The student of Greek fragments may not inaptly be compared to a man who is forming a collection of sea-weeds. Walking along the border of the unsearchable ocean, he keeps his eyes fixed upon the pools uncovered at low tide, and with his foot turns up the heaps of rubbish cast upon the shore. Here and there a rare specimen of colored coralline or delicately fibred alga attracts his attention. He stoops, and places the precious fragment in his wallet, regretting that all his wealth is but the alms of chance, tossed negligently to him by the fretful waves and wilful storms. To tread the submarine gardens where these weeds and blossoms flourish is denied him. Even so the scholar can do no more than skirt the abysses of the past, the unsearchable sea of oblivion, garnering the waifs and strays offered him by accident.
As Stobæus provides the most extensive repertory of extracts from the later Greek tragedians, so it is to Athenæus we must turn for comic fragments. This _helluo librorum_ boasted that he had read eight hundred plays of the middle comedy, and it is obvious that he was familiar with the whole dramatic literature of Athens. Yet the use he made of this vast knowledge was comparatively childish. Interested for the most part in deipnosophy, or the wisdom of the dinner-table, he displayed his erudition by accumulating passages about cooks, wines, dishes, and the Attic market. From an exclusive study, therefore, of the extracts he transmitted, we might be led to imagine that the Greek comedians exaggerated the importance of eating and drinking to a ridiculous extent. This, however, would be a false inference. The ingenuity of the deipnosophist was shown in bringing his reading to bear upon a single point, and in adorning the philosophy of the kitchen with purple patches torn from poetry. We ought, in truth, rather to conclude that Attic comedy was an almost inexhaustible mine of information on Attic life in general, and that illustrations, infinitely various, of the manners, feelings, prejudices, literature, and ways of thinking of the ancient Greeks might have been as liberally granted to us as the culinary details which amused the mind of Athenæus.
When so much remains intact of Aristophanes, it is not worth while to do more than mention a few of the fragments preserved from the other playwrights of the old comedy. The first of these in Meineke's collection may be translated, since it stands, like a motto, on the title-page of all Greek comedy:[122] "Hear, O ye people! Susarion says this, the son of Philinus, the Megarian, of Tripodiscus: Women are an evil; and yet, my countrymen, one cannot set up house without evil; for to be married or not to be married is alike bad." In turning over the pages of Meineke,[123] we feel inclined to call attention to the beauty of some lines on flowers written by Pherecrates (_Metalles_, fr. 2, and _Persai_, fr. 2), and to a curious passage on the changes wrought by Melanippides, Kinesias, and Timotheus in Attic music (_Cheiron_, fr. 1). The comic description of the Age of Gold by Telecleides (_Amphictyones_, fr. 1) might be paralleled by Heine's picture of heaven, where the geese flew about ready roasted with ladles of sweet sauce in their bills. What Hermippus says about the Attic market (_Phormophoroi_, fr. 1) is interesting for a different reason, since it throws real light upon the imports into Attica. The second fragment from the same comedy yields curious information about Greek wines. After mentioning the peculiar excellences of several sorts, the poet gives the palm to Saprias, so called because of its old, mellow, richly scented ripeness. "When the jar is opened, a perfume goes abroad of violets and roses and hyacinths, a wonderful scent that fills the house. This nectar is ambrosia and nectar in one. Keep it for my friends, but to my enemies give Peparethian." Eupolis supplies a description of parasites (_Kolakes_, fr. 1), the first detailed picture of a class that played a prominent part in Attic social life.[124] We may also mention, in passing, the fragment of a parabasis (_Incert. Fab._ fr. 1) which censures the Athenian audience for preferring foreign to native poets, and contains a reference to Aristophanes. Phrynichus yields the beautiful epitaph on Sophocles (_Mousai_, fr. 1) already quoted;[125] nor must his amusing caricature of a bad musician be passed over (_Incert. Fab._ fr. 1), for the sake of this line: