The names of more than fifty Old Comedy ‘poets’, as dramatists were called, are known to us, but their plays are lost. Of Aristagoras, Aristomenes and Aristonymos, Menekrates, Metagenes and Myrtilos, Theopompos, Xenophilos and Xenophon, we have no more than titles, and random fragments. Since every comedy entered for competition at the annual Great Dionysia and Lenaia was a new play, we can calculate that in the fifth century alone, five or six hundred comedies must have been performed, but only nine survive, all by Aristophanes. From the entire fourth century we have three, with substantial fragments of four more. Aristotle knew little about early comedy ‘because no serious interest was taken in it’, an attitude he transmitted to the Renaissance. Consequently, we have no authoritative ancient account of the history of comedy, and surviving works that touch upon the subject are either focussed elsewhere or are so late that they must rely upon lost sources whose trustworthiness it is difficult to estimate.

Archaic comedy

The earliest period of Attic comedy corresponds chronologically with the style in painted pottery which art historians call ‘late Archaic’. Beginning in the second quarter of the sixth century bce, when Athenian black-figure supplanted Corinthian ware in prestige and for export, this Archaic phase is conventionally understood to end with the Persian invasion in 480. By that time, black-figure had given way to the red-figure style of the classical period. The earliest period of Attic comedy is contemporary with Archaic vase painting, and sometimes provided its artists with subjects. Artists of this period have left us twenty-four lively scenes of comic choruses, all but one painted in black-figure, on sympsion-vessels. After c.480, artists turned to other subjects; when they returned to comedy fifty years later, the novelty of actors in costume seems to have attracted their attention.