Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T12:31:00.422Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Aristophanes and de Ste. Croix: The Value of Old Comedy as Evidence for Athenian Popular Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2015

David M. Pritchard*
Affiliation:
The University of Queensland, [email protected]

Abstract

De Ste. Croix famously argued that Aristophanes had a conservative political outlook and attempted to use his comedies to win over lower-class audiences to this minority point of view. The ongoing influence of his interpretation has meant that Old Comedy has been largely ignored in the historiography of Athenian popular culture. This article extends earlier critiques of de Ste. Croix by systematically comparing how Aristophanes and the indisputably popular genre of fourth-century oratory represented the social classes of the Athenians and political leaders. The striking parallels between the two suggest that Aristophanes, far from advocating a minority position, exploited the rich and, at times, contradictory views of lower-class citizens for comic and ultimately competitive ends. As a consequence his plays are valuable evidence for Athenian popular culture and help to correct the markedly fourth-century bias in the writing of Athenian cultural history.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adkins, A.W.H. (1978). ‘Review of Dover 1974’, CPh 73, 143-58.Google Scholar
Arnott, W.G. (1991). ‘A Lesson from the Frogs’, G&R 38, 1823.Google Scholar
Barringer, J.M. (2001). The Hunt in Ancient Greece. Baltimore and London.Google Scholar
Bourriot, F. (1995). Kalos Kagathos - Kalokagathia: D'un terme de propaganda de sophistes à une notion sociale et philosophique: Étude d'histoire athénienne, 2 volumes. Zurich and New York.Google Scholar
Bowie, A.M. (1993). Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brock, R. (1991). ‘The Emergence of Democratic Ideology’, Historia 40, 160-9.Google Scholar
Burckhardt, L.A. (1996). Bürger und Soldaten: Aspekte der politischen und militärischen Rolle athenischer Bürger im Kriegswesen des 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Carey, C. (1994). ‘Comic Ridicule and Democracy’, in Osborne, R. and Hornblower, S. (eds), Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis, 6983. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartledge, P. (1990). Aristophanes and His Theatre of the Absurd. Bristol.Google Scholar
Ceccarelli, P. (1993). ‘Sans thalassocratie, pas de démocratie? Le rapport entre thalassocratie et démocratie à Athènes dans la discussion du V et IV siècle Birds J.-C.’, Historia 42, 444-70.Google Scholar
Christ, M.R. (2006). The Bad Citizen in Classical Athens. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, F. and Morris, S.. (1990). ‘Dining in Round Buildings’, in Murray, O. (ed.), Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion, 6685. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croiset, M. (1909). Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens. London.Google Scholar
Csapo, E. (2007). ‘The Men Who Built the Theatres: Theatropolai, Theatronai, and Arkhitektones’, in Wilson, P. (ed.), The Greek Theatre and Festivals: Documentary Studies, 8721. Oxford.Google Scholar
Csapo, E. and Slater, W.J.. (1994). The Context of Ancient Drama. Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Davidson, J.N. (1997). Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens. New York.Google Scholar
Davidson, J.N. (2007). The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece. London.Google Scholar
Davies, J.K. (1981). Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens. New York.Google Scholar
De Ste. Croix, G.E.M. (1972). The Origins of the Peloponnesian War. London.Google Scholar
Den Boer, W. (1979). Private Morality in Greece and Rome: Some Historical Aspects. Leiden.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donlan, W. (1980). The Aristocratic Ideal in Ancient Greece: Attitudes of Superiority from Homer to the End of the Fifth Century. Lawrence.Google Scholar
Dover, K.J. (1972). Aristophanic Comedy. Berkeley and Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Dover, K.J. (1974). Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Oxford.Google Scholar
Dover, K.J. (1989). Greek Homosexuality, 2nd edn. Cambridge MA.Google Scholar
Dover, K.J. (1993). Aristophanes' Frogs. Edited with Introduction and Commentary. Oxford.Google Scholar
Easterling, P.E. (1997). ‘A Show for Dionysus’, in Easterling, P.E. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, 3653. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edmunds, L. (1987). Cleon, Knights, and Aristophanes' Politics. Lanhamand London.Google Scholar
Ehrenberg, V. (1951). The People of Aristophanes: A Sociology of Old Attic Comedy. Oxford.Google Scholar
