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Greek comedy is the name given to a wide genre of theatrical plays written, and performed, in Ancient Greece. Along with tragedy, it makes up the greater portion of ancient Greek theatre, and its descendant traditions.

This evolution is much simpler than that of its sister art, tragedy, mainly because there is little exact information regarding its origin and earlier development. All that Aristotle can tell us is that it first took shape in Megaris and Sicyon, whose people were noted for their coarse humour and sense of the ludicrous, while Susarion, the earliest comic poet, was a native of a Megarian town. Add to this that it arose from the phallic processions of the Greeks, as did tragedy from the dithyramb, and we have about all that is known about the origins of comedy.

At the country festivals held in celebration of the vintage it was the custom for people to pass from village to village, some in carts, uttering the crude jests and abuse unjustly attributed to the tragic choruses; others on foot, bearing aloft the phallic emblem and singing the praises of Phales, the comrade of Bacchus. In cities it was also the custom, after an evening banquet, for young men to roam around the streets with torches in their hands, headed by a lyre or flute-player. Such a group of revellers was called a komos, and a member of the band a komast or komos-singer, the song itself being termed a komoedia, or comedy, just as a song of satyrs was named a tragoedia, or tragedy.

The Phallic processions were continued as late as the days of Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), and we learn from one of the orations of Demosthenes that the riotous youths who infested the streets of Athens delighted in their comic buffooneries. Pasquinades of the most obscene kind were part of the exhibitions. When formally established as part of the Dionysiac festivals, the Leneas and Dionysia, it had its chorus, though less numerous and costly than the dithyrambic choir, and the actors, at first without masks, disguised their features by smearing them with the lees of wine.

Comedy is defined by Plato as the generic name for all exhibitions which have a tendency to excite laughter. Though its development was mainly due to the political and social conditions of Athens, it finally held up the mirror to all that was characteristic of Athenian life.

Molded terracotta figurine of an actor wearing the mask of a bald-headed white man, from the New Comedy, 2nd century BCE, from Canino, Italy

The new comedy lasted throughout the reign of the Macedonian rulers, ending about 260 BC. It may be studied to better advantage in the Latin adaptations by Plautus and Terence than in the few Greek fragments that have come down to us (though during the twentieth century, the complete text of Dyskolos, a play by Menander, the leading writer of New Comedy, has been rediscovered. It is the only example of New Comedy to have survived in its entirety. A few long fragments by Menander have survived as well from such plays as The Arbitration, The Girl from Samos, The Shorn Girl, and The Hero), nor did it differ essentially from the comic drama of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Congreve and Wycherley (www.theatrehistory.com/ancient/bates004.html)^{[citation needed]}. For the first time love became a principal element in the drama, but it was seldom an honest love. The stock characters of the senex iratus, or "angry old man," the domineering parent who is all too often led into the vices and follies for which he has reproved his son, and the Miles Gloriosus or mercenary soldier newly returned from war with a noisy tongue, a full purse and an empty head also make their appearances. With these exceptions, the characters were very much the same as in the middle comedy. There can be little doubt that the new comedy faithfully represented the most salient features of Athenian society; but it made no attempt to improve it, presenting only in attractive colors the lax morality of the age.

• Susarion of Megara (~580 BC)
• Epicharmus of Kos (~540-450 BC)
• Cratinus (~520-420 BC)
• Chionides (~487 BC)[1]
• Eunicus 5th c.BC
• Eupolis (~446-411 BC)
• Hegemon of Thasos 5th c.BC
• Telecleides 5th c.BC
• Pherecrates 5th c.BC
• Phrynichus (~429 BC)
• Strattis (~412-390 BC)
• Plato (comic poet) late 5th c.BC
• Nicophon 5th c.BC
• Nicochares (d.~345 BC)
• Callias Schoenion[2]
• Sannyrion[3]
• Philyllius[4]
• Diocles of Phlius[[5]]
• Aristophanes(~456–386 BC)
• His sons Araros, Philippus, and Nicostratus were also comic poets.
• Antiphanes (~408-334 BC) Middle Comedy
• Eubulus early 4th c.BC
• Epicrates of Ambracia 4th c.BC
• Anaxandrides 4th c.BC
• Alexis (~375 BC - 275 BC)
• Menander (~342–291 BC) New Comedy
• Philemon of Soli or Syracuse (~362–262 BC)
• Apollodorus of Carystus (~300-260 BC)
• Diphilus of Sinope (~340-290 BC)
• Machon of Corinth/Alexandria 3th c.BC
• Poseidippus of Cassandreia (~316–250 BC)

• Aristotle, Poetics, lines beginning at 1449a. [6]
• The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, volume 1, by Alfred Bates. (London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906)
• P.W. Buckham, Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.
• Francis MacDonald Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy, 1934.
• Xavier Riu, Dionysism and Comedy, 1999. [7]

• An article on the origin of comedy
• "Aristotle on Comedy" by Prof. Malcolm Heath, University of Leeds
• BBC Radio 4 "In Our Time" programme on ancient Greek Comedy, Thursday 13 July 2006