4. But to return to Epicharmus; the comedy of this poet was by no means confined to parodies of mythological stories, as he also, like Aristophanes, handled political subjects, and invented comic characters like the later Athenian poets; and indeed the extent of his subjects was very wide. The piece called Ἁρπαγαὶ, or “the Plunderings,” which described the devastation of Sicily in his time, had, according to Hemsterhuis,(1665) a political meaning; and this was perhaps also the case with the Νᾶσοι, or “the Islands:” at least it was mentioned in this play, that Hieron had prevented Anaxilas from destroying Locri (477 B.C.);(1666) in his “Persians” also there were allusions to the history of the times. The play called the “Countryman” (Ἀγρωστῖνος, _i.e._ ἀγροῖκος), was an instance of the drama, which illustrated the character of a certain class of society. Epicharmus also introduced, and almost perfected characters, which were very common in the drama of later times;(1667) and if the plot of the Menæchmi of Plautus was, as the poet seems to state in the prologue, taken from a comedy of Epicharmus, it must be granted that the ingenious construction of plots was not beyond the powers of that poet.(1668) The style of his plays was not less various than his subjects, as he passed from the extreme of rude and comic buffoonery to a more serious and instructive vein, introducing maxims and moral sentences(1669) with precepts of the Pythagorean philosophy, in which he is said to have been initiated with Archytas and Philolaus the son of Arcesas, the successor of Pythagoras;(1670) and we know from Diogenes Laertius that he introduced long discourses of a speculative and philosophical nature, though it is not easy to see how they were connected with the rest of the piece. In the Ulysses (as I conjecture from the speech to Eumæus) he made incidentally some philosophical remarks on the instinct of animals;(1671) other pieces, such as “the Pyrrha and Prometheus,” and “the Land and Sea,” were by their subjects still more closely connected with philosophy; he also wrote some poems on questions of natural and moral philosophy, which, if we may judge from the imitation of Ennius, were composed in a theatrical and very lively metre, the trochaic tetrameter.(1672) That the dramatic style of Epicharmus was perfect in its kind, is proved by the great admiration it was held in by the ancients, particularly by Plato; and if the Attic comedy excelled in cutting satire and ridicule, the Sicilian poet had a higher and more general aim. The Athenian poets, if we may judge from Aristophanes, confined themselves wholly to the affairs of their own state, and it was their object to point out what they considered beneficial to the people. But Epicharmus had a different and higher object; for if the elements of his drama, which we have discovered singly, were in his plays combined, he must have set out with an elevated and