Balladeer’s Blog takes another look at an ancient Greek comedy. Most of my previous examinations of these verse plays dealt with Attic Old Comedy or on what little is known about Susarion, a revered pioneer of stage comedy.
Epicharmus lived from approximately the 530s B.C. to the 440s B.C. He was born in one of the Greek colonies in Sicily, with Megara-Hyblaea, Syracuse or the island of Cos being the three most widely accepted possibilities.
Epicharmus is often credited with adding plots to the comedies but this is sometimes disputed by those touting Susarion instead. Other innovations possibly pioneered by Epicharmus were stock characters like spongers and naïve rustics plus comedic back-and-forth duels of insults or of competing arguments.
The chorus, so important to Attic Old Comedy, was not yet present on stage in Epicharmus’ time, but musical accompaniment was.
Like so many other ancient Greek comedies, the plays of Epicharmus have survived only in very fragmentary form.
THE RUSTIC (No year known) – The Eudemian Ethics refers to the use of rustic figures early on in stage comedies. As we’ve seen in other ancient Greek comedies these rustics were used in two different ways –
1) As the butts of jokes for their supposed inability to appreciate the sophisticated pleasures of city life and/or for their supposed lack of intelligence.
Or 2) As naïve yet endowed with a common-sense form of wisdom that lets them outmaneuver ill-intentioned city folks who try taking advantage of them or humiliating them. (Think No Time For Sergeants or Beverly Hillbillies B.C.)
In The Rustic the title character is visiting a city and is receiving gymnastic/ athletic training from a menacing instructor called “Knuckles” (Kolaphos). The surviving fragments from this play are so few that even less of the potential plot can be gleaned than from many other ancient Greek comedies. Proceeding fragment by fragment:
“Knuckles moves like the wind.” The trainer is presumably a veritable dynamo, running swiftly, jogging in place, touching toes and other activities of a broadly-drawn athletic stereotype.
“You are making the city the country!” The Rustic is speculated to be failing – or refusing – to conform to citified ways of conducting himself and instead is refashioning metropolitan characteristics to match his rural interpretation of them. Think “SEE-ment pond” for swimming pool. Or maybe “You’re turning New York City into Mayberry!”
Alternately, Laurentianus claimed that turning the city into the country instead referred to lawlessness. Think of a maverick cowboy treating a big city like it’s the Wild West. Or of Crocodile Dundee when he’s in New York. Continue reading
Since Democrats are pretending that previously-stated HEARSAY claims about de facto Third Party President Trump are BOMBSHELL “revelations” it’s only fair that the term bombshells should also be applied to everything which exposes the Democrats for the lying and corrupt white-collar criminals that they are. (We need Third Parties). 
The link is below, but first some excerpts from this HOUSE MEMBER UTTERLY DESTROYING THE THIRD AND FOURTH-HAND ACCUSATIONS AGAINST TRUMP:
“In the blink of an eye we are asked to simply forget about Democrats on this Committee falsely claiming they had more than circumstantial evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russians. We should forget about them reading fabrications of Trump-Russia collusion from the Steele dossier into the congressional records”
“And yet here we are,” he continued. “This is a carefully orchestrated media smear campaign.”
Since it’s just an “Inquiry” the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives simply voted for Inquiry “rules” which permit Adam Schiff (cartoon at right) to run this Show Trial. (Two Democrats showed some integrity and voted “No”) 
SINA – The Bel-Ren counterpart to the Sina of the Hawaiian Islands (Hina) and the Samoan Islands (also called Sina). Like those figures she was the sister of Maui (Hawaiian) or Ti’i Ti’i (Samoan). However, this Sina was neither a moon goddess like her Hawaiian version nor a love and beauty goddess like her Samoan self. 
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #32 (September 1975)
Synopsis: Writer Don McGregor and artist Craig Russell are back after Mantlo/ Trimpe’s disastrous fill-in issue last time. It is June, 44 years in the future. Killraven and his Freemen (M’Shulla, Old Skull, Hawk, Carmilla Frost and her creation Grok – Deathlok in my revisions) continue their guerilla campaign against Earth’s alien conquerors.
Here at Balladeer’s Blog I’ve made it clear that I feel neither Donald Trump nor Bill Clinton deserved to be impeached, but at least Bill Clinton faced a fair, ACTUAL impeachment proceeding. The hopelessly corrupt Democrats are subjecting President Trump to a bizarre “Impeachment INQUIRY” which deprives him and the House Republicans of any rights they would have under a REAL impeachment procedure. 
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“But let’s give a look at what he and his cronies claim they are trying to show—some kind of presidential corruption regarding Ukraine. Some so-called whistleblower with a name no one’s supposed to know but everybody does (Ciaramella) accused Trump of threatening Ukrainian President Zelensky umpteen times with withholding U.S. aid if Zelensky did not investigate the activities of his political opponent and the opponent’s son.”
“As it turned out, when the transcript of the actual phone call was produced, it was a good deal less than that. It’s likely the hyperpartisan whistleblower, who never heard the call in the first place, lied through his teeth for political reasons he thinks—in all his virtue-signaling narcissism—are justified.”
“… 
“They all know that the real investigation is in progress—what happened early in 2016 and thereafter that instigated the two-plus years of phony national hysteria known as the Russia probe, the probe that did everything it could, but thankfully failed, to upend the Trump administration. The characters who engineered this shouldn’t just be impeached—some have already lost their jobs—they should be sent to stir.”
ALLEGRO NON TROPPO (1976) – Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at the infamous Italian parody of Disney’s Fantasia. In our current year, where the avaricious Disney corporation has engulfed and devoured countless film properties and tried to trademark so many figures from world folklore, writer and director Bruno Bozzetto’s satirical poke at The Mouse That Ate Entertainment deserves to be revisited. 
Micheli’s character keeps his animator (Maurizio Nichetti) in chains in a dungeon as another swipe at the House of Mouse. As if that’s not enough he also keeps his musicians in a cage, letting them loose only to do their work for him. 
The highly respected, non-partisan Monmouth Poll has shown that – despite the 24/7 attacks from the Democrats’ media outlets, de facto Third Party President Donald Trump has higher favorability ratings than the 2020 Democrat candidates for president. (And that’s the YEAR 2020, not the number of candidates the Democrats have running for president. Although …) The link is below. 
NCAA Division Three 1. UNIVERSITY OF MARY HARDIN-BAYLOR CRUSADERS ### 2. UNIVERSITY OF MOUNT UNION PURPLE RAIDERS ### 3. MUHLENBERG COLLEGE MULES ### 4. WHEATON COLLEGE THUNDER ### 5. UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AT WHITEWATER WARHAWKS ### 
6. SALISBURY UNIVERSITY SEA GULLS ### 7. CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY PANTHERS ### 8. UNION (NY) COLLEGE DUTCHMEN ### 9. SAINT JOHN’S UNIVERSITY JOHNNIES ### 10. BETHEL (MN) UNIVERSITY ROYALS ### 
THE PEOPLE OF THE MOON (1895) – Written by Tremlett Carter. An unnamed narrator, a scientist of some sort, sees a glowing 18 inch object floating in the sky. A bird who makes physical contact with the glowing orb is killed by the object’s electric charge. 
Happy Veterans Day from Balladeer’s Blog! In keeping with the whole “Eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” tradition here are eleven World War One figures who were awarded the Medal of Honor. 
JAKE ALLEX 
Balladeer's Blog 