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A Case for Aristomenes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Dwora Gilula
Dwora Gilula
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
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Extract

Recent discussions of Aristophanes' early career raise again the question who was recognized as a victor with the Babylonians and the Acharnians and his name officially recorded, Aristophanes the poet or Kallistratos his didaskalos. This old-new controversy has brought back into focus the City Victors' list (IG II 2325) and the reconstruction of' API [in the second column of the comic poets. The inscription itself has not been studied anew and the reader is referred to earlier examinations of it, especially to two articles of E. Capps and to the verdict of A. Pickard-Cambridge, who maintains that it is needless to follow the controversy in detail: ‘For the fifth century, the name of Aristophanes is restored with practical certainty in the list of victors at the Dionysia, between those of Hermippus and Eupolis, it now being proved that the first victory of Aristomenes, the other candidate for the place, fell much later. One can hardly blame Pickard-Cambridge and others for evading the intricate calculations and boring details. Yet, it seems that they deserve, or rather require a re-examination, for Capps, although a meticulous and distinguished epigraphist, had the tendency to jump easily to rash conclusions. Indeed, his frankness in readily admitting his mistakes and recanting untenable positions evokes admiration, but, since his work belongs to a period in which hypotheses were more easily advanced and less rigorously defended than today, an attempt should be made to take a look at his argumentations and see whether they are still valid.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , December 1989 , pp. 332 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1989

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References

1 cf. Mastromarco, G., ‘L'esordio “segreto” di Aristofane’, QS 10 (1979), 153–96Google Scholar ; Halliwell, S., ‘Aristophanes' Apprenticeship’, CQ 30 (1980), 33–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacDowell, D. M., ‘Aristophanes and Kallistratos’, CQ 32 (1982), 21–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 A. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens 2, revised by Gould, J. and Lewis, D. M. (Oxford, 1968), p. 85Google Scholar and n. 9 with bibliography; cf. Halliwell, art. cit. (n. 1, above), 35 and n. 14, and Mastromarco's more extensive bibliographical notes (n. 1, above), 186 nn. 12–13. Mastromarco himself chiefly endorses Oellacher's, H. arguments in WS 38 (1916), 81–157Google Scholar, maintaining (wrongly) that they have been accepted by all scholars. Oellacher's article, however, predates the pertinent piece of evidence published by Capps in 1943 (see below nn. 7 and 9), and consequently some of his calculations are erroneous and his statistics naive. It is no wonder that Geissler failed to understand them, cf. Geissler, P., Chronologie der altattischen Komödie (Berlin, 1925), p. 6 n. 1Google Scholar.

3 Capps, E., ‘Epigraphical Problems in the History of Attic Comedy’, AJPh 28 (1907), 179–99Google Scholar.

4 Which Capps discussed in his article ‘Roman Fragments of Athenian Didascaliae’, CPh 1 (1906), 201–20Google Scholar; for the text cf. Moretti, L., Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae (Rome, 1968), no. 216Google Scholar; cf. also pp. 184–5.

5 cf. Körte, A., RhM 60 (1905), 425–47Google Scholar; Wilhelm, A., Urkunden dramatischer Aufführungen in Athen (Wien, 1906), pp. 195–208Google Scholar.

6 Capps prefers to consider it a City victory, see below; and cf. Dover, K. J., ‘Archippus’, OCD2; Geissler, op. cit. (n. 2, above), p. 11Google Scholar.

7 Hesperia 12 (1943), 1–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 = Koster III, 2; cf. Scholia in Aristophanem, I 1A: De Comoedia, ed. Koster, W. J. W. (Groningen, 1975)Google Scholar. Koster inserts Dobree's conjecture in his text, and quotes Capps' confirmation of it in his apparatus criticus.

9 This is not the first time Capps changed his mind on this issue. Formerly he accepted Dobree's emendation, cf. AJPh 20 (1899), 393Google Scholar; Oellacher's calculations are also based on a rejection of Dobree's emendation as are those of Geissler (n. 2, above). This error leads Geissler to place Hermippus' first victory not long before 426, op. cit. (n. 2, above), p. 11; Hermippus' name is no longer restored in IG II2 2318, col. 5, line 2 for a victory in 422 (cf. Capps, art. cit. (n. 3, above), 196, following Wilhelm, op. cit. (n. 5, above), p. 21). Although Capps proposed to restore Kantharus in IG II2 2325 col. 1,. art. cit. (n. 3, above), 199, he did not see its implications for IG II2 2318, and it was left to Oellacher to reach this conclusion, art. cit. (n. 2, above), 116.

10 Capps, art. cit. (n. 3, above), 196; Kratinus won in 423 according to Hyp. Ar. Clouds, he won 4 victories, one of them in 421 (Hyp. Ar. Peace), and died before 410.

