Anna Peterson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190697099
- eISBN:
- 9780190697129
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190697099.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
As prelude to the discussions of the six chapters that follow, this introduction gives an overview of the evidence for the accessibility of Old Comedy—beyond Aristophanes’s extant plays—during the ...
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As prelude to the discussions of the six chapters that follow, this introduction gives an overview of the evidence for the accessibility of Old Comedy—beyond Aristophanes’s extant plays—during the Imperial era. It also lays out what have been perceived as the two primary ways that Imperial-era authors approached the genre: as a linguistic source and as a problem. In doing so, it provides a survey of the scholarly approaches adopted by the lexicographers (Julius Pollux, Phrynichus, the Anti-atticist) and Athenaeus. It also considers the persistent influence that the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic critics exerted on how later Greeks understood the genre. As examples of this, it discusses Dio Chrysostom’s commentary on the comic poets in Or. 33 (First Tarsian) and Aelian’s account of Socrates’s trial and execution in Historical Miscellany. The chapter concludes with an outline of the structure and argument of the other sections of the book.Less
As prelude to the discussions of the six chapters that follow, this introduction gives an overview of the evidence for the accessibility of Old Comedy—beyond Aristophanes’s extant plays—during the Imperial era. It also lays out what have been perceived as the two primary ways that Imperial-era authors approached the genre: as a linguistic source and as a problem. In doing so, it provides a survey of the scholarly approaches adopted by the lexicographers (Julius Pollux, Phrynichus, the Anti-atticist) and Athenaeus. It also considers the persistent influence that the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic critics exerted on how later Greeks understood the genre. As examples of this, it discusses Dio Chrysostom’s commentary on the comic poets in Or. 33 (First Tarsian) and Aelian’s account of Socrates’s trial and execution in Historical Miscellany. The chapter concludes with an outline of the structure and argument of the other sections of the book.
