4
Although the city produced in that whole period many excellent performers of comedy, only Menander’s comedies contain an abundance of salty wit and merriment, which seem like the saltCf. Cicero, De Officiis i. 37. 133 sale vero et facetiis Caesar vicit omnes, where facetiis corresponds to Emperius’s conjecture ἱλαρῶν. derived from that sea out of which Aphroditê was born. But the witticisms of Aristophanes are bitter and rough and possess a sharpness which wounds and bites. And I do not know wherein his vaunted cleverness resides, whether in his words or his characters. Certainly even whatever he imitates he makes worse; for with him roguishness is not urbane but malicious, rusticity not simple but silly, facetiousness not playful but ridiculous, and love not joyous but licentious. For the fellow seems to have written his poetry, not for any decent person, but the indecent and wanton lines for the licentious, the slanderous and bitter passages for the envious and malicious.
