ABSTRACT
The Greek gods are still powerful and beautiful and superhuman, even when tempered with Hellenistic realism and interest in the emotional. Callimachus' own contributions exist only in a few fragments; there are many other Hellenistic and later epigrams collected in the Greek Anthology. In true Hellenistic style, there is considerable interest in mothers and children in the poem. Even when Theocritus himself was writing, the notion of simple shepherds and goatherds competing with one another in a beautiful landscape was a bit of an anachronism in the increasingly urbanised Hellenistic world. Menander's new comedy is, formally, the direct descendant of Aristophanes' obscene, virile, politically outspoken Old Comedy; moreover, Menander's comedy is just as much derived from the tragedies of Euripides as it is from the comedies of Aristophanes. Given the hegemony of realist theatre, Menander's development of the realist drive in Euripides and to a lesser extent Aristophanes is important for his reception, and for the history of drama.
