Stock characters are one of the features that differentiate Old Comedy from Middle and New Comedy most clearly. Whereas Aristophanes depicts recognizable public figures (Socrates, Kleon, Euripides, Agathon), Menander, Plautus, and Terence depict types (the Grouch, the Young Man in Love, the Sweet Young Thing). As scholars have noted, however, there are stock characters lurking in the background of many of Aristophanes' other stage personalities. I am interested in two of these characters, who survive well into Roman comedy and extend even into other genres: the ἀλαζών and the κόλαξ. The Fraud, or Impostor, or Braggart, and the Flatterer, or Toady, or (as he comes to be known) the Parasite, have a significance beyond their brief appearances onstage in which they trouble the hero: they can both be read as meta-characters, figuring the Actor. They come to stand for related negative stereotypes of the actor in society: that the actor lays claim to a position or a relationship that he does not merit, that he is, by one means or another, a social climber. The alazon represents the Greek world's perceptions of actors, and the parasitus, those of the Roman world.

THE ALAZON: THE ACTOR AS FRAUD

As various professions developed in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE – for example, medicine, banking, acting, oratory, philosophy – so did the problem of people impersonating professionals.