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IV. Themes, Characters, Language, Verbal Humour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Many of the plays exhibit common themes. Few of them offer, in the normal sense, a ‘plot’ — the tenuous λόγος often ends with the parabasis and thereafter collapses into farce. They introduce us to a world outside reality: a world of fantasy where men can join the birds, and fly to visit Zeus upon a beetle (Birds, Peace), of topsy-turveydom where women can be leaders (Lysistrata, Ecclesiazusae), of dreams in which the little man can take on ‘the establishment’ —his political, social, or intellectual superiors — and rout them (Acharnians, Clouds). Their appreciation asks acceptance of a number of conventional assumptions: that old men are lecherous and gluttonous, that women (old and young) are obsessed with sex and drink, that politicians — tradesmen, foreigners and/or bastards, and perverts to a man — are ‘only in it for the money’. Kleon the tanner, in the early plays, is particularly stigmatized: but attacks on demagogues like Hyperbolos the lamp-maker continue throughout the poet’s lifetime. A ‘private’ citizen — guilty perhaps of a single foolish action — is mercilessly pilloried thereafter: poets and playwrights — Euripides especially — are mocked for their literary foibles. The young men are morally and physically decadent: notoriously, Socrates (a ‘type’ of the new learning) is depicted as a mountebank and quack.

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Research Article
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New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 13: Aristophanes , 1979 , pp. 13 - 28
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Copyright © The Classical Association 1979

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References

Notes

1. These farcical scenes in Attic comedy may be relics of a ‘Dorian element’. See Pickard-Cambridge, DTC, pp. 174 ff., Mazon, P., ‘La Farce dans Aristophane et les origines de la comédie en Grèce’, RHT 3 (1951), 7-18Google Scholar.

2. They also, while deploring (as cboreutae) their senility, ‘remember with advantages’ the exploits of their prime (a century before, L. 681). The ‘good old days’ of men like the Marathonomachai (A. 181, C. 986) is a stock theme of Old Comedy (cf. E. 304a). See Meder, A., Der athenische Demos zur Zeit des Peloponnesichen Krieges im Lichte zeitgenössicher Quellen (Munich, 1938), p. 15 Google Scholar, Kassies, W., Aristophanes Traditionalisme (Amsterdam, 1964), pp. 48–62 Google Scholar.

3. This was the fate of the incontinent Kinesias (school. F. 366, E. 330): cf. Kleonymos (С. 353). Such vilification is one of many elements that are common to comedy and oratory: Dover, K.J., Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974), pp.23–33 Google Scholar.

4. Parody of and quotation from Euripides are, of course, universal in the comedies (see especially Thesmopboriazusae). Some.of his plays (particularly Telephos) and phrases are picked out for special mention (below n. 73); Aeschylus ridicules his verbal repetitions (F. 1335-6, cf. 1353-5) and his metrical and musical affectations (F. 1309-63).

5. Three decrees aimed at restraining comic mockery: (1) Morychides’ (schol. A. 67, то ψτίφισμα то irepl TOO μή κωμί^δεΐν; (2) Syrakosios’ (schol. A. 1297, #μή κωμψδβίσθαι ονομαστί rwa-, (3) Antimachos’ of 428/427 (schol. Л. 1150). On this shadowy and apparently ineffective legislation see Radin, Max, ‘Freedom of Speech in Ancient Athens’, AJP 48 (1927), 215-30Google Scholar.

6. PI. Apol. 19 с Socrates thought differently — if the anecdote is true — at the performance: he allegedly stood up to let the foreigners present see him (Ael. V.H. ii. 13). That Aristophanes could be unfair (as to Kleophon, F. 679 ff.) is shown by new evidence on contemporary politicians: see Baldwin, B., ‘Notes on Cleophon’, A Class. 17 (1974), 35-47Google Scholar.

