Editing Old Comedy (section)

==Origins and history==
The word "comedy" ({{langx|grc|[[:wikt:κωμῳδία|κωμῳδία]]}}, ''kōmōidía'') derives from the words for 'revel' and 'song' ([[:wikt:κῶμος|κῶμος]], ''kōmos'', and [[:wikt:ᾠδή|ᾠδή]], ''ōidē'') and according to Aristotle<ref>''The Poetics'' 1449a11, Wikisource English translation [[s:The Poetics#IV]] section IV</ref> comic drama actually developed from song. The first official comedy at the [[City Dionysia]] was not staged until 487/6 BCE,<ref>''Clouds'' translated by Peter Meineck with introduction by Ian Storey, Hackett Publishing 2000, p. IX</ref> by which time tragedy had already been long established there. The first comedy at the [[Lenaia]] was staged later still,<ref>''ibid'' p. xix</ref> only about 20 years before the performance there of ''The Acharnians'', the first of Aristophanes' surviving plays. According to Aristotle, comedy was slow to gain official acceptance because nobody took it seriously,<ref>''The Poetics'' 1448b38–1449b, Wikisource English translation [[s:The Poetics#V]] section V</ref> yet only 60 years after comedy first appeared at the City Dionysia, Aristophanes observed that producing comedies was the most difficult work of all.<ref>''Aristophanis Comoediae'' vol. 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, ''Knights'' line 516</ref> Competition at the Dionysian festivals needed dramatic conventions for plays to be judged, but it also fuelled innovations.<ref>{{harvnb|Barrett|1964|p=12}}</ref> Developments were quite rapid and Aristotle could distinguish between 'old' and 'new' comedy by 330 BCE.<ref>''Nicomachean Ethics'' 1128a 21–24</ref>

The origins of the Old Comedy were traced by [[Aristotle]] to the [[komos]] or celebratory festival processions of ancient Greece, and the phallic songs that accompanied them.<ref>S Halliwell, ''Aristophanes: Birds and other plays'' (Oxford 1998) p. xvii and p. x</ref> Although the earliest Athenian comedy, from the 480s to 440s BCE, is almost entirely lost, it is clear that comedy had already crystallised into a highly structured form, with the chorus playing a central role.<ref>S Halliwell, ''Aristophanes: Birds and other plays'' (Oxford 1998) p. xxx-i</ref>  The most important poets of the period were [[Magnes (comic poet)|Magnes]], whose work survives only in a few fragments of dubious authenticity, and [[Cratinus]], who took the prize at the [[City Dionysia]] probably sometime around 450 BCE. Although no complete plays by Cratinus are preserved, they are known through hundreds of fragments: he was noted in antiquity both for a mastery of plot and for the obscene vehemence of his attacks on [[Pericles]].<ref>J Boardman ed., ''The Oxford History of the Classical World'' (Oxford 1986) p. 176</ref>