213Language and Linguistic Themes in the Fragments of Later Greek Comedy

After some introductory remarks on the text corpus under consideration and the dialectal and stylistic default code of later Greek comedy as a whole, this chapter explores to what extent various aspects of language and linguistic variation are still highlighted and, on occasion, exploited for humorous purposes by Menander’s contemporaries. It is argued that the widespread parodic reproduction of divergent styles and registers which is so characteristic of Old and Middle Comedy has largely, though not completely, given way to an approach that concentrates on lexical diversity on a much smaller scale. There is at best marginal evidence for sustained linguistic characterization of stock figures and the prominence of word play is also reduced. However, despite the greater stylistic homogeneity which thus results, hints at most of the comic techniques encountered in earlier comedy illustrate how the later poets adapted the generic tradition to the changing tastes of their audiences.