Note 251 — Women in Greek Comedy

With regard to what we have described as the second feature of Middle Comedy, it may perhaps just be remarked that this constant habit of parodying and ridiculing love-stories would inevitably tend, in some sort, to bring the whole matter of love into contempt. And that the feelings of contempt so produced, and the similar feelings which originated them, would act and react on one another till both became even more accentuated, was equally inevitable. Nor must it be forgotten that the influence of tragedy, which might otherwise have served to counteract this tendency, was much less than it had been at an earlier period, for the revivals and imitations of Euripides, which held the tragic stage throughout the century, popular though some of them may have been, belonged in spirit to the previous generation, and were thus to a certain extent out of touch with contemporary feeling.