7. The parabasis (it is implied, for this advice) gained Frogs a reproduction (Hypothesis III, 17).

8. The play tilts at (among others) ‘the needle-seller’ Aristoxenos (175), Agyrrhios (176), and Neokleides (665). But Aristophanes (even in his great days) did not always mock: he has praise for Thucydides son of Melesias (A. 708) and Kimon (L. 1144), as in this play for Thrasyboulos (Pl. 550).

9. See (for Aristophanes as actor) Bailey, C., ‘Who played “Dicaeopolis”?’, in Greek Poetry and Life (Oxford, 1936), pp. 231-40Google Scholar.

10. It is studied in detail by David Welsh, ‘The Development of the Relationship between Aristophanes and Cleon to 424 B.C.’ (University of London dissertation, 1978).

11. These references to the poet himself in the first person — unique in comic dialogue as distinct from the parabasis — support the identification (n. 9) of ‘Dikaiopolis’ and Aristophanes. Welsh (n. 10) argues that Kleon had urged unpatriotic conduct in attempting — as a member of the boule — to block the youth’s enrolment as a citizen. By 425 there were ‘deep political’, as well as personal differences, between them (pp. 108 ff., 175).

12. For έξεμέω of ‘disgorging’ illicit profits from the state cf. K. 1148. There are no grounds for assuming (Rennie ad loc, after Lübke) any reference to a scene in Babylonians.

13. His fondness for piling metaphor on metaphor is satirized, τεκταινόμενα τά πράγματα . . . -γομψούμενα каі κολλούμενα (K. 461-3). The influence of rhetoric on contemporary speech (the use, especially, of adjectives in — ικός) is ridiculed elsewhere (C. 1172, W. 1209, K. 1378). See below, n. 80.

14. He was snub-nosed and prominent-eyed (Pl. Tht. 143E, 209B), thick-lipped (Xen. Symp. 5. 9) and Silenos-like (ibid., cf. 4. 19, Pl. Symp. 215e). Meno compares him to ‘a flat sting-ray’ (Pl. Men. 80a). Dover believes that a portrait-mask would approximate too closely to that of a fictitious comic character to be recognizable as Socrates: ‘Portrait-Masks in Aristophanes’ (in ΚΩΜΩΙΔΟΤΡΑΓΗΜΑΤΑ, Studia Aristophanea viri Aristopbanei W.J.W. Koster in honorem (Amsterdam, 1967), p. 28 (repr. in Newiger, p.169).

15. For contemporary education in Clouds and in fact see Dover’s edition, pp. lviii ff.

16. The poet calls the earlier play to our attention (C. 528 ff.). He himself belonged to the young upper middle-class with an intellectual background in the sophists: Forrest, W.G., ‘An Athenian generation gap’, YCIS 24 (1975), 37-52Google Scholar.

17. Other ‘significant’ names are (e.g.) Dikaiopolis, Trygaios, Lysistrata, Blepyros (i.e. ‘Watch-the-wheat’, a skinflint). For comic equation of (women’s) names with character see T. 804 ff.

18. Hypothesis I. 7, αύτΐκα rj παρ άβασκ; той χορού Ϋιμειπται (cf. Σ^ 520) каі ό’που ό δι’καιος προς τον αδικον λαλεί και τελευταΐον άπου каієтаі ή διατρφή Σωκράτους (cf. EVF. 543).

19. EVE889, ύπόκεινται έπί Ttjţ σκηρής iv πλεκτοϊς οίκίστοις ot Xoyoi δίκην ορνίθων μαχόμενοι. 20. For possible endings of Clouds see Dover’s edition, pp. xxiv, xciii.

20. He is ΐΓΐληλιαστής, ‘lover of the law-courts’. For typical manifestations of his passion see W. 88-110.

22. Hypothesis, I. 33.

23. MacDowell at Wasps 1501.

24. Aristophanes wrote a second play called Peace (Hypothesis II, Peace, 1: cf. Tbesmophoriazusae, Plutus) which seems to have had no link with that surviving. See Platnauer, pp. xvii ff.

