Posidippus of Cassandreia the Comic Poet Fragments of Apocleiomene in Greek

The Apocleiomene, or The Woman Shut Out, is a lost comedy by the Hellenistic playwright Posidippus of Cassandreia. It survives only in a handful of fragmentary passages, preserved not through medieval manuscripts but indirectly through the citations of later authors, most notably the antiquarian Athenaeus in his Deipnosophistae. Athenaeus quoted these fragments for their illustrative details about language and social customs. As a work of New Comedy, its plot almost certainly centered on a domestic crisis, likely involving the social or physical exclusion of a female character from a household, a scenario from which the play derives its title. The surviving snippets, which include references to a saffron-colored garment and a concluding appeal for applause to the goddess Victory, offer glimpses into the play’s theatrical texture and its concern with everyday life. Though its direct literary influence cannot be traced, the fragments hold significance for the study of Hellenistic comedy. Posidippus himself was a major figure in the genre, considered by some ancient critics to be second only to Menander. The remains of Apocleiomene thus contribute valuable evidence for understanding the linguistic, social, and dramatic conventions of New Comedy, the tradition that would later provide the foundation for the works of Roman playwrights such as Plautus and Terence.