The old
epics and tragedies are models of purity in comparison, though
Euripides set a bad example in his _Hippolytus_, and still more his
_Aeolus_, the coarse incestuous passion of which was particularly
admired and imitated by the later writers.[319] Aristophanes is
proverbial for his unspeakable license and obscenity. Concerning the
plays of Menander (more than a hundred, of which only fragments have
come down to us and Latin versions of several by Terence and Plautus),
Plutarch tells us, indeed, that they were all tied together by one
bond--love; but it was love in the only sense known to the Greeks, and
always involving a hetaira or at most a [Greek: pseudokorae] or
_demie-vierge_, since respectable girls could not be involved in
realistic Greek love-affairs.
Professor Gercke has well remarked (141) that the charm of elegance
with which Menander covers up his moral rottenness, and which made him
the favorite of the _jeunesse doree_ of his time, exerted a bad
influence on the stage through many centuries. There are a few
quasi-altruistic expressions in the plays of Terence and Plautus, but
they are not supported by actions and do not reach beyond the sphere
of sentimentality into that of sentiment. Here again I may adduce
Rohde as an unbiassed witness. While declaring that there is "a
longing for the ennobling of the passion in actual life" he admits
that
"really _sentimental effusions_ of love are strikingly rare
in Plautus and Terence.
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