25. See (e.g.) Whitman, p. 199:”The Birds is about nothingness and therefore everything’.

26. For this ‘Utopian’ view see (e.g.) Murray, pp. 135 ff.

27. Van Looy, H., ‘Les “Oiseaux” d’Aristophane: essai d’interprétation’, in Le Monde grec: Hommages à Claire Préaux (Brussels, 1975), p. 178 Google Scholar.

28. The old parallel has been recently revived: Dalfen, J., ‘Politik und Utopie in den Vögeln des Aristophanes. Zu Ar. Vögel 451-638’, BIFG 2, (1975), 281 ffGoogle Scholar. See also Katz, B., ‘The Birds of Aristophanes and Politics’, Athenaeum 54 (1976), 353-81Google Scholar.

29. Van Looy, p. 185: ‘Pour Aristophane le bonheur ne réside pas dans une Néphéloccygie nébuleuse ni dans la fondation de colonies au moins aussi nébuleuses . . .’

30. Van Looy, p. 183. Rather, the choice of theme enabled him to use his (and his audience’s) knowledge of Greek bird-life: Pollard, J., Birds in Greek Life and Myth (1978), p. 13 Google Scholar. On the rhythms of the hoopoe’s song see Dale, A.M., JR 9 (1959), 199–200 Google Scholar (=CP, 135-6).

31. There are also dramaturgical similarities in the prologues of that play (Ussher, p. 70) and Lysistrata.

32. It should be remembered, however, that the pair are man and wife. The desire of all the women in the play is towards their husbands; a truer picture, perhaps, than the rampant promiscuity attributed to Athenian women elsewhere (T. 491, E. 522). Cf. de Wit-Tak, Th.M., Lysistrata (Groningen, 1967), p. 129 Google Scholar. Current interest in women in antiquity is evidenced by recent publications: see (e.g.) Lloyd-Jones, Hugh, Females of the Species (London, 1975)Google Scholar, Pomeroy, Sarah B., Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves (New York, 1975)Google Scholar, Shaw, M., ‘The Female Intruder. Women in Fifth-century Drama’, CP 70 (1975), 255-66Google Scholar (a study of Ajax, Medea, and Lysistrata), Lefkowitz, Mary R. and Fant, Maureen B., Women in Greece and Rome (Sarasota, 1977)Google Scholar, Wilkinson, L.P., ‘Classical Approaches II. Women’s Liberation’, Encounter (May, 1978), 25-36Google Scholar, Women in the Ancient World, Arethusa 11, 1978. See also Dover (n. 3), pp.95-102.

33. 567 ff., 588-97; cf. the war-widow, T. 446.

34. A. 500 cf. above, p. 13.

35. F. 391, πολλά μίυ 7έλοιά μ’ βίπειν, πολλα бе σπουδαία.

36. Peter Rau, ‘Das Tragödienspiel in den “Thesmophoriazusen” ‘, in Newiger, p. 339.

37. The name is employed here for convenience of reference: it occurs, however, only φ a scholiast on R, not in the text of Thesmopboriazusae.

38. The parallelism (cf. L. 368, Cyc. 236) may suggest that Aristophanes’ comedies of 411 refer to Euripides’ satyr-play (of 412?) See my Cyclops (Rome, 1978), p. 204. A good recent study of this little-known comedy is Hansen, Hardy, ‘Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae: Theme, Structure and Production’, Philologus 120 (1976), 165-85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. For discussion of the contest see Grube, G.M.A., The Greek and Roman Critics (Toronto and London, 1965), pp. 25 Google Scholar ff., repr. in Littlefield, David J. (ed.), Twentieth Century Interpretations of the Frogs (New Jersey, 1968), pp. 68 ffGoogle Scholar.; Harriott, Rosemary, Poetry and Criticism before Plato (1969), pp. 148 ffGoogle Scholar.; Dover, AC, pp. 183 ff.

