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SINCE ORPHEUS WAS IN SHORT PANTS: REASSESSING OEAGRUS AT ARISTOPHANES, WASPS 579–80
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2021
Abstract
In Aristophanes’ Wasps, Philocleon says that he and his fellow jurors do not acquit Oeagrus until he has recited a speech from the Niobe. Scholars have almost universally assumed that this was the name of a contemporary tragic actor, despite its extreme rarity. This article argues that the reference is rather to the father of Orpheus. As a figure from the generation before the archetypal bard, ‘an Oeagrus’ represents the old-fashioned poetry to which Philocleon and his fellow jurors are devoted.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
The idea for this article came to me while teaching Wasps to a Greek Comedy class at the University of Sydney in 2019. I am grateful to the students for such a stimulating class, and to Peter Wilson, Matthew Wright and CQ's anonymous reader for their helpful comments.
References
1 Σ RVΓ Ar. Vesp. 579 Koster. Commentators (all cited ad loc.): D.M. MacDowell (ed.), Aristophanes Wasps (Oxford, 1971): ‘evidently a tragic actor’; A.H. Sommerstein (ed.), Aristophanes Wasps (Warminster, 1983): ‘evidently a tragic actor’; L. Lenz (ed.), Aristophanes Wespen (Berlin, 2014): ‘ein sonst unbekannter Tragödienschauspieler’; K.S. Rothwell, Jr. (ed.), Aristophanes’ Wasps (Oxford, 2019): ‘evidently an actor who had a part in a Niobe’. Critics: J. Vaio, ‘Aristophanes’ Wasps. The relevance of the final scenes’, GRBS 12 (1971), 335–51, at 346: ‘Oeagrus the actor’; M. Wright, ‘Comedy versus tragedy in Wasps’, in E. Bakola, L. Prauscello and M. Telò (edd.), Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres (Cambridge, 2013), 205–25, at 218 n. 64: ‘Oeagrus is an actor’; M.C. Farmer, Tragedy on the Comic Stage (Oxford, 2017), 128: ‘when [Philocleon] gets a tragic actor in his courtroom, his obsession leads him to demand a private tragic performance’.
2 O'Connor, J.B., Chapters in the History of Actors and Acting in Ancient Greece (Chicago, 1908), 124Google Scholar, §383; Ghiron-Bistagne, P., Recherches sur les acteurs dans la Grèce antique (Paris, 1976), 349Google Scholar; Stephanis, I.E., Διονυσιακοὶ Τεχνῖται (Heraclion, 1988), 342Google Scholar, §1928; Sommerstein, A.H., ‘How to avoid being a komodoumenos’, CQ 46 (1996), 327–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 349–50.
3 PAA 740540: ‘[A]ctor tragic performing in Niobe, komoidoumenos in Wasps of Aristophanes’. The question mark next to Athens in his entry at LGPN II.348 seems to express doubt about his being Athenian rather than about his existence.
4 Z.P. Biles and S.D. Olson (edd.), Aristophanes Wasps (Oxford, 2015), ad loc. For acceptance of the communis opinio, see Biles, Z.P., ‘Thucydides’ Cleon and the poetics of politics in Aristophanes’ Wasps’, CPh 111 (2016), 117–38Google Scholar, at 122: ‘The tragic actor Oiagros escapes conviction only if he recites a tragic monologue.’
5 οἱ δὲ λέγουϲιν μύθουϲ ἡμῖν, οἱ δ' Αἰϲώπου τι γέλοιον | οἱ δὲ ϲκώπτουϲ', ἵν' ἐγὼ γελάϲω καὶ τὸν θυμὸν καταθῶμαι, 566–7. The genitive is (perhaps deliberately) ambiguous and the ‘something funny’ could be a fable by Aesop or an anecdote about him.
6 Σ VLhAld Ar. Vesp. 566 Koster. Σ VLh ad loc. adds that he was an actor ‘of Aeschylus’ (Αἰϲχύλου δὲ ἦν ὑποκριτήϲ).
