IT has been said that the Greeks had three schools of comedy, the old, the middle, and the new. The old was the Comedy of Politics. It took the form of extravaganza or farce. The reader will find nine specimens of it in this volume, all taken from Aris tophanes, who indeed is the only writer of this school that is left to us. With the middle we need not now concern ourselves. Possibly we may get some idea of what it was like from the Women in Parliament and the Plutus, two of Aristophanes's later plays. The new comedy was the Comedy of Manners. It may be compared with the dramas that bear this name on the modern stage, and also with the ordinary novel. We have it only in the translations of Plautus and Terence.