ABSTRACT
Heinz-Gunther Nesselrath's observation that Middle Comedy often invested traditional myths with domestic coloration typical of the fourth century holds for several other plays of Plato. In discussing elements in Plato that suggest his affinities with later Greek comedy, the authors have downplayed those fragments which serve to secure his “rightful” status as a poet of Old Comedy. But Plato is not the only fifth-century comic poet whose particular brand of mythological comedy prompted ancient commentators to reconsider how to categorize his oeuvre, despite the pressures of chronology. Changes in cultural norms, political climate, and theatrical conditions certainly conspire to effect literary evolution, and such changes no doubt account for the fact that a comedy from the middle of the fourth century looked quite different from one of Aristophanes’ fifth-century plays. Mythological subjects in particular seemed to attract Plato, as they did many poets of Middle and New Comedy: the amorous escapades of Zeus and the life and character of Heracles.
