Greek Comedy in the Roman Empire

Dating c. 500 AD, Aristainetos’ fictive amatory letters draw extensively upon the erotic topoi of Greek literature, and comedy features among the author’s most important models. Scholars have begun to investigate Aristainetos’ borrowings from the Greek comic tradition (cf. Arnott 1973, 1975, 1982, Magrini, Zanetto, Drago, Höschele), though the full extent of his appropriation remains to be discovered.

Studies of the theatrical element in Statius’ Achilleid have so far focused mainly on tragic intertexts (e.g. Heslin 2005; Fantuzzi 2013). In this paper, I posit that—as the Second Sophistic’s revived interest in Menander reached Rome—the Latin poet alluded extensively to Greek New Comedy as well. He did so to create an alternate, “Menandrian” world on his island of Scyros, where a costumed Achilles is allowed to hide from the Achilleid’s main and much grimmer “epic” narrative.

Favorinus of Arles is described in sources both hostile and friendly as a eunuch or hermaphrodite who was nonetheless accused of adultery with the wife of a consular; the philosopher-sophist himself even reportedly acknowledged the allegation as one of his “three paradoxes” (Philostr. VS 489; Polem. Phgn. 161.9-163.16 Foerster; Luc. Eun. 7, 10).

It is undeniable that the theater scene in the imperial period included the increasingly popular genres of mime and pantomime (Webb 2008) as well as the reprisal of scenes from Greek tragedy (Jones 1993, Gildenhard / Revermann 2010). Notably absent from this picture is comedy, with few challenging the assumption that productions of comedy fell by the wayside in the centuries following the success of Plautus and Terence.

Unlike Aristophanes’ plays, Menander’s comedies enjoyed a long and successful re-performance tradition. Some thirty years after Menander’s death, his plays were already being re-staged as ‘old’ comedies (SEG XXVI 208) and continued being re-performed for Hellenistic audiences in and out of Athens. In the Greek East as in the Roman West, they also entered the repertory of imperial actors such as an anonymous performer celebrated in the Palatine Anthology (9.513); Straton (IG II212664) and probably Demetrius and Statocles (Quint. Inst.