Fisher, N. (1998). ‘Rich and Poor’, in Cartledge, P. (ed.), The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece, 7699. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Fisher, N. (2000). ‘Symposiasts, Fish-Eaters and Flatterers: Social Mobility and Moral Concerns in Old Comedy’, in Harvey, D. and Wilkins, J. (eds), The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy, 355-96. London and Swansea.Google Scholar
Forrest, W.G. (1986). ‘The Stage and Polities’, in Cropp, M.J., Fantham, E. and Scully, S.E. (eds), Greek Tragedy and its Legacy: Essays Presented to D.J. Conacher, 229-39. Calgary.Google Scholar
Frisch, H. (1942). The Constitution of the Athenians: A Philological-Historical Analysis of Pseudo-Xenofon's Treatise De re publica atheniensium. Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Geddes, A. (1987). ‘Rags and Riches: The Costume of Athenian Men in the Fifth Century’, CQ 37, 307-31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldhill, S. (1986). Reading Greek Tragedy. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gomme, A.W. (1938). ‘Aristophanes and Polities’, CR 52, 97109.Google Scholar
Halliwell, S. (1984). ‘Aristophanic Satire’, Yearbook of English Studies 14, 620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliwell, S. (1991). ‘Comic Satire and Freedom of Speech in Classical Athens’, JHS 111, 4870.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliwell, S. (1993). ‘Comedy and Publicity in the Society of the Polis’, in Sommerstein, A.H., Halliwell, S., Henderson, J. and Zimmermann, B. (eds), Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis: Papers from the Greek Drama Conference, Nottingham 18-20 July 1990, 321-40. Bari.Google Scholar
Halliwell, S. (2004). ‘Aischrology, Shame, and Comedy’, in Sluiter, I. and Rosen, R.M. (eds), Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, 115-44. Leiden.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliwell, S. (2008). Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, M.H. (1983). ‘Rhetores and Strategoi in Fourth-Century Athens’, GRBS 24, 151-80.Google Scholar
Hansen, M.H. (1991). The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles and Ideology, trans. Crook, J.A.. Cambridge MA and Oxford.Google Scholar
Harding, P. (1981). ‘In Search of the Polypragmatist’, in Shrimpton, G.S. and McCargar, D.J. (eds), Classical Contributions: Studies in Honour of M.F. McGregor, 4150. New York.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. and Wilkins, J. (eds). (2000). The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy. London and Swansea.Google Scholar
Heath, M. (1987). Political Comedy in Aristophanes. Göttingen.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, M. (1997). ‘Aristophanes and the Discourse of Polities’, in Dobov, G.W. (ed.), The City as Comedy: Society and Representation in Athenian Theatre, 230-49. Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Henderson, J. (1990). ‘The Demos and the Comic Competition’, in Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (eds), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context, 271313. Princeton.Google Scholar
Henderson, J. (1998). ‘Attic Old Comedy, Frank Speech, and Democracy’, in Boedeker, D. and Raaflaub, K.A. (eds), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens, 255-73. Cambridge MA.Google Scholar
Henderson, J. (2007). ‘Drama and Democracy’, in Samons, L.J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles, 179-95. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hornblower, S. (2000). ‘The Old Oligarch (Pseudo-Xenophon's Athenaion Politela) and Thucydides: A Fourth-Century Date for the Old Oligarch?’, in Flensted-Jensen, P., Nielsen, T.H. and Rubinstein, L. (eds), Polis and Politics: Studies in Ancient Greek History Presented to Mogens Herman Hansen on his Sixtieth Birthday, August 20, 2000, 363-84. Aarhus.Google Scholar
Just, R. (1989). Women in Athenian Law and Life. London and New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kallet-Marx, L. (1994). ‘Money Talks: Rhetor, Demos, and the Resources of the Athenian Empire’, in Osborne, R. and Hornblower, S. (eds), Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis, 229237. Oxford.Google Scholar
Konstan, D. (1985). ‘The Politics of Aristophanes’, TAPhA 115, 2746.Google Scholar
Konstan, D. (2010). ‘Ridiculing a Popular War: Old Comedy and Militarism in Classical Athens’, in Pritchard, D.M. (ed.), War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens, 184-99. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Lech, M.L. (2010). The Dance of Fiction: Cognition, Fictionality and Choral Performance in Aristophanes, PhD thesis, The University of Copenhagen (Copenhagen).Google Scholar
Loraux, N. (1986). The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City, trans. Sheridan, A.. Cambridge MA.Google Scholar
Lowe, N. (2007). Comedy. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Markte, M.M. (1985). ‘Jury Pay and Assembly Pay’, in Cartledge, P. and Harvey, D. (eds), Crux: Essays in Greek History Presented to GEM. de Ste. Croix on his 75th Birthday, 265-97. Oxford.Google Scholar
