CHAPTER XVI.

_THE FRAGMENTS OF THE LOST TRAGIC POETS._

Apparent Accident in the Preservation of Greek Poetry.--Criticism among the Ancients.--Formation of Canons.--Libraries.--The Political Vicissitudes of Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople.--Byzantine Scholarship in the Ninth Century.--The Lost MS. of Menander.--Tragic Fragments preserved by the Comic Poets and their Scholiasts; by Athenæus, by Stobæus.--Aristotle.--Tragedy before Æschylus.--Fragments of Aristarchus.--The _Medea_ of Neophron.--Ion.--The _Games_ of Achæus.--Agathon; his Character for Luxurious Living.--The _Flower_.--Aristotle's Partiality for Agathon.--The Family of Æschylus.--Meletus and Plato among the Tragic Playwrights.--The School of Sophocles.--Influence of Euripides.--Family of Carkinus.--Tragedians Ridiculed by Aristophanes.--The _Sisyphus_ of Critias.--Cleophon.--Cynical Tragedies ascribed to Diogenes.--Extraordinary Fertility of the Attic Drama.--The Repetition of Old Plots.--Mamercus and Dionysius.--Professional Rhetoricians appear as Playwrights.--The School of Isocrates.--The _Centaur_ of Chæremon.--His Style.--The _Themistocles_ of Moschion.--The Alexandrian Pleiad.--The _Adonis_ of Ptolemy Philopator. Page 113