40. Ancient (and most modern) scholars accept that the Eleusinian mysteries are referred to. See (e.g.) Lapalus, E., ‘Le Dionysus et l’Héraclès des Grenouilles ’, REG 47 (1934), 1-20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and (against this view) Tierney, M., ‘The Parodos in Aristophanes’ Frogs’, PRIA 42, Section C (1935), 199–202 Google Scholar, who finds Orphic-Dionysiac connections. Both articles are collected in Littlefield, (n. 39).

41. See Lapalus (n. 40). Anyone who tends to think Dionysos’ treatment blasphemous may compare the episode in the medieval Reynard tale recounted in Torrance (n. 42), p. 108.

42. ‘. . . this last of Aristophanes’ masterpieces . . . portrays the grand poetry of the city’s past as a force undefeated even by death’ ( Torrance, R.M., The Comic Hero (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1978), p. 58 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. Murray, p. 198.

44. ‘It is not sufficient to say that the Assembly of Women is the ugliest (Aristophanic) comedy ... it is the ugly comedy’: Strauss, Leo,Socrates and Aristophanes (New York, 1966), p. 279 Google Scholar.

45. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., ‘Der Schluss der Ecclesiazusen des Aristophanes’, SPAW1 (1903), 455 Google Scholar.

46. See Ussher, pp. xxvi-xxxv.

47. The manuscripts twice (729, 876) in place of a choral song have simply χοροϋ. This note was inserted (it seems) by later editors familiar with New Comedy conventions (cf. Men. Dysc. 232): the role of the chorus in Ecclesiazusae is complete when the new Republic is in being. For further discussion, see Ussher, pp. xxvii ff.

48. For this (somewhat vague) category see Lever, pp. 160-85.

49. Manuscripts in some later passages give χοροθ (cf. n. 47). See Handley, E.W., “ΧΟΡΟΤ in the Plums’, CQ N.S. 3 (1953), 55–61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. See above, p. 9.

51. This is the more marked because of strong resemblances (particularly in the two plays’ final episodes) of incident, character, and language.

52. This is also true of tragedy: A.M. Dale, ‘The Creation of Dramatic Characters’, CP, pp. 273 ff. She exaggerates a little in saying of Old Comedy that it is ‘. . . clearly not interested in producing “characters” except as vehicles for the illustration of comic ideas’ (p. 278).

53. One should hesitate (e.g.) to remove W. 1364-5 from ‘an uncharacteristically foul-mouthed Bdelykleon’ and attribute them, as ‘magnificently abusive’, to his father ( Rusten, Jeffrey S., ‘ Wasps 1360-1369: Philokleon’s ΤΩΘΑΣΜΟΣ’ HSPh 81 (1977), 157 Google Scholar ff.). On discontinuity of characterization see Dover, AC, pp. 59 ff.

54. See (for the Aristophanic hero) Whitman (some of whose comments, however, are eccentric); Terranee (n. 42), pp. 37-59, (on ‘character’ in Aristophanes) Maurach, G., ‘Interpretationen zur attischen Komödie’ (A. Class. 11 (1968), 4 Google Scholar n. 10); (for the buffoon, βωμολόχος) Arist. E. N. 1128a4.

55. Arist. loc. cit. n. 54; cf. above, p. 8.

56. Above, p. 13.

57. S.F. Macmathúna, ‘Trickery in Aristophanes’ (Cornell dissertation, 1971).

58. Such conventional figures however, do exist: Lamachos the άλαξών (‘braggart soldier’) foreshadows the later miles gloriosus.

59. He engages in καταγλωττισμός with his daughter (W. 609). This is among the rewards of jury-service; but presumably not all old men enjoyed it.

60. MacDowell, p. 8. For an attempted psychological study of Philokleon see Paduano, G., Il giudice guidicato (Bologna, 1974)Google Scholar.

61. Maurach (above n. 54), 4 ff.

62. Both, moreover, are prototypes (W. 1292, PL 627) of the later servus currens: on his origin and evolution see Guardi, T., ‘1 precedenti greci della figura del “servus currens” della commedia romana’, Pan 1 (1974), 5-15Google Scholar.

