style of drama that prevailed in Athens from about 400 BC to about 320 BC. Preoccupied with social themes, Middle Comedy represents a transition from Old Comedy, which presented literary, political, and philosophical commentary interspersed with scurrilous personal invective, to New Comedy, with its gently satiric observation of contemporary domestic life. Aristophanes' last play, the Plutus, is an extant work that reflects this transition. Antiphanes and Alexis were preeminent Middle Comedy dramatists, but none of their plays has survived except in later quotations of individual words or sentences. See also comedy.