Apparent Accident in the Preservation of Greek Poetry.--Criticism among the Ancients.--Formation of Canons.--Libraries.--The Political Vicissitudes of Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople.--Byzantine Scholarship in the Ninth Century.--The Lost MS. of Menander.--Tragic Fragments preserved by the Comic Poets and their Scholiasts; by Athenæus, by Stobæus.--Aristotle.--Tragedy before Æschylus.--Fragments of Aristarchus.--The _Medea_ of Neophron.--Ion.--The _Games_ of Achæus.--Agathon; his Character for Luxurious Living.--The _Flower_.--Aristotle's Partiality for Agathon.--The Family of Æschylus.--Meletus and Plato among the Tragic Playwrights.--The School of Sophocles.--Influence of Euripides.--Family of Carkinus.--Tragedians Ridiculed by Aristophanes.--The _Sisyphus_ of Critias.--Cleophon.--Cynical Tragedies ascribed to Diogenes.--Extraordinary Fertility of the Attic Drama.--The Repetition of Old Plots.--Mamercus and Dionysius.--Professional Rhetoricians appear as Playwrights.--The School of Isocrates.--The _Centaur_ of Chæremon.--His Style.--The _Themistocles_ of Moschion.--The Alexandrian Pleiad.--The _Adonis_ of Ptolemy Philopator. Page 113 CHAPTER XVII. _ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY._ Greek Tragedy and the Rites of Dionysus.--A Sketch of its Origin and History.--The Attic Theatre.--The Actors and their Masks.--Relation of Sculpture to the Drama in Greece.--The Legends used by the Attic Tragedians.--Modern Liberty in the Choice of Subjects.--Mystery Plays.--Nemesis.--Modern Tragedy has no Religious Idea.--Tragic Irony.--Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy.--Modern Tragedy offers no #katharsis# of the Passions.--Destinies and Characters.--Female Characters.--The Supernatural.--French Tragedy.--Five Acts.--Bloodshed.--The Unities.--Radical Differences in the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Art. Page 145 CHAPTER XVIII. _ARISTOPHANES._ Heine's Critique on Aristophanes.--Aristophanes as a Poet of the Fancy.--The Nature of his Comic Grossness.--Greek Comedy in its Relation to the Worship of Dionysus.--Greek Acceptance of the Animal Conditions of Humanity.--His Burlesque, Parody, Southern Sense of Fun.--Aristophanes and Menander.--His Greatness as a Poet.--Glimpses of Pathos.--His Conservatism and Serious Aim.--Socrates, Agathon, Euripides.--German Critics of Aristophanes.--Ancient and Modern Comedy.--The _Birds_.--The _Clouds_.--Greek Youth and Education.--The Allegories of Aristophanes.--The _Thesmophoriazusæ_.--Aristophanes and Plato. Page 171 CHAPTER XIX. _THE COMIC FRAGMENTS._