Note 519 — Chapter LXVII · THE DRAMA. — RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS. — THE SOPHISTS.
Reading edition
See respecting these licentious processions, in connection with the iambus and Archilochus, vol. iv, of this History, ch. xxix, p. 81.
Aristotle (Poetic, c. 4) tells us that these phallic processions, with liberty to the leaders (οἱ ἐξάρχοντες) of scoffing at every one, still continued in many cities of Greece in his time: see Herod. v, 83, and Sêmus apud Athenæum, xiv, p. 622; also the striking description of the rural Dionysia in the Acharneis of Aristophanês, 235, 255, 1115. The scoffing was a part of the festival, and supposed to be agreeable to Dionysus: ἐν τοῖς Διονυσίοις ἐφειμένον αὐτὸ δρᾷν· καὶ τὸ σκῶμμα μέρος τι ἐδόκει τῆς ἑορτῆς· καὶ ὁ θεὸς ἴσως χαίρει, φιλογέλως τις ὤν (Lucian, Piscator. c. 25). Compare Aristophanês, Ranæ, 367, where the poet seems to imply that no one has a right to complain of being ridiculed in the πατρίοις τελεταῖς Διονύσου.
The Greek word for comedy—κωμῳδία, τὸ κωμῳδεῖν—at least in its early sense, had reference to a bitter, insulting, criminative ridicule: κωμῳδεῖν καὶ κακῶς λέγειν (Xenophon, Repub. Ath. ii, 23)—κακηγοροῦντάς τε καὶ κωμῳδοῦντας ἀλλήλους καὶ αἰσχρολογοῦντας (Plato de Repub. iii, 8, p. 332). A remarkable definition of κωμῳδία appears in Bekker’s Anecdota Græca, ii, 747, 10: Κωμῳδία ἐστιν ἡ ἐν μέσῳ λάου κατηγορία, ἤγουν δημοσίευσις; “public exposure to scorn before the assembled people:” and this idea of it as a penal visitation of evil-doers is preserved in Platonius and the anonymous writers on comedy, prefixed to Aristophanês. The definition which Aristotle (Poetic. c. 11) gives of it, is too mild for the primitive comedy: for he tells us himself that Kratês, immediately preceding Aristophanês, was the first author who departed from the ἰαμβικὴ ἰδέα: this “iambic vein” was originally the common character. It doubtless included every variety of ridicule, from innocent mirth to scornful contempt and odium; but the predominant character tended decidedly to the latter.
Compare Will. Schneider, Attisches Theater-Wesen, Notes, pp. 22-25; Bernhardy, Griechische Litteratur, sect. 67, p. 292.