The greatest works of Aeschylus are _Seven Against Thebes_ and _Prometheus Bound_; the greatest of Sophocles: _Antigone_, _Oedipus the Tyrant_ and _Oedipus at Colonos_; the greatest of Euripides: _Hippolytus_ and _Iphigenia_. After Euripides tragedy was exhausted and only produced very second-rate works. COMEDY.--Comedy enjoyed a longer existence. Very obscure in origin, no doubt proceeding from the opprobrious jests exchanged by the lower classes in mirthful hours, it was at first freely fantastical, composed in dialogue, oratorical, lyrical, satirical, even epical at times. Like tragedy, it possessed a chorus for which the lyrical part was specially reserved. It was personal--that is, it directly attacked known contemporaries, often by name and often by bringing them on the stage. The celebrated authors of this "ancient comedy" were Eupolis, Cratinos, of whom we have only fragments, and Aristophanes, whose work has come down to us. ARISTOPHANES.--Aristophanes was a great poet, with incisive humour and also incomparable lyrical power, with voluntary vulgarity which is often shocking and an elevation of ideas and language which frequently raise him to the heights of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Here was one of the grandest poetic minds that the world has produced. His most considerable achievements are _The Frogs_, the earliest known work of literary criticism, in dramatic form too, wherein he sets up a parallel between Aeschylus and Euripides and cruelly jeers at the latter; _The Clouds_, in which he mocks the sophists; _The Wasps_, wherein he ridicules the Athenian mania for judging, and magnificently praises the old Athenians of the time of Marathon. MENANDER.--To this "ancient comedy," immediately succeeded the "middle comedy," in which it was forbidden to introduce personalities and of which Aristophanes gave an example and a model in his _Plutus_. Later, in the fourth century before Christ, with the refined, witty, and discreet Menander, the "new comedy" was analogous to that of Plautus, of Terence, and that of our own of the seventeenth century. THUCYDIDES.--To return to the time of Pericles; Attic prose developed in the hands of historians, sages, and philosophers. Thucydides founded true history, scientific, drawn from the sources, supported and strengthened by all the information and corroboration that the skilled historian can gather, examine, and control. As a writer, Thucydides was terse, bare, limpid, and possessed an agreeable sober elegance. He introduced into his history imaginary discourses between great historical personages which allowed him to show the general state of Greece or of particular portions of Greece at certain important times. It is not known why these discourses were written in a style differing from that of the rest of the work, wise, even beautiful, but so extremely concise and elliptic as, in consequence, to be extremely difficult to understand.