Summary On Aristotle’s evolutionary scheme (Poet. 4), potential iambographers attracted to early comedy did not produce dramatic invectives against individuals, but ‘dramatised the laughable’ in the manner indicated by Margites and other burlesque epics. Kratinos was later able to superimpose a harmless parody of myth on current events, and thus turn it into political satire by innuendo (Dionysalexandros). Aristophanes gave up mythological pretense, shows contemporary Athenians reacting to present-day issues, satirizes political ‘villains’ directly, but constructs his plots on top of a narrative sequence of functions whose origins lie in traditional myth and folk tale. This endows his heroes with the ability to succeed in humanly unattainable plans in order to counteract evil. Lysistrata represents another evolutionary stage in that it has a female heroine at a time when no male hero could stand for a significant part of the audience.
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