63. Neil on K. 32, ‘Demosthenes . . . ridiculing Nicias’ nervousness and chattering of teeth’. The identification with Demosthenes (K. 54) is tentative: early copies named neither him nor Nikias (cf. Hypothesis II. 13.21) and nothing in the text suggests the latter. See Dover, , Maia 21 (1969), 123-5Google Scholar.

64. Ussher, pp. xxxv ff.

65. Oeri, H.G., Der Typ der komischen Alten in der griechischen Komödie (Basle, 1948)Google Scholar. But Aristophanes lacks Gilbert’s innate cruelty: see Sir Quiller-Couch, Arthur, ‘W.S. Gilbert’, in Cambridge Lectures (1943), p. 304 Google Scholar: the Gilbert and Sullivan operas have much relevance for Aristophanic studies. Gilbert at school won prizes for metrical translations of the Latin and Greek classics, Taylor, Deems in Plays and Poems of W.S. Gilbert (New York, 1932), Preface, p. XIX Google Scholar; for his debt to Aristophanes see Fiddian, Pauli, PCA 52 (1955), 20-1Google Scholar.

66. VX.Symp. 233 d.

67. Rau, P., Paratragodia (Munich, 1967)Google Scholar. See further Murray, A.T., On Parody and Paratragoedia in Aristophanes (Berlin, 1891)Google Scholar; Schlesinger, A.C., ‘Indications of Parody in Aristophanes’, TAPhA 67 (1936), 269-314Google Scholar; id. ‘Identification of Parodies in Aristophanes’, AJP 58 (1937), 294-305.

68. References to and parody of Sophocles are rarer (e.g. P. 531, B. 100): ‘. . . Sophocles’s personality and plays did not offer such good material for caricature and parody as did Euripides’s and Aeschylus’s’ (Stanford at F. 82). Other tragedians (mere names to us) are referred to in disparagement (Л. 12 ff., P. 803 ff., F. 86 ff.).

69. We are not to suppose an Athenian audience — for whose twofold composition see E. 1155 —so well versed in (even recent) tragedy as to recognize the source of every quotation or allusion. Cf. Harriott, R., ‘Aristophanes’ Audience and the plays of Euripides’, BICS 9 (1962), 1-12Google Scholar. For Aristophanes’ recognition of, and adaptation of his humour to, the differing intellectual levels of the audience see R.S. Lyttle, ‘Aristophanes and his Audience’ (New University of Utster dissertation, 1978). Cf. below, p. 42 n. 1.

70. The passivity of tragic choruses in crises (A. Agam. 1367, E. Hipp. 782) may be glanced at in E. 261; the passage also illustrates comic παρά προσδοκίαν, or bathos (see below).

71. F. 1126 ff. preserves the first lines of Aeschylus’ Choephoroi.

72. There is little attempt, however, except obviously with foreigners (Pseudartabas, A. 100, Lampito, L. 81) to distinguish comic characters by diction: and syntax and metre are only rarely used to illustrate a character’s present state or situation. See, though, the euphoric drunken servant-girl (E. 1112-26, cf. Plaut. Most. 319, 325). Similarly, B. 310, 315.

73. See E. Melanippe, fr. 487 N2, ‘όμνυμι б’ íepòv aWe’p’, οί’κησιν Διός (cf. T. 272); Ba. 889, Sapòv χρόνου ηόδα. The objection to the famous line from the Hippolytos, ή γλώσσ’ όμώμοχ’, ή бе ψρην άνώμοτος (T. 275 ff., К 101 ff., 1471), is presumably ethical, not linguistic.

74. See(e.g.)IC. 1056, P. 1089ff., B. 575, L. 520, F. 1034 (Homer); B. 250 ff. (Alkman); K. 1263 ff., 1329, С 597, 0.941 ff. (Pindar); C. 1356, B. 919, T. 161, E. 973a ff. (Simonides, Ibykos, and lyric poetry in general).

