You're going to be. So, The Hello and welcome back to the history of ancient Greece episode 54 old comedy and

Aristophanes in

in addition to tragedy and the Sader Play, comedy was one of the three principal dramatic forms in the theater of classical Greece.

The Greek word for comedy, that being Komodilla, derives from the words Comos, to Revel, an ode, a song.

And according to Aristotle, comedy actually developed from a song. The first official comedic play at the city

Dionysia was not staged until 487-486 BC, by which time tragedy had already been

long established there

Aristotle and his poetics says that comedy was slow to gain official acceptance

Because nobody took it seriously at first

Regardless comedic competitions at the city Dionysia and then the Lenea, more on that shortly,

implement at dramatic conventions for plays to be judged, but it also fueled innovations.

Aristotle also wrote that what separated comedy is that it is a representation of

laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster.

Developments were quite rapid though, and Aristotle and later Alexandrian scholars tried to make distinctions between

comedies various forms. So they conventionally divided Athenian comedy into

three periods. The first they called Arkea, were old. The second they called Messe, or Middle. And the third, which was the comedy of their time, they called Nia or New. These divisions appear to be largely arbitrary though. An ancient

Athenian comedy almost certainly developed side by side over the fifth and fourth centuries

BC. Old comedy survives today largely in the form of the 11 surviving plays of Aristophanes from the fifth century BC, while middle comedy from the fourth century BC is largely lost, preserved only in a few relatively

short fragments.

New comedy is known primarily from the substantial Papyrus Fragments and one almost complete play from Menander,

who flourished in the late fourth century BC, and who in turn had a large influence on the Roman

comedic playwrights such as Terence and Plautus.

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