proof of the decided propensity of that people to humour. This is confirmed by the claims of the Megarians, who disputed the invention of comedy with the Athenians, and perhaps not without justice, if indeed the term invention be at all applicable to the rise of the several branches of poetry, which sprung so gradually, and at such different times, from the particular feelings excited by the ancient festival rites, that it is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to fix upon the period at which the species of composition to which each gave rise was sufficiently advanced to be called a particular kind of poetry. Yet it is in the highest degree probable that the Athenians were indebted for the earliest form of their comic poetry to the Megarians. The Megarian comedy is ridiculed by Ecphantides, one of the early comic poets of Athens, as of a rude and unpolished kind, which circumstance alone makes its higher antiquity probable. Ecphantides, whom Aristophanes, Cratinus, and others ridicule as rough and unpolished, looks down in his turn on those who had introduced comedy from Megara, and claims the merit of first seasoning the uncouth Megarian productions with Attic salt.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- History and Antiquities of the Doric Race , pp. 360 - 391Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1830