75. Kleinknecht, H., Die Gebetsparodie in der Antike (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1937, repr. Hildesheim, 1966)Google Scholar; Horn, W., Gebet und Gebetsparodie in den Komödien des Aristophanes (Nuremberg, 1971)Google Scholar.

76. The famous Harmodios skolion is quoted (Ł. 632, cf. A. 980), and one by Timokrates parodied (A. 532).

77. Bowra, C.M., ‘A love-duet’, AJP 79 (1958), 376-91Google Scholar.

78. Murphy, Charles T., ‘Aristophanes and the Art of Rhetoric’, HSPh 49 (1938), 69-113Google Scholar.

79. Miller, H.W., ‘Aristophanes and Medical Language’, TAPbA 76 (1945), 74-84Google Scholar; Denniston, J.D., ‘Technical Terms in Aristophanes’, CQ 21 (1927), 113-21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80. Peppier, C.W., ‘The termination -кос, as used by Aristophanes for comic effect’, AJP 31 (1910), 428-44Google Scholar; Dover, K.J., CR N.S. 4 (1955), 207 Google Scholar, who sees the -ικος ending as administrative language; Denniston, J.D., The Greek Particles2 (1954), lxvii, 88 Google Scholar.

81. Dover at C. 2; Vetta, M., ‘Un caso di autoparodia in Aristofane (Ran., 1278)’, ANSP 5 (1974), 1281-7Google Scholar.

82. Parody and incongruous juxtaposition are combined in this passage from Joyce’s Ulysses ( Stanford, W.B., Ireland and the Classical Tradition (1976), p. 108 Google Scholar): ‘And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a comely youth, and behind him there passed an elder of noble gait and countenance, bearing the sacred scrolls of law and with him his lady wife, a dame of peerless lineage, fairest of her race . . . And begob it was only that bloody old pantaloon Denis Breen in his bath slippers . . .’

83. Dover comments (C. 8) on the ‘lively insouciance’ implied in farting. Its incidence in Aristophanes is discussed by Hošek, R., Lidovost a lidové motivy u Aristofana (Prague, 1962), pp. 160-74Google Scholar.

84. A compendium (with some doubtful examples) of such usages is Henderson, Jeffrey, The Maculate Muse (New Haven and London, 1975)Google Scholar.

85. Werres, J., Die Beteuerungsformeln in der attischen Komödie (Bonn, 1936)Google Scholar.

86. Some such may underlie expressions now obscure to us: ‘he didn’t save his own eyelid’, ‘sit down and chew your cuttle-fish’ (E. 402, 554). See further L. Bauck, ‘De proverbiis aliisque locutionibus ex usu vitae communis petitis apud Aristophanem comicum’ (Königsberg dissertation, 1880).

87. Peppier, C.W., Comic Terminations in Aristophanes and the Comic Fragments (Baltimore, 1902)Google Scholar; id., ‘Comic terminations in Aristophanes’, AJP 39 (1918), 173-183; AJP 42(1921), 152-61.

88. W. 185; cf., e.g., F. 965.

89. Cf. the imitations of frog- and bird-song (F. 209 ff., B. 227 ff., 260-2).

90. Preparations for naval warfare include ‘black eyes’ (A. 551) and end with a reference to Euripides’ Telephos (cf. n. 4). On word accumulation see Spyropoulos, E.S., L’Accumulation verbale chez Aristophane (Thessalonica, 1974)Google Scholar.

91. Taillardat, J., Les Images d’Aristophane2 (Paris, 1965), pp. 21 ffGoogle Scholar.

92. See further Newiger, H.-J., Metaphor und Allegorie. Studien zu Aristophanes (Munich, 1957)Google Scholar; Komornicka, A.M., Métaphores, personnifications et comparaisons dans l’oeuvre d’Aristophane (Breslau, 1964)Google Scholar.

93. See further (on language) Dover, K.J., ‘Lo stile di Aristofane’, QUCC 9 (1970), 7-23Google Scholar; (on techniques of humour) Grene, David, ‘The Comic Technique of Aristophanes’, Hermathena 50(1937), 87–125 Google Scholar.