Mikalson, J.D. (1983). Athenian Popular Religion. Chapel Hill and London.Google Scholar
Miller, M.C. (2010). ‘I am Eurymedon: Tensions and Ambiguities in Athenian War Imagery’, in Pritchard, D.M. (ed.), War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens, 304-37. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Mills, S. (1997). Theseus, Tragedy and the Athenian Empire. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moorton, R.F. (1988). ‘Aristophanes and Alcibiades’, GRBS 29, 345-59.Google Scholar
Mossé, C. (1983). ‘The “World of the Emporium” in the Private Speeches of Demosthenes’, in Garnsey, P., Hopkins, K. and Whittaker, C. (eds), Trade in the Ancient Economy, 5363. London.Google Scholar
Murray, G. (1933). Aristophanes. Oxford.Google Scholar
Murray, O. (1990). ‘The Affair of the Mysteries: Democracy and the Drinking Group’, in Murray, O. (ed.), Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion, 149-61. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, O. (1993). Early Greece, 2nd edn. London.Google Scholar
Neil, K.A. (1909). The Knights of Aristophanes. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Ober, J. (1978). ‘Views of Sea Power in the Fourth-Century Attic Orators’, Anc World 1, 119-30.Google Scholar
Ober, J. (1989). Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People. Princeton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ober, J. (1994). ‘Power and Oratory in Democratic Athens: Demosthenes 21, Against Meidias’, in Worthington, I. (ed.), Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action, 109-29. New York and London.Google Scholar
Ober, J. and Strauss, B.S.. (1990). ‘Drama, Political Rhetoric, and the Discourse of Athenian Democracy’, in Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (eds), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Civic Context, 237-70. Princeton.Google Scholar
Okál, M. (1960). ‘Aristophane et l'armée athénienne’, Eirene 1, 101-24.Google Scholar
Osborne, R. (2004). LACTOR 2: The Old Oligarch: Pseudo-Xenophon's Constitution of the Athenians: Introduction, Translation and Commentary. London.Google Scholar
Osborne, R. (ed.) (2007). Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art, Liter-ature, Philosophy, and Politics 430-380 BC. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Ostwald, M. (1986). From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law: Law, Society andPoUtics in Fifth-Century Athens. Berkeley, London and Los Angeles.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, R. (2005). Polytheism and Society at Athens. Oxford.Google Scholar
Pelling, C. (2000). Literary Texts and the Greek Historian. London.Google Scholar
Perlman, S. (1963). ‘The Politicians in the Athenian Democracy of the Fourth Century BC, Athenaeum 41, 327-55.Google Scholar
Pickard-Cambridge, A. (1988). The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd edn, rev. Gould, J. and Lewis, D.M. with new supplement. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Powell, A. (2001). Athens and Sparta: Constructing Greek PoUtical and SocialHistory from 478 BC, 2nd edn. London and New York.Google Scholar
Pritchard, D.M. (1998). ‘“The Fractured Imaginary”: Popular Thinking on Military Matters in Fifth-Century Athens’, AH 28, 3861.Google Scholar
Pritchard, D.M. (1999). The Fractured Imaginary: Popular Thinking on Citizen Soldiers and Warfare in Fifth-Century Athens, PhD dissertation, available at http://espace.librarv.uq.edu.aU/view/UO:152267. Macquarie University (Sydney).Google Scholar
Pritchard, D.M. (2003). ‘Athletics, Education and Participation in Classical Athens’, in Phillips, D.J. and Pritchard, D. (eds), Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World, 293349. Swansea.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pritchard, D.M. (2004a). ‘Kleisthenes, Participation, and the Dithyrambic Contests of Late Archaic and Classical Athens’, Phoenix 58, 208-28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pritchard, D.M. (2004b). ‘A Woman's Place in Classical Athens: An Overview’, AH 34.2, 170-91.Google Scholar
Pritchard, D.M. (2009). ‘Sport, War and Democracy in Classical Athens’, The Inter-national Journal of the History of Sport 26.2, 212-45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pritchard, D.M. (2010). ‘The Symbiosis between Democracy and War: The Case of Ancient Athens’, in Pritchard, D.M. (ed.), War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens, 162. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Pütz, B. (2003). The Symposium andKomos in Aristophanes. Stuttgart.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redfield, J. (1990). ‘Drama and Community: Aristophanes and Some of his Rivals’, in Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (eds), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Civic Context, 314-35. Princeton.Google Scholar
