1. Procleon is a typical example of that stock character who was to become familiar in later Roman comedy as senex: the dried-up, judgemental old man, opposed to the flow of life, who has continued to play the role of Dark Father or Tyrant through the history of storytelling. In fact senex characteristics are so well-defined that they constitute an archetype, which can affect older women just as much as men, as in the fearsome Granny-figure, constantly complaining about the younger generation and the modern world, made famous over many decades by the British cartoonist Giles.

2. There are occasions when Comedy presents a situation remarkably similar to that familiar in Overcoming the Monster stories, where we see the ‘Princess’ locked away by the Tyrant in a tower, with the handsome hero arriving to free her. In Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville the young heroine Rosina is kept shut away by her grim guardian, Dr Bartolo, until the Count Almaviva and his ally Figaro manage by a series of stratagems to liberate her. In Mozart’s Il Seraglio the beautiful young English heroine Constanze has been imprisoned by the Pasha Selim in his palace, and her lover Belmonte arrives to risk his life in rescuing her: until the Tyrant magnanimously recognises the force of their love and lets her go.