7 On Aesop in Wasps, see Rothwell, K.S., ‘Aristophanes’ Wasps and the sociopolitics of Aesop's Fables’, CJ 90 (1995), 233–54Google Scholar; Pertsinidis, S., ‘The fabulist Aristophanes’, Fabula 50 (2009), 208–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schirru, S., La favola in Aristofane (Berlin, 2009), 56–70Google Scholar; Hall, E., ‘The Aesopic in Aristophanes’, in Bakola, E., Prauscello, L. and Telò, M. (edd.), Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres (Cambridge, 2013), 277–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 289–94; S. Miles, ‘Cultured animals and wild humans? Talking with the animals in Aristophanes’ Wasps’, in T. Fögen and E. Thomas (edd.), Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Berlin, 2017), 205–32, at 213–24.
8 Tlempolemus is listed as a tragic actor by Ghiron-Bistagne (n. 2), 359, but Stephanis (n. 2), 429, §2430 designates him a ‘fictional person or of doubtful historicity’ (‘πλαστὰ ἢ ἀμφίβολης ἱστορικότητας πρόσωπα’) and O'Connor (n. 2), 135, §467 assigns him a sceptical question mark.
9 Biles and Olson (n. 4), ad loc. LGPN I.347, citing IG XII(5) 978 and tentatively dating him and it to the second or first century b.c.e.
10 Cf. N. Kanavou, Aristophanes’ Comedy of Names: A Study of Speaking Names in Aristophanes (Berlin, 2011), 98 on Trygaeus in Peace: ‘It is not historically attested and must be the poet's own creation, possibly inspired by similar names attested in neighbouring regions; these were rare, which would have made the etymological significance more noticeable.’
11 Biles and Olson (n. 4), ad loc.; Kanavou (n. 10), 95.
12 Biles and Olson (n. 4), ad loc.; Kanavou (n. 10), 95.
13 Sommerstein (n. 1), ad loc.
14 Kanavou (n. 10), 95 and Biles and Olson (n. 4), ad loc. respectively.
15 Kanavou (n. 10), 181–2.
16 Cf. Biles and Olson (n. 4), ad loc.: ‘lit. “some Odysseus”, i.e. “someone like Odysseus”’. I am indebted to CQ's anonymous reader for this example, though it does fall into a slightly different category, since it refers not to a more generally applicable type, ‘an Odysseus’ (e.g. a trickster), but to the very specific, perhaps unique ‘type’ of men who escape imprisonment by hiding under animals, a type which the joking Bdelycleon does not in fact believe exists. As a further complication, Bdelycleon is unwittingly flagging Aristophanes’ witting parody of Odyssey 9.
17 Kanavou (n. 10), 48, 114–15; S.D. Olson (ed.), Aristophanes Acharnians (Oxford, 2002), ad loc.; N.V. Dunbar (ed.), Aristophanes Birds (Oxford, 1995), ad loc.
18 He has no iconographic presence, either in his own right or even in his capacity as Orpheus’ (mortal) father. See M.-X. Garezou, ‘Orpheus’, LIMC VII.1.81–105, at 81: ‘Les témoignages disparates sur la parenté d'O[rpheus] ne sont pas d'un interêt particulier pour l'analyse iconographique.’
19 Genealogy: Certamen 48. Begetting: Heraclid. Pont. fr. 159 Wehrli; Ap. Rhod. Argon. 1.25. Genitive: Pl. Symp. 179d2; Alcid. fr. 2.126 Avezzù; Hermesian. fr. 7.1 Powell; Ap. Rhod. Argon. 1.570, 2.703, 4.905, 4.1193; Phanocl. fr. 1.1 Powell; Diod. Sic. 3.65.6, 4.25.2; Lucian, Astr. 10. Patronymic: Nic. Ther. 462.
20 Ion of Chios’ mysterious tragedy Laertes may have been the exception that proves the rule.
21 Contest: Nonnus, Dion. 19.61–117; aristeia: 22.168–217, 320–53.
22 δεύτεροϲ αἰόλον ὕμνον ἄναξ Οἴαγροϲ ὑφαίνων, | ὡϲ γενέτηϲ Ὀρφῆοϲ (‘Second, Lord Oeagrus, weaving a varied song, because he was the father of Orpheus’), Nonnus, Dion. 19.100–1. A. Bernabé and R. García-Gasco, ‘Nonnus and Dionysiac-Orphic religion’, in D. Accorinti (ed.), Brill's Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis (Leiden, 2016), 91–110, at 98: ‘This kind of “inverse genetic heritage” works … as a poetic anticipation of the capability that would make Orpheus well known later on.’
