plays, except a few titles,(1648) which however show that he parodied mythological subjects. But Epicharmus is much less known and esteemed than his peculiar style of writing and dramatic skill deserve; and those authors greatly err, who fix upon the period when his peculiar kind of poetry had arrived at perfection, as the commencement of the Athenian comedy, and attribute the clumsy and rustic simplicity from which the latter emerged, to the Sicilian style, which had enjoyed all the advantages which the life of a city and court could afford.(1649) Before, therefore, we enter into details respecting the dramas, of Epicharmus, we will say a few words on the nature of his subjects, and his mode of handling them. The subjects of the plays of Epicharmus were chiefly mythological, that is, parodies or travesties of mythology, nearly in the style of the satyric drama of Athens. Thus in the comedy of Busiris, Hercules was represented in the most ludicrous light, as a voracious glutton, and he was again exhibited in the same character (with a mixture perhaps of satirical remarks on the luxury of the times) in “the Marriage of Hebe,” in which an astonishing number of dishes was mentioned.(1650) We can however form a better notion of the drama called “Hephæstus, or the Revellers,” chiefly by the help of some ancient works of art, which have come down to us. The play began we are told, with Hephæstus chaining his mother Here by magical charms to a seat, from which he only released her after long entreaties.(1651) Now on a vase discovered at Bari in the kingdom of Naples, and now preserved in the British Museum,(1652) Here, with the superscription ᾽ΗΡΑ,(1653) is seen seated on a throne; on her right is a clown fantastically dressed, whom his pointed cap marks as a servant of Hephæstus, and his name, Dædalus, is written over his head;(1654) on her left is Mars, dressed, with the exception of his helmet, in the same fashion (with the superscription ΕΝΕΥΑΛΙΟΣ); both these figures are armed, and endeavouring, the one to dissolve, the other to strengthen the charm by which Here is held. The whole scene is evidently supposed to take place on a stage, leading to which there are some steps; and as there were no other Sicilian or Italian comedies on the same subject, it may without hesitation be considered as a representation of the first part of the Hephæstus of Epicharmus.