i 
 in Literature and Art. I 5 
 N 
who caft a reflection on the ftate of Athens in parodying H line Of EuriPideS' 
This poet had faid,_ 
 ti rjnimg E,3ozS)ke9' 17 v6;unv 0155211 [Jilin 
(Nature has commanded, which cares nothing for the laws); 
which Anaximandrides changed to-_ 
1') 1r6)ug i,3o15M9' E v6p.r-w oilriev pike: 
(The state has commanded, which cares nothing For the laws)- 
Nowhere is oppreliion exercifed with greater harfhnefs than under demo- 
cratic governments; and Anaximandrides was profecuted for this joke as 
a crime againtt the Hate, and condemned to death. As may be fuppoled, 
liberty of fpeech ceafed to exitt in Athens. We are well acquainted with 
the character of the Old Comedy, in its greatefl: freedom, through the 
writings of Ariftophanes. What was called the Middle Comedy, in 
which political fatire was prohibited, lafted from this time until the age 
of Philip of Macedon, when the old liberty of Greece was finally cruihed. 
The lalt form of Greek comedy followed, which is known as the 
New Comedy, and was repretented by fuch names as Epicharmus and 
Menander. In the New Comedy all caricature and parody, and all 
perfonal alluhons, were entirely profcribed ; it was changed entirely into 
a comedy of manners and domeltic life, a picture of contemporary fociety 
under conventional names and characters. From this New Comedy was 
taken the Roman comedy, fuch as we now have it in the plays of Plantus 
and Terence, who were profeffed imitators of Menander and the other 
writers of the new comedy of the Greeks. 
Pictorial caricature was, of courfe, rarely to be feen on the public 
monuments of Greece or Rome, but mutt have been configned to objects 
of a more popular character and to articles of common ufe; and, accord- 
ingly, modern antiquarian refearch has brought it to light fomewhat 
abundantly on the pottery of Greece and Etruria, and on the wal]-paint- 
ings of dorneftic buildings in Herculaneum and Pompeii. The former 
contains comic fcenes, efpecially parodies, which are evidently transferred 
to them from the Rage, and which preterve the malks and other attributes 
-fome of which I have necefiarily omitted-proving the model from 
which