23 Nonnus, Dion. 13.428–31. Ap. Rhod. Argon. 1.553–8. On the Apollonian scene's metapoetic implications, see C.J. Ransom, ‘Back to the future: Apollonius’ Argonautica 1.553–58, chronological play and epic succession’, Mnemosyne 67 (2014), 639–45.
24 Aelian may mention an otherwise unattested Oeagrus (or perhaps a different chronology for the same Oeagrus) as post-dating Orpheus and Musaeus and being the first to compose a poem about the Trojan War (Ael. VH 21). However, Οἴαγροϲ is König's conjecture for the manuscripts’ Ϲύαγροϲ and in any case such a minor and probably late variant in the mythological tradition would not outweigh the overwhelming testimony for Oeagrus as Orpheus’ father.
25 E.g. Ar. Ran. 1030–2 ϲκέψαι γὰρ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆϲ | ὡϲ ὠφέλιμοι τῶν ποιητῶν οἱ γενναῖοι γεγένηνται. | Ὀρφεὺϲ μὲν … (‘For think how helpful the noble ones among the poets have been since earliest times. Orpheus …’).
26 D. Konstan, ‘The politics of Aristophanes’ Wasps’, TAPhA 115 (1985), 27–46, at 32. Cf. M. Payne, ‘Teknomajikality and the humanimal in Aristophanes’ Wasps’, in P. Walsh (ed.), Brill's Companion to the Reception of Aristophanes (Leiden, 2016), 129–47, at 141: ‘Their aesthetic preferences are old-fashioned, like Better Argument's untimely preference for old school poetry and old school sex in Clouds.’
27 Cf. the similar artistic and socio-political preferences of Dicaeopolis (especially Ach. 9–11, with Z.P. Biles, ‘Aeschylus’ afterlife: reperformance by decree in 5th c. Athens?’, ICS 31–2 [2006–7], 206–42, at 221–7) and Strepsiades (especially Nub. 1353–79, with M. Wright, The Comedian as Critic [London, 2012], 84).
28 Farmer (n. 1), 117–53; N. Papathanasopoulou, ‘Tragic and epic visions of the oikos in Aristophanes’ Wasps’, CW 112 (2019), 253–78; S. Nelson, Aristophanes and his Tragic Muse: Comedy, Tragedy and the Polis in 5th Century Athens (Leiden, 2016), 165–71; Wright (n. 1), 216: ‘The aged Philocleon and the decrepit jurors, predictably, prefer the archaic tragedy of Phrynichus to that of the more up-to-date younger tragedians.’
29 It is tempting to look for a reason why it is a speech specifically from Niobe that Oeagrus must deliver. However, in marked contrast to Oeagrus, Niobe has multiple associations, with fertility, boasting, impiety, mourning and petrification, which makes it harder to assert the primacy of any single one. Plato has Critias, himself ‘quoting’ Solon, say that she and Phoroneus were the first human beings, pre-dating even Deucalion (Pl. Ti. 22a). This tradition of Niobe's antiquity is also reflected in reports that she was the first mortal woman with whom Zeus had sex (Diod. Sic. 4.14.4, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.17.3) and perhaps in Martial's use of her as a mythological exemplum of a sexually repulsive uetula (Mart. 3.32.3, 10.67.2). The audience at the Lenaea in 422 might thus have associated Niobe as well as Oeagrus with extreme antiquity and by analogy with old-fashioned poetry. However, Aristophanes may simply be evoking a famous tragedy by that other archetypally ‘old-fashioned’ poet, Aeschylus (though Sophocles’ play cannot be ruled out), perhaps with a comic paradox that Oeagrus must recite the loveliest rhēsis from a play best known for its protagonist's silence. CQ's anonymous reader makes the further attractive suggestion that such a paradox could characterize Philocleon as a mis-reader of tragedy, like Dionysus in Frogs. On Niobe's silence, including the possible allusion to it in Frogs, see Taplin, O., ‘Aeschylean silences and silences in Aeschylus’, HSPh 76 (1972), 57–97Google Scholar, at 57–76; Wright, M., The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy. Volume 2: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (London, 2019), 262–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.