11 It cannot be reached by simple calculations of averages, cf. Oellacher's attempt at finding out the averages, art. cit. (n. 2, above), 109–10.

12 On the basis of the traces reported by Wilhelm, op. cit. (n. 5, above), p. 116.

13 cf. Wilhelm, op. cit. (n. 5, above), p. 115; cf. also Geissler, op. cit. (n. 2, above), p. 11.

14 Capps, art. cit. (n. 4, above), 208.

15 W. A. Dittmer's hypothesis of a line length of 74(!) letters, which he advanced in his dissertation The Fragments of Athenian Comic Didaskaliae found in Rome (Leiden, 1923)Google Scholar written under the supervision of Capps, has even less to commend it; and cf. Capps, art. cit. (n. 4, above), 212 on the improbability of a line longer than the one he has suggested; Moretti, op. cit. (n. 4, above), p. 185, who tends to accept Dittmer's line length, but nonetheless rejects as rigid and artificial the calculations of all scholars – Dittmer's included – since they did not take into account any additional material which might have been included in the didascaliae, such as notes de comoediarum fortuna, de histrionibus, de musica, vel sim. But if Moretti's line of reasoning is consistently followed, no line length can be established and consequently all the restorations should be rejected, including that of Aristomenes' name for a first victory in 395/4 (Capps' restoration followed by Moretti).

16 Capps, art. cit. (n. 4, above), 215–16.

17 Ibid. 216.

18 Ibid. 216 n. 3.

19 Pickard-Cambridge, op. cit. (n. 2, above), p. 85 n. 9.

20 cf. MacDowell's interpretation of lines 528–32, art. cit. (n. 1, above), 23.

21 Dramatic competitions, which award second and third prizes (and in the case of comic poets in some periods, even fourth and fifth, as in 434, when Kallias won a fifth place, IG xiv 1097)Google Scholar, differ essentially from competitions which award first prize only. For in competitions in which you either win or lose a second place is no less disappointing than the last one. It is said in praise of Sophocles that he won twenty victories and was often second, but never third (Vita8). Even the third prize meant a success of sorts, for one could have been refused a chorus altogether and lose the chance of even being placed third, see Pickard-Cambridge, op. cit. (n. 2, above), p. 84 (Birds 445–7 is a plea in the middle of a performance and cannot be considered as evidence of attitudes). Hence Wasps 1023 need not be interpreted as referring ‘primarily to the success of the Knights’ (MacDowell ad loc), for which Aristophanes won the first prize at the Lenaea of 424, but also to the plays for which he won the second prize.

22 The statement that Dikaiopolis is speaking εχ persona is problematic and has no parallels elsewhere. Dover assesses correctly the difficulty and offers, to my mind, the only acceptable interpretation, namely that the ‘I’ is the ‘I’ of the comic hero, see Dover, K. J., ‘Notes on Aristophanes’ Acharnians', Maia 15 (1963), 15Google Scholar = Greek and the Greeks (Oxford, 1987), p. 296Google Scholar. It is not stated in the Suda at what festival the Babylonians was produced. It could have been performed at the Lenaea of 426, and at the Dionysia of that year Kallistratos could have produced another play, the one referred to in the parabasis of the Acharnians. For the Acharnians was performed in the secret period of Aristophanes' career, when he was unknown to the general public. MacDowell, art. cit. (n. 1, above), 24, does not like the term ‘ghost writer’, but nevertheless has refuted persuasively the recent attempts of Mastromarco and Halliwell to revive Kent's (and others') tripartite division of Aristophanes' early career (cf. Kent, R. G., ‘The Date of Aristophanes' Birth’, CR 19 [1905], 154)Google Scholar; MacDowell is clearly right when he maintains that the man in question in Ar. Ach. 628 ‘has had charge of several comic choruses before… since Aristophanes was not in charge of any chorus before Knights… it follows logically that the man described in the parabasis of Akharnians is not Aristophanes but Kallistratos', and cf. Gilula, D., ‘A Career in the Navy (Arist. Knights 541–4)’, CQ 39 (1989), 259–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 cf. Russo, C. F., Aristofane, autore di teatro 2 (Florence, 1984), p. 35Google Scholar; the belief that the Babylonians was victorious is according to Russo ‘una superstizione’. He postulates instead a first City victory in 425 with an unknown play, see pp. 40–1 and 405.

24 Capps (n. 3, above), 186, 189.

25 Capps, E., ‘Chronological Studies in the Greek Tragic and Comic Poets’, AJPh 21 (1900), 52–3Google Scholar.

26 Pickard-Cambridge, op. cit. (n. 2, above), 85 n. 9.