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A Lesson From The Frogs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

W. Geoffrey Arnott
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Extract

The world of Aristophanes’ comedies is mainly one of fantasy, where free men carry private peaces in wineskins or fly to Zeus on a dungbeetle, women introduce sex-strikes or take control of the state, and a slave rides down to Hades on a donkey. A fantastic idea is the wellspring of his plots, and its successful realization leads to equally fantastic after-effects. Yet embedded in his extant plays from the Acharnians at least to the Ecclesiazusae is a series of passages where the focus appears to be on the real world of contemporary politics, history, belief, and the arts, while advice on authentic issues is offered to the mass audiences in the theatre of Dionysus. Is that advice seriously intended, or is it as fantastic as Aristophanes’ comic plots?

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , April 1991 , pp. 18 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

NOTES

1. The latest discussion of the subject in extenso is supplied by Heath, Malcolm, Political Comedy in Athens (Hypomnemata 87: Göttingen, 1986)Google Scholar, with full bibliography (pp. 55f.). Cf. MacDowell's, D. M. review in CR 38 (1988), 215ffGoogle Scholar.

2. Aristophanes was probably not the first (pace Grube, G. M. A., The Greek and Roman Critics [London, 1965], p. 22)Google Scholar writer to voice the opinion that poets were teachers; Cratinus may well have anticipated him, if his Dionysoi (see fr. 52 Kassel-Austin, , Poetae Comici Graeci IV [Berlin and New York, 1983], p. 147)Google Scholar was produced before Aristophanes’ Acharnians. A contrary view was expressed by Eratosthenes: ‘Every poet aims at entertainment, not. instruction’ (in Strabo, 1.2.3), and Long, A. A. does well to remind us (in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, I: Greek Literature, edited by Easterling, P. E. and Knox, B. M. W. [Cambridge, 1985], p. 536)Google Scholar that Aristotle never insists on the didactic function of poets.

3. The Frogs itself, however, was produced not by its author but by Philonides.

4. Cf. Barrett's, David comments in the introduction to his Penguin translation of the play (Aristophanes, The Frogs and Other Plays [Harmondsworth, 1964], p. 149)Google Scholar.

5. The translation here is my own. A literal rendering is needed in order to bring out precisely and clearly what Aristophanes is saying.

6. Even Heath (n.l), who is generally sceptical about a didactic purpose in political comment elsewhere in Aristophanes, accepts the serious intent of the parabasis in the Frogs (pp. 19ff.).

7. Cf. Leeuwen, J. van in the introduction to his edition of the Frogs (Leiden, 1896), p. viiiGoogle Scholar: ‘Dicaearchi verba cur addubitemus iusta causa non est.’ Heath (n.l), p. 220 n.34 is more distrustful of the statement in the hypothesis .

8. A second production within a few days of the first is supported by e.g. van Leeuwen (n.7), p. viii and Murray, Gilbert, Aristophanes: a Study (Oxford, 1933), p. 118Google Scholar; at the Greater Dionysia of 405 by e.g. Droysen, J. G. in his German translation of Aristophanes (Berlin, 1838), 3. p. 393Google Scholar, Zielinski, T., Die Gliederung der altattischen Komödie (Leipzig, 1885), p. 118Google Scholar, and D. Del Corno in the introduction to his edition of the play (Milan, 1985), p. xi. With a full discussion of the question Allen, J. T., University of California Publications in Classical Philology 11 (1930–1933), 143ffGoogle Scholar. argues for 403; cf. Sommerstein's, Alan H. edition of the Acharnians (Warminster, 1980), p. 24 n.10 and Heath (n.l), p. 20 n.34Google Scholar. In an impressive paper delivered at the Nottingham conference on Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis, July 1990, and to be published probably in 1992 as part of the conference proceedings, however, Sommerstein retracts his earlier view and argues convincingly for the Lenaea of 404; cf. Radermacher's edition of the play (Vienna, 1954), p. 3.

9. London, 2nd ed. 1919, p. vi. Cf. his commentary on 686–705.

10. Cf. Ussher, R. G., Aristophanes (Greece & Rome, New Surveys in the Classics 13, Oxford, 1979), p. 13Google Scholar.

11. Cf. D. M. MacDowell's edition of the speech (Oxford, 1962), commentary ad lot, with a careful translation of Patrocleides’ law.

12. According to Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.19, Theramenes objected that the καλοì καì ἀуαθοí in Athens were not limited to that number; cf. also Ath. Pol. 36.2.

13. Cf. especially now Krentz, Peter, The Thirty at Athens (Ithaca and London, 1982)Google Scholar.

14. On the number of men killed by the Thirty see Rhodes, P. J., A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar, ad loc. The figure of 1,500 is given also by Isocrates (Areopag. 67, Lochit. 11) and ‘more than 1,500’ by Aeschines (In Ctes. 235). A scholion on Aeschines, In Tim. reports that ‘some’ (ἔνɩοɩ) authors say 1,500, but Lysias 2,500.

15. Cf. especially Strauss, B. S., Athens after the Peloponnesian War: Class, Faction and Policy (London and Sydney, 1986), pp. 54f., also 47, 93fGoogle Scholar.

16. Ath. Pol. 35.1.

17. Xen, . Hell. 2Google Scholar.3.50. Diodorus Siculus (14.4.6) gives a garbled account and magnifies the daggers into swords.

18. Ath. Pol. 37.1–2, Xen, . Hell. 2Google Scholar.3.20.

19. Isocrates, , Areopag. 67Google Scholar; cf. Diodorus Siculus 14.5.6–7.

20. Cf. Ath. Pol. 33.2.

21. Cf. especially Croix, G. E. M. de Ste, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972), pp. 361f., 367Google Scholar.

22. Cf. Krentz (n.13), p. 16.

23. Cf. e.g. Handley, E. W. in CHCL (n.2) 1. pp. 390f. and Heath (n.l), pp. 21ff.Google Scholar