1. At Athens, a coarse and ill-mannered jest was termed a Megarian joke;(1631) which may be considered as a certain proof of the decided propensity of that people to humour. This is confirmed by the claims of the Megarians, who disputed the invention of comedy with the Athenians,(1632) and perhaps not without justice, if indeed the term invention be at all applicable to the rise of the several branches of poetry, which sprung so gradually, and at such different times, from the particular feelings excited by the ancient festival rites, that it is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to fix upon the period at which the species of composition to which each gave rise was sufficiently advanced to be called a particular kind of poetry. Yet it is in the highest degree probable that the Athenians were indebted for the earliest form of their comic poetry to the Megarians. The Megarian comedy is ridiculed by Ecphantides, one of the early comic poets of Athens, as rude and unpolished, which circumstance alone makes its higher antiquity probable.(1633) Ecphantides, whom Aristophanes, Cratinus, and others, ridicule as rough and unpolished,(1634) looks down in his turn on those who had introduced comedy from Megara, and claims the merit of first seasoning the uncouth Megarian productions with Attic salt. But one of the earliest introducers of comedy was, according to the most credible and authentic accounts, Susarion, a native of Tripodiscus, an ancient village in the Megarian territory;(1635) in Attica he made his first appearance in the village of Icaria,(1636) situated on the borders of Megaris and Bœotia;(1637) where it is known from mythological fables, that the rural festival of Bacchus had been celebrated from an early period. The argument for its Doric origin, derived from the name κωμῳδία, “the village-song” (the Peloponnesians calling their villages κῶμαι, and the Athenians δῆμοι), is by no means conclusive, as the derivation of that name from the word κῶμος, _a tumultuous festival procession_, is far more probable. The early time at which comedy must have flourished may be seen from the fact, that it passed over to Athens in the 50th Olympiad;(1638) but of its character we should form a very partial judgment, if we trusted implicitly to the accounts of the Athenian neighbours; and yet we have no other means of information.