In sections on epos, drama, empirical and imaginary chronotopes, and shifting chronotopes, they examine such aspects as calculating the mythical dimension: time and distance in Homeric navigation, Iris as messenger and her journey: speech in space and time, time traveling and space traveling in Greek
middle comedy, mythological time and space in Ovid's exile poetry, and Carmenta in the Fasti: a tale of two feasts.
Finally, Andrew Hartwig focuses on
Middle Comedy, analysing the change of plots over time: unlike tragedy, Old Comedy is not regarded as "golden", which gave space for comedy to develop without such long shadows being cast over it.
(6) Most scholars agree that Assemblywomen and Wealth are more or less specimens of Middle Comedy; see H.
(46) Segal writes: "This growing tendency toward domestication and financialization culminates in the Plutus (288 BC) and then in middle comedy" (The Death of Comedy 114).
(33.) See Nesselrath 1990 and 1997, who argues convincingly for continuity between Old and
Middle Comedy. Cf.
Middle Comedy Style of drama that prevailed in Athens from about 400 BC to about 320 BC.
The scathing social satires of Aristophanes were the best examples of Old Comedy, which declined after the defeat of Athens into
Middle Comedy, of which there are no extant examples.
Could this trend in stagecraft explain, in part, the rise of
Middle Comedy with its emphasis on stock characterization and dramatic monologues?
Aristophanes' dramatic activity covered the end of the period of Old Comedy and the start of the so-called
Middle Comedy, with most of his surviving plays belonging to the period of Old Comedy.
