Note 250 — Women in Greek Comedy

With the other distinctive features of Middle Comedy, though occasional reference may be made to them, we have less to do. It may not however be amiss, in passing, just to notice the spirit of the age, which, while it required personal attacks on men to be more or less veiled, allowed personal attacks of the fiercest description to be made on women openly by name. A remarkable instance of this is the Antilais of Epicrates, but it is far from being the only one. As for those Middle Comedies which are called after public men (e.g. the Theramenes of Cratinus junior), it would be easy to believe that these were all, as some of them certainly were, composed after the deaths of the persons whose names they bear, and that these names were simply used as types, in the way that Juvenal speaks of Tigellinus, &c.