[87] Comedy is divided by the Grecian critics into three branches; the old, the middle, and the new. Of the two latter we know little, since the works of Aristophanes, the only perfect comedies extant, belong, with one exception, to the first. It would be foreign to our purpose to enter here into a description of them; but it may be generally stated that they were of a milder character; the licence of personality was gradually retrenched, and with it, the political importance of the stage. The lines of distinction cannot be drawn with much precision, but the former of them seems to commence early in the fourth century B.C., the latter in the reign of Alexander, which began B.C. 336. The total loss of the new comedy, and especially of Menander, is perhaps the greatest that classic literature has sustained. It appears from the remaining fragments to have been of a highly polished and moral cast. But a good idea of its general form and tendency may be derived from Plautus and Terence, of whose plays several are little more than translations from it. [88] Knights, line 231, ed. Bekk., see the Scholia. It was usual for authors to perform a part in their own comedies. Aristophanes had not hitherto complied with this custom. [89] The following extracts are from Mr. Mitchell’s translation; to whom apology is due for occasional omissions, where the allusions would have required a large body of notes to render them generally intelligible, without being necessary to the general effect of the passage, and a few slight alterations. [90] The Athenian judges used beans in giving their votes. Each received three obols, about five–pence, for his fee, and in one of the courts the common number of judges was from two to five hundred or more. The poorer classes made a livelihood in this way, and hence there sprung an extraordinary love of litigation, which Aristophanes is continually satirizing. The ‘Wasps’ is expressly directed against it. [91] Pnyx, the place of general assembly. It was filled with stone seats, to which reference will be made hereafter. [92] Cleon’s father was a tanner, and the poet is continually twitting him with his dirty trade. [93] Eucrates. [94] Lysicles. [95] A mountain torrent of Attica. [96] It has been generally said that Cleon lost his popularity and incurred this fine in consequence of the representation of the Knights; but there is no authority for the former supposition, and the latter is disproved by the mention of this fine in the opening of the Acharnians, acted the year before, in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war. The prosecution was conducted by the Knights; which probably led to the mistake. [97] In the original it occupies altogether more than 100 lines in a play of 1400. [98] Thunder from the right hand was an omen of good fortune. See the original, ver. 639. [99] A crown or chaplet was the usual reward of such persons as brought good news.