Sicilian comedy
The Sicilian Comedy was in ancient Greece from the 6th century BC. The first artistic training of the later Old Comedy , which emerged from still unformed funny folk plays and antics . Its brief heyday had an impact on the further development of comedy, especially in southern Italy and then as far as the Romans.
Epicharm
The Sicilian Comedy received its form from the comedy poet Epicharmos from Megara in Sicily , who lived around 560 BC. Was born and lived in Syracuse at least in his old age after the destruction of his native city (483) and was favored by the art-promoting tyrants Gelon († 477) and Hieron I († 467), for whom he wrote tributes in his plays. Epicharmos is considered to be the real creator of comedy. He took the already existing games (antics, improvisations, swanking, jokes at parties and parades) their impromptu character, introduced a uniform plot, paid attention to sophisticated language and careful verse construction (mostly trochaic tetrameters ) so that the comedy alongside the others Seals became an equal art form of its time. His dramas often dealt with mythological subjects and moved in a stiff and forced comedy rather than showing powerful wit and bubbly humor. An idea is possible from the Κωμασταί ἣ Ἃφαιστος = The reduction of Hephaestus , the Hera has enchanted, to Olympus by Dionysus (and his drunken swarm κῶμος , Komos), or a Homer parody with hexameters : Ὀδυσσεύς αὐτόμολος = Odysseus, Deserter . The philosophically educated poet could nevertheless raise deeper problems without creating boredom and entertain the educated viewer with ingenious teachings and sayings.
Sophron of Syracuse
Another representative of the Sicilian Comedy was Sophron of Syracuse (around 430 BC), a contemporary of Euripides . From the old folk plays that still existed and from mythological material, he composed so-called mimes , which imitated ordinary life and in rhythmic prose and in Doric dialect presented simple, gripping actions or lively conversations that were perhaps recited but not performed: The women who see the isthmias ; Those who conjure up Artemis ; The fisherman ; Prometheus . Plato read his plays and brought them to Athens.
Phlyacs
During the New Comedy era, impromptu antics continued to be of great importance in Sicily and southern Italy. They leaned on Epicharm and Sophron and were called phlyacs . Since the beginning of the 4th century vase pictures have shown scenes from these pieces, the so-called phlyak vases : distorted masks, leather and red-painted phalloi , padding on the abdomen and buttocks. Via the Oscars in Campania, these pieces came to the Romans as so-called Oscar games or atellans and influenced the development of Roman comedy.
Rhinton from Syracuse
Another offshoot of the Sicilian Comedy was, under the influence of the New Comedy, the so-called Hilarotragedy (cheerful tragedy) by Rhinton from Syracuse, who lives in Taranto , who was also influenced by the comedies Epicharms and also by Euripides. He lived at the time of Ptolemy I around 320 BC. BC and developed his Hilaro tragedies from the old Phlyak pieces. His popular pieces, kept in the Doric dialect, revived the mime and the satyr play and treated mythical subjects in a parodistic way, such as B. Amphitryon . Almost nothing of him has survived in literary terms.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Remnants in Comicorum Graecorum Fragments (CGF) 1,152-181.
- ↑ Diogenes Laertius 3:18.
- ↑ CGF 183-189.