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The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics (c. 335 BC) that comedy is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster. [1] C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world. [2]
Old Comedy is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians. [1] The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with their daring political commentary and abundance of sexual innuendo, de facto define the genre.
Literature, in general, is defined by Aristotle as a mimesis, or imitation of life. Comedy is the third form of literature, being the most divorced from a true mimesis. Tragedy is the truest mimesis, followed by epic poetry, comedy, and lyric poetry. The genre of comedy is defined by a certain pattern according to Aristotle's definition.
The language of Aristophanes' plays, and in Old Comedy generally, was valued by ancient commentators as a model of the Attic dialect. The orator Quintilian believed that the charm and grandeur of the Attic dialect made Old Comedy an example for orators to study and follow, and he considered it inferior in these respects only to the works of Homer.
While most ancient Greek and Roman plays have been lost to history, a significant number still survive. These include the comedies of Aristophanes and Menander, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and the Roman adaptations of Plautus, Terence and Seneca.
The word τραγῳδία, tragodia, from which the word "tragedy" is derived, is a compound of two Greek words: τράγος, tragos or "goat" and ᾠδή, ode meaning "song", from ἀείδειν, aeidein, 'to sing'.
Lysistrata (/ l aɪ ˈ s ɪ s t r ə t ə / or / ˌ l ɪ s ə ˈ s t r ɑː t ə /; Attic Greek: Λυσιστράτη, Lysistrátē, lit. ' army disbander ') is an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC.
Articles related to Ancient Greek comedy, one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece (the others being tragedy and the satyr play). Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods: Old Comedy , Middle Comedy, and New Comedy.