Aristotle describes the genre of comedy in his Poetics, especially as to how it differs from tragedy.

Among other distinctions, Aristotle says comedy represents men as worse than they are in real
life, whereas tragedy shows them better. Tragedy uses real people, whereas comedy uses
stereotypes. Aristotle says the plot for comedy came originally from Sicily.
Greek comedy is divided into Old, Middle, and New Comedy. Aristophanes is the author of the
earliest Old Comedy we possess, The Acharnians, produced in 425. Middle Comedy (c.400-c.323)
ran from roughly the end of the Peloponnesian War until the death of Alexander the Great. No
complete plays survive. New Comedy (c.323-c.263) is exemplified by Menander.
In ancient Athens, there were annual competitions not only in tragedy, but also comedy at the City
Dionysia, starting in 486 B.C.
OLD Aristophanes eleven plays the wasps, the clouds, lysistrata
MIDDLE largely lost, fragments of it were however discovered from Athenaeus of Naucratis
Less political and less personal, whereas before there was ridiculing and mockery of public figures
NEW Menander (c. 342 -291 BC) Perikeiromene only surviving one, although he wrote over 70

Menander focussed more on personal relationships, friends and family, as well as social mishaps

The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics (c. 335 BC) that comedy is a representation of laughable
people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster.[

Satyr Plays: These short plays were performed between the acts of
tragedies and made fun of the plight of the tragedy's characters. The
satyrs were mythical half-human, half-goat figures and actors in these
plays wore large phalluses for comic effect. Few examples of these plays
survive. They are classified by some authors as tragicomic, or comedy
dramas.
Comedy: The first comedies were mainly satirical and mocked men in
power for their vanity and foolishness. The first master of comedy was the
playwright Aristophanes. Much later Menander wrote comedies about
ordinary people and made his plays more like sit-coms.
Tragedy: Tragedy dealt with the big themes of love, loss, pride, the abuse
of power and the fraught relationships between men and gods. Typically
the main protagonist of a tragedy commits some terrible crime without
realizing how foolish and arrogant he has been. Then, as he slowly realizes
his error, the world crumbles around him. The three great playwrights of
tragedy were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.