Note 702 — Chapter XXII · WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE — IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, AND GAUL.
Reading edition
Timokreon, Fragment. 5 ap. Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, p. 478,—Σικελὸς κομψὸς ἀνὴρ Ποτὶ τὰν ματέρ᾽ ἔφα.
Bernhardy, Grundriss der Geschichte der Griech. Litteratur, vol. ii, ch. 120, sects. 2-5; Grysar, De Doriensium Comœdia, Cologne, 1828, ch. i, pp. 41, 55, 57, 210; Boeckh, De Græcæ Tragœd. Princip. p. 52; Aristot. ap. Athenæ. xi, 505. The κότταβος seems to have been a native Sikel fashion, borrowed by the Greeks (Athenæus, xv, pp. 666-668).
The Sicilian βουκολιασμὸς was a fashion among the Sicilian herdsmen earlier than Epicharmus, who noticed the alleged inventor of it, Diomus, the βούκολος Σικελιώτης (Athenæ. xiv, p. 619). The rustic manners and speech represented in the Sicilian comedy are contrasted with the town manners and speech of the Attic comedy, by Plautus, Persæ. Act. iii. Sc. 1, v, 31:—
“Librorum eccillum habeo plenum soracum. Dabuntur dotis tibi inde sexcenti logi, Atque Attici omnes, nullum Siculum acceperis.”
Compare the beginning of the prologue to the Menæchmi of Plautus.
The comic μῦθος began at Syracuse with Epicharmus and Phormis (Aristot. Poet, v, 5).