Revermann, M. (2006). ‘The Competence of Theatre Audiences in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Athens’, JHS 126, 99124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhodes, P.J. (1982). ‘Problems in Athenian eisphoraand Liturgies’, AJAH 7, 119.Google Scholar
Robb, K. (1994). Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece. New York and Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robson, J. (2009). Aristophanes: An Introduction. London.Google Scholar
Roisman, J. (2003). ‘The Rhetoric of Courage in the Athenian Orators’, in Rosen, R.M. and Sluiter, I. (eds), Andreia: Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity, 127-44. Boston and Leiden.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roisman, J. (2005). The Rhetoric of Manhood: Masculinity and the Attic Orators. Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosivach, V. (1991). ‘Some Athenian Presuppositions about “The Poor”’, G&R 38, 189-98.Google Scholar
Rosivach, V. (2001). ‘Class Matters in the Dyskolos of Menander’, CQ 51, 127-34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruschenbusch, E. (1979). ‘Die Einführung des Theorikon’, ZPE 36, 303-8.Google Scholar
Sealey, R. (1976). A History ofthe Greek City States 700-338B.C. Berkeley, London and Los Angeles.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, R.K. (1988). Democracy and Participation in Athens. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slater, N.W. (1997). ‘Bringing Up Father: Paideia and Ephebeia in the Wasps’, in Sommerstein, A.H. and Atherton, C. (eds), Education in Greek Fiction, 2752. Bari.Google Scholar
Sommerstein, A.H. (1982). Aristophanes: Clouds. Edited with Translation and Notes. Warminster.Google Scholar
Sommerstein, A.H. (1983). Aristophanes: Wasps. Edited with Translation and Notes. Warminster.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sommerstein, A.H. (1984). ‘Aristophanes and the Demon Poverty’, CQ 34, 314-33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sommerstein, A.H. (1987). Aristophanes: Birds. Edited with Translation and Notes. Warminster.Google Scholar
Sommerstein, A.H. (1990). Aristophanes: Lysistrata. Edited with Translation and Notes. Warminster.Google Scholar
Sommerstein, A.H. (1994). Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae. Edited with Translation and Notes. Warminster.Google Scholar
Sommerstein, A.H. (1996). ‘How to Avoid Being a Komodoumenos”, CQ 46, 327-56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sommerstein, A.H. (1997). ‘The Theatre Audience, the Demos, and the Suppliants of Aeschylus’, in Pelling, C. (ed.), Greek Tragedy and the Historian, 6379. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sommerstein, A.H. (2004). ‘Harassing the Satirist: The Alleged Attempts to Prosecute Aristophanes’, in Sluiter, I. and Rosen, R.M. (eds), Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, 145-74. Leiden.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Starkie, W.J.M. (1909). The Achamians of Aristophanes. London.Google Scholar
Storey, I. (1987). ‘Old Comedy 1975-1985’, EMC 31, 146.Google Scholar
Storey, I. (1992). ‘Δέκατον μὲν ἔτο τόδ’: Old Comedy 1982-1991’, Antichthon 26, 129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Storey, I. (2003). Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tacon, J. (2001). ‘Ecclesiastic Thorubos: Interventions, Interruptions, and Popular Involvement in the Athenian Assembly’, G&R 48, 173-92.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (2007). ‘A New Political World’, in Osborne, R. (ed.), Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Politics 430-380 BC, 7290. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Thomas, R. (1989). Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vartsos, J.A. (1978). ‘Class Divisions in Fifth-Century Athens’, Platon 30, 226-44.Google Scholar
Wallace, R.W. (1997). ‘Poet, Public and ‘Theatrocracy”’, in Edmunds, L. and Wallace, R.W. (eds), Poet, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece, 91111. Baltimore.Google Scholar
Walsh, P. (2009). ‘A Study in Reception: The British Debates over Aristophanes' Politics and Influence’, Classical Receptions Journal 1.1, 5572.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winkler, J.J. (1990). ‘Laying Down the Law: The Oversight of Men's Sexual Behavior in Classical Athens’, in Halperin, D.M., Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (eds), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, 171210. Princeton.Google Scholar
Yunis, H. (1998). ‘The Constraints of Democracy and the Rise of the Art of Rhetoric’, in Boedeker, D. and Raaflaub, K.A. (eds), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens, 223-40. Cambridge MA.Google Scholar
Zumbrunnen, J. (2004). ‘Elite Domination and the Clever Citizen: Aristo-phanes' Achamians and Knights’, Political Theory 32.5, 656-77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar