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Aristophanes and the Prometheus Bound

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Everard Flintoff
Everard Flintoff
Affiliation:
The School of Classics, The University of Leeds
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Extract

It has been acknowledged ever since H. T. Becker's dissertation on Aeschylus in Greek comedy that Aristophanes' plays can provide us with a terminus ante quern for the composition of the Prometheus Bound. The evidence is clearly presented by Becker and shows that there are a large number of echoes, particularly in the Knights and later in the Birds. Of these latter the most interesting occurs at Birds 1547, a line spoken by Prometheus himself, μισ⋯ δ' ἅπατντας τω⋯ θεōὺ ὡς ōἶσθα ςὺ which is certainly meant to parody PV 975, ⋯πλΏ λ⋯γῳ τō⋯ς π⋯ντας ⋯χθα⋯ ρω θεōὺς a line also spoken by Prometheus. It makes explicit what is surely implicit in all Aristophanic imitation, that what we have here is not just a play but a particular context that is so well known that the reference is meant to be picked up not just by the fictional ‘you’ to whom it is addressed but by the audience, too; in short we may infer that the line of the Prometheus Bound was already a classic quotation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , January 1983 , pp. 1 - 5
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1983

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References

1 Attention was drawn to Aeschylean echoes long before. One of the first to have done so was Theodor Kock in his second edition of the Birds (1876), and was followed by Bakhuyzen, W. H. van de Sande in his De Parodia in Comediis Aristophanis (Utrecht, 1877)Google Scholar. But Becker's, H. T.Aischylos in der griechischen Komödie (Darmstadt, 1914)Google Scholar did this more systematically than any of his predecessors and still remains, in my view, the best treatment of the subject. It is also worth seeing Propriis, A. de, Eschilo nella critica dei Greci (Turin, 1941)Google Scholar, Wartelle, A., Histoire du texte d' Eschyle dans l'anliquitè (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar and Griffith, M., The Authenticity of Prometheus Bound (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar.

2 See West, M. L., ‘The Prometheus Trilogy', JHS99 (1979), 141Google Scholar, for some possible evidence that at least the Prometheus Unbound may be parodied in Cratinus' Ploutoi, which may mean that 429 is the terminus ante quern for the ‘trilogy’ as a whole.

3 Knights 758 seems to come from a combination of PV 308 and PV 59; Knights 836 is derived from P V 613; Knights 924 with its unusual and highly specific image ἰπōὺμενōς – unaccountably not mentioned by Griffith – is almost certainly based on PV 365. Any of these echoes on their own might have been an accident. Added together they rule out that possibility.

4 Birds 685 ft. is derived from PV 547 ff.

5 Where it is used with ἢλγōς (perhaps part of the point here).

6 Ajax 72; Scyth. frg. 493.1.

7 IT 1373; Hippolytus 124; Phoenissae 1315.

8 A point which might be underlined by Aristophanes', very similar use of the word at Knights 626 ff.Google Scholar, a play which, however, shows, as we have seen, some evidence of familiarity with the P V.

9 See Dover, K. J. on Aristophanes, Clouds 1367Google Scholar: ‘It is debatable…how far popular literary judgements are founded on subliminal perception of statistics rather than on a few memorable passages.’

10 See Stanford, W. B.,‘Three-word iambic trimeters’, CR 54 (1940), 8–10Google Scholar and Griffith, M., op. cit. 91 ffGoogle Scholar.

11 See Richards, G. C., ‘Greek Compound Adjectives with a Verbal Element in Tragedy’, CQ 12 (1918), 15 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clay, D. M., A formal analysis of the vocabularies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (Minneapolis and Athens, 1958 and 1960)Google Scholar, and Griffith, M., op. cit. 147 ffGoogle Scholar.

12 Like the -στωμōς root, it too is projected in an oddly ‘Freudian’ way by the principal sufferer from the condition on to those whom he dislikes with whom he comes into contact.

13 cf. Taplin, O., ‘Aeschylean silences and silences in Aeschylus’, HSCP 76 (1972), 83–4Google Scholar, for a recent discussion of the issue.

14 cf. Snow, C. P., The Affair (London, 1960), p. 117Google Scholar: ‘“How did you know I was here at all?” “Ah ha! I have my spies. I have my spies.” (How in the world, I wondered, did the old man pick up jargon of the forties and fifties like that phrase etc.)’. We do not credit Aristophanes with much verbal sensitivity if we suppose this to have been beyond him. But for two possible examples of an attempt to catch the tone of a particular generation, both within the same play, see Clouds 973 ff. for a parody of the older generation's mania on young boys, and Clouds 1087–1104 for a spirited and perhaps never bettered parody of the Socratic elenchus.